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..

^There’s the biggest skills shortage world wide since records began.
I’m a recruiter I could place anyone with any IT skills and a degree within hours. 3 interviews booked by Monday afternoon and probably a contract role to keep you going in the meantime too^

I've just put IT, Hartlepool into Indeed. The closest 'IT' job is for Anglican water, installing and maintaining pipes, the next one is Hebburn, quite a trek if you've got no car like the people shown on the programme. After Hebburn it was Hull. Hartlepool doesn't have a shortage of IT experts because Hartlepool has no employers who deal with IT.

There may be a national skills shortage but that doesn't mean that aren't job shortages in some areas of the country. Yeah, sure you can move but if you're not capable of completing a degree like the people shown in the programme or you're a single parent like me and wouldn't be able to work if you moved away from your on-call childcare, what then?

I swear that back in my day, god I sound of.. lol. But back in my day it was really different. The road to university and degrees was finish school at 16, go to college from 17-19 and then if you got really good results, onto university.
It was seen as an accomplishment in itself to go to uni. My sister and niece have both gone.

Back in the eighties everyone's mum and dad worked in the factories in Hartlepool. You'd leave school, walk in to a factory and get a job and they were decently paid because if they weren't you'd just leave and go to one of the other factories that paid more. There was no-one queuing outside the church waiting for Mother Gemma to open the soup kitchen because they were starving. The church didn't even have a soup kitchen or food bank. That's a very recent thing because of a very recent demand for one.

The people shown on C4 would've left school and got a job in a factory. Back then the drug/drink problem in Hartlepool wasn't half as bad it is now because everyone had hope and something to aim for. Now they don't. And I know loads of people who went to Uni and now either don't work, work in call centres in Boro or are going back to Uni to study nursing because the NHS is pretty much our only decent employer.

Yes, the almost total destruction of manufacturing in the UK is a big part of what caused the current situation. And before you start parroting the bullshit about how industries need to be 'competitive', have a think about what that means.
It means low wages.

What were we saying about care workers?

Story from todays Observer

"I had to sack my carers because of having to choose between food or home support"

www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/02/social-care-costs-catastrophic-elderly-disabled-choose?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

"Disabled people are having to choose between eating and paying for carers because of “catastrophic” social care charges, charities have warned.

The MS Society, Parkinson’s UK, Age UK and Mencap are urging the government to take action amid growing evidence that disabled and elderly people are rationing their social care because they cannot afford it, or taking the care and accruing thousands of pounds of debt.

Genevieve Edwards of the MS Society said: “We know care is becoming increasingly unaffordable for people with MS, potentially costing more than £110,000 in a lifetime. Faced with catastrophic care costs, some are forced to choose between care and other essentials, such as food and heating.”

Local authorities have always been legally entitled to charge for social care, but in the past many asked individuals for little or no contribution towards its provision. But under mounting financial pressures, a growing number of local authorities are adopting or raising social care charges. Two-thirds of local authorities in England have introduced or increased charges for care in the past three years, according to freedom of information requests by the MS Society.
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There are wide variations between councils in both the amount they charge for social care and who has to pay. Disabled people are already more likely to be living in poverty than those without a disability, and critics say social care charges amount to a tax on disability and old age.

Kari Gerstheimer of Mencap said some people with learning disabilities were being unlawfully charged for care because local authorities were failing to account for the extra costs that come with a person’s disability, or insisting that disability benefits intended to pay for other essentials go on care fees.

“It is shocking that people with a learning disability who are already on very low incomes – even those relying on benefits – are having their support packages cut and are being charged unaffordable rates for their own care. Government needs to solve the problems with social care rather than forcing people already struggling to make ends meet to pay more.”
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Keith Bright, 58, who has MS, said he had had to make his team of carers redundant after the council increased the contributions he had to make for his social care from £125 a week to £179. Unable to afford that and keep up with mortgage payments on their bungalow, Bright and his wife, Glenys, had no choice but to let the carers go. Now 29 hours’ care a week has been replaced by one hour a day. “That’s not even enough to help me get showered,” he said. “But it’s all we can afford.”

On top of the new costs, the council reassessed Bright’s case in the light of a change in his disability benefit and backdated his contributions, requiring the couple to find another £2,000. They have already spent more than £28,000 in five years on social care and had to take out a loan.

Glenys Bright said they had been threatened with bailiffs for the debt. “We both feel we’ve been treated like criminals yet we haven’t committed a crime,” she added.

Analysis by the union GMB last year found that more than 160,000 people had become trapped in debt for social care, with more than 1,000 taken to court by their local authorities over the last two years over non-payment for their own care, or that of loved ones.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are committed to ensuring everyone has access to the care and support they need and have provided local authorities with access to up to £3.6bn more dedicated funding for adult social care this year and up to £3.9bn for next year.

“We will shortly set out our plans to reform the social care system for adults of all ages to ensure it is sustainable.”

Frequency The early 80s is when manufacturing and factories started closing down. I know it was not everywhere, but where I lived there were major job losses and getting a factory job was not easy

In the early eighties Hartlepool still had StarTek who had a massive contract with file-o-fax, (StarTek kept going until the early 2000s, I worked there after leaving school in 1993) the crisp factory the biscuit factory, the sticker factory, the window factory, the curtain factory, the meat factory and a few others plus a steady fishing industry.

I remember being very envious of the girl whose mum worked in the sticker factory and dad worked in the crisp factory. My mum and dad worked in the window factory and the meat factory. What use are free double glazing and pork chops to an eight year old?

In the 70s, there was this thing about 'work hard and pass your exams or you'll end up working in a factory.'
Now it's more like 'get a degree and you might be lucky enough to get a job in a factory.

This isn't to say that factory work is wonderful; it can be dirty, dangerous and not all that well paid. But factory work, when we still had a lot of factories, offered opportunities to move up within the company and, if you weren't that bothered, generally there was good camaraderie and other perks.

These days, though, the other big problem with unskilled/semi-skilled work is that so much of it is in the hands of agencies. This leads to workers being treated as interchangeable and disposable and keeps pay down, because the agency takes a cut before the worker is paid. Also, the ability of agencies to move employees around stops people connecting with their co-workers and maybe organising for better pay and conditions. Yes, there have always been agencies who fulfill a necessary function and treat workers well, but the current trend is basically parasitic: insert yourself into an industry, demand that all jobs have to go via your organisation and cream off a chunk of the wages paid...

I have a degree. I also have a Master's degree.
To get the first job I've had in 20 years I had to take a basic course in health and social care, and lie that I had no other qualifications. I had to point out mistakes in the basic literacy and numeracy tests that made them impossible.
Then I got a job, with 13 and a quarter hour shifts. I did the training, worked the induction, and the nurse in charge sent me home before she had to call an ambulance because I couldn't physically do it. I am not disabled enough to claim anything but not well enough to do the only available job here...
Lord knows what the job centre will say on Monday but I expect it will involve sanctions if I don't work myself into a fourth heart attack.
UC won't allow DH to claim alone we are both required to do 35 hours job search a week and be available for work.
Previously he worked and earned enough to keep us. I never claimed "sickness" or anything else, never got maternity benefits of any kind, we just managed.
Then DH got sick. The hospital are still trying to find out what's actually wrong cancer and/or TB have been suggested and the job centre used his being sick as the excuse to make us claim UC.
The stress is immeasurable, until you have been on the receiving end of the system you simply cannot comprehend how bad it is.

PomBear

Frequency

Think yourself lucky...
My dad was a chiropodist.. my mum worked at Clarke's..

Oh the jokes they had about feet.. they all stank. (Groan...)

This threads coming to an end soon, it's been interesting, informative and shocking all at the same time.

I don't think I'll ever forget the "No empathy for losing a child cause her nails are painted" eye opener that.

Or the "Whole generation of kids being taught not to work" shocking really.

But now it's time for me to follow the advice that I'm sure a lot of posters have muttered, it's time for me to Fuck off..

Peace out to all the Scroungers...
Love to all the grafters and the workers..
Do one landlords..

Oh I've just come down from the island of Skye,
I'm no very big and I'm awful shy,
And the lass's shout as I go by..
Tinker will ye fuck off...

Oh let the bullshit fly
And the nonsense flow
To go sign on I think go
The spongers say hello
Tinker will ye fuck off?..

Well a lady stopped all my cash,
Cause she said I'd been on the lash,
Instead of being at a job bash
Tinker will ye fuck off...

Oh let the bullshit fly
And the nonsense flow
To go sign on I think go
All the spongers say hello
Tinker will ye fuck off?..

Well me landlord now has raised my rent,
And I have no money it's all been spent,
Does any one have a spare box for rent?
Oh tinker will ye fuck off?

Oh let the bullshit fly
And the nonsense flow
To go sign on I think go
All the spongers say hello
Tinker will ye fuck off?..

And no I'm living on the street,
We nee roof and nee ta eat,
My whole life ha turn't to sheet..
Oh... Tinker... Will.. ye... Fuck off?

(All together now....)

Oh let the bullshit fly,
And the nonsense flow
To go sign on I think go
To all ye spongers I say hello...
Tinker has now fucked off..

@clairemcnam

Actually the job centre encourages volunteering especially when getting JSA

@Dorsetdays

Couldn't agree more with everything you've said so far.

Its the attitudes of people that constantly make up excuses and drain you with all this self pity. Its actually insulting that people would assume that I live in some sort of foreign land to the poor. I went to Uni and had to struggle on £3500 for the year, and it was torture! I went full weeks eating just pasta. a tin of tuna was an absolute luxury. Things like soap to shower with were rare and constantly used to cut open the free sample bottles from whereever we'd taken a handful from. 1 thing no body can accuse me of is not knowing what its like to do without.
I accepted what I had, yes I might have complained; but it was never someone elses fault and I kept going because I was bettering myself knowing that it would all be worth it and that one day I'd be comfortable.

I don't like it when I hear so many people saying they are entitled to so many things and that they should have them because they deserve them. Basically saying "I deserve to have this so that rich person should pay for it because they've got loads of money" wait a minute; you're not entitled to their money any more than they're entitled to your money. Just because someones done really well for themselves doesn't mean you get to go and say "right I'm taking some of that because I havn't got much money".

Thats the basic argument if you were to look closely at WeeTinkerMonkey's argument about landlords. Its that there's an indifference there and he feels entitled to what the landlord has because he feels some entitlement that he hasn't earned.

I have no issue with anyone who is receiving sickness benefits or the like. That is who and what benefits are for. I do think its telling though when so many people jump up on the defensive and feel the need to put long posts on about how difficult their life is and how hard they work. It the end of the day if your sat on your backside all day through illness there isn't anything you can do about out its as simple as that, you don't need to defend or prove yourself. I think the actual figures are nowhere near the genuinely too ill to work though.
The fact we have people on sickness classed as having a disability due to alcoholism and drug addiction is pathetic and speaks for itself. Not far behind is depression. I'm not denying it exists but its not an illness! Its a condition, and is nonetheless a condition that isn't going to improve by sitting in the house all day or staying in bed!
The fact of the matter is that regardless of the stats there are much higher numbers than recorded of claimants who CHOOSE not to work and look for a way they can fit into an illness category so they can declare themselves 'sick'. This "small number" is probably those prosecuted for fraud which we all know is a fraction of the real number committing it.

If you are genuinely claiming benefits and using them how they were intended I would expect you'd be as outraged as I am that so many people are choosing them as a lifestyle when you are claiming them because you have no other options. Just because you'll be no better off going to work doesn't mean you should choose not do. You'll never better yourself, your kids or those around you by going down that road.

@StevieHuckle - you don’t think addiction is a sickness ? That’s pathetic is it ?

Depression may well be made worse by staying in bed, but it’s the medication that makes people lethargic. My cousin was an unmediated bio polar for 20 years, held down a good job and raised 3 children. 6 months into treatment she’s like a bloody zombie. That’s what happens when there’s no appetite to fix the actual issues just dick band aids over the issues.

It’s getting worse not better so rather than taking the piss out of my posts anyone who actually wants to move forward. Get IT skills. A degree would be great but you’d not earn less than £15 an hour in first line support. Care work is never going to get you out of poverty. Redirect your efforts

I agree it has been an interesting thread. Thank you to those prepared to speak to those of us who moved to find work and may be have different views on some topics.

There are lots of different issues on the thread but lack of work in the area concerned is one of the biggest ones rather than mental health and disability issues which you would get in most parts of the country if not all and in a sense is a red herring to the main issue as is hating landlords. The core issue is loss of regular jobs up there. They were never particularly well paid. My family were more likely to be miners or work on the shipyards and a few were "master mariners" away at sea which itself is not that great for wives left at home almost as single parents at times. The mines were not great either so I am not sure we really want those back. I had quite a few ancestors down the pit at age 12 even.

What I was trying to describe is that in areas which are better off there are regular PAYE full time jobs and the rents down here do not mean those jobs are not worth getting.

My mother who became a teacher via state grammar school wrote her famly tree in the 1970s which I still have. She proudly wrote down what her various cousins and aunts had become eg teacher, nurse, dentist, BSC. London, music teacher Scotland - that one went to the Royal Academy. I think they tried really hard in the 1930s and 40s to pull the family out of poverty basically by getting education.

Those of us writing about university are saying that today is it different - uit is easier than it has ever been to get to university as about 40% of children go now and every single one of them gets all their fees paid and a maintenance loan and you don't pay a penny back ever uniless you earn over 25k and you only pay 9% of what you earn over 25k back ever So if you are on £30k you pay 9% of £5000 = £450 a year back on your student loan. It is not a loan in the normal debt sense.

So it is definitely worth people's teenagers trying to get good GCSEs and A levels in good hard subjects if they possibly can and using that route to a good degree and if that means moving to Newcastle, Durham it is worth the effort as it might help them. Obviously it won't help those who would not be able to pass the exams but even those might find getting a job with accommodation away (my daughter did a few summers abroad working in holiday camps etc) can at least show you the opportunities out there.

@Inliverpool1 pay you bloody council tax. I assume your name is based on where you are. The city has lost so much funding from government and needs the council tax. Bet if your bins weren't emptied you would be going after the council.

Lazy benefits scrounger signing off to go to bed. Yep, that's right I'm gonna spend ALL DAY in bed!!

don't let the fact I've just done a 12 hour Nightshift, at least an hour of which pays tax, stop you frothing over it all though, hate to spoil your fun 😁

@AdoraBell there is no need to stress over student debt in UK. I really think it should be called differently and not 'debt'.
Unless she will make ove xxk a year, currently stands on 25k, she will not pay. And when she makes over the treshold it's 9% from what is over.
So for example 30k a year = £37 a month.
There is no need to stress. No one will sell the debt to bailiffs. By the time she finishes uni, threshold will be even higher.

And yeah. For many it is actually free, because many never start repaying. Then massive majority never pays in full. It's about 17% who pay it off.
If she is worried Martin Lewis has really great info on it.

Good luck to her with her course.

These thread really reflects the reality of the situation and the divide between those who take a positive attitude to their situation (Frequency, MiGi) and those who will only look for reasons to keep their negative attitude justified.

Life is just an accumulation of weighing investment opportunities. We have to decide how much effort we are prepared to put in for any expected result. On one extreme end are those who will put minimal effort and only when the expected return is high. These people usually wait a long time for these opportunities to come along and then even with good odds will fall against those who will have put more effort in. They call themselves unlucky. Then you have those on the other end of the spectrum who will put 100% effort even when the chance of return is 10%. They face one failure/rejection after another until they get their big break through. When they do, they are labelled lucky.

Helena, the twitter link you posted to justify that dwp will sanction people who volunteer is quite deceptive as it appears the reason for the sanction was that thry believed he was doing paid work for free for someone he knew rather than being sanctioned for vonteering and not spending enough time job searching.

trying to get the anagram to work: steviehuckle to IDS. Because surely a normal compassionate member of society could t honestly be so awful

Reanimated. Heard it all now with the continual excuses. Don’t get a job to pay the bills unless it’s meaningful and doesn’t ‘line someone else’s pocket’

If someone is capable of working and can get a job, they should. End of. Not everyone is in a position to pick and choose and many jobs can have a tedious, repetitive element to them but if they pay the bills and give you a much better chance of getting an even better job if you keep looking then it’s always better than the alternative. 🙄

Don’t go to university, get a good education and improve your future because you’ll have a student loan hanging round you and will be harassed forever by bailiffs demanding repayments. Erm, no that’s not how it works at all as many posters have pointed out.

In addition you now actually only repay interest on the amount you earn over the threshold which is currently £25k. So for someone earning £27k they pay 9% back on the £2k they earn over the threshold which equates to £15 per which isn’t a bad investment for your future.

Really hope that there aren’t people reading this thread and taking your advice which is incorrect and potentially damaging. Instead of trying to keep everyone at the lowest common denominator (eg don’t bother trying, you’ll never get anywhere) it would be far better to start encouraging others, finding positive options and instilling a ‘never give up’ attitude.

tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/long-term-unemployment-rate

www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39980793

www.gov.uk/government/collections/dwp-statistical-summaries