IDS "I could live on £53 a week"

[MurderOfGoths]

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.

I heard the interview with IDS on Monday. After the presenter had interviewd a self-employed man who said he had only earned £2,700 last year working full-time. He was asked if he would like to ask IDS a question. He said he'd like to ask him if he could live on £53 a week. The presenter relayed that to IDS who answered "If I had to, I would" and then went on to say something about how the Jobcentre could help the guy with a different job and/or any benefits he might be entitled to. A bit different to how some of the media presented it.

pumpkinsweetie

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.

No, I think you must be mixing him up with Ed Miliband. IDS has lived through hard times. There's an interview with him in today's Mail where he talks about living in a one-room bedsit with his girlfriend, where they shared a bathroom with three other bedsits.

His girlfriend... the daughter of 5th Baron Cottesloe, on whose estate they now live?

"But still you'll never get it right
'cos when you're laid in bed at night watching roaches climb the wall..."

BoulevardOfBrokenSleep

His girlfriend... the daughter of 5th Baron Cottesloe, on whose estate they now live?

I assume that means that all the stuff that happened in his life before that wasn't real?

There really is a 'prolier than thou' attitude in this thread.

I was looking at his Wikipedia entry - IDS's life story not being at the forefront of my mind - and the only time he could've been unemployed was a brief period between leaving the army in April 1981 and taking a job selling arms at Marconi later the same year.

He married his missus in 1982 so I'm assuming she's who he was dating during said period.

It's all a little hazy as there seems to be some, er, confusion about what colleges he went to; but that seems to be the timeline.

No, I think you must be mixing him up with Ed Miliband. IDS has lived through hard times. There's an interview with him in today's Mail where he talks about living in a one-room bedsit with his girlfriend, where they shared a bathroom with three other bedsits.

Oh, for goodness sake; a small period of not being employed between leaving the army and getting a permanent job is really not living through hard times. It really isn't! I assume he left the army with a lump sum, so would have had money in the bank. He was only 27, so presumably could have moved back in with his parents - instead he chose to move in with his girlfriend in London. And, irrespective of her coming from coming from a wealthy family, she had a good job as a secretary - so there were many couples living on far less. And as for pounding the streets; obviously one of them wasn't Oxford Street as I can't believe not even a single shop was hiring!