Confused re attitude to benefits and work experience

[catontheroof]

Your thoughts please - why has it become so politically incorrect to suggest that fit adults in this country should be expected to work for a living?

I believe that we need a safety net but cannot understand why people should not have to take jobs that they are qualified for if those jobs exist. I also cannot understand why people "deserve" tax credits etc.

If large chunks of our population do not work then our GDP is low. The only way that we can afford to have so many on benefits with a relatively high standard of living is by importing goods from other countries where the workers live and work in atrocious conditions.

Why do we think that it is right and proper that people in this country sit around being paid not to work whilst tens of thousands all over the world work in sweat shops to provide them with a lifestyle?

If our fit population all worked then we'd increase GDP and have money to help people in other countries where there is real poverty.

Hi there,

Just to let you know, we're moving this thread to 'Politics'.

God there are some hard faced bitches on this thread

I have paid tax since 1982 and never once worried about that money supporting those in society who need it. Now for the first time ever I am going to claim and yet there are those who would begrudge this.

I hate these benefit threads, they bring out the absolute worst in people.

Btw anyone wanting to swap is welcome! Give me your £40k salary, your house, your car and in return you can have my HA house, old banger car and a disabled child.

Cos I have it so easy and now on benefits it's going to be an easy ride judging by some of the ill informed attitudes here.

It's benefits or people starve./freeze/become homeless.

Which do YOU choose because that's what it comes down to.

or you could think that a few generation ago in the UK, normal people didnt have central heating. NEVER heard my mum or grandma complain.

what rubbish.

i dont have the heating on. my mum didnt growing up - the house only had open fires. & my grandma.

they did not freeze. its only a drama (if you are all healthy) if you make it into one. old people, ill people completely different.

If you live in a well insulated house then you can cope with minimal heating. If you live in crappy housing then it's not that easy.

Are you suggesting that society goes backwards to the very cold houses and living conditions of the past?

My gran lived in an unheated house with limited electric fires and it was freezing. I certainly remember her saying how cold she was in the evenings. This was in the 1970s and she'd been in the same unheated house since the 1940s. My mum remembers being very cold there too. So some patents and grandparents DO remember feeling cold and complaining about it as well.

Good points gaelicsheep.

I realise the thread has moved on totally, but just wanted to qualify my previous post. Obviously I realise that some people have to have two earners to make ends meet - crazy situation if you ask me, but individuals can't change it. We were in a similar position a while back, except that DH couldn't find work so we were claiming more CTC than we'd have needed to otherwise - we've been scroungers see. How very dare we? I realise that we are now very lucky to have a choice, and my post was aimed at people like the OP who make it a moral issue, not people with no choice. Hope that was clear. As you were.

Open fires can be perfectly good heating. They're not central heating - but they sure as heck ain't the same as having no heating at all, or having a two-bar electric fire as the sole heater for a large room.

Tbh, Tilly, you sound like someone saying, "I know what it's like to go barefoot in the snow - I had to wear Clarkes instead of Gucci boots last night."

Precisely serialkipper, I was going to say something similar. In the bad old days we lived in a freezing cold house with only storage heaters for heating. No open fire or anything else. If we could have huddled around a real fire so that we could be warm somewhere in the house that would have really helped. But living somewhere that you can never get warm, anywhere in the house - that's truly miserable and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

So in terms of the definition of basic need, the OP doesn't count housing as a temporary hostel will do (so actually, just 'not on the streets') and Tilly (who I was starting to like) has decided that heating doesn't really count either as, in the good old days, everybody was used to being cold.

How many calories a day should we be budgeting for?

We lived in a house a few years ago which had a constantly breaking down heating system. Very old house but open fires had been bricked up years before. It was so cold I used to put DS to bed in our bed and get in with him to keep us both warm. DH was working away and the LL took a lifetime to sort out repairs. I'll always remember how sore my hands were and the GP telling me it was due to the very cold house. DS had the same sore hands (he was 3 at the time and I thought we had some weird skin thing). GP was right because when the heating was fixed it cleared up on us both.
Yes it was a miserable time - we got through it though.

DS is now 9 and struggles due to his autism, one of the things which stresses him is cold hands. I do wonder sometimes if that harks back to the very cold winter in that unheated house. It might not but I can't help wondering.

I'm a bit confused as to how catontheroof can take the moral high ground when she too is benefiting from the appalling exploitation of the developing world by this country. I'll bet she buys Chinese, Indian, African, Indonesian etc, made goods, clothes and food without very little genuine thought for the people who are subsidising her lifestyle by barely scraping a living in order to support her smugness. I mean, really - shouldn't she stop buying it and benefiting from it and go and live in a cardboard box on a rubbish tip so as to avoid being an outrageous hypocrite? And by supporting this outrageous exploitation, she has also, in her own little way, contributed to the destruction of manufacturing jobs in this country, creating a population with nothing much useful to do. How selfish is she???? I don't know how she sleeps at night, although I guess looking down on others helps.

I think anyone who can say that heating isn't a necessity has never really experienced living long term in an unheated old property. In other words she might think she knows what a cold house feels like but in reality is clueless.

I just find the whole premise of this thread quite incredible. We have people who are fortunate enough to find themselves on a good income, with a good standard of living, sitting in judgement on those less fortunate and feeling they have the right to decide which parts of a decent standard of living they should be entitled to. Those who are doing this, who the hell do you think you are? Should the unthinkable happen - say you become seriously and chronically ill - YOU will be net scroungers from the system too. Do we all get to sit in judgement to decide how much treatment you're allowed before you've exceeded your quota?

You have a good education, you've been lucky enough to have a good job and get on the housing ladder before prices went stupid. You have enough to eat and you can afford to drive to work. You know there are many many rich people in this country taking the utter piss. And yet you dare to claim that a home and heating are unnecessary luxuries for people who are not as fortunate as you?

Totally totally incredible. I suggest any of you who are taking part in that conversation take a long hard look at your own lives.

Good grief, Cat, how can you be so unfeeling? I'm now on income support after being on JSA since the company I worked at for over 10 years unexpectedly went out of business just before Christmas, because our biggest customer folded and didn't pay the money they owed. I had one of the top jobs in the company but was still on a low wage so wasn't able to save much money. I'm also very pregnant (the baby was conceived long before my company ran into trouble, not that it matters) and, understandably, potential employers were reluctant to take me on. Anyone could lose their job in this economic climate; yes, even you - no one is more than a couple of steps away from having to sign on. And yet you'd villify and dehumanise someone who is out of work and needs help! Well one day it could be you needing help.

Bring back chilblains and paraffin heaters, like the good old days (remembers these bitterly...)

*Tax Credits are a BUSINESS SUBSIDY that allows employers to pay their employees LESS than a LIVING WAGE FOR THE UK (which WILL be different to what a living wage is in any other country, it's individual to each country).

It does NOT mean that the person in work is feckless, or workshy - it means their employers refuse to pay them ENOUGH TO COVER THE BASIC COSTS OF LIVING IN THE UK.*

Exactly this.

I think it is so strange when people cite the way we used to live as being perfectly fine, in the "never did them any harm to have no heating and to live hand to mouth, with the threat of starvation constantly upon them.
Actually, it did a great deal of harm.
People were malnourished. They got rickets. They had horrible untreated depressions and acted it out by beating their children with belts.
Families had to move to find work (and this is what tillyminto would have us do now) and so were rootless and isolated from their families.
Unmarried mothers had to give their children away because they could not work and there was noone to support them (and this happened to millions).
The disabled and mentally ill were hidden away in sanitoriums to rot.
The working poor suffered awful working conditions and died young, toothless and broken.

Is this really is the direction people like tillyminto want us to go in-backwards?

My grandparents were immigrants who knew real poverty, and "pulled themselves up". They were also staunch fighters for union rights and equality because they knew the alternative.

Bring back workhouses. Problem solved.

Oh yes, chilblains and paraffin heaters. I remember them well. I had chilblains on every damned toe in the winter in that house. When we moved here it was slightly warmer as one of the heaters worked so I only had them on every other toe. Then I got a pay rise and we could afford to replace the storage heaters with new ones that worked properly. Thank God. Not everyone's that lucky.

'Bring back workhouses. Problem solved.'

too good for 'em! Factory farm them as a cheap protein alternative to beef.

NowThenWreck Great post. You are spot on in your posts about the past and about the ideas behind the original welfare state. It is very sad that people have become such a selfish and ignorant society.

What is so terrifying is that if people like the OP had their way that is exactly what would happen. It's people like that, and the current Tory government, that allowed those godforsaken places to exist. In those days the privileged in society stuck their fingers in their ears and assumed that the poor deserved to be so and merrily ignored the horrors that went on. It could happen again. That is so very frightening.

"That" being workhouses, not protein factories (at least I hope not!)

i dont have a problem with fit healthy people who can work but who can't get a job - working for their benefits.
what i do have a problem with is the government paying businesses to take these people

1. becuase they have a connection to the tory party and effectively my taxes are paying camerons rich friends

2. these are jobs - they are not made up jobs they are real jobs - that could be given at a normal rate of pay - amking people not dependant on benefits.

work for a charity, plant pretty flowers along the railway, take a voluntary position advertised at your local volunteer bureau - and keep your benefits - thats fine, thats great, thats good.

but DON't put my taxes into your rich fucking friends pockets Cameron you fuck

DON'T blame the state of the economy on poor people when rich people fucked it over Cameron you fuck

IF you are the working poor - stop being so bloody stupid believing all this murdoch /sun tory media bollocks. seriously do some digging - you'll soon find out that the rich get richer and the rest get shafted - RESEARCH it, don't bloody believe popular press - it's for thick people. Stupid people read the Sun.

CodandchopsWed 07-Mar-12 22:31:51
I think anyone who can say that heating isn't a necessity has never really experienced living long term in an unheated old property. In other words she might think she knows what a cold house feels like but in reality is clueless.

practically cod, i think you should do what you can to change your situation. e.g. look on MoneySavingExpert to see if anyone can advise. i have lived in a house with the only heating one an electric coin meter & a plug in radiator which was obviously stupidly expensive. & it was an old house. ice inside etc.

but i have been brought up to think that is not a notably bad thing. for me, my mum, my gran or anyone else. i am not saying its fine you you & not for me. a fleece means its much more comfortable in a cold house than in the past anyway.

(NB: you did not mention your son had autism & i was not even sure if he was a child as you has paid tax since 80s)