Why work when you can get a good salary on benefits?

[Orwellian]

Sorry to come over all DM but I just can't believe the amount that is given out in benefits. I just read this story; www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087857/Romanian-Big-Issue-seller-given-legal-right-claim-housing-benefit.html
and this lady is getting over £25k a year tax free (and will get housing benefit to boot soon) as well as her nice little earner from selling the Big Issue (isn't that supposed to be for homeless people, not those on £25k per annum?).

Anyway, it just got me thinking. What is the point in getting into debt at university to achieve a high career (which will take years to climb the career ladder), when you can simply achieve the same income by having several children. I did a calculation on the Turn2us website and there is actually not much difference (especially when all the extra benefits such as free school meals are included) in a family with one higher rate taxpayer and a similar family where nobody is working once everything is taken in to account.

I never see my husband because he works so many hours. Maybe I should suggest he gives up work as we would only be slightly worse off on benefits but he would be around to help me with the children.

Trust me he reads the paper in Spanish and he met his partner there who is Spanish.

He did travel to South America when he was young as well. My brother lives in abroad as well and he has learnt Chinese as he will soon be working there.

you may be right though about other expats not speaking the language.

If I remember this lady got legal aid and then a translator so I think it is all a bit of a racket.

You would think she could try to learn a bit of English. I think we are far too accommodating.

I and my DH pay a lot of tax and I don't have a problem with this woman making a claim - she is working and caring for her family and she needs help to make that work. She is entitled and I for one am happy to help her family. I fucking hate the DM

About the boxes again ...

Yeh, I did think about the issues around them quite a bit Portofino - and decided that it is quite a good project. Now, I could be wrong about that, but obviously I don't think so.

And was I not meant to mention that it is a bit of a hassle to do all that fiddly wrapping - 'cos that's just my experience ?

Annoys me when people pick on a minor thing you've mentioned and ignore the main points ...

Which were that it seems a worthwhile thing to do both for my own DCs and for a child who might otherwise not get many presents at any time.

If she's only making £100 a week from her 'business', that works out to around two days wages at current minimum wage rates (£6.08 p/h). If she is working for more than two days a week her business is obviously failing spectaculary considering that she'd make more money stacking shelves in Tescos AND she wouldn't have to stand in the pissing rain all day. If, however, she isn't working for two full days per week it kind of blows a hole in her beatified status as a hard working woman going to the ends of the earth for her family.

The question I asked somewhere around page 2 remains to be answered and that is, what does the hard pressed British tax payer get for their money by subsidising this woman - how many children she has, how many of them are disabled or what happened to her partner are all totally irrelevant questions.

The nub of the matter is this, we are paying this woman £25.5k per year in various direct benefits, plus housing benefit (which could be as much as £400 per week or nealry £21k per year). To earn that sort of money (£46.5k) after tax from a regular job, you'd need to pull in a pre-tax salary of around £68,700 and for that sort of money I'd happily stand around all day in the pissing rain flogging the Big Issue for a couple of hours!

To answer the original question, why work when you can get a good salary on benefits, I have to say I haven't a bloody clue.

My apologies for the spelling in the post above - I had a spell check remembering malfunction...

Rgds,

Mr. Pants.

But cold she take her disabled child with her to Tesco while she stacked shelves?

And what do they get for their money? I would assume that her children will one day be of working age and will pay tax.

How about you read the article. It states that she 'gets' £50 in HB. Of course, she doesn't get it, her landlord does.

And where does this idea come from that she has to be of some 'worth' to the country? Is that where we are headed - that only those who are deemed worthy are given financial assistance.

How about you try working more than 2 days a week when you have 4 kids, one of them disabled. See how you get on and then come back here and tell us about it.

As I said, the circumstances of having a disabled child are irrelevant and although this woman is only claiming £50 a week HB, someone in her position could be claiming £400 p/w - who it goes to is also irrelevant. I don't expect my housing costs to not be included in my earnings, likewise, just because her HB goes straight to her landlord doesn't mean that it doesn't cost the tax payer. In terms of an overall package of handouts it should be included.

As for 'only those deemed worthy should be given financial assistance' I ask you where does it stop? If someone can live a better life on benefits in this country than they can have whilst working their nuts off in their home country they would be mad not to try their luck. Likewise, if we are going to go around inviting all and sundry into this country, pay them a small fortune in benefits and not even ask for a contribution it's hardly surprising that our money has run out. In this instance, a one way ticket back to Romania would have saved a lot of money in the long run.

Ten years ago, if I told you that we would be shipping in immigrants, and housing them at great cost to the social purse, so that they could sell the Big Issue you would think I was barking mad.

Your final point, "How about you try working more than 2 days a week when you have 4 kids, one of them disabled. See how you get on and then come back here and tell us about it." gives no reason why the woman in question has to be located specifically in Britain. Making a dangerous assumption, one might suppose that back in Romania she may have more of a family network to draw upon.

Mrpants. Why do you work? Why do any of us work?
Because its in most peoples nature to want to provide, as it is in this lady's nature.
Bet she'd rather starve than tolerate this kind of bitterness.
Fact is, we are lucky to live in a democratic, free speaking, Christian, green and pleasant land. And the general concensus (democracy) is that we look after the weeker in our society. And that includes those who have come here from wherever.
If you find this system abhorent there are plenty of countries where you'd agree with their carefully thought out regimes and you are free to go live there.

The Tesco thing is a bit misleading. The subject of the article is Romanian and therefore her employment rights are limited. Most Romanians would have to get a registration certificate before being able to take employment, I'll explain some exceptions below. They can however be self-employed without such restrictions. This is probably why she's selling the Big Issue rather than working in Tesco.

(There are some Romanians who wouldn't be subject to these requirements, for a number of reasons- eg they had a UK work permit before Romania joined the EU, they've acquired permanent residence through being a qualified person for 5 years, they are the spouse of a British national etc. But none of those seem to apply here).

Incidentally, Romania does not place such limitations on British nationals, as far as I'm aware.

Good to get some factual knowledge on here!

As for 'only those deemed worthy should be given financial assistance' I ask you where does it stop? If someone can live a better life on benefits in this country than they can have whilst working their nuts off in their home country they would be mad not to try their luck

I absolutely agree. Benefits should never be more profitable than working. I also don' believe in top up "in work benefits"

But i don't think that people on benefits get too much. of course they dont. For every 1 story you hear about someone who is, on paper, well off on benefits there are a 100 who are barely scraping by. The notion that a life on benefits is financially a good idea is ludicrous.

Why are we blaming people who work, Like this woman does, for not being able to earn enough to pay for her family?

Why does the tax payer have to top up the wages of people who are working full time?

Because employers aren't paying enough for people to actually live on. When you hear of companies earning post tax profits if billions, they are allowed to avoid taxes perfectly legally thus boosting their profitable earnings, yet their employees earn minimum wage and need that tax payers money ( of which the employers aren't contributing to) to boost their wages to a level where they are able to survive.

yet here we are arguing whether this woman is a scrounger or is somehow in the wrong for claiming things she is ENTITLED TO.

Why is it that you cannot see how fucked up that way of thinking is?

There is an excellent article on this issue Here

ValarMorghulis, thanks for your reply. Tim Worstall's blog this very morning addresses the issues arising from the Guardian piece you linked to - I don't always agree with his analysis but one commenter on his post suggested that rather than being subsidies to employers, they are better thought of as subsidies to the consumer. I don't have the time or inclination to go through the whole post now - but it is here if you are interested.

"Why are we blaming people who work, Like this woman does, for not being able to earn enough to pay for her family?... here we are arguing whether this woman is a scrounger or is somehow in the wrong for claiming things she is ENTITLED TO." This is seriously missing my point which has been as consistent as it has been unanswered - not just by you but by everyone so far. I couldn't give two shits for her personal circumstances, my problem is why the merry hell are British tax payers coughing up huge sums of money for a foreign national and her dependants who, without our overwhelming support, wouldn't be able to afford to live here. Why the hell is she 'ENTITLED' to a generous handout from our people simply because she turned up at Heathrow one day with a desire to live in Britain? If someone turned up on your doorstep unannounced one day, with a handful of dependants, and demanded free food and board from you on an indefinite basis, would you not think you had a right to tell them to sling their hook? I happen to think that you would.

exactly Mr Pants. As I said earlier if we had everyone here doing the same thing from Europe and the Third World we would be in a sorry state but this kind of thing encourages it.

We keep being told we cannot retire and get our pension say at 65. Is it any wonder.

also I am more concerned about our elderly who are treated appallingly in hospitals and then have their homes stolen from them to pay for care.

I thought Big Issue was set up to help the homeless already here.

At least she bothers to work even if it doesnt pay much

Why the hell is she 'ENTITLED' to a generous handout from our people simply because she turned up at Heathrow one day with a desire to live in Britain?

Because she is an immigrant, not an illegal entrant to the country. She has entered Britain legally and abiding by the laws that surround Migration.
She is not getting anything that our laws do not say she is perfectly entitled to.

There have been many questioning whether "we" would receive similar treatment in Romania. No i don't suppose we would. That is probably why the woman left in the first place.
Do you feel Britain would be a better place if we followed Romania's social guidelines then?

Perhaps the law needs changing then.

No I wouldn't want it to become like Romania either but some where in between. Maybe a bit more like France.

"She is not getting anything that our laws do not say she is perfectly entitled to." The law, as Dickens commented 150 years ago, is an ass.

"That is probably why the woman left in the first place." What! She's here only to claim benefits from us? Gee - that makes paying tax such a more pleasant experience.

I couldn't give a frog's fat arse about Romania's social guidelines - last time I checked they were an EU member state just the same as us, so the place can't be all that bad. This isn't someone who is fleeing for their lives from a tyrannical government, this is someone who has, seemingly, turned up on our doorstep explicitly for a free handout - the fact that the British taxpayer is worse off because of her actions, doesn't seem to be considered by anyone here.

I think you are more likely to find that she left die to her child having a disability that would be better cared for by the British medical system, rather than being dumped in a Romanian institute.

When we joined the EU and agreed to the economical migration within it we placed certain rules around benefit claims. This lady clearly meets the criteria and so is entitled.

If you think France have it so well then move there. You are perfectly entitled to, the same way this lady came here.

There are many parts of the world where the British NHS trumps the locally available provision - this doesn't mean that the NHS should assume responsibility for every waif and stray, irrespective of where they come from, though.

As for your last point about France, I distinctly remember the Beeb / Grauniad etc., kicking up a big fuss about France forcibly deporting Romanians back to where they came from, rather than having to give them state handouts. I have no objections to anybody coming to this country, whether from an EU country or not. I don't even object to people coming from overseas and taking jobs here. However, I do draw the line at people coming here just to exploit our benefits system when they have never contributed into the system.

MrPants - the woman is a WORKING mother of 4. one of which is disabled.

Do you think we should deport her until she becomes as captain of industry?

Yes of course I could move to France but I wouldn't expect the Freebies that this women is getting.

If you look on the Mail website comments there are a couple of Romanian complaining about her saying that she is sullying the reputation of Romania.

I am sure this was all carefully orchestrated so that she appeared to sell a few Big Issues. I wonder if she will bother now.

I wonder if her children need alot of language support in the schools as well but I may be wrong.

I am the same about people coming here. If they are going to contribute to the treasury, they are very welcome but not to sponge and take all the available social housing off people who have been on the waiting list for years and not contribute anything.

also if they have valuable skills e.g. doctor, nurse

Thi sis about the special arrangem,ents with Hungary and Bulgaria. People from there who move here don't get the usual British benefits (unless they are working). The argument is that selling the big issue (even if she just sells 1 copy a year) is working so then all the other benefits kick in. It is a way round the rules as it were.

It is an interesting technical point. If you can prove you are self employed eg clean one set of windows a year or month then it seems the rules say ah you are a worker so you get all the benefits. That is the issue here and the unfairness as it is way round the special Hungarian and Bulgaria rules which we have.

It's not Hungary, it's Romania. Hungary is a full member of the EU. They have the same rights as us.

Gah, not as us, sorry, as any other member state eg France, Germany etc.