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AIBU?

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Original poster

are furloughed people the new benefit scroungers?

379 replies

ghostmous3 · 22/05/2020 02:28

According to some posts that are doing the rounds on shitebook they are

Before lockdown people moaned about the 'feckless workshy' now the vitriol is aimed at the 'furloughed sitting on thier bums on beaches spreading germs, how dare they when weve got to work. We're paying for you're furlough'

I'm feeling bloody sensitive tonight. I didn't ask to be furloughed, I'm more than likely getting made redundant at the end of july and I dont go to beaches!

OP posts:
Lynda07 · 22/05/2020 15:44

MadameMarie Fri 22-May-20 15:29:14
Is it just me, or are Brits constantly at each others throats these days for issue after issue? Furloughed v non-furloughed, public sector v private, workers v benefit 'dossers', young v old, Brexit v Remain etc etc

How much of it is divide and rule?
....

Is it different in other countries? I wouldn't know.

May on an internet forum like this people vent whereas in real life, they may have fleeting opinions but let them go.

My experience is that most people are trying to make the best of a difficult situation and many are reaching out to help others if they can.

zingally · 22/05/2020 15:46

I'm furloughed, and honestly I'd MUCH rather be working! My quality of life is fairly close to nil at the moment, our monthly household income has more than halved, and I'm bored out of my brain.
Can't wait to get back to work!

Quibblewibble · 22/05/2020 15:59

I am furloughed I didn't choose to be it has its ups and downs. In all honesty I'm looking forward to going back to work. There probably are people furloughed treating it like a holiday, but it's unfair for all furloughed staff to be tarred with the same brush.

LadyofTheManners · 22/05/2020 16:05

But that's the country we live in

Imagine reading that type of rubbish and being disabled. Or being the relative of a disabled person, knowing the MSM is whipping up hatred against your relative.
Imagine being someone who had a poor education and is now unable to find a decent wage. Or the working poor who work like clockwork for such shit pay they are forced to claim UC as a top up, or even use foodbanks. Our local Covid Aid team was contacted by a midwife this week, who has been off due to catching Covid. She is unable to do overtime as it's all been assigned this month so she now faces the very real possibility of having no way of paying her food bills as the overtime is what she uses to cover food for the month as the rest goes on rent and bills. She had to request a food parcel.
How on earth do we love in a society where a nurse can't pay her food bill without extra hours?

Can I just ask that those of you who hate the way the furloughed are being spoken about remember that feeling next time you assume every person on benefits are scroungers, that you know that's not always the case, in fact,the percentage of those who are truly taking the piss are tiny.

Truthpact · 22/05/2020 16:11

I really wouldn't take the opinion of someone who is that stupid as worth listening to.

People on furlough aren't the new benefit scroungers. They are likely to end up with no job and on actual benefits. Not really a choice I'd like to face.

Waxonwaxoff0 · 22/05/2020 16:17

@LadyofTheManners I'm on furlough and I have also been on benefits, I never call anyone a "scrounger" and I couldn't care less who is on benefits for whatever reason. Don't assume that all of us think that way.

SinisterBumFacedCat · 22/05/2020 16:20

There’s no nasty nurse slagging off furloughed people on my Facebook feed. I had a cull around Brexit and it’s an oasis of calm on there.

NiteFlights · 22/05/2020 16:22

@LadyofTheManners I’m not one for having a go at people who receive benefits, they are an essential safety net in any civilised society and ought to be administered more efficiently and humanely than they currently are. I agree with you that perhaps the current rhetoric will encourage some people to re-think their assumptions about benefits and that’s a good thing.

gumball37 · 22/05/2020 16:30

I think the pandemic is bringing to light just how little people care about anyone except themselves.

Reality. No one gets out alive. Money doesn't go with you when you die. Some of us had our eyes opened to just how short and precious life was before this... And honestly... I'd rather live a poor life with my kids than a rich one just to make some people in society look at me in a positive light.

lyralalala · 22/05/2020 16:35

I agree with you that perhaps the current rhetoric will encourage some people to re-think their assumptions about benefits and that’s a good thing.

I don't think it will. I think it's just making another class of people.

Before now there was "Hard-working people" and "Lazy scroungers who don't work".

Now there is "Hard working People", "Good honest people who are victims of the pandemic" and "Lazy scroungers.

The rhetoric against said lazy scroungers is just as bad, and sometimes worse, as before.

Notmyfirstusername · 22/05/2020 16:43

It's pretty clear that the government need to start to 'other' the furloughed as they will be forced to reduce the support soon. Providing 50/60% or UC levels of support to your 'hard working' 'salt of the earth' neighbour and it leads to people thinking "there but for the grace of god..." and demanding a decent long term safety net.
By framing them as a bunch of work shy shirkers sat on the beach drinking at 9 am whilst moaning about safety, they can be quickly added to the rest of the poorly treated UC/disabled/ carers and paid a pittance which they should be grateful for.
I very much doubt it, but I hope this experience will open up some people's eyes as to how it feels to be treated like crap because of circumstances entirely beyond your control.

RitzSpy · 22/05/2020 16:46

I haven’t seen this post or any like it. I understand the fear of the amount of money the Gov are spending but it was the right thing to do and money well spent imo. I hope you don’t lose your job OP.

Original poster
ghostmous3 · 22/05/2020 16:47

I dont judge anybody on benefits or call the scroungers either. I only put that on my title as I feel that's the opinion of many that are working furlough or not

I've been there myself. I've had to claim benefits for a few years to survive a situation that was not good and I know that life on benefits is not all its cracked up to be.

OP posts:
MadameMarie · 22/05/2020 16:57

@Notmyfirstusername

Lots of rhetoric this week of lazy work-shy teachers, packing out the beaches to Normandy Landing levels but refusing to teach kids due to 'elf and safety' and backed up by public sector union dinosaurs

MadameMarie · 22/05/2020 17:02

@ghostmous3

It's a British mentality of always wanting to punish people.

How many times do you words like "prison is a holiday camp/prisons are too soft" etc, yet the same people lose their shit at being shut in their house for a few weeks for 23 hours a day (let alone locked in a tiny cell with another person).

Life on benefits is deemed as some kind of life of luxury due to cherry picked tabloid fodder of extreme system fiddlers. But if you asked the people who think that whether they'd swap their cushy office job for a life on the dole they wouldn't.

PleasePassTheCoffeeThanks · 22/05/2020 17:25

There is a safety net already. It's now called universal credit. That is the safety net. It was considered an acceptable amount of money to survive on before (I don't think it is but a majority did) so it should be enough now
You have a point. Why is UC enough for the ones made redundant pre-Covid but not for the ones out of work during Covid?
You could argue that the point is to avoid households having to sell their home etc for the sake of 3-6-9 months out of work when there was a high probability their income would come back. But the measures such as mortgage holidays were put in place to avoid this.
So why? Am I missing something? I might, genuinely wondering.

HeIenaDove · 22/05/2020 17:30

People have not clocked it yet but I fear we are sitting on something of a time bomb of all that being released and frustrations spilling over

Ive certainly clocked it.

lyralalala · 22/05/2020 17:31

You have a point. Why is UC enough for the ones made redundant pre-Covid but not for the ones out of work during Covid?
You could argue that the point is to avoid households having to sell their home etc for the sake of 3-6-9 months out of work when there was a high probability their income would come back. But the measures such as mortgage holidays were put in place to avoid this.
So why? Am I missing something? I might, genuinely wondering

Because in the same way people were conned into forgetting that slashing disability benefits to target the tiny percentage of scammers would affect genuinely disabled people, people have forgotten that the "type of person who claims UC" is actually all of us.

They didn't take into account when the decent mortgage interest help was removed that it might be their mortgage that was at risk.

They didn't think about it being their savings that counted when the 16k complete cut off that was put in place (that was actually said on threads on here "My savings aren't savings, they're a house deposit")

It never occurred to them for a second that the cushy income people on benefits allegedly get wouldn't actually pay for their non-flashy, average life.

BlackberryCane · 22/05/2020 17:31

I've been part of anti UC campaigns and it obviously isn't enough. But in fairness, there's a substantial difference between the economic impact of a small percentage of the population being mainly or fully reliant on this shit safety net and the numbers that are now furloughed and would otherwise qualify. One doesn't have to be a frothing benefits basher to see that.

NoHardSell · 22/05/2020 17:51

There's no way this furlough scheme is cheaper than UC.

Fair enough, first couple of weeks it was a good idea, but beyond that - no. If UC isn't actually enough, then sort that out, instead of having the pre and post covid unemployed on two vastly different schemes. Mind you, my personal choice is to reopen most businesses and only provide support for those on a list of 'not possible to social distance'. Also - no, it shouldn't apply to non-independent school age children. No, it shouldn't apply if your business is allowed to open but you prefer to not take the risk of losing some profits. No, it should not apply if your business is not based in the UK and doesn't pay taxes here.

HeIenaDove · 22/05/2020 17:53

. I'm a high level tax payer and a Tory (sorry!) and I do get pissed off about the level of benefits some receive usually - but this is different. I have had to take a 10 percent pay cut and still work full time but I don't begrudge anyone their furlough money

And we are back to deserving and undeserving yet again.

LadyOfTheFlowers · 22/05/2020 18:03

Some people are morons who don't understand things they rant on about.
If your workplace is putting you on furlough I don't think you have a choice. I don't recall anyone saying you could choose to carry on going to work or stay home and get furloughed 🙄

Okrightbut · 22/05/2020 18:05

I feel that the language the government use and that they started to use quite early on once the scheme was introduced as really caused this way of thinking by quite a lot of people. I think the scheme costs more than expected so they want the connotations of being part of it to be negative. I also think a lot of people are struggling with working at home and looking after children so or bound to feel a bit resentful of those who don't have to work so this is perhaps where the animals that is coming from. Unfortunately as I couldn't we I don't think we are particularly caring to think this looking out for the new benefit scroungers is unfortunately part of how a lot of people are and they're always looking for someone to blame and have a go at

RyanBergarasTeeth · 22/05/2020 18:06

There's no way this furlough scheme is cheaper than UC.

Long term it is cheaper though. It retains jobs so less people will be unemployed at the end which means they will pay it back slowly in tax in the future rather than end up unemployed costing more in tax longer term.

HeIenaDove · 22/05/2020 18:06

There's fields and fields of crops dying because farmers cannot get workers from the EU and UK people don't seem to want to do this work

And ive found the comment i was looking for!!!!!!

A lot of these jobs are live in on site For weeks or months!! Social housing tenants arent allowed to live away from home if they want to keep the tenancy. Its not laziness Its not wanting to end up homeless. Tenancies dont allow for it

a. If there wasnt time for lots of stipulations in the furlough scheme , ......................how long do you think it would have taken to change millions of tenancy agreements.

b. And how many of those resentful on here would be happy to assume/report that a social housing residence had been abandoned if someone had decided to take the risk of doing this work.

c. how would a tenant be available for the mandatory gas safety check. Enough people on here and in RL are in agreement that this should go ahead pandemic or no pandemic. Which neatly brings me to

d. You cant ask a neighbour to wait in your property for you as we are not supposed to be mixing households.