I think this benefit family need to take a long hard look at themselves

[HungryHelga]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16812185

£20 a week in the pub

£15 a week for Sky

£32 a week on mobile phones.

A large pouch of tobacco AND 200 fags, plus 24 cans of lager.

£30,284.80 a year in benefits

And this family thinks they are hard done by?

Ridiculous. The benefits system in this country is totally out of control.

The answer is more jobs. Here there are 14 applicants for each job and these are shitty minimum wage jobs.

And don't forget HungryHelga, that when the parents get cancer from smoking all those cigarettes, or cirhossis of the liver from all that booze, they will get free treatment, courtesy of the state (i.e.) working taxpayer. And people think this £26k cap is inhumane. Tell that to the people of Africa and India earning $1 a day who work 10 hours a day!

I know - if you are on benefits, you should submit household accounts every month so that they can be checked against a list of acceptable expenditures - a bit like MPs' expenses.... And Sky TV, drinking, smoking, eating ready meals, using mobile phones, heating your house above 19c, and socialising outside the home will all be forbidden. You shouldn't, after all, be able to afford any of that, anyway, even if you do have a good reason to be unable to work and be living on benefits. And if you get depressed about your life and your inability to cope, you have to kill yourself to prove it, because it's too easy to fake depression otherwise. The fairest way to sort the scroungers from those genuinely in need is to clamp down on all of them - after all, none of them are paying their way.

Why do people think they have the right to decide and judge what other peple spend thier money on? Because "your" taxes pay for it? That argument is just tripe. As I have said up thread, by that rational, "my" taxes might well pay for "your" Child Benefit or Tax Credit. I don't have the right to judge what you spend your money on. "My" taxes and "your" taxes get wasted / badly spent left right and centre - why pick on benefits?

Do people perhaps think if this family didn't smoke the global recession would not have happened?

IT WASN'T BENEFITS THAT CAUSED IT.

I know the BBC has done a lovely job with this article of frothing you up so you support the benfefits cap, but do you not even feel a tiny bit played? Or dou you like being told what to think?

It isn't relevant whether this one family buys a bit of baccy or spends more than you would on a mobile phone bill. Really - it isnt the issue

But is certainly is working as the distraction it was designed to be

The issue is, it seems, that most human beings are naturally self-centred and self-justifying - ie selfish - unless set a good example of why you shouldn't be. And if you want to change that to make a nicer society, it is more effective for the strongest to lead by example than for the strongest to carry on with their own selfish behaviours whilst giving the most pathetic and inadequate a good kicking. Although I guess giving the weak a good kicking will teach them that you have to be hard nosed and selfish to do well in life, and that therefore scrounging as much as you can from the system is a perfectly valid method of making ends meet.

But catgirl, it doesnt matter that your taxes might be paying for my child benefit because I am putting money back into the system as I said before. If you have not worked for 11 years when you are perfectly capable of doing so, you are take, take taking and not giving anything back, therefore I think people are allowed to judge what their taxes are spent on.

And having worked in a local council, I am well aware of how much taxpayers money is wasted on pointless projects etc, I have complained about that as well.

Actually it is a bit of a non issue for me. I am lucky enough to have a job that I enjoy (most of the time!) and between us my husband and I earn more quite a bit more than the benefits cap. However, I am saying that if I was working my arse of to support my family and struggling to make ends meet without any help from the system, then I would be supremely fucked off to see a family like this - can you not see that?

Catgirl,
Once again they can spend their money on what they want, but they cannot expect people to go against the cap because it means they cannot get ciggerettes or alcohol etc. The father of the family quite clearly states that if the state cuts his benefits he will choose between feeding or heating the family, and makes no mention of cutting down on his drinking or smoking. And whilst it may not be his fault he lost his job in 2001, it certianly comes across as being his fault he has not found other employment in the eleven years since this happened. If in the past eight years over half a millon people from the new EU countries have been able to come over here and find employment, what is his reasoning especially as he had a three year head start. He might be a software developer by trade, but if no one wants to employ you in that sector you have to look elsewhere.

I can't understand why benefit bashers always harp on about drinking and smoking. The government gets a large proportion of that money back again in tax.

The BBC has got like the Daily Mail recently.

but the cap won't make a scrap of difference to the economy

you do know that?

It will help the economy as we still rely on cheap loans, and if we do not make these cuts we will not be able to get cheap loans anymore which will mean we will be driven into the ground by huge interest on debts and loans. People are only prepared to lend to us at such cheap rates if they see we are making cuts and not heading the way of Greece which has seen lenders make losses. If we do not make cuts the interest rates go through the roof and we head the way of Greece and Italy.

opinionated,
becuase the guy is saying that he needs to get more than the average wage, and then goes on to say he spends the difference between what he now gets and what he would get if he was an average worker on alcohol, ciggerettes, mobile 'phones( because his teenagers will be angry if they do not get them), sky movies (because he gets bored not working), going out to the pub, and that if he does not get this extra he will make the choice between feeding his family or heating the house.

If you are working very hard to bring money in for the family and would be better off on benefits, then the fact that you choose not to claim benefits shows that you believe your life is somehow more fulfilled and worthwhile working on a lesser income than it is suffering the indignity of being paid to do nothing. Should you therefore be angry at the sad individuals who don't understand that, or should you pity them for missing the point? Or are you angry at them even though you aren't in a position where you would be better off on benefits, because you don't like having to work hard yourself and if you were in the position of having to choose between working hard for little, or doing nothing for a little bit more, you would also choose the latter?

And of course, someone who would starve their family or freeze them to death in order to get alcohol and cigarettes would behave like that whether on benefits or in a job.

Holy crap, this family can afford a lot of alcohol!

The £82 per week less could in fact mean a healthier lifestyle. Thats a lot of money spent on tobacco and booze, yet they have the tenacity to suggest that next year they have to chose between heating or food.
Losers.

Is there much point trying to stay healthy if there isn't much point to your life?

If you are working very hard to bring money

How come no one just 'goes to work' any more? It seems compulsory to stress you 'work hard' or emphasise you are a 'hard working family' (do they send the kids down a salt mine after school?)

This puritanical oneupmanship and assumed moral superiority is absurd and in most places misplaced. My grandfather spent 50 years down the pit and then his retirement hacking the lining of his lungs up, he'd have never have been as smug to describe himself as being from a 'hard working family'

rabbit,
It is also about society as a whole. if everyone said they would not work and only claim benefits then the entire state system would collapse, there would be no benefits, no NHS, no schools etc. It is the hypocrisey of on the one hand demanding you get more money, then on the other telling the media how you spend the difference on luxuries.
If someone is on benefits and chooses to fritter their money on whatever they want that is their choice, but they cannot complain about not being given enough benefit money to be able to fritter it away after they have paid for essentials. You are not hard done to if you get the average wage for doing nothing, and the things you cannot afford are things like alcohol, mobiles for all your children etc.

Would anyone want to employ the man in the article?

I think it is true that you feel the need for Sky TV, cigarettes and alcohol more if you've got nothing better to think about or do.

Unfortunately, I think most people go out to work for the benefit of themselves, not for the benefit of wider society. That's what's wrong with the argument over what one individual spends their money on - it's irrelevant to the wider question of the purpose of work.

Of course, if nobody goes out to work for any reason other than their own personal gain, we should scrap benefits altogether and leave people to save up their own money for a rainy day, only providing help in the form of workhouses, as anything other than food and shelter is a luxury.

SKY????? How dare they voluntarily give money to the Murdoch corporation that do their damn-est to deamonise them.

I also dont understand this guy's comment that if the cap came in his family would have to choose between 'heating or eating'. Er no you would have to choose between heating and eating OR cigarettes, alcohol sky and mobile phones.

"they cannot complain about not being given enough benefit money to be able to fritter it away after they have paid for essentials. You are not hard done to if you get the average wage for doing nothing, and the things you cannot afford are things like alcohol, mobiles for all your children etc."

Exactly. These are the things that some working people have to cut out. Why is it fair for non-working people to afford them on a handout? No one is saying they should starve/go cold/go without essentials but they should certainly not be complaining about having to cut down on things that some working people can't afford.

Yes - send them to the workhouse. Why should ANYone not working, including those with a good reason for being unable to find work, think they deserve to live somewhere potentially nicer than somewhere a person working for a wage lives? Chuck them out of their homes asap, I say. Why should they be able to waste money on damaging their health as they try to get through their very dull days? They are having so much more fun than working people, the rotters. They are all really happy people, having a whale of a time partying at the expense of the State.

Or would we feel less jealous if, instead of wasting their money on killing themselves off young, they spent that money on taking their children to museums and libraries, going for long walks and cooking wholesome, time consuming meals? I, personally, would have to admit to then feeling more jealous then, that the money and time was going towards things I might not have time to do but actually WANTED to do. I don't feel any jealousy or anger towards people who live in cramped houses in Wales and who can't think of anything more worthwhile to do than to drink and smoke and talk on their mobile phones.

It's the people who stay at home doing a really good job of looking after their kids at the expense of the State that should make us really cross. They should be out working for a pittance and putting their children into poor quality childcare like the rest of us have to do - and then coming home and drinking too much because of all the stress (but at least its our money to drink away).