Why are so many people on MN so anti benefit bashing?

[Bearbehind]

Genuine question- although I am well aware I will probably get flamed for this.

Osbourne's comments in the wake of the Philpotts's about benefits supporting lifestyles which are disagreeable to most tax payers today has touched a nerve with many for varying reasons.

I've always been of the opinion that benefits should be sufficient for the basic necessities but shouldn't cover luxuries like cigarettes, alcohol, Sky, mobile phones or holidays, as they shouldn't be an alternative to working (obviously only for those people capable of working) yet so many threads on here say its none of our business to question what benefits are spent on?

Why is it so many people are happy for their taxes to fund the luxuries listed above for others when they can't afford some of them for themselves after paying tax!? Am I missing something?

Pan i really beilieve that something like a twenty pound fee for a GP appointment isnt too far away.

What gets me is the language we use to describe state support given to certain groups. People are 'on benefits', as if they are being lavished with the largesse of the state. Have you read about Helen Goodman's attempt to live on £53pw btw? She said it left her with £18 for food:

www.dailyshame.co.uk/2013/03/satire/mp-lives-on-18-a-week-food-bill-and-we-love-her-for-it/

Bankers get 'bailed out' (Have you seen the news about HBOS today?), MPs get expenses, a subsidised bar etc. The Queen has a 'pay rise'.

All paid for by the taxpayer - but only one group is continually demonised and dehumanised. Funny that.

But what really sickens me at present is coming on MN and seeing fellow MNers having to justify their very existence to some jumped-up fucker at the end of a keyboard who choses to tut tut about poor people watching Sky or drinking.

Fucking hell, if I had to look after my family on £53pw to cover pretty much everything, worrying myself sick about what I'd do if we had any emergencies, I think I'd bloody deserve a drink or a fag or something to give me a moment of respite from the worry, stress and sheer fucking misery of it all.

FFS. If we keep banging our heads against this wall any longer, we're going to break the Internet, aren't we?

Big unMN hugs to Darkest, Peachy, Dawn and everyone on this thread who has shared their experiences. You shouldn't bloody well have to, not in this way. xxxxx

Exactly what Pan said in her/ his first post.

Going back to what I said, I hope we are all using our votes and using them wisely.

Its - his post fwiw. We live in a democracy. We don't have to put up with this stuff. My sister claims state benefits. And rightly. We need to vote wisely.

Read 'Chavs - the demonization of the working class' by Owen Jones. It's a good read and throws up some good points re benefit bashing.

Osborne wanted 'a debate in this country'.

Really? This kind of debate? Maybe.

Or, did he seize the manslaughter of 6 children to serve his political agenda; to have the country focus in, like the sun through a looking glass onto people who claim benefits, so that the country forgets about the banking crisis, the tax avoidance scandals and the fact that real wealth is, as in years gone by, being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands etc etc.

He of course is doing the bidding of a man who once claimed DLA for his disabled son. Cameron showed his true colours when he announced he would protect pensioners (the grey vote) but didn't extend the same to the most vulnerable in our society, the disabled. I've come to the conclusion he learnt very little about the struggles of the disabled because he and his family had a substantial financial cushion when his son was alive. It's the only explanation I have for his lack of moral compass in this regard.

whether Chavs is waiting for me in my reading pile (it just got mentally relegated to the top)

Madam

It's not that surprising really. Historically, periods of serious economic troubles have always led to vulnerable groups being scapegoated. The discontent and anger of those feeling the pinch seeks a focus. Those who were already regarded with contempt are an easy target to unite the rest of the population in hatred. People seen as 'not like us.'

Political leaders target them, directing hostility away from themselves and their economic (mis)management. Newspapers stir up loathing, picking out extreme examples and presenting them as typical. Negative language used to describe the group becomes entrenched, which serves to further isolate them from the population as a whole. It's hard to hate a mother or want to take from children. Dehumanising them makes it a lot easier. Children are born, these ones are 'bred'. Parents and children are a family. These ones are a 'brood.'

Over time it has been skin colour, religion, nationality, ethnicity that determined those who are 'other.' This time, as well as 'immigrants', the target is the poor.

I am shocked as to how many people seem so ready to buy in to the shit being peddled. I'm sorry for all the MNers who have to put up with crap from idiots as a result. It must be hard enough dealing with the consequences of the current 'reforms' .

I don't do Facebook but it sounds like a general myth busting post doing the rounds might help. Or at least flaming educating anyone who is spreading them around.

Absolutely Twentytotwo.

It genuinely chills me to the bone, perhaps because my grandfather was executed by the Nazi's for opposing the regime. Seeds of hate are so easily sown.

No point in anyone trying to say "that won't happen again" or "that wouldn't happen here". Anything can happen again. Anywhere.

Meanwhile, in some very naice bits of London, Cameron and his friends are laughing at the fact that they've managed to turn a financial crisis caused by the greed of the extremely wealthy into a situation where the low income are abusing the very low income, the welfare state is being dismantled and the super rich are free to carry on their merry way with industrial scale tax avoidance that makes benefit fraud look like a grain of sand in the Sahara.

My Doctor has signed me off sick indefinitely. Yet ATOS has told me that they have reconsidered my award for DLA and stopped it. So apparently my disabilities aren't disabling despite the disabling effects they have on me.

Yet?

People in the same situation as this are going to make up a fair chunk of those 'long-term' JSA / other benefit claimants. Too disabled to work, yet not given disability benefits that would have them viewed as disabled...

if you really believe someone to be the sort of waste of space that would try and milk the benefits available to them... would you really expect that if you lessened their benefit that their children wouldn't be the one to suffer and tighten their belt?

OP have you ever considered the fact that someone that you see "working and claiming JSA" might be on workfare.
Google it cos quite frankly......i cant be fucked.

darkesteyes if you are going to use inverted commas to quote me as you have in the post above, can you at least quote something I have actually said!

I haven't mentioned any specific instances of benefit abuse, rather the principle of people who claim with no intention whatsoever of looking for work.

Perhaps OP, it would serve you better to discuss the points being raised, acknowlege what people are saying and have the debate you apparently want, instead of getting bogged down in semantics.

Or is that not goady enough?

wanna, I think darkesteyes post was far more goady than anything I have said because she quoted me on something i didn't say but I quite agree with your point about discussing what has been said and was just thinking about what to say.

What I really don't understand, and probably never will, is why so many people, many of whom are in desperate situations themselves, are so tolerant of the minority who get away with abusing the system.

Some of the posts on here are truly humbling yet there is a strange acceptance of those who have alternatives but chose not to take them as their lifestyle is funded without them having to work.

Because if you lived on the edges of these peoples lives, the alcoholics, the addicts, the downright lazy, you would see that there is absolutely nothing to envy about their lives.

The amount of money they live on is miniscule if they are single. If they have kids they get more but I would never begrudge a child money to survive no matter what their parent is like.

0.7% is so not worth bothering about. Taking £71 a week of these people will not fix the economy but it would have effects on them and their wider communities.

Its the big boys at the top we need to be scrutinizing. You know, the ones with the power.

I hear what you are saying wanna I think ultimately, as others have said, it is the benefits system which is wrong as there shouldn't be such a small difference, therefore such a small advantage in taking a job over remaining on benefits and people shouldn't be incentivised by larger council houses, more benefits etc to have more children. Whilst these are the facts I guess they'll always be some people who opt to milk the system.

I was recently talking to a Srilankan man who has 4 children and has to work abroad in order to fund his family as they have no benefit system and he can't find enough work at home. His perception of the UK benefit system was that it is very soft touch which got me thinking.

I won't benefit bash because it is not very nice, or kind.
Berating the tiny number of people who "work" the system, if they exist, is too damaging to the majority of claimants who would love to be working and earning a good wage.
I also realise that my own pleasant lifestyle is very much down to luck. Luck that I was born relatively intelligent, to caring but not rich parents, able to go to a good school, parents who let me go to university, no limiting illness yet, no long term unemployment yet. None of this is
my doing, it's good luck. So why bash
those who have been less lucky?

But OP

Can you see that it is not benefits being too generous that is the problem? Benefits are set at minimum levels the government says you need to live on so they are already at the minimum. If work doesnt pay its an issue with wages and living costs.

The govt needs to do something about low wages instead of undermining the NMW. Do something about unemployment instead of massaging the figures. Do something about high housing costs instead of taking more money from people who have nothing already.

They are demonising claimants to distract from their lack of ability or desire to tackle any actual issues.

That's what I meant wanna, there's little incentive to take a badly paid job when it pays only marginally more than the benefits which would otherwise be received. The benefits some get are not the minimum needed to live as if this were the case they couldn't afford to drink and smoke etc as these aren't necessities but it is clear that for many the amounts they receive barely enables them to survive.

@Wanna. The million dollar question is what is this 'something' the govt needs to do to raise low wages? There is no magic wand solution.

Our economy is simply not competitive enough against our global competition to bring in the money we want to spend on our benefits. Govt's do not like to cut public expenditure because it loses votes.

But what can they do? Raise the MNW? We're already struggling to compete on price abroad. We're a western nation so raising our wages will affect exports.

And raising the NMW doesn't really help very much with our deficit. The low paid don't pay any or barely any tax at all anyway. Raising the NMW will either tip them over the tax threshold so they'd be no better off or we'd have to raise the tax threshold thereby negating any effect on our deficit. In short we'd still be spending billions more than we have each year.

What we need is a large scale investment in areas of industry we wish to develop. So leading edge technology seems a good idea to me. We're already great at microprocessors. How about investment in green technologies? High tech manufacturing?

In time those industries would bring much needed and well paid jobs. But all that takes time. Years if not decades to realise. And the electorate have short memories and just want a quick fix magic wand solution now. An answer where someone else pays and not them personally.

I do agree Niceguy. Everyone seems to want to protect their own area (which of course is understandable!) Pensioners are being targetted now by some people as being able to pay for other people's benefits/lifestyle choices.

On a recent SAHM thread there were some saying that the pensioners should pay for their option to be at home.

The benefits some get are not the minimum needed to live as if this were the case they couldn't afford to drink and smoke etc as these aren't necessities but it is clear that for many the amounts they receive barely enables them to survive.

Someone who is spending their money on drink and drugs is doing without in another area. Its all down to priorities. I prioritise clothes for my kids and paying the bills, they put drink first. No one is living in a great house with brand new clothes and all the latest technology whilst still able to go out on the lash. Objecting to how they spend their money is fine aslong as you realise you cannot actually control it or lump everyone in together.

Niceguy

Ofcourse the answers arent easy, or quick, but I would welcome some kind of nod towards what they intend to do to help the economy instead of this constant narrative of how evil benefit claimants are.