Time for a shake-up in the Benefit System

[mamaonthemoor]

We've just had a conversation with an unemployed eighteen year old couple that has made us feel like mugs. They have never worked a day in their lives, went straight from school to the dole. They get everything paid for i.e rent, council tax, plus weekly money for food etc. They are getting help towards their other bills such as electricity and have just received a grant that they don't have to repay for furniture in their new accomodation. My husband and myself work and pay our taxes, we have five children the eldest is working but still living at home, one at college, 2 at school and a baby. We own our home. If this couple were to go and get a job they would be five hundred pounds a month worse off,they said to us why should they work and it's true. I tried to say for your own self respect, so that you can do the things in life that you want to and so that the likes of us are not paying to keep you but really when you look at it what incentive do they have?They get up late, spend the day on xbox and tv, then pub in the evening, it seems this is enough for them, a habit easily slipped into. They will of course in time advance themselves the only way they can by having children so that they will be provided with a bigger house and more money. It makes me sick though that this is possible. It's about time the government put a stop to all of this. Everybody occassionally needs a little help along the way but this current situation if ridiculous, I'm not talking about the disabled benefits of course but the government keep threating this great shake up in the system, it seems that it's actually only really affecting the people that actually need the help. People that are losing benefits they need such as the disabled, the sick and elderly and not these abled bodied people that should be earning their own livings.

I don't know whether the original post is a troll or not but there genuinely is a problem at the moment. A combination of higher youth unemployment and benefit dependency that could lead to long-term worklessness and other serious implications. Jobs are more difficult to come by as companies retain existing staff rather than recruit new ones. And there is little incentive to take a low-paid job if, for a relatively small difference in living standards, it is boring or difficult. "Work" is not necessarily seen as a good thing in itself.

We will eventually move towards a situation where if jobs are offered they must be accepted or benefits will be lost. But not until the economy is well into recovery and there are more jobs available.

How many more of these threads are we going to have?

[bbiscuit]

Gosh another "benefit scum" thread on MN. Who'd have thought it? [bhmm]

Yawn! If you think it's so easy then do a swap with them. No? Thought not.

Do they have a plasma screen too?

The tories will sort this out. That's why I voted for them. Workless families getting £1700 a month in benefits??? WTF? You'd have to earn about £30,000 a year before tax to get this sort of money. I don't care how many kids you have. You chose to have them, you pay for them. The sooner this entitlement culture ends, the better.

The tories will sort this out. That's why I voted for them. Workless families getting £1700 a month in benefits??? WTF? You'd have to earn about £30,000 a year before tax to get this sort of money. I don't care how many kids you have. You chose to have them, you pay for them. The sooner this entitlement culture ends, the better.

"We will eventually move towards a situation where if jobs are offered they must be accepted or benefits will be lost. But not until the economy is well into recovery and there are more jobs available."

Never mind more jobs - as I posted there are some jobs that if you're moving from benefits to work you literally cannot afford to take. The number of jobs I, as a LP, have not even bothered looking further than the hours is pretty high. It is simply impossible.

And HAmmy - no you wouldn't have to earn £30,000 a year before tax to get that much money (of course dependent on number of children - not all workless families get that much a month). It's funny how the WTC, CB, CTC and yes, sometimes HB and CTB that working families often recieve aren't taken into account in these dicussions..........

Hammy, yes, I'm sure the Tories will 'sort it out' - I mean they're doing such a sterling job so far, aren't they, what with 20% of all young people out of work at the moment.

The economy shrinking by .5% is obviously part of a brilliant plan by Osborne to create growth and opportunities for the unemployed, isn't it?

As for 'You chose to have them, you pay for them.' Great observation there, Hammy. I mean, no-one's ever lost their job after they had children, have they? What are they supposed to do? Put them in the workhouse?

And what is going on at the moment? It's like Mumsnet has suddenly become a vortex into the 1840s...

question - what is a troll and what are the biscuit signs meaning?

Dunno why people are aghast at the thought that a lot of people are a bit lazy and a lot self interested. Most people want the best possible lifestyle for the least effort. Why not? That leads people to different paths, one of them being benefit dependency.

I don't know how accurate those figures are, maybe they were trying to wind you up. But yes, the system needs a shake if it's substantially better for many many people to be on benefits than to work. It's not saying that people are scum to acknowledge that everyone will do what's best for their situation. That's all our natures.

I would like to see a rise in the min wage, as as it is tax credits etc are only subsidising employers. But I don't see that happen in the current climate, indeed in a globalised economy I Don't see it as being workable. Even if it is fair.

haha at "best possible lifestyle"

oh yes - £442 a month to pay all your bills (gas, electric, etc), buy food and have a fun filled life is great isn't it for 2 people. Yes ok, they get their rent and council tax paid, but they have to pay for everything else.

Actually the sad thing is that some people do think that's a great lifestyle on that amount of cash, they have no ambition or vision of anything other than a life with few options.

The figures are not correct. I am no expert but a couple working full time each on minimum wage would not be worse off on benefits, they would have more money coming in in work. This is estimated at £500 rent per month, certainly not £500 a month worse off unless they had to travel a few hundred miles to work each day.

I have seen the beginning of that attitude in schools where are low expectations of students.

Heads chasing stats etc.
I could write a very long rant about it.
But I bet not many people would eant to read it - so wont :)

i agree that people who can work should be applying for jobs at every opputunity.

however whilst you have 200 hundred people applying for 2 posts unemployment is not going to go away.

my nephew applied for a post as apprentice electrition with a large company 500 youngster applied for the job from all over the country.

not all young people are idle, from what i can make out most are desparate for work.

there will always be those who abuse any system be that bankers, mps, nhs, local authority, benefit claimants ect ect.

there many forms of theft and fraud of any system the odd sicky hear and there, petty theft from employers, lying to insurance companys what ever it is cost everyone money.

mamaonthemoor: i agree with the general thrust of your post if your fit and healthy and able then you should at least be looking for work and taking it if offered but in my experience most youngsters are desparate to find work in an ever shrinking jobs market.

i also agree it seems that the disabled seem to be the target of most cuts.

what i find quite astonishing about this government is their absulute dogged determination bring in an even tougher medical for disability claimant when their own indepent review of the system by proffsor harrigton stated it needed to be changed. they refuse to wait until the changes have been made to the medical and are introducing the tougher new medical in april of this year.

now that is a waste of taxpayers money set up a review of a system agree the system needs changing then ignore it.

I worked for the pensions service for two years, and only ONCE in that time had someone on the other end of the phone who turned out to have NO National Insurance contributions AT ALL on her record when she was applying for her pension. That takes some doing!

But yes, as long as there is a lot of unemployment, there'll always be people who choose unemployment as an option. You're entitled to feel pissed off about them not trying, you're only human - but it's tough beans, that's just the way life is. They might not manage to get work however hard they tried, in any case.
We're past the days of workhouses, thank God.

Dotnet. 'as long as there is unemployment, there'll always be people who choose unemployment' Wasn't that meant to be;

As long as there are benefits that pay you more (or the same) some, out of work people will choose unemployment as an option.

MAMAONTHEMOOR. It makes more sense for these two NOT to work, whilst you and your husband get up and go to work at 7am, these two 18 year olds, stay in bed for 200 winks! They can also mooonlight and top up their money.

I'm sure you are quite fit at 18 to do most jobs on the black market!

Unemployment shouldn't be an option for fit and healthy people. Perhaps if the unemployed were made to take the jobs that we currently have to put out to the Eastern Europeans because no one over here will do them (and that's not meant to be a racist comment) then there would be such a high unemployment level for the British. I know not all young people are idle, both my daughters work, the one at college funds her car which gets her to college in this way and my 16 year old son who is leaving school in July already has a job to go to. Before anyone says lucky them it didn't just plop in their laps they got up off their bums and went and sorted it. And yes it is this old chestnut again sorry if my thread is boring to those of you who have been on here a while but I just joined and wanted to discuss what was relevant to me at the moment.

Why do I open these bloody threads ...will I ever learn?

aaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhh!

mamaonthemoor. 3 million jobs have gone to foreigners! Many have taken jobs that Brits don't want. Mass immigration has caused problems, and this has not been helped by the feckless refusing work.
British people not doing certain jobs, left the Labour party with an excuse to invite millions in to do their jobs, of course on very low pay to help out their freinds in big business.

It is true that many can't find work, I have recently returned from Redcar, a ghost town if ever there was one! The local steel plant closed some time ago leaving many workless. I don't blame these people, they genuinly cannot find employment.

The welfare state has created many people with an impression that if they don't want to work they won't and it's ok, and this has created difficulties for society as a whole.

There are always going to be liars and freeloaders. If there was no benefits system, they would find someone else to con or freeload off, and in the meantime you shaft all the people who genuinely need that assistance.

The popular view seems to be that the freeloaders, the con artists and the "scroungers" make up the vast majority of those on benefits (this certainly seems to be the view perpetuated by the media...) but anecdotal evidence from people who work in benefits offices etc seems to suggest otherwise.

Just because you know of a few people, maybe from your school or down the street or facebook friends or whatever, who cheat the system or actively choose dependency on the state, it doesn't mean that everyone does (and you don't always know the full story anyway). Maybe more of your friends and family rely on them than you realise, but keep quiet about it lest they be judged for "scrounging".

Usualsuspect. You open these threads because you are a masochist, no?