Save the Children launches appeal for children in the UK

[Vagaceratops]

BBC link

And it will get worse :(

Xenia, Xenia, Xenia.

It is NOT as easy as that to move when you live in a council or HA property. You have to have a LOCAL CONNECTION to the area to be able to have a council or HA property there. A local connection is only : Mother, Father, Brother, Sister living in the area.

Without a local connection, if you turn up at a council from elsewhere, without a family connection in that area, and you're not fleeing DV, you can't get a council or HA house.

If you are currently in a council or HA house, you can't just go private rent somewhere else because you need to (mostly) be in employment to privately rent, or have a guarantor. Which a lot of people won't have. You also need to find up to 6 months rent up front if you are unemployed.

You can't undertake cash in hand leaf letting work, or any other cash in hand work, while you are claiming benefits - that is benefit fraud unless declared, and if declared, you will be making yourself possibly not eligible to claim JSA if they deem that you are unavailable for FT work as you are working too many hours. If you declare it, all that will happen is they will take the cash off your benefits, except the first £20 a week of any earnings.

An Internet connection isn't the only thing needed to do proof reading online - a good standard of English is also required. And they still have the issue of it possibly stopping their benefits - which also includes their Housing Benefit which secures the roof over their family's heads.

Also, if you take a short-term, temporary job, it can stop your housing benefit for the duration of the job, while they 'reassess' your claim to see what portion of your rent will then be covered. It is currently taking 24 weeks for a Housing Benefit reassessment in my area. If you start a temporary job, that's one reassessment. When that job stops, another reassessment is needed. But they still haven't reassessed the FIRST time yet.

People who rely on top-up benefits like Housing Benefit and Tax Credits just CAN'T take temporary jobs, as they will lose their home. Their wages won't even cover the rent of a 2-bed council/HA flat here. Let alone such fripperies as food, electric, gas and water.

You REALLY have no idea what you are talking about, do you?

You REALLY have no idea what you are talking about, do you?

...this is what bugs me with so many of the 'pull yourselves together' type posters on here (the ones that like to use the word 'bleating' a lot). They really do have no idea.

They have no idea about the housing system, no idea about the benefit system or what various people are entitled to. Blimey, if I had a quid for every occasion that I read on here that the low paid get 'all sorts of top ups', which apparently bring a £15K salary up to around £40K... They are utterly clueless.

As mentioned in one of my posts elsewhere, in years of paying taxes I was briefly homeless and claiming benefits. What an eye-opener that was in terms of learning about housing rights, what different benefits entitlements are, and how difficult it could be to claim them, particularly if you're no fixed abode.

You forget to mention that there sure very few allotments in big cities getting less all thetimo and the ones there are have massive waiting lists of as long as long as 40 years.

SOme people will always be poor and make up excuses and say impossible. Others get on with things and improve their lives. I hope we can remain a country where there are sufficient people with the personal values to make something better of themselves whatever it take. I accept and have said on iother threads that there is a problem once you start earning in a new business in coming off benefits althoug the new single benefit is going to make it easier - there was a letter in the Times about it last week - you can work for a year to get your self employed business going so things are imjproving thanks to this Government.

Just look at those who have moved here from abroad to see what is possible. I advise them all the time. They are wonderful, hard workers etc I hvae so much more in common with them than the fat lumpen negative white benefit claimants of the UK.

This is why these articles stating how easy it is to live on benefit are so ludicrously pointless and misleading. If some people are better off on unemployed it is because wages are low and living expenses are high. Housing, fuel and food cost have spiralled over the past decade and these costs hit not only the unemployed, but the poorly paid.

Cost of living is an issue, but long term unemployment and blighted communities are our biggest expense. Not the safety net benefit system.

Lol xenia if you hate us so much go away go to another country. I grow sick of your blanket insults.

Come to west London and I'll show you many immigrants from Poland, India and Africa, drinking on the street and sleeping in doorways, under bridges and peddling for cash in hand jobs at the station in the morning, I'll show you many men of no fixed abode driving mini cabs and many woman in the council housing with many kids still getting pregnant while they claim single parent benefits and claim no man lives with them.

You think only lazy white English people claim benefits and cheat the system, you are insane and a racist.

Ever thought of the effect of your and many others constant insults?.

You think children of the poor are born with a negative attitude, or is it just the constant insults, the salt of the earth hard grafting British working class, now the new pillar of hate, poor because they are lazy, stupid, incompetent etc, now considered the scum of the earth, even had their class stolen, replaced by the word underclass many well to do selfish arrogant ponces.

Poor is the new black, imagine what would happen if the politicians came on tv complaining about all the lazy black underclass being a scourge that needs eradicating.

Got an eye opener watching the Panorama documentary all about the families on a Blackburn estate. There's no hope there for the young generation because the place is rife with drugs, no aspirations at all. They admit that they won't apply for a cleaning job because what's the point when you can get your benefit money without doing a day's work. It's easy money for nothing.

It's easy spouting about how people should change and do x y and z but if you've never walked in their shoes how can you be so matter of fact about what they need to do to change that?? If you had to live on that estate day in day out what hope is there?

It restricts your hours, i never applied for any late jobs when i lived on an estate cos i didn't want to be walking home late at night, it wasn't the estate itself that was the problem it was the road leading to it, my mum's been mugged in that road 4 times.

Still I'd take any sensationalist tv show with a pinch of salt.

Oh, where to start?
Nobody's suggesting you can live the life of Riley on benefits. It's a safety net, to keep a roof over your head and food in your belly. It was never intended that people should adopt it as a lifestyle to keep them all their days. It has become a poverty trap and a killing field for aspiration.
Listen to what you're saying ? grumbling that it's so unreasonable that you can't work cash in hand and claim JSA! Words fail me!
(Totally accept that the reassessment of housing benefits is a huge problem with regard to taking temporary work)
Someone else cites the fact that there are numerous immigrants running cabs, working cash in hand, having babies to increase benefits so its not just "lazy white people" Oh, well that's alright then!
These people are not the salt of the earth, they are not the working class (you do need to actually do some legitimate work to be working class) and while the term underclass is undeniable harsh, is it really any worse than the Tory scum, selfish bastard vitriol constantly directed at anyone who supports an aspirational way of life?
I have no right to ask you what your BF did with his £3000 lottery win Sun and will resist the urge to ask if he bought the ticket with his benefits. But if I found myself in line for a such a useful lump sum, here's what I would have used it for. Paying down debts ? highest interest ones first, or learn to drive ? thereby opening the door to all sorts of employment opportunities ie, motospares delivery, post office or parcel delivery, taxi driving, courier, bus driver, not to mention being able to pick up his partner thereby widening his/her scope for employment. I'd put some away for emergencies (like replacing fridges or washing machines) or enrol on a course that opens real opportunities for employment. (Things don't always work out. DH paid £8000 to qualify as a Domestic Energy Assessor (more if you consider lost earnings while he trained) only for the Labour government to pull the rug on the whole thing. Shit happens, you move on.) Any of these things could have changed your prospects.
It's not easy, it takes grit and determination, but it is possible and only YOU can do it. The Tories don't need to grind the poor down, they're doing it themselves.
And please don't presume we don't understand what its like to do without and struggle. We started from rock bottom.

Steady on mintoes. Everyone is aspirational, it's just that some people have lost their way and their aspiration has become getting the next hit of 'bubble', or getting the Jobcentre to leave them alone for 6 weeks. These people see no way out and it is up to this government to change their aspiration, they are no longer capable of it.

In the Panorama programme I would say the local services came out particularly poorly, with the police just touching the surface, teachers excluding children, and youth services being non-existent. These children were crying out for attention from their parents, constructive things to do with their time. They were neglected. Change that and you change everything. Blame their parents for being benefit scroungers and you change nothing.

Some people have a mentality of take and not working very hard and some are positive -do-ers who just get on with it. We need much more hard work and stoicism in the UK. Think about what you can do not what you can't. I said nothing against the English working class. I referred to those not in work who do little to try to find it. We will all have had ancestors who moved to find work. I moved hundreds of miles away from family. My grandfathers 3 brothers moved to the US/Canada after the 1920s market crash. it might a very unpleasant time, family split up etc but it can be worth it in the end.

People say they cannot move. Why? People have moved through hitching lifts. I cycle a lot. There are ways to get around this country which do not cost huge amounts. There are some very cheap night buses. If I can sleep in a tent someone else surely can who is younger and fitter. You can travel to London, pitch up somewhere, work in the week and go back to family at the weekend.

I said I worked with many people from abroad who have come here with absolutely nothing and been prepared to work as hard as I have done for 30 yeras and done very well. I did not say everyone who comes here from abroad is the same but just that in countries immigrants tend to work very hard because of course they have been the sort of people prepared to move heaven and earth to better themselves.

I didn't see the Panorama programme achillea but what you say rings very true. We did some work for an inner city school infant school fairly recently. The kids were fantastic ? bright, interested, cheeky, everything you'd expect kids to be. The parents, mums and dads, many barely more than kids themselves, glowered at us, swigging from cans of cheap lager at lunch time, crushing the cans and throwing them at us, flicking lit cigarette butts at us while we worked. F'ing and blinding at the kids who ran up to them. This is not anecdotal stereotyping, we witnessed this. I have no doubt that the children had as much potential as any other kids, so what on earth to do to keep that vital spark alive I really don't know.
And as a final PS before I leave the thread, two months after we finished at the school, the headmistress rang us to say everything we had built had been smashed to pieces and anything of value ( block paving and concrete hedgehogs and rabbits from the woodland garden!) stolen, could we please come and clear the site and make it safe.

It is very disappointing how many people have used this thread to 'point the finger' at the poor, using horrible stereotypes like Xenia's: fat lumpen negative white benefit claimants.

(Although, to be honest, I stopped taking Xenia seriously when she suggested poor people move to Australia to seek work.)

achillea You've made some excellent points in your posts.

It is prejudice against the working classes which is clearly demonstrated by Xenia on this thread (the same prejudice that cunts like Kelvin Mckenzie have) that caused many people to believe the lies about Hillsborough for 23 years.

DarkesteyeswithflecksofgoldWed 12-Sep-12 22:17:04

XeniaSun 09-Sep-12 09:07:16

I certanily agree with thebone. Now it might be said I do a lot of things for nothing (and am pretty silent about it) because I'm fairly well off because I've worked hard etc but we do in a lot of the volunteer stuff I am involved with see people incredulous we'd do something for nothing. We need to change attitidues so people don't think the state owes me more but to think wow I'm so lucky as a single person on benefits - all my rent in a room in a house is paid and I get £53 a week and free prescription charges or whatever it is that that single person would get, rather than oh woe is me, this is too little to eat. And then people think I am prepared to take this hand out for a year but after that I will get a job and if there isn't one here in Hull I will go to London or Australia to look for work. The attitude of some older people in the UK that they will not claim benefits even those to which they are entitled has not much filtered down to younger people.

Well Xenia. Has it filltered down to you. Do you practise what you preach about this mythical group of older people who dont claim even what they are entitled to.? So you dont claim the Child Benefit that you are entitled to then?!

I havent yet had an answer Xenia so i will assume that you are a hypocrite as well as a racist.

how on earth did anyone get anywhere in life before the benefit system was introduced. people managed through education etc and worked their way out of the situation. they didn't have children until they were married (as a rule).

i think in some ways the benefits hold people back and make them like apathetic.

how on earth did anyone get anywhere in life before the benefit system was introduced

A selection of answers...

(a) they were forced to live in the Poor House, where families were usually kept separated from each other
(b) they took Parish Relief
(c) some died
(d) some became very unhealthy
(e) many lived in absolute squalor
(f) multiple families lived in a single house
(g) some put their children in orphanages, even though the parents were still alive
(h) my own great aunt (a very respectable middle aged woman) took to prostitution to try to house and feed her three daughters after her husband left.
(i) children were forced to go to work from as young as 8 (as they still do in certain parts of the world, sadly)

The fact is that our society decided this was not acceptable in a civilised and affluent country and introduced a welfare state.

Why are you asking, alemici? Would you like to go back to the good old days?

Alemci, I can't decide if you're saying these things for the lulz factor and to get a reaction out of people, or if you're really that naive.

Alemci, despite the abuse heaped upon you, you do raise an issue about benefit dependency which is a valid one. Benefit dependency is a serious issue.

no i wouldn't like it to go back to that which you have described 2 goldfingers but i am sure whoever introduced the welfare system didn't envisage it would end up the way it is now.

perhaps the awful things you describe Gold, made people do something about the situation. i watched the Who do you think you are programme about Hugh Dennis and his great grandfather was a miner but then his grandfather managed to go to a grammar school before ww1.

perhaps our current system stops people going anywhere because they will always get money regardless and still not be too badly off.

I watched it too, alemci. Did you not notice how Hugh's ancestors were among an absolutely tiny minority of working class miners' children who were able to achieve that? Much was made of this achievement in the programme because it was very, very unusual.

Do you think you might consider saying '...stops some people going anywhere' and (from your previous post) '...ways the benefits hold some people back', rather than lumping everyone who's on benefits together? Many, many benefit claimants - the vast majority I imagine - use benefits as a means of temporary assistance, or use them on a more permanent basis because they are too ill or disabled to work. Your use of language implies that you see them as some kind of homogenous, generic, feckless mass who come from a common culture and share a lack of aspiration. Benefit claimants come from all walks of life and claim for a multitude of reasons. So long as people continue to describe them as you do, ie. as a generic whole, there's not much hope really, is there?

To add to my earlier list:
(j) children with physical and mental disabilities were stuffed into institutions so that parents could work, rather than be carers...

People have always risen and fallen - you have social mobility up and down. Most people though have an average IQ, don't work very hard and are pretty mediocre and don't go anywhere much and that's fine, plenty are happy too as we all know money and happiness do not go together. indeed long life an dhealth seem to stem from being hungry a bit of the time - something the rich impose on themselves and the poor rarely endure so get fat and die younger peversely in our topsy turvy world of the over fed poor in the UK.

Carole Middleton and I have had a similar projectory in a sense - both originally from NE mining families a generation or two back. What makes some people get better off in financial terms? IQ I suppose. Schooling someone mentioned above re Hugh Dennis and if you're bright you are likely to do better at a comp or a grammar or wherever. My parents were both pretty bright and went to state grammars and then paid for fees for us as we are doing for the 9 cousins in this generation. My great grandfather was a miner. My grandfather worked for himself..

I agree we cannot generalise. Iain Duncan smith says most people are on benefits for 1 year when they lose a job and get another within a year. It's those who never work who are our much bigger problem.

I think most people though are agreed that managed well state benefits do not mean food cannot be afforded and STC has been criticised for its stance although there is an STC letter again stthe Neary article in today's times.