To think this is a bad way to spend £1000 community care grant

[milliec]

Message withdrawn

What's wrong with charity shops?

I think the point here is not what she's spent the money on per se, but the fact that she's spent it unwisely and is coming back for more, whilst refusing any other sensible ways of being helped.

It's not a hand-out she's entitled to it just as any of us who found ourselves in the same situation would be entitled to it.

It is hard to take charity but I would find it a LOT harder to go BACK and demand MORE charity!

It is a hand out.

It has been handed out, she doesn't have to pay it back, it is a hand out.

And she has wasted it.

She may have the most piteous reason in the world, it could make your heart bleed, perhaps as a child she was teased for having a shabby sofa, but that is still no reason to let your children be without beds because not only did you want a sofa, you wanted a new sofa!

It is selfish and wasteful and I judge her for it!

It's not charity. Since when were statutory grants charity? You don't call Child Benefit charity do you, because it's the same thing?

Charity would be if all the Mumsnetters who could clubbed together and put a tenner each in to help this woman buy more furniture. Then everybody could get pissed off because she'd spent it on one perfect coffee table.

It is handed out to people in need (and I am not debating that she is in need), like income support, and jobseekers allowance.

To waste it and go back and ask for more is just breathtakingly cheeky.

No-one denies she is entitled to the money - she clearly is as she has been means tested for it. What we are syaing was that she should have spent it more wisely. She is not entitled to ask for more money because she wasted the first lot. If she had bought most of what she needed on the cheap and still fell short any needed more, then fair enough, give her more. But her priorities were all wrong.

See I think breathtakingly cheeky when we're talking about taxpayers money is this kind of thing:

"Earlier this month, the NAO revealed Sir John had been on 43 foreign trips in three years, often accompanied by his wife. They travelled first class on 22 separate occasions including to San Francisco, the Bahamas, Brazil, Lisbon and Venice, at a cost of £76,000. He had also enjoyed 164 lunches and dinners since 2004, including meals at the Ritz, Savoy, Dorchester, Wiltons, Mirabelle and Bibendum. The most expensive bill cost taxpayers £301."

I think Elizabeth has a point (again). We all pile in to condemn poor/working class people who may appear not to be terribly sensible with money but no-one even comments on flagrant money-grabbing by middle class people at the public's expense... (and in this case by the very man supposed to oversee how our taxes are spent).

yes, but he also signed his own expenses off - we are at fault for letting that happen. absolute power corrupts absolutely.

are we at fault for lending this woman £1000? maybe if she doesn't prioritise her children first.

this is what makes it difficult when your apparently donating money, you don't know exactly if what you intended it for is what it's being used for. maybe donations of goods should have been made first before the offer of £1000?

These topics always go the same way.

Although I personally sorted beds for my children with my CC Grant, I can also appreciate how pride comes into this and also other factors to do with mental health and self esteem.

Surely the fault is with society and the way we are so precious about stuff that we are highly insured and super kitted out well beyond what is necessary - ALL of us, even those of us sitting on manky sofas and wearing hand me downs.

To suggest that insurance be compulsory is ridiculous and a direction I would not like to see our rights to choice and independence go.

The whole CCG system is flawed but the whole Social Security system is fractured and flawed and the solution requires such an overhaul that inevitably people would go without while the whole thing is fixed - as with CSA and Tax Credits. You can see why nobody wants to give it a make over. The money appears to go on stamping out fraud,etc. whilst doing nothing to improve the means used to assess need and priority.

So,for as long as we all continue to support consumerist culture who are ANY of us here to judge please?

Absolutely casbie

The crap financial control systems in place enabled Sir John to abuse the situation to his own advantage.

The poor systems in place allowed the claimant to turn down free second hand replacements and claim money for new with no control over how it was allocated by the claimant.

Crap systems will always be abused .... Do the government learn, tighten up the rules in times of high taxation and demands on the taxpayer. Do they £$£&*% !

P.S. When our 3 piece suite was disentragting into the carpet I bought our 2 sofas second hand because they were an expensive brand and I couldn't justify paying twice as much for new ones when we have small children wiping their noses on them and going through toilet training during our peiod of ownership of them. Actually I'll still probably shop on ebay for a suite/sofas when it comes to replacing them. There are mad fools out there who want to change their suites before they're worn out you know !

I had a poor upbringing - can you tell ?

i can't afford the consumerist culture - so i rebelled and washed my clothes by hand for months...

we got a washing machine from local CRNP, £500, which we paid back (every penny), took us three years.

yes, i think i'm poor enough to judge.

What's poor enough to judge though? I mean how far entrenched in such a culture does one have to be before we have to stop denying it?

Hand washed clothes/unwashed clothes
Washing machine/washing in the river
Asda value/food out of bins

I'm poor but I'm still part of the culture - I'm looking for a second hand printer and a mattress on Freecycle and Ebay. I don't need either to survive.

newknife

pride in showing off your new sofa ?

or

pride in not having to go back and ask for another handout as you spent the first one wisely and made use of second hand furniture ?

I know which one I'd choose.

The thing is a lot of the people on here who are perhaps judging milliec's client are not well-off themselves and accept the use of second hand stuff as a necessity. These people reuse/recycle and are, through necessity, thumbing their noses at the consumer culture which would love to sucker them in with 0% finance deals on all sorts of new consumer goods.

I think more should be taught about re-using/recycling/environmentally sound principles along side consumerism culture with all the downsides and being financially aware/budgeting/living within your means whilst kids are in school. Probably a lot more use than French/German/Media Studies for some kids.

My sofa cost £125 from Ikea so I feel like my opinion is very valid here too.

I'm still noticing a big difference between the reaction to rich Sir John and his £390,000 expense bill over three years (how nice to be able to go on first class trips to Venice with his wife) and the poor woman who had lost everything who bought a sofa and some clothes for her kids. The woman is on the receiving end of all kinds of judgements whereas Sir John, who we would expect to be financially prudent given that was his JOB, hasn't had a word said against him yet in fact in his case it's the system to blame, not him.

390 women could have gone mad at the sofa shop and in Next on his expenses and there would have been 390 women to judge harshly too. He deprived us of all that.

Yes, but what I'm saying is...what creates this situation where there is pride to be had in a new sofa?!

It only stings to look at an Argos catalogue and realise you can't even afford one of their sofas because it feels like everybody else you know is buying furniture at 4 times the cost of a crappy sofa that you can't even afford.

So who needs to do the work - the poor who need to wise up and get into the whole 2nd hand thing more or the wealthy who don't need to use second hand out of personal necessity but can continue to widen the divide by saying "silly me, I keep meaning to recycyle but it is such a faff juggling ones gym bag with the empties tub on the way to lunch"?

If we are going to start creating rules, maybe it shouldn't be about what the CCG is spent on or on being insured but on ridiculous spending and frittering and lavishing oneself with items that are beyond necessity.

Elizabeth - still sounds like a brand new sofa to me.

I condemn Sir John way more than the claimant with no money sense who wants more money because of her foolishness/vanity. I am heartily glad that he has been publicly named and shamed for his greed at the tax payers expense. He should perhaps have served time, who knows.

Milliec's client has the benefit of anonymity with the public in general but she has seen a source of "free money" and it seems to have gone to her head. She needs lessons in budgeting not another handout.

What I would like is to hear is that systems are being tightened to stop a proliferation of this type of unmonitored publicly funded handout.

I'm glad that single mums with three children who have lost everything in fires are able to get grants to help them get back on their feet. I'm less glad that the administrators of such schemes gossip about them on talkboards and encourge other people to join in their judgements.

I have no idea who this Sir John is, but from the limited info I have it sounds like he is guilty of fraud.

It is a totally different issue.

I am poor. I have always been poor. Unless I get my place at uni I suspect I will always be poor. As much as I would like to keep my pride, sometimes I bite it back and accept help. I have had no new furniture since moving out from my parents home, except for my bed. Even that was a gift from my parents and that was about seven years ago now.

Shock, pride, stupidity. Nothing excuses going back and asking for more because you can't be bothered to realise that sometimes you just have to take what is offered because with a little judicious budgeting even the most skint of individuals can put a little cash away for a rainy day, or a dream six hundred quid sofa.

Agnes

Mental ill health and poverty are sometimes inextricably linked. I think we need to remember that. Obvious choices may not be made for various reasons.