Welfarisation has made people utterly entitled and unable to take responsibility for themselves and their families.

[hagchic]

I grew up in a working class family. The values I was taught were that you stood on your own two feet and it was no one else's job to do what you could do for yourself.

If you were hurt, you were expected to get up and go and clean yourself up - and stop whining about it unless it was actually serious. If you were ill, you went to bed and if you were lucky some magic lucozade appeared.

If you were sad, then you were sad. If life was unfair then that was just how life was and you needed to deal with it.

You never ever sought charity or took benefits when you were able to work or put up with less. You lived to your own means, not to what you saw on TV or at school - and if you wanted that lifestyle it was up to you to get it.

Today everyone has the expectation that someone must help them, that they are obliged to help them - even before they have made any attempt to actually do the work of helping themselves. They expect luxuries like holidays, pets, new clothes and treats when they do nothing to earn this.

I think self sufficiency is a value that needs to return to our society.

The Motability car system definitely needs to be ended, it's an absolute joke, use your benefit money to buy a decent roadworthy car a few years old and maintain it yourself.

That is literally what the motability scheme is

You use part of your entitlement to pay for a car, like finance, but without the crippling interest rates.

Do people not research what they're whining about before they embarrass themselves by expressing their misinformed opinion in public?

Although out of interest, where can you find a secondhand wheelchair-adapted car for sale? Because I've never seen one for sale anywhere.

I agree with your opening post OP, that the level of entitlement these days is amazing. People want to work part time, and then complain about not having money for holidays or experiences. I actually had a parent tell me at school today, about how lucky I was! That they don’t get any help from the government and have to pay for everything. She is a school teacher and works 3 days a week, she has a widowed mum who does a lot of free childcare for her so she does not have to spend on breakfast club or afterschool club. Her husband works in IT. She kept droning on about how I was so lucky as we could afford nice holidays.

Well I work 5 days a week full time and so does DH. We don’t have any help as both mine and DH’s parents live abroad. We live within our means and save hard. If I worked part time like she did I might not be able to afford holidays etc. Why do people think they can have everything?! I would love to work part time but in my role it is almost impossible to find. I don’t expect anyone else to fund my lifestyle. My DH and I are jointly responsible. This expecting the government or someone else to hand them everything on a platter is so irritating.

Motability is the only way I can afford a car that meets the needs of my disabled son. Without it, I wouldn't be able to just go out and buy a car suitable for my son.

Gosh a lot of people I t his thread seemed
to have wilfully missed the bit about ‘unless they really need it’ I don’t think anyone sensible would dispute that some really need help and in those cases it is nothing to do with lack of personal responsibility.

Regardless, OP still seems to think those on benefits should feel shame even if they do really need it.

On the point of motability, actually, it is not a state-funded benefit. It is a charity, funded by investments, on which it pays tax.

How many genuinely disabled people do you know?

We need to bring back national service and the birch. Never did me any harm being caned twice a day. Kids today are too soft, if the Soviets invaded they would be all glued to their mobiles. Many would hang a few benefit scroungers and work dodgers. Put them in chains and get them to fix potholes I say. The motorways should be filled with the workshy filling the holes until they were done. Feed them gruel and pottage rather than benefits for fags and booze. Sterilise them if they cannot feed their kids and take them off them. Teach them all manners and decency by bring back capital punishment. What society have we created by this liberal nonsense about looking after scroungers. Flog them ans flog them hard.

Council housing would have been a dream when I was a child in the 70s. In our part of London, most people had no choice but to make do with slum landlords or, if you were lucky, housing associations. It wasn't unusual for families like ours to be living in HMOs, sharing a kitchen and bathroom with three or four other families. Outside toilets were common.

There were council houses and flats, but turnover was very low, even back then. Once people were in they never left. For families like ours, there was no chance of the stability of a council house.

It's a myth that it was all rosy back when it came to housing. There is no comparison to the poverty of the 50s, 60s and 70s.

🙄

FFS my dad used to fix potholes for the council. He needed an HGV license. What teen has one of those?

The premise of Motability was fine. The problem is that, as with many government-run or government-backed schemes, the execution and value for taxpayers was poor.

I think @CovenOfCheeses was being facetious.

Although I am pretty sure the last benefits bashing thread I was on had posters genuinely suggesting bringing back workhouses as a solution to poverty...

Hard to know these days.

I was born in 1974 and prescriptions were free. I remember when they started charging. Also dentistry and orthodontistry was free. I had plenty of both.

I know a few genuine claimants who are unable to work in any capacity. I've no problem with that.
I also know others who could work but choose not to as they are so well off on benefits. I've actually heard someone on benefits say "it's not my problem if you choose to work".
I also know a few who have gone down a route of seemingly unprovable ailments and have succeeded getting a PIP to see them through the rest of their lives - their words not mine. I do realise they have to be reassessed every so often but it seems to just a phone call these days. Fibromyalgia, anxiety, long covid, various things with acronyms such as RSD and a couple who call the mental health crisis team every few months 'to keep my PIP'.
I worked on the peripheries of mental health and benefits for 30 years.
I worked full time for 53 years and never claimed a penny so am I the mug? Probably.

I saw that too, and on more than one thread.
I recall someone suggesting that unemployed people being removed from their homes and forced to live in some mass HMO/workhouse nightmare where they are forced to pick fruit, and look after disabled people (also removed from their homes to live there).
These people walk among us.

Not for the genuine, but you must realise quite a few aren’t.

Who are these people well of on benefits? Because I am on benefits, and am very far from well off. Compared to NMW, I am on well less.

Not well off here either. Neither is anyone I know on benefits.

Same. Yet people will go about benefit claimants on the equivalent of £70k... I just do not see that in real life. We are all broke!

I'm not arguing that it was rosy - I'm saying that a pretty massive percentage of the population were being heavily subsidised by the state back in the 70s just as they are now. The idea that everyone was self-sufficient and nobody relied on hand outs just isn't true. Those hand outs just came in a different form and maybe felt less like a subsidy but it doesn't mean that they weren't.

And with the uptake of child benefit being almost 100% it's hard to agree that there was ever a time when taking government handouts was seen as shameful by most people. The uptake was sky high when everyone was eligible. Almost nobody said no to free money back then despite what they're telling us today.

I'm not on benefits and can't think of many people I know who are, but then again, I don't know the ins and outs of my neighbour's cousin's cat's hairdresser's financial situation either, unlike most benefits bashers on MN. For all I know, she could be claiming eleventy million pounds a week in benefits.

I will still fight against scrapping the welfare state because I don't want to live in a society where we trample over the vulnerable to help the wealthy, or where children are left to go cold and hungry so that MPs can claim for 2 houses and three-course meals.

Saying that, if welfare claimants did have enough money to spaff up the wall we probably wouldn't be in the state we are in, as research has proven it is people with lower incomes who create the most demand for goods and services and stimulate growth. The wealthy like to hoard their money.

Well I was and always have been self sufficient but my life changed overnight and I am now dying. My husband is caring for me so has had to reduce his hours in his self employed business massively and as such we are now relying on benefits and PIP to keep a home over our children’s heads. We barely make ends meet as benefits are so shot especially when you are self employed. My teenagers are studying and working part time so they can be somewhat self sufficient but my point is sometimes it is utterly impossible. Stop fucking generalising and bashing everyone on benefits. For most of us it is not a choice we would make if circumstances were different. Independence and self sufficiency can disappear in the blink of an eye so stop judging others just because your life has worked out fine and dandy so far.

Yet another poster who is lacking in comprehension skills. It's getting beyond boring now.