Dispatches- Britain’s Benefit scandal

[Sunnywalker]

Anybody watched this? It’s made me so angry. Some highlights include a company that can’t recruit an apprentice on 26k because sickness benefits would amount to 24k so it wouldn’t be worth it. 500,000, 25-34 years old on long term sick, a woman who has never had a FT job and claims 35k in benefits, this lady would like to work but says will never achieve the same income if she worked.

This country is bankrupt, public services crumbling! What is going on? Why isn’t there an overhaul!

a woman who has never had a FT job and claims 35k in benefits, this lady would like to work but says will never achieve the same income if she worked.

I bang this drum but this is about moral character more than anything else. My single parent mother never claimed out of work benefits although it would have been better for her with young kid but she believes strongly in working for a living. Whereas my best friend’s mom (school age friend) has six kids and never worked a day in her life, feeling entitled to have the taxpayer pay for her life.

I remember doing multiple shitty low paid jobs while applying for graduate positions to have money coming in but other people I knew instead claimed unemployment while searching for a job they felt worthy off.

Some people will develop skills to get jobs they will pay the kind of salary they want. Others will sit on their arse and expect others to pay for them.

Work needs to pay more and equally the benefits system needs to be restructured to deter laziness and entitlement.

It's frustrating to see. I know many people that claim to be single parents so get all the help with school dinners and everything that comes with being a single parent yet some of them are self employed doing cash in hand jobs like eyelashes/nails and their partners' is giving them a fortune in child maintenance so they are likely get about £40+ grand - I'm get 25k in my office job. It's frustrating BUT it's being allowed to happen so that is the problem

That's a great idea. What happens when they can't pay their rent and end up on the street? Are we going to have tent cities?

I don't see why it's bad that people claim benefits along side working. Anyone on a lowish wage will have some sort of top up. Especially with kids etc. Benefits being removed the more you earn. That makes sense. Otherwise you'll have a situation where you lose all your benefits just because you have a lowish paying job now.

It’s an apprentice wage. Most people start on low wages and work up.

It’s interesting that there is yet another programme on benefits.
Might it be that investigating and highlighting how much bid corporations and billionaires cost the public purse in lost revenue might be more difficult and more expensive as they can afford lawyers? The last figures I remember seeing is that this cost 10x to 100x more.
Then there are the 100s billions wasted on Brexit. Where are the programmes about this?

NB never received benefits but work with many with disabilities whose benefits don’t even cover the essentials

That was an apprentice wage though and most apprentices are likely to be very young, with many still living at home.

I would halve the benefits all round including sickness, make single mothers share one bed flats with another single mother and make benefits so awful people actually work.

@AmberHiker

He work less than part time and everything combined we have an income of just under £5,500 a month.

That's a huge amount to get in benefits. Are you honestly getting £66k a year?! If that was a taxed income pretty sure you would need to be on £100k a year which is considered top end salary. I think you'd have to be in a top managerial position, vet, GP, surgeon, headteacher type job to get that sort of money coming in.

😳😳

They tried that in Victorian Britain.

Sounds appealing if you've no sense but solves nothing.

Why would we create thise roles, when we could just create jobs? I lived through the YTS, work-for-benefits years, it did nothing but supply cheap labour and killed off a few young men (who hadn't been given H&S training).
We actually need targeted free training. My age group (50's) need the in-use IT packages training, but it isn't available. We all need skill up, simple courses.
@Arran2024 just out if interest were are they giving out these flats? I know people on HA lists and it's working applicants only. Or homeless and in Council hostel accommodation.

The government are looking to 'shake up' disability benefits and this programme is obviously part of the agenda.

They're talking about sending the DWP into psychiatric wards to talk to people about getting a job.

I would have thought that getting the NHS up and running would be more of a priority so that people can get essential treatment before they reach crisis pont.

Have you been living in a different universe?

Did you miss the constant rhetoric around 'hard working people' and the poverty porn programmes such as benefit street around the time universal credit was introduced?

Did you miss the introduction of universal credit with its punitive sanctions and its demand that people evidence the time they are looking, applying and attending interviews for work otherwise they receive no money? And the only people exempt from this are those with evidenced disability?

Did you miss the introduction of PIP with its punitive criteria so that 1000s of disabled people were left in poverty and many even died as a result?

Did you miss the fact that the housing allowance rate element of UC was lowered by the tories so that instead of covering 50% of local private rents it now only covers a third, which has lead to more homelessness or need to use money they receive for other elements of UC to top up private landlords' bank accounts (again leaving them in poverty)?

Actually, I don't think you missed any of this at all, did you?

Don’t ever stop being you, will you. It’d make these threads much more boring.

"Also, don't envy people on benefits. They never progress. They never get promoted."

I also don't envy people on benefits.
However, never progressing and never being promoted is a reality for so many workers that I find that statement quite offensive. Loads of people have jobs, but not careers.

Landlording has destroyed our economy. It’s done so to many civilisations before us - greed and rapacity of landlords figures highly in contemporary accounts of china’s collapses for instance.

This also raises the question of why we can afford benefits, but not training for essential work - and why individuals should pay for that to serve in this country of exploiters, takers and abusers.

Do you seriously believe that the people who are choosing to live off benefits would all rush out and get a job if the money was better? You're living in cloud cuckoo land.

Here's an example, one of the government's policies is to massively increase the numbers of hounding being built but the construction industry are saying that is simply not possible as we don't have the workforce to do it. There's an estimated 130,000 vacancies in the industry. Some will be unskilled but others are skilled labourers and above. Nobody wants these jobs because it's too much like hard work.

This is not a corporate problem, this is a societal problem with increasing entitlement and laziness seeping in.

Shockingly biased documentary frequently comparing apples with oranges.

Feels like we are heading back to the 'Benefit Street' days.

Can you link to the episode please?

I do benefits for a living and I can't get near £24k pa for anyone, except perhaps if the live in area where rents are massive, never mind somebody of the sort of age to embark on an apprenticeship.

You might be if you have disabilities or a child/ children with disabilities but the disabilities would have to be significant
Gone are the days when people can "choose" not to work.

“However, never progressing and never being promoted is a reality for so many workers that I find that statement quite offensive.”

This is a particular issue for women facing the largest motherhood penalty in Europe, too.

I dont know.
It seems weird that say kids in school get 6k only for education for 190 days but their parents might be getting say 24k towards their rent.
That there are so many oarent ckainpming their income is low enough for free school meals at 6k which is incredible.

But otoh having had alevels in sciences BCC, a degree, 11gcses, its still hard to get a job so i can see how people give up. And the best earining people being builders et c or people earning cash in hand.

Personally i would suggest a cap between the top earners and bottom.

I can’t even watch these programmes. The benefits system in this country needs a total rethink. People that need it should receive it, no question. And what a civilised society that we help people in need rather than them living in crippling debt or slums as per a lot of the rest of the world.

However, we’ve gone far too far the other way. Millions of people take the piss and we pay taxes for them to do so. It’s time to cancel that approach. With Labour in, no chance.

Whenever I watch those types of show I don’t understand how it’s possible. When I became a single parent and my DD was a minor, I got £50 HB for rent, then a combo of CB+WTC, but there is no way in hell it was liveable.