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..

Yes. Nobody cares about tax evasion. Because they are all at it.
Those of us on PAYE don't have the opportunity to fiddle our taxes.
God help us if our employer or HMRC make a mistake. We are treated like criminals.

I come from a similar background to the one in the programme. I managed to break the cycle but I don't have health issues and managed to get good qualifications and meet a lovely husband. Clearly some of those in the programme have learning difficulties or maybe didn't have the role models to help them make a better life. I have an autistic/hyper mobile child and I have found the system to get support utterly frustrating. I'm able to access services and pay for physio etc but there are children in poverty who wont have these issues addressed appropriately as they grow. How someone who is partially blind or illiterate is expected to navigate the current benefits system is beyond me.

To my mind it's people earning perfectly good salaries and getting 30 free hours of childcare paid for with my taxes who are the scroungers.. I tell myself the tax I pay is going to people with nothing who really need it.

Absolutely This

"She moans that the council aren't replacing her shabby looking kitchen quick enough, or replacing doors that her kids have kicked in fast enough"

Well hang onto your hat because here is something you havent thought of..................My HA want to refit the bathrooms. They also want to replace the flat doors. Which means tenants need to be home to let workmen in. No problem i hear you cry. Except this area went full UC in October 2017 A lot of tenants on my estate are in precarious low status jobs and claiming UC. They darent take time off because they wont ger offered more hours. If they are on zero hours and get called into work suddenly they have to go in, A nieighbour had to cancel a gas safety check because he was called into work with no notice. Workmen tend to come round when they feel like it. So they turn up when they arent supposed to. And when they ARE supposed to turn up they dont.

Throw UC , zero hours contracts and precarious jobs into the mix and its not hard to see why many tenants are planning to refuse the refurb. The doors to the flats are being replaced with more robust doors and that cant be refused.

But we all recieved a letter just after New Year saying that the company fitting the doors will be round to discuss this with tenants in the WEEK commencing the 7th Jan. Not even an all day call which is bad enough An ALL WEEK call.

It took NINE MONTHS to do my neighbours kitchen in 2008.

Tenants are worried about the logistics of this and this is a knock on effect of UC and the erosion of rights that i bet didnt occur to a the Government or a lot of the general public.

Not even an all day call which is bad enough An ALL WEEK call

And they didnt turn up.

If her kids are kicking in doors, either they have SN, or they are a chaotic family with deeper issues than being on benefits. There are people who struggle with daily life, with just the ordinary stuff of buying food, feeding your kids and providing basic care.

Do you honestly get sanctioned for missing one phone call though?

Yes, eve if you are unconscious in hospital or at a PIP assessment with a different department.

I'm not sure what will happen with my next year. I have a number of health conditions and have struggled to work. I have 20+ years of NI payments. Under the old system because I had paid in I would receive incapacity benefit, but because I have worked they will now take into account my pension, that I paid for and only receive due to ill health and a 10 year fight.

Under UC they will count it as income and reduce me payments to £30 a week. You might be thinking that is fair, but my current benefits are based on what I have paid in.

So basically I have paid into an employer pension, an AVC, then struggled to work and paid 20+ years NI but I will get less than a 25 year old who has never worked.

Had I stayed on benefits when I first became disabled instead of getting a degree and post graduate qualifications and actually working I would be receiving about £30 pw more than I do now.

OK so according to an online benefits calculator - and for simplicities sake I've discounted the housing element since this isn't spendable income - a single person with four children would be entitled to:

£297.66 weekly Universal Credit
£61.80 weekly child benefit

Total weekly income: £359.46

Multiply that by 52 then divide by 12 and we have a monthly income of £1,557.66 pcm (which is how it's actually paid).

The standard rate of UC for a single person over 25 with no children is:

£73.34 weekly UC.
Or £317.80 per calendar month.

So those are the basic figures assuming that the site (entitledto.co.uk) is correct and up to date and that I've input the data correctly.

Entitledto isn't completely accurate. It does okay as a rough guide but isn't definitive by any means. As an example, when I enter my information on there it states I'm entitled to Housing Benefit which I'm not and Council Tax Benefit which I'm also not and that we should be getting £40- something a week in Tax Credits which I also do not.

When I was a single parent I took a training post with a large organisation. As I was a trainee I got £1300 a month plus £300 tax credits. Rent and council tax was £700 (previously covered by benefits). Commuting costs were £350 a month because hey, you travel to where the work is right? That left me £550 a month. (I didn't have childcare costs as kids were at high school then, I couldn't have done it if there had been a cost). Benefits at the time would have given me £500 a month. So for two years I commuted for 3 hours a day and did 8 hours of work for £50 a month. Of course I did it because it led to a well paid job so it was worth it. Would I have done it for years on end, somewhere with no progression? No, sorry but I wouldn't. And I don't blame anyone else who wouldn't either.

Entitled to also doesn’t tell you how much of your rent you are responsible for or how much council tax you’ll pay. Housing benefits and council tax benefit rarely cover the full amount.

(On the chldcare hours I have never had any, have worked full time since 1983 without a break even for babies and even child benefit stopped; wish I had had some free childcare - would have been very useful). Instead I moved hundreds of miles away from the area not too far from that programme for work with the result I had no family around to babysit but someimes you just have to bite the bullet and move where work is just as so many of my ancestors moved to the NE to mine coal and work on the land - they moved for work.

They pick some sad stories but I know people on benefits for 20+ years, quite capable of working (even part time perhaps) but choose not to, until recently they were left on sickness benefits with no reassessment, but now they are being made to job hunt - they were let down 20+ years ago of course, no one should be dumped onto benefits when they actually needed ot and retraining because injuries meant they couldn't do their old job.

Something needs to be done, uc is harsh but administered correctly it should help those unable to work the most, and get people back on their feet and into work.

It is easier to move away fir work if you have had a good education and have professional qualifications.
It is very different for people who have neither.

Reading some of the replies on this thread has made me feel so sad.

It's so easy to judge their choices when you have the privilege of knowing where your next meal is coming from and that you will be able to pay your bills (even if you work really hard to be able to do so)

I really hope these posters never have to experience the level of poverty portrayed in the program...

annie A lot of people in receipt of UC ARE WORKING.

Its not just an out of work benefit. Thats what UNIVERSAL means

I'm curious about that. Has there been any kind of analysis on how UC is affecting those who do work but still have a claim?

There are a lot of people too sick to work who are being thrown under the bus by Capita employees with no medical training desperate to meet their targets. Why an assessment by their GP isn’t used i’ll never know. Although I can guess.

People who are working and receiving UC are also subject to their benefits stopping and starting particularly as one of the major flaws in the system is that some months you will get no benefits at all and have to pay your bills entirely from your wages without the UC top up that you need in order to be able to afford those bills.

Fun times.

@Alsohuman

My DD had one of those so called "assessments". I went with her for support and I was shocked to my core by the amount of lies told by them! I genuinely had no idea how corrupt they are! We fought it all the way and 15 months later she won her appeal. Ironically they awarded her a higher rate than I think she would have got, had they just allowed it in the first place! If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I'm not sure I would have believed it. It's truly shocking.

@EwItsAHooman

See that just says to me that I can fully see why someone doesn't want to give up a regular benefit payment for uncertain work. So much for UC "helping" people to be better off in work!

I'm a glad I found this thread, tommorrow I'm quitting my job to live the life of riley on benefits. How anyone could grudge some money to the people on that show is beyond me. That man with sight issues crying down the phone that he hadn't eaten? What do you all think should happen to him? He's unemployable, should he just starve then?

So much for UC "helping" people to be better off in work!

I have just registered a change with tax credits that I'm pretty sure will trigger a change to UC. Had a good look at the calculator on one of the sites and it's not depressing reading, it's terrifying 'How the fuck am I going to survive' reading. Going to lose around £25 a week because - well just because. That's my council tax payment. That's three quarters of the gas and electric in winter. Then using the calendar, because I get weekly pay I'm going to face 3 months out of the year when I get half of what I usually get. Same outgoings, same bills, same wages.
Just spent 2 years in my own austerity digging myself out of debt. Needn't have bothered, this time next year I'll be back in it up to my eyeballs. And I work 40 hours a week, squeezed tighter every day by employers that want to save money so understaff and then kick off when shit goes wrong, and don't pay a wage you can live on. I'm scared I'll lose my job one day because I physically cannot do more than I am, doesn't stop them demanding though. I've always paid into the pot, exp and DC father totally screwed up and spat out by the army, can't hold a job, doesn't get any support from the country who's bidding he did. I had 3 jobs at one point before DC, paid more tax in one than I earned in another. But here I am being a scrounger whilst working full time and only just making ends meet, fuck knows what will happen when I get changed to UC now, I'll need to work 7 nights a week to get anywhere near enough income to survive.
Why aren't people as up in arms about shit wages as they are benefits? Currently all that's happening is the government are saving my employer money by supporting my earnings. But no, easier to call the likes of me a scrounger than admit some of these 'naice' business owner people are in fact the ones screwing the system.

I am also terrified of being moved on to UC. I have a range of part time jobs which I juggle, but one of them is only term-time, one involves upfront costs to make money, another is utterly dependent on there being enough work available. It's all pretty unpredictable.

@ihaveabloodyheadache I don't think there is a person on this planet that would call you a scrounger. I really hope things get better for you :(

There are a lot of people on this thread trying to justify things that can't be justified - people need to claim benefits for hundreds reasons and I have no issue with that.

Unfortunately, despite most people on this thread being in total denial, people in this world DO EXIST that are scroungers and will rinse the system for every penny they can! I know them on a personal basis! I know their circumstances so how people can say that's untrue is just bull.

It should always pay to be in work than out of it, unless it's impossible for whatever reason. That's my opinion and that is clearly an unpopular one