AIBU to feel annoyed about discounted attractions for benefit claimants?

[Sheldonsheher]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15721199/Benefit-claiming-families-UK-attractions-working-Brits.html

I know I’ll get slated as the origin is the daily fail but, but this kind of annoys me too! I mean as a single parent I don’t want to pay £60 to go to the zoo either.

I just can't get upset about this. I was a single parent on tax credits for a long time and now I'm a high rate tax payer off benefits.
I never took my kids to this kind of stuff, travel in to London is a good £100 plus the whole taking enough food with you or buying it when you got there still makes the £4 entrance inaccessible to a lot of families.
I was never better off when I was earning less and claiming tax credits, there is no way I'm going to berate others because they claim UC and can get a £4 entrance ticket. Good for them, I hope they can afford to get there.
It takes a lot to get out of the benefit trap and I just don't know how I would of done it without my parents, even going away with work for a night they step in a look after my son so I can take the next promotion up.

There are clearly two different types of discount:

1. The general BOGOF, groups, Child discounts available to all and encouraged to incentivise more people to go to the attraction and spend more money
2. The free tickets to schools, heavily discounted tickets for benefit claimants, NHS discounts which are a form of charity or virtue signalling.

The former is very different to the latter in terms of general accessibility. Rationally a business is only going to make money from customers if they pay to get in or they have the disposable income to buy stuff at the attraction. Realistically you wouldn't target people on UC for these purposes as by definition they don't have much money. It therefore stands to reason that the UC benefits is a form of charity of virtue signalling rather than a savvy business decision. It would be a more obvious commercial decision to discount tickets for those with a high disposable income who are more likely to pay full price if they return and will buy the food/merchandise at the attraction. It doesn't really work as a form of virtue signalling though if most people are opposed to it.

@MyLuckyHelper You get a better return on your tax than I do. What’s the higher amount? Tax paid or benefits with the perks? I guess the latter so the gap is paid for by others. It’s not a win for them. So many just work the minimum hours to get the best benefit return. But others pay!

We went to Whipsnade a couple of weeks ago with our daughter and grandson. Admission was £103.

When my kids were young my Mother paid for us to have a season ticket, no way we could afford it. Kids in car, packed meal to avoid expense, and stay all day for the price of a couple of gallons of diesel

As I worked in London I had a season ticket to Euston. A perk of that was taking the kids from Milton Keynes to London for a quid each, full travelcard including tube and buses. Walk around the sights at no cost. Science Museum and Natural History Museum were free. Ditto British Museum.

Kids still mention how much they enjoyed those trips and how much they learned.

I don't grudge our poorest kids having a few opportunities to see and do things they'd never get near if parents had to bear the full cost.

@Verv It is a grant funded scheme Called Community Connections raised from various means including, the national lottery, local development levys, various charities, including Age UK etc.

I thought charity started at home and we were all desperate to "look after our own" these days.

Oh I guess that was all a big fat lie after all.

Yes possibly I do at the moment. If I make it through life with no serious illness, I'll have less of a return than someone who has a cancer diagnosis for example, perhaps. I wouldn't want to swap with them though.

Working minimum hours for a higher benefit return is an outdated notion. With UC, the more you work, the more you have. It's not like Income Support.

OK, so how much are discounted tickets to schools, educators, NHS, armed forces and UC subsidised by other ticket payers?

For goodness sake! Fairness is important. Vital in fact for our society to function, particularly when it comes to the welfare state and benefits. You are essentially taking money from some households to give to others. Buy-in is essential otherwise people will begin to question and ultimately dismantle it.

If a policy is good then it will stand up to scrutiny and questioning. Attempting to shut down debate by implying that legitimate questions are somehow irrelevant or churlish won't help your cause. Look at the poll! You're not winning.

Any chance you could elaborate on the virtue signalling, when the scheme has been going on for years without any PR from the companies themselves, but is now in wider public knowledge as newspapers & 'politicians' have moved on from Motability and onto discounted attractions.

Blimey, you've got to be a bit miserable to begrudge some poor or disabled children a trip to the zoo haven't you?

And yes I have season tickets to the local zoo. Which I paid full price for. I don't give a shit if the zoo gives discounts to poor families, I'm just glad I don't need benefits.

Life isn’t fair! I would much rather have to pay full price for admission to places with DS and him not be disabled, but hey ho that’s life!

Because an attraction has to cover its own costs to survive. An attraction like London Zoo for example is under severe financial strain. The more people you have paying £1 or some other extreme discount, the more the full price ticket will have to be. The money you are currently directing towards this scheme could be used to target more affluent customers with a good discount that wasn't as big as the UC visitors. This would lead to more money taken at the gate and more money spent in the attraction ultimately reducing the cost of the full price ticket.

The zoo can't afford to offer these less generous discounts on top of the lucrative UC discounts.

@HairsprayBabe Charity is a voluntary choice made by an individual. You can opt in or out of it. The same cannot be said of taxation funding weekend trips and leisure activities.

Who told you life is fair. Do you think being disabled is fair, do you think someone's partner dying well before their time is fair, do you think your child being disabled or having a life limiting illness is fair, do you think losing your job through no fault of your own is fair, do you think leaving domestic abuse and having to start from scratch again is fair. Life isn't fair.

It's about accessibility to culture and wider experiences for the poor. It's long been held as a favourite cause for lots of rich and powerful people. The general public generally are less sympathetic to this as the poll proves.

The posters who object to 'subsidising' tickets for others don't seem to have an idea of if or how much they are subsidising them by.

Surely there's a big difference between your £50 ticket becoming £100 because of someone else getting a cheap ticket, and your £99.99 ticket becoming £100?

Unless it purely is just it's not fair/they don't deserve it rather than an actual concern about the money?

Is that you Robert?

You need to include some actual numbers or this is meaningless.

So what? One form of unfairness doesn't warrant another. If my child was disabled or my partner died would a heavily discounted zook ticket make it 'fair'? What if the widow wasn't entitled to UC and didn't even get the discounted zoo ticket?

The general public love to demonise people on benefits (with the exception of pensioners), rather than tax evaders for some reason. Who knows why?

No I really don't need to do anything. Your assertion that the tickets aren't subsidised by those paying full price is blatantly wrong. The attraction would shut down without them and there would be no zoo for those paying £1.

so the UC discounts are lucrative now?

Or subsidised zoos, I guess…

People saying they are cancelling season tickets or refusing to visit attractions because of the discounted tickets available to others. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face! What miserable fuckers they are.

The zoo would shut without full price ticket payers, yes. Offering discounted tickets alongside full price ones, to encourage people who otherwise wouldn't go at all - doesn't cost the zoo money. Unless you can show evidence to the contrary, it's a non argument. The discounted people aren't being given spaces instead of full price ones.