Skint Britain: Friends without Benefits on C4

[amrscot]

Is anybody else watching this?

One of the couples take their dog out to hunt rabbits and squirrels that they can eat.

They've just shown him with a dead rabbit he has caught skinning it in the kitchen

Horrendous..

HB has largely been paid direct to tenants for a good 25 years now.

The Conservative party cares best and is the best supporter of the welfare state

You've not taken your medication have you?
That's the most ludicrous sentence on this whole thread. I can only assume you aren't well, or drunk?

I really don't understand why some people question that these things happen in Britain. All I can assume is that they have been born rich, with silver spoons in their mouths and nothing in their heads whatsoever. FFS, we all know there's a housing crisis, we all know that there is one hell of a lot of private renting now that did not exist 40 years ago. When you have a private renting sector that automatically -automatically - means that landlords have more and tenants have less. In fact they pay for nothing and can be thrown out on a whim. Housing benefit didn't pay full rent 30 years ago, and things have been restricted since. The DWP has openly admitted that it's sanctions cause hardship and even death. How blinkered do you have to be to not realise that we are back to the Victorian Age here?? Why do some persist in believing that NASA didn't land on the moon and there is no real poverty, people dying on the streets, nothing to see, move along??

Whenever someone pops up on mn saying they are struggling and a well meaning mumsnetter says
Can you get a job / another job
I always think..not in Hartlepool she won’t
A few years ago there were two driving delivery jobs advertised by Tesco

They had 300 applicants!
How many were people were heading towards retirement I wonder?
One of the jobs went to someone under 30.
No surprise there then.

Someone said houses start at £50k where they leave
Well hear you go...try one of these

HB has largely been paid direct to tenants for a good 25 years now.

I thought that too..when the house was council it got paid to the council..but private I have always known it be paid to the tenant. I know when I got a place about 12 years back the housing benefit came to me and I just paid the rent.

For the people calling those on benefits spongers here's a day on ESA

7am - Wake up to a freezing cold house and dress child
8am - walk child to free breakfast club in a completely inappropriate coat for the freezing cold
9am to 3pm - sit under your duvet trying to stay warm because you can't afford to put the heating on, no breakfast and a value tin of soup for lunch
3pm - back out in the cold in your crappy coat to pick child up
5pm - feed child on whatever you can scrounge up for the day - eat the same sized portion for yourself. Keep your kids coat on him so he can stay warm
7pm - put kid to bed early with a hot water bottle
Do absolutely nothing yourself until 9pm when you can put the heating on for an hour and take a timed 5 minute shower.
10pm time for bed before the house gets cold again.

In between all this you're living it up by walking everywhere in your totally weather inappropriate clothing to buy food from the cheapest shops possible a lot of it is at its best before or past it from the cheap shop. If there's a spare pound or two you take it to the very cheap charity shop to buy some books for the kid so at least he has hope in the future.

I have to maintain an internet connection for the teenager in high school and actually running my bills and trying my best to try and find a mental health service willing to help me because the doctors can't do anything else due to the massive cuts. You spend your days hoping nothing else goes wrong and filling in shitty surveys to earn a couple of pound to pay for the scientific calculator your teenager absolutely needs for her exams.

Life of luxury.

My partner was sanctioned once before we moved to ESA for not attending an appointment because he was tracking me down in the hospital the police took me to after a suicide attempt. 2 weeks with no money. Those were 2 shitty weeks.

The whole point of selling off council housing was to get rid of council housing, because of the view that the state should provide as little as possible, and that everything should be about profit first and formost. This is why councils were forbidden to use any of the funds raised by selling off the housing stock, to build more housing stock. Party of it was the deluded smug worldview that everyone could be a property owner if they tried hard enough, of course, but a lot of it stemmed from the idea that people who owned, rather than rented, their homes would be more likely to support the Conservatives, unlike those pesky council tenants who didn't have enough respect for their betters.

Yeah it was about privatising the provision of rental housing. And just like other privatisation schemes it's ended up costing the state more money (in benefits) than it ever spent on housing.

It didn't even create the fabled property owning working class it was touted as being about. 40% of former council properties are now owned by private landlords. So there are still tenants in them, but they're paying twice (at least) as much in rent as public sector tenants, with no security. And like all tenants a significant proportion claim HB to help pay their rent. So instead of the state collecting rent monies on those properties, they're paying money for them to the private landlords. It's a fuckup of almighty proportions.

I thought it was one of the big issues about UC in the news at the moment? With claimants and LLs alike, and charities and organisations such as CAB. Protesting that under the old system (may have been IS or HB, not sure what the latest before UC was) that housing was paid direct. The issue now is that it's getting paid to people instead. Which is fine, except if you've overdraft fees you're in the shit basically as you don't see all that money. And there's an argument that it's not fair on people who for eg have addiction issues and therefore don't pay rent and lose their homes. In fact I'm sure there's a scheme under UC where if you show that you can't manage your money or have circumstances that mean your rent doesn't get paid, they will pay straight to LL. But it isn't offered. You have to ask for it, and it's not well known

That's how it is with HB - you can request it goes to the landlord. Mostly used by 3rd parties for vulnerable clients. But the default is for it to be paid to tenants.

If the tenant is in receipt of Hb then the government are subsidising the housing. Just because it passes through the tenants hands first doesn't change where it's come from does it?
But yes there is a problem with those unable to budget for whatever reason being directly paid but that's a separate issue really.
The main thing I have issue with is that no one seems to care that LLs who receive rent from HB tenants are quietly building their pension, wealth etc while everyone points the finger at the claimant and calls them a scrounger, yet they are the ones who walk away without an asset from all of this. It's dead money to everyone except the LL.

I care. I think it's a scandal. There are people building property portfolios with government money. £10.2 billion a year Billion.

thepoorsideof.life/2019/02/14/64-year-old-woman-with-multiple-health-condition-fails-universal-credit-medical-assessment-living-in-substandard-accommodation-how-are-people-supposed-to-survive-this/

Where I live there are lots and lots of blocks of flats being built. Literally on every available patch of land.
The developers receive council funding to build a certain percentage of "affordable" flats.
But they don't do it.
And they appear to be getting away with it.
Many of these flats are bought by foreign investors, some are just left empty.
It is a scandal. Not least because lots of people were evicted from their perfectly good homes so that the land could be cleared for development.

Jellybean - I'm ashamed to say that not so long ago I thought along your lines - such as those who smoked, an 'underclass' who drank and took drugs' while 'we the working' paid for them - then I educated myself and realised it was absolute bollix.

I have one thing to say to those who claim people on benefits have sky tv, go on holidays, have the 'best' of everything.

Pack your job in and you to will live this utopia - so easy!

Another local -there really are no jobs. Have a look on indeed and tell me which one you'd choose

Pemberstone are going to make 70 families homeless so they can build houses for sale.

can understand frustration at people who work hard and pay taxes and can't afford luxuries to see people who have never worked and have no intention of doing so, having those luxuries

So to reiterate then don't work and receive your 'luxuries'. Or have an ounce of common sense that people on benefits can't afford anything like that unless they are playing the system and as well as getting benefits receive cash in hand.

I know it's been largely ignored be we should be hounding those who avoid paying tax, not begrudging those at the bottom of the benefit system - it's madness. Teresa May has a billionaire husband, most politicians are middle class, private schooled privileged - they have no idea of true poverty and it's disgusting these people are targeting disabled people, families who yes have historically been on benefits but have been given no help to get themselves out of that situation.

What's more disgusting is the likes of Jellybean preaching about long term benefit claimants - I really hope you don't have a lifestyle issue such as you husband (if you have one) leaves you or you are made redundant - I'm in a well paid job but have no savings - I do however have the support of my parents so if the reality my job was at risk my parents would support me - if I was living on 70 quid a week job seekers? I have no shame is saying I might buy a bottle of wine to blot out my reality.

It's also actually quite reasonable to refuse to 'work' when what is on offer is shit pay, unpredictable hours and pointless tasks that are of no benefit to either society or the person completing them. The fetishisation of paid employment as the only type of work which is valid is a) usually practiced by people who do very little of it themselves and b) missing the point. Most people want to 'work' in that they want to spend at least some of their time in purposeful activities but no one really wants to spend their days phoning other people up to try to sell them something they neither want nor need and then being told to fuck off, for instance.

There are, really, more able-bodied adults than necessary tasks for them to do, so a lot of 'jobs' are either a literal, deliberate waste of people's time (to keep them quiet and in their place) or all about enriching the shareholders, not the worker. And the most essential, non-automatable jobs (wiping arses in care homes, preparing food for sale, waste disposal etc) are often the worst paid...

I've just watched this programme and to see a disabled man in a phone box sobbing and pleading for money to get some food after not eating for a few days due to lack of funds is utterly heart breaking. Sorry, but no one should be reduced to that in the 7th wealthiest country in the world!
The government should be absolutely ashamed!
A government that has never known hardship. Poverty to them is being down to their last two bottles of bloody extra virgin olive oil! They wouldn't know hunger if it jumped up and bit them on their well padded arses!
Are we really wanting a country where the haves have everything and the have not's have fuck all? A bloody communist state?
Absolutely scandalous.
To all those who don't give a shiny one, well I just hope it never comes knocking at your door.

I can understand frustration at people who work hard and pay taxes and can't afford luxuries to see people who have never worked and have no intention of doing so, having those luxuries

So to reiterate then don't work and receive your 'luxuries'. Or have an ounce of common sense that people on benefits can't afford anything like that unless they are playing the system and as well as getting benefits receive cash

You've taken that completely out of context, because I go on to say

but then we don't always know the truth behind things.

And give a personal example of how I got slated for having the holiday of a lifetime - paid for by someone else. Not by me or my benefits. Or even by someone in this country for that matter. Maybe I worded it badly (fresh from my crappy paid job and endless commute on ridiculous transport!) But I can understand the frustration who someone who perceives that someone on benefits is getting luxuries they can't afford and are on benefits because they don't work and have no intention to.

I can see reading it back how it came across.

Reanimated SGB - Absolutely! It's obscene.

@Auslander and everyone else saying that you hope this never comes "our way".
I'm sorry but to me that's a completely different scenario, I have nothing against anyone who NEEDS to use the welfare system. I have nothing against anyone who is disabled! I have nothing against those that have contributed then need to take out.
I have an issue with those that choose to not work and have never bothered and never will. That's a totally different thing and that's what I'm refering to.
My SIL has 4 kids. Lives in a very large council house, has been abroad every year for 3 years. Goes out a lot. The 3 oldest kids all got a brand new Xbox for Xmas EACH.
She has never worked a day in her life for the 13 years I've known her. Her 2 year old gets free childcare... Why?
How anyone can justify that I'll be interested to hear!

My SIL has 4 kids. Lives in a very large council house, has been abroad every year for 3 years. Goes out a lot. The 3 oldest kids all got a brand new Xbox for Xmas EACH
She has never worked a day in her life for the 13 years I've known her. Her 2 year old gets free childcare... Why?

Child maintenance? Your brother funds it? Her parents pay for her holidays? Credit? A mixture of all the above? She's not legally required to find work until the youngest is in school fulltime?

Who the fuck knows. I don't have four kids but I don't imagine working and looking after four kids would be easy.

It's easy to look down at people we think of as lower than us and think they shouldn't have that because I work and I don't have that when what we should be thinking is I work so I should have that too. It's criminal that people working fulltime can still be in poverty. What people who don't work have is irrelevant. It shouldn't be a race to the bottom. And as SGB keeps eloquently pointing up we need to look up to find the culprit, not down. 10% of the people control 90% of the wealth. That's what's not fair. A mother taking her kids on holiday pales in comparison to that don't you think?