To find it shocking how brazen people are with their hatred of refugees?

[GreenFairy93]

Another day, another Facebook post calling for the army to be bought in to stop the boats. Another comment section full of people shouting "sink the boats!" "Use as much force as necessary to stop them!"

There are women and children on these boats and people are brazenly calling for force to be used against them and for them to be sunk, with pictures of their faces next to their comments. Not an ounce of shame. And there's hundreds of them.

I just find it absolutely abhorrent and honestly, really upsetting that so many people have dehumanised asylum seekers to the point they have absolutely no compassion in their hearts to the point they are publicly calling for harm to come to families fleeing war.

AIBU to be shocked that people think this is ok now?

But we’re not talking charity donations, we’re talking about public money in the form of that £9 or £49.

It is fair to question what those funds go towards being used for, but only if you’re also of the mind to question what people spend their UC on. They’re all public funds. Are people of benefits allowed takeaways?

I’m more of the mind that once those funds leave the public purse and arrive in the hands of whoever is getting them, they can waste it however they please, we don’t need receipts. That applies to both our “own” and those who have arrived here.

It's not ridiculous at all.

The response to how on earth do people think it is acceptable to call for the sinking of refugee boats by the armed forces to ensure they never make it ashore when there are children in these boats was 'they aren't women or children they are young men'.

That can absolutely be interpreted as it's fine to sink them because it's just men. At no point did midnight oil agree that this behaviour is abhorrent or unacceptable, she justified it.

Why are you so desperate to just gloss over this disgusting behaviour?

Do you think that should be applied to all benefits then, people in UC should be humiliated by having their outgoings scrutinised and they should have no right to a private life?

I wasn’t talking to you sweetpea 🙂

No but I don't like people being bullied so I was pointing out your hypocrisy.

I don’t hate anyone - we are all humans. I just think we need to know who’s coming here and what their reasoning is. The vast majority are young, single men. 🤷‍♀️

@LittleYellowQueen What evidence do i have that tax evasion and fraud isn't being tackled?
£46 billion a year lost. Next question?

Where does that figure come from?

Exactly. Many countrues allow asylum seekers to work rather than spend years in deep poverty. Also we need to continue to speed up the processing.

The way that my tax money is spent IS my business. I do care if somebody is potentially committing one or several crimes; it's long been a staple of HMRC to investigate people who are living beyond their means. Somebody with £9 a week is potentially living beyond their means if they are ordering takeaways. I’d rather we punished criminals, not indulge them because, awww, they’ve had a hard time of it.

We’re on a discussion forum; speculation is part of any discussion, and unless you can produce definitive evidence that the speculation is unfounded, its an entirely reasonable basis for a conversation. Just because it’s not to your preference, doesnt make it any less valid. Do you berate women who post their suspicions (or, to put it another way, their speculation) that their OH might be having an affair?

So is that a blanket approach you want to apply to all benefits, UC for example, if someone is believed to spending beyond their means

That’s a difference of opinion. I don’t question people on UC with the latest iPhone, I don’t buy into the “in poverty but has a TV” stuff, and I don’t care what someone spends their £9 on.

Once the government has given them it, it’s not my £9.

We do have an issue with non-taxed work. We have that issue in our own “unemployed” too in the form of cash in hand jobs, drug dealing, etc etc. I’m assuming that bothers you as much as it does in the case of migrants? It’s as bad when our “own” do it?

That’s completely irrelevant. But I wouldn’t conclude someone was definitely having an affair without evidence of one.

Even the government recognises that asylum seekers are working illegally, which is why they are proposing to share details of migrant hotels with delivery businesses, to try to join the dots, yet you seem to delight in glossing over that criminal activity. Perhaps illegal working and tax evasion don’t bother you because these are nice young men who are just trying to have a better life, but some of us have a wider sense of fairness and social conscience.

I understand the despair of people who have been hit by the austerity of the Conservative/Liberal Governments where 1.Sure Start was cancelled, people could be sacked with no recourse, people's jobs were increasingly on zero hours contracts, so you never know whether you'll get work, pay frozen for years.....etc but the problem is not primarily the arrival of asylum seekers ( who by definition are ambitious and want to work hard and we need because of our collapsing birth rate). 2.The privatisation of our wealth e.g. Water, Rail, Gas, Electricity,Post etc etc so these companies pay out huge dividents to share holders, hiding their wealth to avoid tax and leaving us with non functioning services. 3. The fact that the richest 50 families in our country have roughly the same wealth as the poorest half of the population. We need a wealth tax say 2%. Billionaires would barely notice it and would live here still. 4. About 29% of our land is not registered so we can't tax it as we have no idea who owns it.
Etc, etc. The whole argument re immigration is a distraction by millionaires like Farage to avoid tackling our real problems of inequality and exploitation of the working population.

You know that term has racist origins, right? It’s not generally acceptable these days.

Don’t forget the ones that are returning to Afghanistan for a ‘holiday’ …

I will have a look and find some sources, but surely you are not THAT naive to not call it a coincidence…

They frequently do that themselves, otherwise the Sun and Daily Express would have nothing to publish.

No, because that’s not true either.

It originates in a classic Greek text that was translated and introduced into English in 1542. It predates the use of the word spade as a racial slur, which was first recorded in 1928.

I admittedly did have to look that up, but you could have done the same thing to work out that it doesn’t have racist origins.

If you had £9, you’d quite likely find another source of income.

Criminal activity is criminal activity, but let’s not pretend it’s not very obvious why someone would need more than £9.

The answer IMO is to get them into the workforce and earning quicker. They can contribute then too!

So people on UC routinely have their bank activity looked at?

They already do, it’s one of the ways they catch criminals.

You know you're totally wrong about that right?
It's origins are in no way racist.
It just means to speak the truth

“We do have an issue with non-taxed work. We have that issue in our own “unemployed” too in the form of cash in hand jobs, drug dealing, etc etc. I’m assuming that bothers you as much as it does in the case of migrants? It’s as bad when our “own” do it?”

It absolutely bothers me as much, and I’ve reported it before, along with suspected tax evasion.

Okay. Well then let’s deal with people getting £2k a month in benefits and doing it, before we deal with the people with £9.

Fair, right?

If somebody was paying your rent, utilities, food and travel bills, and charities were happy to provide you with phones, clothing, and entertainment, what would you need more than a few quid a week pocket money for?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9dgd1qyq29o