To think Toby Young deserves scorn for this article?

[BowieFan]

Apologies for linking to the Daily Mail, but I've used a service that denies them advertising revenue: <a class="break-all" href="https://anonym.to/?www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3869182/Why-Lefties-misty-eyed-movie-romanticises-Benefits-Britain-says-TOBY-YOUNG.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">anonym.to/?www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3869182/Why-Lefties-misty-eyed-movie-romanticises-Benefits-Britain-says-TOBY-YOUNG.html

Aside from the basic errors (it's 100minutes long, not nearly 3 hours), it's just an awful article. The fact that Toby Young thinks everyone claiming benefits is a smoking/gambling/drinking loudmouth is just offensive. I'm shocked - not that it was published - but that he thinks his opinion is the opinion of everyone.

I'd love to see him survive on benefits. I wonder if he'd be saying the same things then?

The UK would have plenty of money if we got rid of Trident and made the super wealthy and corporations pay their bloody taxes. Billions of pounds just thrown away, while the government harasses the most vulnerable of society literally into the grave to save £30 a week.

But if you're rich you're allowed to do anything you like.

Hope it gets sorted Dawn x

www.independent.co.uk/voices/ken-loach-i-daniel-blake-toby-young-life-on-benefits-rings-true-mark-steel-a7383461.html

As I work full time as a single mother and to enable me to keep a lot of benefits claimants and the like I can't always pick up on all questions.... why do the Tory party care more? Exactly as I said above - they are the ones who have given the lower paid the biggest pay rise they have had in 20 years (increased minimum wage) and secondly they manage the money to ensure we have cash to pay the low paid.

I do accept that the Tories found it hard to get spending down. I think they did a better job than Labour would have done at that that but they have been far too wet in my view in making nothing like enough cuts. I give them blame for that and would argue they could care for the less well off better if they made more cuts to ensure future ability to maintain that care.

But I don't think as we both have such very different views we will ever convince the other. We both think the UK is just about okay enough that we both stay living here so we'll just have to make the best of it.

ODFOD, you do not keep a lot of benefit claimants.

As I work full time as a single mother and to enable me to keep a lot of benefits claimants and the like I can't always pick up on all questions....

Imagine for a moment that we're all at a restaurant or dinner somewhere having this discussion, and you've just said that.

It would go down like a lead balloon.

Well, I'm afraid that reply reads just as prattishly as it would if you'd said it out loud.

I think that does raise a really good point, though. The government and the media have carefully created this horrible artificial position (through spin and brainwashing, really) of "benefits claimants (and immigrants) are stealing your hard-earned money!" They are intentionally manipulating the public to try to pit ordinary struggling people against each other as a form of scapegoating and to get the focus off them and their cronies. And most people are struggling, few people have an easy life. It's very easy to manipulate desperate struggling people.

It's essentially the Hunger Games. The Capitol brainwashes the people into thinking the slaves from rival districts are the enemy, when the real enemy is the Capitol itself. And it's something we've seen time and time again throughout history (eg the spin following the horrible ramifications of the Versailles Treaty, if that's not too abrupt a leap) and it never ends well.

Getting your enemy to fight itself is literally one of the oldest tactics in the book. Sun Tzu.

Benefits claimants are not the ones responsible for your difficulties. Don't blame them. Blame the government. Blame fatcats who expense bloody duck houses. Blame financial mismanagement and government fraud. Blame illegal wars over oil. Blame sponsoring or providing arms for illegal wars and coups for political reasons. Blame governments being hand in glove with dictators and illegal arms merchants. Blame billionaires and corporations who don't pay tax and the government who bends over and says "Thank you sir may I have another?"

Stop letting the government manipulate you and stop doing their job for them. Start demanding answers from those responsible and start holding criminals accountable.

Me2017, do you claim child benefit?

Me2017 was entitled to child benefit when her five children were young and living with her, but as a high-earning lawyer she is no longer able to claim.

And yes I have reported the PBP.

Oh, lordy, is this the poster previously known as having a name beginning with X?

With an island?

Toby Young has a terminal illness- the Napoleon Syndrome which obviously has no cure.
The little man is a stupid pea.

It's essentially the Hunger Games.

That is so very true. I wish I could do memes.

I agree with pretty much everything you say BowieFan except this:
"Their teaching (like most of these free schools) is shockingly lacking in some places." which is plain offensive to those of us who have had to set up our own free schools because the council can't/won't and otherwise our children wouldn't have a school to go to.

To get the whole scheme from planning to opening was 3 bloody hard years of work from a very committed and driven team of people. Now in our third year we are oversubscribed and the founding members are still on hand giving their time free to support the school - not only as governors and on the PTA but volunteering and helping the school out with it's day to day running. Because we are invested in making our school a success.

My son (now yr4) was put in a school 7 miles away as the "nearest school with places" because the council has allowed house building on an EPIC scale locally meaning that there aren't nearly enough school places for rising 5's. The council were, and still are, anti our school and yet it doesn't stop them relying on us to cater to the children they can't find places for. Our school follows the national curriculum, only employs fully qualified teachers, uses the same over allocation system as every state school in the borough.

So please don't lump all of us in with your sweeping generalisation about free schools.

Toby Young is a total nob.

You could argue that stipping child benefit away from single mothers like I am is exactly the pitting people against each other this Big State thing wants to do. So we have left and right batting each other - benefits claimants perhaps against hard working middle income families each seeing the other as some kind of enemy whereas if instead benefits claimants could set aside their issues and fight to ensure all people kept their child benefit and vice versa we could together unite against big state? Is there that where we can find the common ground and avoid falling into the elephant trap of group v group contrived antipathy signed to keep both groups compliant and to heel at the whim of that big state?

I still claim child benefit for two but I pay it all back once a year. I just want to cause the state a bit of trouble as I don't suppor the removal of universal benefits. Universal benefits keep those who pay most of the country's tax on side; they help achieve a buy in to the welfare state - the we are all in this together feeling, that we all put in and all take out. As soon as you chip away at the universal benefits you actualyl generate less tax and so the less well off are worse off.

in fact I'd support a universal annual payment to everyone over 18 of say £10k a year if combined with a 20% flat tax and abolition of all other benefits and state pensions.

whereas if instead benefits claimants could set aside their issues
Which issues would they be, too cold, too hungry, too ill. The 12 mile walk to and from the job centre because you live in a rural area and can't afford the six pounds on bus fares?

benefits claimants perhaps against hard working middle income families each seeing the other as some kind of enemy

No it's low income households who are most successfully being encouraged to hate the sick, the disabled, the unemployed and the downright downtrodden.

It's visible on MN all the time. Neighbour against neighbour.

me2017 - people would consider 10K far too small an amount of money if other benefits were removed.

£10k wouldn't cover a years rent in many places - let alone non essentials like food, clothing and warmth

Imagine being such a sad pathetic individual that your height of achievement is being banned repeatedly from a parenting site and rejoining repeatedly just to be a goady fucker.
Bit tragic really

Me2017, if you're claiming child benefits and always have done for your five children, you really can't claim to be "keeping" benefit claimants.

in fact I'd support a universal annual payment to everyone over 18 of say £10k a year if combined with a 20% flat tax and abolition of all other benefits and state pensions.

And precisely how far do you think £10K a year is going to go in paying for housing and basic living requirements - particularly for people who are seriously disabled or suffering from long term and possibly terminal illness?

I have now seen the film and red TY's article.

Good grief - he does set up some self serving arguments, doesn't he? Apart from not following the plot or understanding the background facts (ATOS, for example, is not a UK owned company, and it was to them that the Assessments were outsourced... Ok, the country of ownership was changed, so what?) and did he miss that whatever Katie's benefit should be, she is sanctioned 40% because of being late?

As for 'no one will agree with this film because people want the benefits bill cut', well yes, and why is that? Because of the number of people who like TY believe that your authentic benefit claimant is in fact a drinking, smoking, brawling members of 'the bottom of society' as TY calls them.

It is a fact that London is sending people miles away, away from friends and families, because of the expense. It is a fact that people were wrongly declared fit for work. (and not, therefore , s justification as TY cIaims, for the number of people pulled off benefits) I know a MN-er whose dP was declared for for work after a serious stroke that left him unable to write or speak, stand up unaided, sit up straight or control his (extreme) emotions.

And Dan's carvings are nothing to do with 'tat' sold in Islington toy shops - that is just vicious bitchy vitriol against who he imagines to be the market for this film.

And Dan does not 'listen to R4 and classical music'. He has the shipping forecast on late at night when he can't sleep and listens to the shipping forecast because his wife loved the theme music. Which (I am not an expert) sound more like 'easy listening' than 'classical'.

I was on the Board of a charity that provided services for homeless people. The vast majority were people who had led normal lives, and one thing beyond the reach of their safety net had gone wrong.

The system is the system and should be judged on it's own merits, providing rational support for people, whether they are ordinary people struggling, or drinking, smoking wastrels.

Good grief - MN has many many benefit claimants, doing their best to do the best by their kids and do what they can - ordinary people. TY should spend a few weeks here, maybe.

The #hungerhurtsbook hashtag on twitter is heartbreaking.

Thank you Blu - brilliantly said. Mark Steel gave an amazing riposte: www.independent.co.uk/voices/ken-loach-i-daniel-blake-toby-young-life-on-benefits-rings-true-mark-steel-a7383461.html

My personal highlight is: "He outlined his qualifications even further by saying, “I’m no expert but several aspects of I, Daniel Blake, don’t ring true.” This is why he’s quite reasonably become a spokesperson for Conservative ideas: he accepts he knows nothing about what happens on welfare, but isn’t afraid to insist he knows more about it than someone who spends their whole life in it, because he thought “that doesn’t ring true” while looking out of the window."