Yes it's the DM, yes it's about a large family on benefits, but surely even if only half of it is true it's shocking!

[StrawberriesAndCherries]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1265508/Peter-Davey-gets-42-000-benefits-year-drives-Mercedes.html

Are they wrong to get what they are entitled to?

42K a year though - I must be going wrong somewhere!!!

'It;s not the poor who are keeping the working poor struggling.' SGB you are so right there.

Agree with SGB, we need the system we have, but this couple are taking the piss and as such I think they deserve all the criticism they get.

I really dont think that most parents would let their children starve if their benefits were cut. That is just an emotive thing to say and stops the debate going forward. It also brings in the point of teaching feckless parents how to bugdet and cook good healthy meals on a small amount. Whatever money I have to use for food is what I have. You cut your cloth accordingly or whatever the saying is.

If we had food/fruit/milk vouchers as opposed to money then the food would go to the correct place and not used on wants rather than needs.

But they're not poor, are they? They have a house, merc, minibus, all sorts of electrical goods, a decent food budget and masses of presents.
They're not poor by any objective standard. They are however lazy and workshy.

Yes, it would affect the children.

They wouldn't get 4 fecking presents each birthday. They wouldn't get £300 each Christmas. The family might have to live without sky tv.

You know what? It wouldn't kill them. My kids don't have any of those things, we don't have sky tv, hey, we're still alive and functioning.

Oh hang on.... what's that I hear? "But the parents wouldn't cut back on those things if they had less money. They'd carry on buying expensive shite at Christmas, and making sure they had their sky package, computers and mobile phones. It's the children who would suffer, because the parents would cut back on decent food, or shoes....."

Yeap, it's called choice. I could let my children go hungry and neglected and spend our income on crap if I chose. Let's have a bit of honesty here. The parents are choosing to live like this. And before anyone else pipes up and says "But they're probably not very bright, they probably didn't go to very good schools blah blah blah" - that's a fucking insulting excuse, because there are millions of people who aren't very bright or well qualified who are fantastic, responsible parents.

Hear hear StrawberriesandCherries.

Vouchers for needs - milk, fresh fruit, decent pair of shoes for the kids.

Not money for lazy scroungers to spend on shite.

Of course, another way of stifling the debate is to dismiss it all as Daily Mail scare-mongering.

Riven those kinds of parents would chose that regardless of how much money they had coming through- that little girl who dies recently lived in a house where the fridge was full . 99% of the rest of us would rather die than do that.

Oh FFS. What does it matter to you if a few people may be playing the sytem a bit. It actually costs you, each whining, vindictive smuggo lining up to throw bricks at this family, maybe a penny a year.
You can bet your arse they have been run rings round by the journalists, anything they might have said about why they would like to work but can't (ie the difficulties of caring for that little boy) will have been suppressed, and they will have been needled and put on the defensive and asked leading questions until they said something roughly along the lines of 'well when you put it like that I suppose we do deserve the money' and the quote would have been put in as 'we deserve the money'.
And get the fuck over fussing that they have a big TB. They wont own it, it will be from Brighthouse or somewhere and they will be paying for it at a fiver a week for 20 years, the same with the rest of their consumer goods.
I loathe features like this because they are so deliberately calculated to get idiots all frothing at the gusset about scroungers-on-benefits therefore nicely taking the heat off all the expense-fiddling MPs and bank chiefs who have trousered millions of TAXPAYERS' money to pay their own bonuses with.

SGB - looking at the bigger picture. They have 9 kids now, planning on 14. How many of those will choose to follow their parents lifestyle choice? 1,2, all? Probably the vast majority as a lot of us look to our parents to set the example. So we all then pay for them, and their kids to keep up the standard of living they are used to.

So for every family ( and it is not just this one they are everywhere in every village, town etc) that do this it costs and it will be a never ebding cycle unless it is stopped.

We arent smug, just fed up with this crazy mad system that allows and rewards laziness.

People who neglect their children do so whether they are receiving benefits or not. It is nothing to do with the benefits, it is do do with bad, terrible parents.

Limiting benefits for scroungers limits benefits for folk who are honest and just out of a job.

Yes, people who are abusing the system should get their benefits cut but to cut the benefits system entirely is wrong.

. SGB - now you can go for a nice soothing lie down.

I am right behind you - people are forgetting that the benefits don't amount to enough to buy things outright so Brighthouse etc make a fortune because the TV will cost them megabucks more than it's worth.

They are in a minority - truly they are. I have a huge area I cover as a HV - it's a very deprived area too. Know how many big families on benefits I work with? It's two out of several thousand. These families are a small minority.

Eh? Who is whining about what it costs them as a taxpayer? I agree, on a personal level it's probably a few pence a year.

You're entirely missing the point that most responsible hard working people find this attitude and lack of responsibility towards parenting shocking. Those parents are continually breeding children who they cannot support, and wasting money on shite because presumably that's easier than actually raising a smaller number of children in a responsible manner. Those children are going to grow up with no sense of responsibility, and a shocking sense of entitlement.

It's also really boring to hear the old arguments about bank chiefs and MPs trotted out too. It's perfectly possibly to be disgusted with the bank chiefs and MPs and scroungers like this family. It's not an either/or!

All this hyperbole about 'frothing at the gusset' (interesting choice of phrase, it personally doesn't make me dampen my knickers, but maybe for some....?) is just designed to stifle the debate, as others have said.

The parents are lazy scroungers who are raising children without any sense of social responsibility. That is the real issue. I don't see how anyone who genuinely cares about social welfare can fail to be shocked by that.

how can anyone get £439 pw income support? Isn't that the same for everyone?

Those figures have got to be wrong, people on benefits are not living the high life, they are barely making ends meet

£172 of the weekly sum is for disability and I bet that hardly covers his extra needs and if they are running a motability car, half of that will not be in cash, they won't have it in their pocket, it goes straight to motability. The same for housing/council tax benefit, isn't it?

They prob live on half of what is quoted

It's not right violet I agree but if we believe in a welfare state then unfortunately we have to also accept there will always be those who will never contribute anything. It's not right but it's better than no welfare state at all.

How do you know they are raising their children with no sense of social responsibility - they may want them to work. They may hope that they don't live the same life. They are certainly teaching them that a child with special needs is cared for and supported. Their Dad is raising money for the appropriate charity. It would be good to see him in some kind of work though.

Why do you so rigorously defend them?

They are "scroungers on benefits". Thats not a debate, they just are. They give others on benefits a bad name.
Its not just middle class dm readers that get pissed off at this shite, its all the people who don't take advantaged of the system as well, because people start to think that everyone is like that, when they aren't.

Having an opinion doesn't make us "whining vindictive smuggos", any more than yours makes you a rabid liberal do gooder.

Jolly Pirate - you think they 'may want their children to work?'

In which case, can you explain why the father gave up working nine years ago, well before the lad with a disability came along, when they only had a couple of children by the sound of it, because he wanted to live on benefits instead?

I hardly think any parent who wants to instil a good work ethic in their children is

a) going to make that decision in the first place

b) publicise it in a national newspaper with a big photo of all the family.

The message those parents are sending out is loud and clear!

They would also be getting the disability component of CTC in that then, so basically they have large income due to having a disabled child

I get all those components (DLA, CTC) as I have a disabled child - would I get such a hard time if I wasn't working I wonder?

It is almost impossible for both parents to work when they have a disabled family member - having to attend so many appointments and doing physio and OT and all the other therapies. Many of my friends have to be stay at home too

The reason this family gets so much is down to having a disabled child and this discussion is making me feel very uncomfortable

I wouldn't defend them as such but I do defend the welfare state.

I am just saying they are a minority of people and yes the welfare state needs to address the non-contributers as well as those who have fallen on hard times.

I have worked all my life and recently dropped my hours to 16 a week because my son has additional needs. I am very grateful for the tax credit system which allows me to support my son. That is the mark of a caring society - it supports it's people to live life successfully and meet their own individual needs. I would be hugely pissed off if society suddenly said - everyone getting benefits of any kind will get vouchers for food etc. I have bills to pay and use money to pay bills as the money comes in. Vouchers would be a hideous idea.

(wearily)

Read the article. The father gave up work NINE years ago, because he preferred to live on benefits. That was YEARS before the disabled child was born. Can we please take the disability issue out of the equation, because the family were lazy scroungers regardless of what their specific circumstances now

I don't know that I said "that they want their children to work". Just saying it's possible they may. I don't know them and don't know anymore than I've read.

Yes the Welfare State needs to address families like this but I don't know how it does this without damaging innocent families who don't abuse the system in this way.