"Family Life on Benefits" A Case Study Courtesy of the BBC

[MrPants]

I know there have been hundreds of these posts recently, but is this case study typical? Linky is here.

My first thought was that the difference to the household budget, before and after the £26k cap, is going to be roughly the cost of her 200 fags per week habit - a habit which, I reckon costs around £70 per week, I couldn't justify financially.

My second thought was that, if you took away our two cars (needed to get us to work) and their additional associated costs, and the factor in that we pay a moderate mortgage rather than rent in massively subsidised social housing, their outgoings - or crucially, disposable income - look uncannily similar to our own.

I pay income tax in the middle rate and I'm middle class. It's taken me fourteen years of working very hard to get to the level I'm at in my career and my wife and I decided to wait until our careers were firmly established before starting our family and yet, I can still look at this family and think that I'd be better off if I was in their shoes. How can that be right?

What really grates though, is the emotive language used "If they do cut our benefit we are going to have to choose between eating and heating the house properly." Am I right in interpreting that statement as meaning "My wife could quit smoking but she'd rather our kids went unfed or cold"?

It's nice to know that my family is forced, through taxation (backed up with all the threats and force that the state can muster), to go without stuff just so that some unemployed family, who will never thank me for my hard work, generosity and sacrifices, can sit on their arses all day smoking themselves into an early grave.

ali, maybe he can't be bothered because he sees no financial benefit, he's probably suffering from low self esteem

I don't know Ali; I started my first degree aged 32, my post grad aged 36. DH is due to complete his (very vocational) degree in 3 months, he will be 41.

Which DOES go to prove surely that not everyone is the same?

AS for routine- I agree. But that again would vary: a carer or someone doing voluntary work or studying would not be the same as someone sat at home with nowhere to be. A lack of routine - more specifically purpose- is damaging and can lead IMO to depression.

OTOH soem policies co,ming in would work against that routine aim: from what I can work out it will be pretty damned impossible to receive UC for a family if a member is studying or retraining due to the minimum work hours or workfare rule. The only information I can find in the briefing docs is 'Marginal Deduction Rates for those receiving income-related benefits or Tax Credits in the current system or receiving Universal Credit. Self employed and students are excluded.'; at the moment if a partner is retraining his family can still claim HB etc just without his name on the claim, studentship excludes only him. Under UC as far as I can find if one partner is working but the other not including study, or working under their allocated hours if low icnome, then the whole family faces losing support which seems incredibly negative and counter productive.

Thankfully, DH will be qualified soon but if he ahd been made redundant today instead retraining would not ahve been an option. His company didn't close but chose to chase a different amrket area and move away; with moving not an option for us we'd have been high and dry. living where we do opportunities are few and far between.

Pinko that is exactly my point, plenty of people retrain, reskill and look at new directions to earn their way in life. My own DH has recently been made redundant and we have just set up our own company and are looking at ways to retrain and stay employable for the next 25 years.

There are, IMO, enough people who cannot do this for whatever reason and therefore need the support of the state, (illness, disability of themselves or children etc) that everyone who possibly can keep themselves employable should.

I agree that the UC needs a lot of work. It is a good idea in principal, but there needs to be scope within it for people to reshape their lives.

Oh I do so wish I had bipolar disorder and an addiction to smoking and got to live in social housing instead of going to work every day and getting a pension and having to choose which area I bought my house in - life would just be so much more pleasant, wouldn't it?

you do, then you could be like ds's mates mum, she eneded up killing her self. yes co Bipolar is such fun.

I have always told my children that to have nice things you have to work hard for them,
I grew up in a one parent family living on benefits and I made bloody sure that I did better, My children have seen Dad go to work every day of their lives and me work part time, neither of us smoke, only drink occasionally, car (needed for work) has always been over 10 years old and second hand, holidays were mostly visits to family and the save the tokens from the paper caravan type with the exception of a skiing trip and a week in Corfu, and there have been times when we were so broke that we lived on weetabix and beans on toast.
My husband earns £18k a year so I think I might quite like £26k a year TBH.

Fags, alcohol, sky, phone contracts are not in any sane persons mind essential items. The benefit system is a safety net in the short term and should have a cap and a cut off point

Rabid even if your DH gave up his job you would not get £26k a year. I know that when my £14k job ends in a few weeks I am going to be worse off not better. The Welfare advisor worked out a reduction of £150 a month worse off.

The system is broken, My sister worked all her life paying 40% tax and when she lost her job and was sick having chemo for cancer and her marriage ended (her Ex could not deal with the cancer the fuckwit) she got a grand total of.....wait for it..... £44 a week.

I know someone who has lived on benefits from the age of 27, raised two children on the state, and now 40 years later is still on benefits and getting more a month then DH earns and pays no rent or council tax.
BROKEN SYSTEM

Under the proposed changes, your sister might get even less, Rabid.

Cancer patients will have to go through the much-criticised new assessments and may well be found fit to work - not because they are but because that's what the DWP wants.

They will then be told to apply for JSA, attend the JobCentre regularly and possibly be sent to mandatory "work experience" that is usually manual work. And penalised if they fail to complete it.

Any system, whether for expenses or benefits or lollipops in the playground, will have some people trying to work it. No matter how stringent you make it, a few will get through. And these people can then be held up as poster-child bad boys to force through change.

But the change may not fix the system.

In this case the WRB will make things worse for the very people you'd most like to help. But someone somewhere will still, I guarantee you, find a way to wriggle round it. So then we can cry "Broken system" again, and make it even harsher: rinse and repeat.

Where do we want to stop? Who are we actually trying to hit here?

Rabid- everyone should have a cut off? Regardless of reason for claiming?

We have also been a family never to have claimed JSA or workless benefits, the boys don;t see Dh go out to work every day but only as he goes upstairs for most of it! He ahs always brought in an income.

Time limiting benefits would work against me as a carer, ds3 as severely autistic. Hereas it is my exp[erince that those people so - what? alcking in self respect, broken?- will simply take the hit and acept it, unaware of their ability to make any changes to their life. The people who will be incentivised by schemes are those who seek work anyway, who were probbaly redundant or got ill- the ones they should be dealing with will take a completely different approach, one that starts before the aspirations are lost forever- these are the kids whose lives are over before they are ten, elevel; same ones whose youth clubs and schemes are being lost from the cuts.

And YY to cancer patients benefits- the ESA rules on those are hideous. Was it Lord Fraud Freud that said the lives of the terminally ill can be improved by working? Last stat I read on people dying between being refused ESA and applying for appeal was 31; cancer patients are in taht risk group.

Oh and mobile phones are often essential items- says the woman who had a funny turn last week that caused a missing person search becuase she didn;t have her phone on her.

And whose children's schools are tern miles in each direction (SN schools) and the local one demands a mobile number as part of registration (can set own admission criteria)

OTOH I would merrily agree that a POSH phone is not an essential item, even then DH got his Android (incrediby useful for his work)for £20 by cashing in loads of Tesco vouchers for one of those 2X offers and choosing PAYG (has an internet shop, means he can answer questions from clients even when in uni).

£26k is waaaay to high. The system is ridiculous and I can't believe the tories are being so soft. I would love to know if there is another country in the world where it is possible to be out of work, year after year and get more in benefit than they'd get if they worked. I am not refering to people with disabilities or carers, just the long-term feckless. They should be grateful for every single penny they get.

Perhpas yes with the real long termers; but in between long term feckless and disabled / carers (AKA Victorian Poor a la victorian Britian) are a lof of people who HAVE paid in for many years and lost their work, easy enough to happen these days.

And yes £26k is way too high: IF we had social housing or cheap rented that cold fill a demand for cheaper. We don't, people can;t choose to live in cheaper houses that do not exist. Even here in Newport there is no surplus of housing in cheap range (and the rental range chages wherever youa re- LHA is about £512 here compared to over £1400 some palces in London).

The long term disabled and those caring for them are one thing, I mean if you have a disabled child you are going to need all the help you can get, but there are perfectly healthy people out there abusing the system and as much as most people on here do not want to admit or acknowledge the fact there are people out there that abuse the system, that become baby farms, that can not be asked to do better cause the system is shelling out to them, I know people in real life that are just scroungers, friends of MIL both claim benefit cause he has a bad back, it does not stop him working cash in hand in manual jobs, she is claiming to be a carer for their son who is a server asthmatic maybe if mum dad and son all stopped smoking he might feel better!

A friend who runs his own business was moaning that the girl he gave a job to left with the words, I'm only £20 a week better off working and I don't like getting up early

And at least two of the girls I wet to school with admitted getting knocked up to get hand outs and not have to work, there are people who play the system and until the government stand up and say NO there is going to be generations of people with a shameless sense of entitlement

The family in that article should be ashamed of themselves.

There is no question that their benefits should be drastically cut, and those who have to claim benefits because of disability should be angry at people like that instead of being angry at tax payers who just don't want their money wasted on lazy arsed scroungers. They are the reason disability benefits are being cut.

I wouldnt envy them.

Sounds like a pretty shitty life. I have generally enjoyed my work, and unemployed periods have been the toughest - far tougher than having an enjoyable job and the freedom that disposable income brings, the ability to make plans for the future etc.
The parents (both are step parents who have combined their families) are bringing up 6 children between them. Good on them for taking responsibility, rather than their partners who went off scott free and presumably don't even contribute.

I agree with cory

Pinkoliberal Yes few people are genuinely claiming benefits, there are people who have to through being a carer or finding themselves made redundant & these are genuine but in my experience there are many many who are not genuine & are happy doing absolutely nothing about getting work.

Hammy,
This has been an issue in denmark too. The socialists claimed that poverty was rife in Denmark and did a programme about a woman they claimed was living in poverty. Unfortuently it backfired on them when they said she got over £1600 in benefits each month after tax (about the same as an average after tax wage) and had a good lifestyle. Then it turned out for the long term unemployed to be as well off working as unemployed they would have to earn £3600 each month, more than most people earn, and certainly more thna someone who had been unemployed for years was going to be able to command. So they are having the same discussions as the UK in regards to benefits.

And lets remember that in the dn those workign are not going to have more than those not working, as if an elderly person has anythign of value -own home, savings, and need care the state remove their assets from them to pay for the care, but if they have nothing they obviously get the care for free.

Mobile phones cost less than lunch at McDonalds. Well they can, unless you insist on getting an all-singing all-dancing one.

www.carphonewarehouse.com/mobiles/mobile-phones/ALCATEL-OT-209/PPAY

£2.95

You can get a contract for £5/month with 100 minutes, texts and internet. More than adequate for teenage children. Or PAYG if you just want it for incoming

Ok they've got five teenage kids, and presumably phones for the adults too, so that's 7 phones, but they are spending £140/month, which works out as all-singing all-dancing latest shiny smartphone each, not just 'you can't survive without a mobile phone in today's day and age'.

Obviously they can afford to make large cutbacks.

Of course they can, is anyone arguing otehrwise: mind it might be not so much cutbacks as actually spending it on what it should be spent on like school trips, fruit etc, who knows.

DS2 got a phone when he started playing out (his brother's rep as an aggressive asd kid means ds2 is a target for any child wannting to send a message IYSWIM)- it cost me £10.01p, with a tenner's credit on it, becuase we chose a Royal Wedding one they could not flog.

Raybeth after years of working with struggling families, living in an area of + + unemployment my experience is that to say most people aren't genuine is pretty silly tbh. Some yes; most no. By a long, long way.

Sometimes it takes a fair bit of digging to find out what is going on- although that was pre-crash, now it's just a sheer alck of opportunities as much as anything.

I mean even the bloody tories get that there are very few jobs and they have a rep to maintain!

And before bed:

A) Pick your mates better- fraudters are not IMO good peole to befriend
B) Asthma gets the ? Agree wrt to smoking of course but given asthma kills the child deserves help
C) I went to a sink school in a crappy area and I don't have a single friend as you describe; I know some exist but it's not that many as an overall percent ime. poeple on HB- 80% of them are not unemployed, did you know that?

A few people have made the point that if you work, you may be no better off in the short term but that in the long term you'll have better prospects, pension, a house to pass on etc

I'm not so sure any more. These are exactly the sort of things which are being cut. Many people who pay hundred of pounds into pension funds each month are seeing the value wiped out. Public sector pensions are being radically reduced. And if you have managed to buy your own home, you'll have to sell it to fund your old age care, whereas if you haven't bothered saving, you'll get funded by the state.

There used to be a sense that playing the long game was worth it. I went to university and spent years training, living on very low incomes (far far lower than the proposed benefits cap) because the message out there was that it would pay off in the long term. If we're now losing the long term paybacks, and we're not seeing the short term advantages.... What on earth is there to motivate people?

Many working people cant afford, and will never be able to afford, the number of kids described in the op. they cannot afford that level of socialising. They cannot afford that much on a mobile phone. They can't afford a sky package. Is it any wonder the country is up shit creek?

I am sue that you are better off in work!

You rent a house on HB and chances are if you lose your job you will end up in some kind of homeless accom; certainly around here, cheap housing is way over subscribed.

You workk at the level not to get HB and you can pick and choose still pretty much. You have control. That means so very much!"

I also went to Uni, am 3 years into training now.

And I honestly still do not get how they can afford that much on phones etc. Our income is above the basic benefits level by some way yet we simply could not. I am, to br frank, baffled.