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Original poster

IDS "I could live on £53 a week"

107 replies

MurderOfGoths · 01/04/2013 14:58

The Work and Pensions Secretary said he could get by on £7.57 per day if he "had to"

Ok then, let's see him do it.

And not just for one week, one week is easy. He wants to try it for longer than that. Say 6 months.

And he wants to do it down south, just outside London. Somewhere with London's costs, and none of it's benefits (eg. cheaper convenient public transport). During that time he should have to apply for jobs and get to interviews - to the full distance that the jobcentre specifies.

Have to deal with emergencies like cooker breaking down etc.

On and if he could spend the first few weeks without any income at all due to delays in processing, that would add a good level of authenticity.

OP posts:
TheCrackFox · 01/04/2013 22:26

He really is full of shit!

Anyone could do it for a short period of time but it is the cumulative effect of poverty that is impossible to live with.

Original poster
MurderOfGoths · 01/04/2013 22:38

"Anyone could do it for a short period of time but it is the cumulative effect of poverty that is impossible to live with."

Absolutely. And the addition of the uncertainty makes it more soul destroying.

He needs to try living on it for a fair amount of time without knowing when it will end. He needs to try it in a way that he has no control over when or if it will stop.

OP posts:
pumpkinsweetie · 01/04/2013 23:05

Lets face it, the bottle of booze he swigs is probably worth £53 or more buy its self.
He will never realise what he has got.

This treating and taking the piss out of the poor should not be allowed. The man if you can call him a man, i say mouse is a 1st class pleb

Original poster
MurderOfGoths · 02/04/2013 09:12

Bloody hell, that petition has over 123,000 signatures now!

OP posts:
Darkesteyes · 02/04/2013 17:19

I wish the Duke brothers from Trading Places would come along and swop him with a homeless person or someone on benefit.

VerySmallSqueak · 02/04/2013 17:29

It is upsetting and insulting in equal measures that this man has the audacity to suggest that he could ever do this.

VerySmallSqueak · 02/04/2013 17:32

And as others have said it's not about doing it for one week.
Such is the nature of the beast.

ssd · 02/04/2013 17:38

keep on signing folks

Chipstick10 · 02/04/2013 17:51

He didn't actually say he could do it, he said he would do if it he had to. That's something completely different.

Tortington · 02/04/2013 17:56

hes worth over a millioin - or his wife is, he will never 'have to do it'

its a bit like me saying ' I could walk on the moon if i had to'

Chipstick10 · 02/04/2013 18:04

Of course he will never have to do it. What politician would be in a position where they would have to. It's like when people where berating the queen when she had to do a photo opportunity drinking tea in a council house. Poor woman looked completely uncomfortable just as the woman whose house it was would be if she had high tea at buck house. I don't get the point.

ssd · 02/04/2013 18:57

the point is he's making laws that force others to do something he has no idea of

Chipstick10 · 02/04/2013 19:03

That's what politicians do every day of the week. Laws are made that wont affect them. Diane abbot was quite happy to send her child to a very expensive school. Not so happy for us to do it though.

pumpkinsweetie · 02/04/2013 19:05

Because however much it will never change his life, it may change his thinking and hopefully make him realise a life on benefits isn't something people choose or aspire to.

ssd · 02/04/2013 19:15

Dianne Abbot cant stand her

Viviennemary · 02/04/2013 19:29

I quite like Diane Abbot. But for all her leftie views she still sent her son to private school. [busad]

ssd · 02/04/2013 19:48

she is a total hypocrite

Jellykat · 02/04/2013 19:56

Wow, over 300,000 signatures!
They mentioned the petition on the 10 o clock news last night, hope more media pick up on it and it keeps gathering momentum.

InMySpareTime · 02/04/2013 19:59

BertieBotts, the book by Polly Toynbee was called "hard work", I got it from the library one time. She lived on the breadline, taking on a series of minimum wage jobs and exploring the initial costs of setting up home etc. it is most enlightening, IDS should read itWink.

ttosca · 02/04/2013 20:49

A DirectGov petition finally made it through, after one was denied:

epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/47898

If you'd like to see IDS subsisting on £53 / week debated in Parliament, we need 100K signatures. ;)

Please sign.

BertieBotts · 02/04/2013 21:00

Yes, I got it from the library and then liked it so much I bought it and used it in one of my university essays about the welfare system!

Something which really struck me was when she bought some curtains but then got back to realise she didn't have a curtain rail, and lacked the money to buy one, and ended up making some makeshift curtains with a sheet or something. Then the next day when she was walking around the estate she noticed that loads of other tenants had similar arrangements, sheets, towels, flags hung up crudely in windows instead of curtains. I always notice it now too. It's the kind of thing that makes a house look like the inhabitants are lazy/workshy, but in reality it's just the kind of thing that's never going to make it to the top of the priority list over other things like food, debts, bills etc.

Jux · 02/04/2013 21:47

My fantasy about IDS now is that they make him do a reality tv show where he has to live on benefits, find a flat, survive until we the voters vote for him to go home again. We could keep him there for years, and he'd never kow when he was going home.....

BertieBotts · 02/04/2013 23:22

Grin I've just seen this on twitter. www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/02/iain-duncan-smith-53-pounds-a-week

AndieDisestablishment · 03/04/2013 15:36

I'm raging about this flippant and insulting remark and the fact that he's now using the petition as a stick to beat "the lefties" with, saying it's a distraction.
As a family of two adults and two children the DWP expect us to be able to live off £112 per week (our rent and council tax is paid) It costs us £40 per week to feed our gas and electricity meters (that's with all but one radiator off during the day and the boiler being turned off when the kids go to sleep at 7). If I wanted the whole house to be warm it would be £50/£60 per week instead! Despite feeding all this into the meter my last quarterly bill was in debt (how do they work out that you're in debt on a prepay account?!) We have other debts from before we started claiming as my partner was self employed and was hoping beyond hope that he would obtain a new contract and not need to claim benefits, which in themselves took a month to process. So we have around £20 per week of debt to pay. A weekly bus pass is £15 which is needed to get to the jobcentre, shops, interviews (ha!) So that leaves us with £37 per week to feed four, pay water rates, telephone, Internet (telephone and Internet are apparently essential because DWP are using the Internet for everything now and you have to phone them constantly to remind them they're not doing their jobs properly!) My tax credits have been cut off because they didn't send me the right forms when I moved in with my partner so I am currently super gluing my DS's shoes so that he has something to wear to school. It's a good job he's on Easter holiday as I can't afford to wash his uniform this week! So if IDS would like to try living on JSA (however much it is for a single person because even £71 doesn't cover much) then I bloody well think he should.
NB: My partner and I will be off benefits soon but not much better off as child care will set us back £270 per week so that lovely £1200 per year they're giving us after slashing our tax credits will be SO welcome. Clueless gits.

pumpkinsweetie · 03/04/2013 16:10

The man is an absolute twat, who landed his job through inheritance. He never actually tried hard to succeed, it has all landed in his lap.
It's him that should be grateful for what he has received, but instead he chooses to harp on about how easy it is to live of £7 a day.

He said it, in a time when cuts and caps are being made and are going to hit everyone hard so yes he should live up to what he said.

If he doesn't want/think he can, then tough shit he shouldn't have opened his gob before thinking first.

The size of him, cant see £7 keeping him in food let alone anything else Grin, he obviously doesn't take note of Change4Life campaign either.

He is a horrid specimen of the highest order, infact in don't even think he is from our planet tbh.

If he won't practice what he preaches, maybe he could tell us exactly how he would live off £53 and have a chat with us mnetters on why he thinks those on welfare live such wonderful lifes.