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..

And if a child is going to school hungry because their parents have been sanctioned to the hilt, how is that going to help their learning?

And if that child grows up viewing Society as a punitive, uncaring entity that left him/her hungry and cold, made their parent(s) stressed and angry, and meant they were fairly miserable throughout childhood/adolescence why would that child then engage with that Society once they grow up? UC perpetuates the poverty trap, it does nothing to end it.

Again: what your grandparents or parents did decades ago, or even what you yourself did back in the 80s or 90s is not relevant. Because the economic climate has changed so much - predominantly, property speculation has led to a huge rise in housing costs, while wages have been held down in order to increase shareholder profits.
There seems to be an enthusiasm, among the rich and powerful, for ensuring that as many people as possible work for corporations for low pay, which is why it is being made steadily more difficult to opt for self-employment. Actually, it's not that they want workers to do tasks, they want a pool of available workers that they can pick and choose between, but who are desperate enough to accept anything in the way of poor pay and awful working conditions.

What your parents or grandparents did decades ago, or even what you yourself did in the 80s or 90s is not relevant.

Well, actually it is! There wasn’t housing benefit or disability benefits or even Universal Credit available in our grandparents time. If you didn’t work, you starved. Mortgage interest wasn’t paid when I was bringing up my sons. I agree your point that it is harder to be self employed but plenty of tradesmen are. It is much more difficult to be successful in a shop or retail unit though.

And if that child grows up viewing Society as a punitive, uncaring entity that left him/her hungry and cold, made their parent(s) stressed and angry, and meant they were fairly miserable throughout childhood/adolescence why would that child then engage with that Society once they grow up

A child that grows up to hate the country may well be likely to be more susceptible to sinister outside influences.

My parents came to England in the early 50s.
Apart from rental properties that had signs up stating "No Immigrants" there was a pretty good choice of homes to rent at affordable rates and jobs were available. If the landlord liked the look of you, and you had a job, you could move in. (You could also be chucked out at very short notice if you didn't pay your rent).
Now you need a big chunk of cash and a friend or colleague with lots of money to give you a reference.
I just can't see how anybody with no job and no money could possibly move anywhere. They would be sleeping on the streets. Oh...wait...

There wasn’t housing benefit or disability benefits or even Universal Credit available in our grandparents time. If you didn’t work, you starved.

Fuck me, your GP must be old, there's been a welfare in the UK for the poorest in society since at least the Tudor times and before that the church helped the poor.

Moving beyond the Tudors the most famous version of welfare, at least in my mind, was the 'Poor House'
Not that I'd want to go back to that.

The liberal Government in the early 1900s did a lot of work and began reforming the welfare state.

For all this, and more, consult your local library, where books come to life.

I suggest you re study your history we had workhouses up until the 20th century. If you look online you can see hundreds of men and women living and being fed by the Salvation Army. We had the poor board, parish council and the Labour office but nothing like the benefits available today. For your information my grandparents died in the 1980s and early 90s.

Omg there are some utter, utter, utter, utter, utter fucking arseholes on here.

Yes, there was less in the way of state benefit at points in the past. But it was easier to get cash-in-hand work, easier to get 'lodgings' ie somewhere cheap to stay and the cost of housing in relation to wages was different. Also more people had both the skills and the space to keep a few chickens or grow veg. It is almost impossible to be self-sufficient these days - no land, no knowledge of the skills to produce food. And so many of the casual self-employed-ish jobs people used to do (and are still advised to do by the smug and witless) such as cleaning, dogwalking, odd jobs etc are now only acccessible via some sort of app or agency which will take the majority of what the client is charged and pay the actual worker pennies.

I do not support the current attacks on benefits and the poor.

But welfare benefits were not introduced until 1946. Before that there was the workhouse and charities. Even in 1946 there was unemployment benefit, widows pensions, sickness benefit and pensions, but no other benefits like modern days.
Before that time it is estimated that 15 to 20% of the population lived in absolute poverty i.e. not having enough food to eat or clothes to wear. Since the 1950s, the issue has been relative poverty, not absolute poverty.
And places were not cheap to rent. The poorest lived in slums. It is well documented that the price families paid to live in 1 room, was higher per square foot than the cost at the time per square foot of living in a mansion. Families with 12 or more children would live in 2 rooms with no hot water or inside toilet.
We can condemn the poverty of the present whilst acknowledging the reality of the past.

Family income supplement was introduced in 1971, this topped up low wages. Remember there was no minimum wage. Before this, there was no top up system.

My granny was in a poor house in Italy during WW2. IDK how old she was but I do know she was a teenager in WW2 and died in the late nineties. She never looked back on the Britain she immigrated to as a great state and a time we should all aim to recreate. In fact, she hated it and would have literally given her right leg to go back to her war torn Yugoslavia.

It confuses me when people look way back when and remember it as time of plenty and opportunity because my Gran (who worked her whole life in a county whose language she didn't know) despised the time and portrayed it to be a time of deprivation, hunger and misery and claimed the UK continued to be a time of deprivation, hunger and misery until we joined the EU. She longed to go back to the the former Yugoslavia her entire life and begged me to do what I could to settle there as I would have a better life.

www.ageuklondonblog.org.uk/2019/02/22/mixed-age-couples-universal-credit/

"Mixed messages, mixed-age couples and Universal Credit
February 22, 2019 Paul TreloarFinance, Pensions

Universal Credit has been prominent in the news lately, whether it’s the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Amber Rudd acknowledging that a rise in foodbank use may be linked to the highly troubled roll-out, or the much trailed announcement that a two-child limit will not be applied retrospectively. However, you could find yourself not having heard about another significant policy development, which will soon affect tens and potentially hundreds of thousands of older couples. On the evening of 14 January 2019, in a written ministerial statement given to the House of Commons at 7.20pm, and the day before the Brexit meaningful vote taking place, Pensions Minister Guy Opperman informed MPs that from 15 May 2019, mixed-age couples will both need to reach State Pension age in order to make a claim for Pension Credit. One cannot help arriving at a conclusion that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) were looking to bury something which they thought might generate some negative headlines

A mixed-age couple is, as the name suggests, one in which one partner has reached State Pension age, whereas the other partner has not. Currently, a couple in this situation are able to choose whether to claim Pension Credit or Universal Credit. From a financial perspective, the choice is usually very straightforward – the standard Pension Credit rate for a couple is more than £7,000 a year more than equivalent amount under Universal Credit.

Currently, there are around 115,000 mixed-age couples claiming Pension Credit, Housing Benefit, or both. These couples will not be affected by this change initially, due to savings provisions. However, any break in these claims, even for a single day, could see entitlement lost completely and needing to reclaim would mean they would need to claim Universal Credit instead.

Further, from 15 May 2019, all new claims will have to be for Universal Credit, with both partners in the mixed-age couple being required to submit an online claim and manage an online account.1 The older partner will not be required to undertake work-related activity but the younger partner will be subject to full conditionality unless their work coach agrees to a relaxation

Age UK has already been contacted by couples where the younger partner is providing care for the older partner and who are extremely concerned about both the financial loss and their ability to manage the work-seeking requirements whilst also maintaining care for their partner. Age UK has highlighted that this policy could produce the absurd situation where a single pensioner would be better off separating and living apart from their partner, due to the simple fact that Pension Credit for a single person pays more than Universal Credit does to a couple.

In response to this move, we’re aiming to undertake two interlocking activities. The first and most pressing is to try and highlight the change to couples who are potentially affected and encourage them to claim whilst they can. We know that underclaiming of Pension Credit is already a huge problem, with estimates of more than £3 billion not being paid each year. Anyone who does want to check whether they are entitled can use the Age UK benefit calculator which only takes about 10 minutes from start to finish.

Alongside this awareness raising, we’ll also be lobbying for the policy to be reversed entirely. We welcome Ms Rudd’s pledge to “tread cautiously,” when moving existing benefit claimants onto Universal Credit through its managed migration programme. However, given the well-publicised problems of implementation of Universal Credit already, it’s difficult to understand the motivation to suddenly and unexpectedly throw older mixed-age couples into the melting pot.

If the policy does go ahead, we’ll be pressing for consideration being given to higher personal allowances being payable for mixed-age couples, as already happens with the legacy benefits being replaced by Universal Credit. This would at least ameliorate some of the potential financial losses. And there’s a whole range of other more technical issues that do not appear to have been fully considered, which need clarification prior to implementation.

With State Pension age having now equalised between women and men, and then continuing to rise, to 66 years in 2020 and 67 years in 2028, it is inevitable that more and more couples are going to be affected by this change over time. The complete lack of public communications from DWP to date has worrying echoes of what happened with the WASPI women when pension ages were first increased and no-one wants to see a repeat of that situation.

To have your say on the #AgeGapTax, add your name to this Age UK petition.

Footnotes

1. Although note, due to Pension Credit and Housing Benefit for pensioners having up to 3-month’s backdating, the absolute last day for new claims is effectively 13 August 2019, provided the claimant can show they were entitled as of 14 May 2019"

Add message | Report | Message poster HelenaDove Sat 23-Feb-19 00:26:39

Paul Treloar
‏ @PaulieTandoori**

Can honestly say, this has been one of busiest and most stressy weeks at work I can remember in long time. This mixed age couple change for Universal Credit causing chaos already and it hasn't even started.
6:43 PM - 21 Feb 2019

Paul Treloar
‏ @PaulieTandoori**
15h15 hours ago

Working out how people will move from UC to PC, working out when people already on PC/HB will lose it and why, dealing with clients reaching 65 after May 15 and distressed to hear they're losing ££££'s. That kind of thing.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
Paul Treloar
‏ @PaulieTandoori**
14h14 hours ago

For eg, under UC, couples are treated as permanently separated after 6 months. If mixed age couple split after 15 May, older partner can't claim UC due to age but can't claim PC as need to be separated for 12 months to no longer be treated as couple.
Add message | Report | Message poster
HelenaDove Sat 23-Feb-19 00:36:54

I think this warrants posting twice.

"For eg, under UC, couples are treated as permanently separated after 6 months. If mixed age couple split after 15 May, older partner can't claim UC due to age but can't claim PC as need to be separated for 12 months to no longer be treated as couple"

What a totally unworkable system. Why on Earth are they (the Government) persevering with it!

@HelenaDove

My god it really does just get worse and worse doesn’t it! The message they’re sending out is as long as you are not only working, but working in a well paid job (so paying plenty of tax) you’re a valid member of society. If you’re not, then you’re shit on our shoes. It’s disgusting.

My DS has moved to a country far away and plans to stay there. I miss him but I encouraged him to go and I’ve encouraged him to stay there. If I have any grandchildren I don’t want them raised here. I find it sad I feel that way, but this country is a mess and it’s getting worse.

Yes, the punitive sanctions attached to Universal Credit, the limitations put on eligibility for Pension Credits, the continuing cuts to local authority and related services all indicate that the country is in an economic mess and the government is trying to claw back or save every penny it can.

This is why programmes which stereotype and vilify recipients of certain 'benefits' are broadcast. They are an attempt to scapegoat the vulnerable and justify the operation of a system which has the sole goal of saving money.

"UC perpetuates the poverty trap, it does nothing to end it." I believe this.

I know the media have a lot to answer for with their insatiable 24/7 blood thirsting and often answerless and limited reporting style, but I am in my 40s and don't recall such desperation streaming out since the miner's strike. It is awful.

I am riding my high horse now, so i apologise for ranting.

However, the programme is so obviously biased and the characters so blatantly chosen to perpetuate stereotypes. For example, we have one or two 'worthy' poor people, such as the 'little drummer girl' and the man who is losing his sight. However, the vast majority of the 'cast' in this programme are shown as 'feckless' (smoking and using an expensive looking phone whilst experiencing cancer and poverty) or criminally stupid and work-shy.

'Austerity' was supposed to prevent this country from descending into impossible debt and bankruptcy. However, for areas such as Hartlepool, Barnsley, Liverpool, Doncaster and others, this has meant a severe reduction in essential services. Furthermore, the lack of sustained re-investment into these communities meant that generations have grown up with little or no prospect of local employment.

Finally, as we plunge into Brexit and the debt owed by this country escalates to new heights, I can only see the situation getting worse. Perhaps some people from the communities above may have voted to leave the EU because they had seen no real progress in their own situations (irrespective of any EU finding). However, the government will let them down again as the noose of austerity tightens around the necks of those least able to flee.

Asta, that was partly what I was saying - people sometimes do move, even abroad. It is certainly not easy or ideal. I don't agree that mentioning the past is wrong. None of us want to go back to it except where it was better and we can't pick and choose anyway. For many of us the past was worse for our ancestors than the present is. For some people it won't have been. We are where we are now.

I also agree that it is hard to move eg it is fit adult men who tend to move - even Syrians at least those who get as far as the EU and the vulnerable often get left behind unless you can get enough money together for air faire such as the Ugandan Asians who tended to be well educated but had had a lot of their property confiscated by Amin.

However sometimes for those who can move including the younger and single people where they have no disabilties it can be a route to a better life; that was all I was saying.

(gotin, we certainly have too much debt as a nation but Jan 19 we did actually receive loads of tax in so the deficit - jan 19 borrowing £20b not the £40bn of 2006 but we certainly have a long way to go to reduce the £20bn to zero and indeed start paying back national debt. If we were paying out less interest each month we would have more to spend on the less well off).

The point about no minimum wage in the past ( I remember those days well) was interesting above because employers had to pay a market rate for work at least before family income supplement in 1970 so low age employers were not subsidised by the state by way of tax credits and housing benefit which today is often paid to those in full time work.

I still haven't watch ep 2 - too much work - working today from home Saturday, not that I am suggesting this is harder work than my ancestors down the mines or at the shipyards (the latter where my grandfather fell to his death at work)

I do see what you’re saying Xenia. I grew up in an extremely poor rural area. I moved away when I was 16, more so to get away from an abusive father but still. I think that’s a bit around mindset though. I’ve always been a bit adventurous and ambitious. I wanted more out of life than what my birth circumstances offered me. I wasn’t leaving behind a loving and supportive family. I was also exposed to a different life at regular intervals. My maternal grandparents lived in a prosperous European country and held professional jobs (my mother did not choose well in marriage!) and I spent every Summer of my childhood with them. So all of these factors combined to inspire me to do better. I then passed all that on to my own children.

However, I can see that if your only exposure to a more prosperous life is what you see on TV. If everyone around you is, and always has been, stuck in poverty. You end up thinking that there’s no way out. It can seem very daunting to leave behind everyone and everything you know. Especially if you are close to your family. It is absolutely a trap, but it’s also pretty damn clear that UC is not the way out of that trap!

The key to getting money is having money in the first place! Money for relocating, money to pay for the first months childcare so a woman can take a job. Sometimes just enough money for decent work clothes and commuting costs. When I started the training course for the job I have now I needed £400 for my commuting costs in the first month. I didn’t have it. I didn’t have family to help me. I was lucky that I had a boyfriend earning an ok wage who lent it to me and I paid him back £100 a month once I started getting paid. Otherwise I’m not sure how I would have done it.

Paying people a pittance and then sanctioning them to the hilt so you can pay them even less, is not “helping” them out of poverty.

Well I was pretty disgusted by the crime in this show

This week's is very sad so far

Not watching this weeks yet but have it on record

So depressing