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..

I'm planning on watching this tonight. I've watched I Daniel Blake, and it made me cry. I had a spell as a single parent on benefits but that was over 25 years ago now and, while it wasn't great, it wasn't the utter shit show the benefits system is now. At least back then I had my little book and got my money at the post office every week without fail. No sanctions, no delays, no mess ups. I honestly don't know how people manage now.

When you come on MN it's easy to forget how some people struggle. On here it's all big houses, 100k jobs and private schools! I remember one thread in particular where people just couldn't seem to get their head around the fact that some people only have one toilet in their house! (I only have one in mine). They reacted like not having at least two bathrooms was living in poverty and deprivation!

I consider myself privileged because when I buy groceries I can buy what I need without having to check prices. I can keep my home warm. If something breaks in my house I can get it replaced, if not immediately, within a couple of weeks. These are quite basic things in life but so many people don't have that.

Bloody ridiculous that young single mother had to wait for a phone call she may miss but wasn't allowed to pop down to the job centre instead for her interview.
She had two young children and could easily miss a call if she was dealing with them or busy in the house. Are you supposed to take your phone into the toilet with you?!
The DWP make no allowances for the difficulties a parent may be facing.
Makes me sick.

they also expect you to look within 90 minutes travelling time

And that's 90 minutes directly there, it doesn't take into account public transport timetables or routes that might go around the houses before reaching your destination.

I'm twenty miles from Alnwick, not far at all when we go on there in the car to visit the gardens or castle. I took the DC on the bus once when DH was away and regretted it because it was two bus journeys of an hour each with a half hour wait between getting off the first and onto the second. If I had to work that far away from home I couldn't manage a two and a half hour bus commute each way, that's fine hours on top of whatever shift you're doing. It's also trusting that there'll be a bus back to where you're going as rural buses don't usually run into the night - one of the buses we got finishes at 6pm and the other only runs a partial route after 6.30pm.

Fine hours = five hours

^So, people of Hartlepool, get a bus you can't afford to a library that he computers , queue fmup for the next open computer and spend 8 hours looking for jobs and applying for all of them within a 90 minute travel radius.
Then if you get one, you'll need childcare.
Your job starts at 9am, but it's 1.5hours away, so that's childcare from 7.30am job finished at 5pm so you'll need that child are until 6.30pm^

Public transport in Teesside is so fucked up due to cuts it's actually quicker to get to Leeds from Boro than it is to get from Hartlepool to Ormesby (an area in Middlesbrough approx. 20 to 30minutes by car from Hartlepool) When I travel to Leeds I can be there by 12, after leaving Boro at 10:35am. It's one bus, direct. To get to Ormesby from Hartlepool by 9am for a training event I had to get on the first bus at 6:35am from and then wait in Boro bus station for 40 minutes for the next bus and you've got no chance of getting to any of the collieries on public transport. You can't even get back from Teesside park after 6:30pm.

When I was looking for work I stopped looking for work in Ingleby, Ormesby, parts of Boro and Stockton etc but kept looking in York, Sunderland, Newcastle, Darlington and Durham as they were quicker, cheaper and easier to get to than small villages a few minutes away by car

If an immigrant from eastern europe can come to UK with very little money, no bank account, no NIN etc. and be working within 2weeks so can anybody. If minimum wage is not enough there is overtime. There is no excuse for those who are healthy.

Plenty of people move to where the job is.

How do you move to where the work is if you have no work and therefore no money?

Also like fuck are immigrants getting work within two weeks with no bank account.

Overtime? For single parents with young kids? Really? Does your local childcare work 24/7 because mine doesn't.

If an immigrant from eastern europe can come to UK with very little money, no bank account, no NIN etc. and be working within 2weeks so can anybody

Cite your sources for this True Fact™

If an immigrant from eastern europe can come to UK with very little money, no bank account, no NIN etc. and be working within 2weeks so can anybody. If minimum wage is not enough there is overtime. There is no excuse for those who are healthy

You live in a bubble don't you?
Try bursting it and make an effort to learn something about poverty and deprivation, lack of education, lack of opportunity.

If only you'd pull your finger out Frequency and just swim the Tees, think of it as exercise but try not to swallow the water, you could get the 63 to Ormesby and be there by midnight. That's what the immigrants would do.

If an immigrant from eastern europe can come to UK with very little money, no bank account, no NIN etc. and be working within 2weeks so can anybody

Do you honestly believe that? I live and work in London, and have worked with vulnerable people. There are a huge amount of homeless Eastern Europeans who thought the same as you, and it turns out it wasn't so easy! And this is in London where we have plenty of minimum wage jobs. You have no idea what you are talking about.

Gosh, you don't need to site references, just open your eyes.
Most workplaces in the NW of min wage has immigrants working. They come over and work immediately living in mho's they share beds between shifts. I know because i see this, no references required.
The laws surrounding Roma changed in January too, Wales has already started providing sites, and England due to follow.
So British and European Roma will be looking for work soon, as they travel. About time too, councils are having to do what they were supposed to many years ago.

In fact ao.com, most, 90+% of the staff are immigrant. The British are a minority in lots of jobs where you can work various shifts.

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

They actively look for reasons to sanction people these days, apparently staff have 'sanction targets' which thinking logically, should not exist if sanctions are only for people who have done 'wrong'. You cannot set targets for something thats meant to depend on claimant refusing jobs and such..as you should only apply them when the bad thing is done!

A friend of mine was sanctioned a few years back because she missed a jobcentre appointment. She missed it as she has had to rush her daughter to A+E due to breathing issues. The sanction was reversed mind as whoever looked at it saw how disgusting it was, but she had to go weeks without money. It was all fine though because 'when its reversed, you get the backpay anyway'; which is obviously useful to the person who had to live on nothing Same for when PIP and such is denied then theres a year or so wait, again thats fine as you do eventually get the money. But..while its nice having what you were entitled to back, that does not help you for the year or so you were without income!

In fact ao.com, most, 90+% of the staff are immigrant. The British are a minority in lots of jobs where you can work various shifts

I find that hard to believe given that only just over 10% of the UK workforce is made up of non UK nationals. Unless you are proposing that all of the migrants work for ao.com?

I'm also unsure what ao.com has to do with rising unemployment and lack of opportunity in the north east due to the decline of industry. Last time I checked Bolton, which is where most of the ao.com jobs are based, is not in the NE. Nor could anyone from the NE afford to commute to Bolton for a NMW job. Nor could anyone not working afford to move to Bolton on the off chance they get a job at ao.com.

If an immigrant from eastern europe can come to UK with very little money, no bank account, no NIN etc. and be working within 2weeks so can anybody

Can you please repeat that, didn't you're hear it due to your buttocks muffling the bullshit.

Eastern Europeans may well come here and be working within two weeks, that may well happen, because they've paid a slave master to sort that for them.
Now they're living in a house with 15 others, sharing beds and facilities whilst earning £9ph and giving the slave master £3, living on £3 and sending £3 home.

Let's just skip all the bullshit and set up work houses for the poor, it worked well last time.

Do you honestly believe that? I live and work in London, and have worked with vulnerable people. There are a huge amount of homeless Eastern Europeans who thought the same as you, and it turns out it wasn't so easy! And this is in London where we have plenty of minimum wage jobs. You have no idea what you are talking about.

I know it. I had excatly £200 with me and a friend who let me sleep on her sofa while I looked for jobs when I arrived. It wasn't London. Within 2 weeks I had a full time job in a factory, admittedly via a job agency, with plenty of overtime opportunities. We shared travel costs - a worker from the factory with a car would pick people up at a given location. It wasn't easy. 6am-2pm or 2pm-10pm shifts. Overtime on weekends. 3 months later I was able to move out of my friends house, got a better job and 2 years later another one etc. etc. Moved with work couple of times. Never claimed anything in my life. Nowdays I have a child but I'm not even entitled to a child benefit due to earnings.
I know PLENTY of others with similar stories. Some went back into education got college qualifications, nursing degrees etc.
If an immigrant can do it with the language and cultural barriers so should a native who doesn't have those.

It's good the majority of posts here are understanding and rightfully angry that the situation is as depicted last night. Long term poverty and deprivation is horrible, and saps self-esteem and confidence. Your family and friends may have nothing, too, so can't help - the partially sighted man managed to borrow just £2.50 from his father who is probably poor himself. I know if I fell on hard times, I have family and friends who are comfortable enough to see me through, but truly poor people may not.

I volunteer with people who have nothing. Some don't even have a phone, which is essential in today's world. Or they have a phone but no credit. Older ones - anyone over about 35 - may not be confident with the internet, which you need to know about to check for jobs, or even able to monitor their bank account. I helped a young guy the other day who had huge difficulty completing a form (probably an educational difficulty that had not been put right - he had no obvious special need).

I've seen on Twitter and even on mumsnet total ignorance and judgment. It's so wrong.

I'm from Hartlepool and severely doubt the man who kills animals for food actually does it for that, he has a reputation in the town for being a vile human and has killed family pets for fun I have no sympathy for him!

The town is like any other, good and bad parts, I'm lucky to be from the good part but have lots of friends from the bad parts and they get by just fine, the editing and angle of the programme is imo to take a small town and make it into poverty porn

These people can afford cigarettes,alcohol and drugs....Funny that.

Frequency

It's in Crewe, not Bolton, my sis works there.
I was talking about the NW, we have a lot of immigrants doing min wage jobs, and as I said, they tend to share beds in mho's. ao.com was just an example.
All our factories are employing immigrants and the main reason so many people voted leave.
A bit silly really as there are so many more due to come soon as the laws have changed for Roma.

'Skint Britain' Really?

Unemployment is at it's lowest rate for decades, and our economy is flourishing. For those who genuinely are unable to work through serious disability we have a generous welfare state to help them.

For the rest, the vast majority of people, there is work out there.

The trouble is too many prefer to sit on their (usually very large) backsides and complain about living in 'poverty'

The important thing to remember is the fact that the rest of us, the tax payers, are paying for this lifestyle.

The town is like any other, good and bad parts, I'm lucky to be from the good part but have lots of friends from the bad parts and they get by just fine, the editing and angle of the programme is imo to take a small town and make it into poverty porn

I was going to say the same thing re: the good and bad parts of Hartlepool. I live in Ingleby (around 20mins by car) and to be honest, always think of Hartlepool as Seaton seafront but I’m aware there are some really nice parts of Hartlepool - headlands for example! I felt it was very focused on the poorer parts (suppose that’s the point in the show though)

I do sympathise with anyone who has no money for basic essentials such as food. It’s disgusting. Nobody ever deserves that. There should atleast be something in place to give an ‘emergency’ voucher to somebody to use in a supermarket (not just expect these people to go hunting around for a referral to a food bank!) I agree with the many PP that the anger is directed at the most vulnerable people in society because we are made to believe that they drain tax payers money and they are easier to target than the large companies / business men hiding their millions god knows where.

Most workplaces in the NW of min wage has immigrants working. They come over and work immediately living in mho's they share beds between shifts. I know because i see this, no references required.

Please tell me that do not think that that is an acceptable standard of living which we should be aiming for for benefit claimants?That it is desirable to have a half-share in a bed space as your only accommodation?

Unemployment is at it's lowest rate for decades

Apparently so, whats not mentioned is that a bunch of people are on 0 hours contracts and sometimes get no hours at all, yet are still classed as 'in work'. 0 hour contracts work well for a minority of people, but for most they are not a good plan. If you have any responsibilities at all, 0 hours is generally a disaster.

'Generous welfare state' for the disabled made me snort a bit though. Even the most disabled people are having their benefits either cut or stopped due to ATOS/Maximus centres basically being Lourdes..what consultants have failed to fix, the 'medical assessor' somehow manages to cure in 20 mins!