Benefits street

[viagrafalls]

Anyone watching ?

I claim benefits myself, yes. I just dont act lile a twat and blame everybody else for my own problems. I also work stupid hours.

Lastnights episode was heartbreaking. When kids are going genuinely cold and hungry despite their parents trying their hardest, that makes me sad.

But do you not realise that is the reality for the vast majority of those living purely on benefits??? I know of single people living on less than £50 a week, including heating their homes and feeding themselves.

In all honesty i cant see a physical way of a single person surviving living alone, so i do get it. And it isss sad. That is the sort of situation i feeel for,not thieves and criminals.

But the crime is a direct response to the circumstances they are living in. If you have zero money, a highly dysfunctional life and extremely limited job prospects, what do you think will happen? Fungi for example- what sort of job could he actually sustain? He is an illiterate addict with probable mental health issues. He shop lifts as he has few other options.

I cannot sympathise with it, i know people struggle but the majority do manage. It is a shit situatoion but a lot of their situations are because of crime and greed in the first place.
I just find it infuriating when people make excuses for their behaviour when there are people, like the romanians for example, who are in a far worse position and dont resort to crime.

The vast majority of criminals, such as those shown, are bred, not born. They haven't turned to crime purely out of 'greed', but because to them it is all they know and they have limited fear of the consequences, and actually some prefer to be inside as at least it is warm, they are fed and have some level of belonging with other prisoners. Yes, it is absolutely wrong to steel or deal drugs, but I do have sympathy for them that they have such shit lives that they feel the need to do this and that it is ok. Somewhere, something has caused this and I think if we as a society took Sweden's approach of seeing it as everyone's fault that a person has turned to a life of crime, and addressed where the failings lay, we would have fewer people living like some of the more damaged on the programme.

Hickory, if there's one thing I've learned on Mumsnet, it's never, ever to criticise anyone reliant on benefits. Nothing is their fault, it is the fault of society. Anything that they do that most of us would consider wrong, or even morally reprehensible, is the fault of MP's, of bankers and of banana skins placed in front of them to trap them.

It is absolutely pointless comparing the UK to Scandinavia. They are hugely different countries not least because of the fact that their population is not anything like as high as ours, they do not have anything like as many different cultures crammed into smaller areas and the cost of living in these countries is crippling. There are benefits of course but Scandinavia is not some sort of utopia where goodness springs. People complain endlessly about the rising cost of food and people turning in desperation to food banks - they would be a lot more desperate in Sweden! Food costs a fortune and so does a lot of other stuff, including working itself: taxes are huge. Yes, you "get it back", to an extent, but this is workable only because the population is small.

Every single crime committed has a reason for it and that includes rape, it includes paedophilia, it includes murder. Are we to shrug and point to people's childhoods then? I certainly think that paedophilia has its root causes in childhood but we don't excuse it on that basis!

I am very sorry that people have had less than ideal lives but I wholly refute that the reason for this lies at my door. I was bullied, badly bullied, for years at secondary school by people who remind me of the people portrayed here, and it is interesting that my experiences would be unlikely to elicit sympathy while because the people in the programme have less money than I do now, that's "ok then."

I recognise that there is a cycle. But I also recognise that we have free education for all and we have free healthcare for all. There have never been as many opportunities for children in low-income areas to access high-quality education. The only way to break the cycle as far as I can see is to remove other options - make the alternatives of NOT working so uncomfortable that people begin to understand that work is a necessity not an optional extra.

I am sure I will return this evening to be told I am a Daily Mail reader, an idiot, someone undoubtedly will say "SO you want me/my friend/our children to go and work in a sweat shop / up a chimney / be shot."

No. I just want to live my life peacefully and normally, and work is a part of that. I want that for everyone. I just disagree that the way to reach that ideal is making excuses for everyone who currently does not live in that way.

Brilliant rainy. I am not so articulate as you so when i post a lot of the time i get shot down as i cant express what i mean.
My big example is the ginger woman with the kids, she is living on barely anything and her kids are being neglected because they chose to commit fraud and brag about it so her claim was suspended.
Also fungi is on more money than most on jsa as he is on incapacity yet he still has not enough? And manages to get a meal from his neighbours so he is completely wasting his money, then going on to commit more crime to get more money to waste.

scarletsmummy I have members of my extended family who have had "good enough" parenting and have siblings who are law-abiding but who are criminals because of choosing what appeared to them an easy route. They are opportunistic criminals, the area they live in has a thriving gangster culture that they've opted into. My heart doesn't bleed for them.

Then there are damaged people with appalling childhoods that I do feel so sorry for, and some of them are even middle-class!

I went off a lot of the characters this week. Last week I had nothing but sympathy for their situations and felt that, realistically, they hadn't been given much other opportunity in life.

I guess I still recognise that. But many were so prejudiced, xenophobic, racist and ignorant this week that it really turned me off. Even White Dee, who I thought was lovely last week.

I felt very sorry for the large group of Romanian men trying to make money for their families though.

And it seemed a very twisted media ploy to film struggling Romanians and air it in January 2014. Hmmmm!

I think I feel much like you Rainy. I'm a Guardian reader but I don't accept that once your income falls below a particular level then you stop being responsible for your actions.

Education and healthcare are free in this country. I understand that for many, education is seen as irrelevant and that teachers etc are seen as interfering smug twats. Fine, but that's cultural. It isn't based upon income.

My own parents and grandparents came from nowt and had nowt. They were driven to improve their lot, as I bet most people's parents and gpts on here were too.

God just caught up with the second episode , has to be one of the most depressing things I have watched. Men brought to the UK to be pretty much slaves in the promise of money.. 16 hours days for £10:(

Im so pleased people are seeing the other side of the coin, maybe il stop reading they are coming here to rob us and take our benefits zzzzz. You are so right though, very very depressing to watch.

i felt nothing but sympathy and sadness for the romanians, both the fruit picking bunch in one house and the roma family. my heart went out to them

I the last episode to be really sad.

We are all led to believe by the media that 'coachloads' of Romanians come here to thieve/steal. Clearly they are duped into believing that they will have good work here - when this doesnt materialise what options do they have left to look after themselves. How ironic that they all wanted to go home.

The man in the garden on the phone to his children made me cry.

At no point did I say that people turn to crime because their income fell below a certain level- of course there are many who are very poor and don't. However, those that do will inevitable have had something go wrong somewhere. Look at the stats on the backgrounds of those in prison, in particular literacy and numeracy, addictions, and care leavers. You don't generally find many well balanced middle class young men in there!

I agree with ISeeYouShiverWithAntici that this is propaganda. Just watched the first episode on 4OD and that is exactly how it felt. I really wish that people receiving benefits weren't all tarred with the same brush and programmes like this don't help the image of benefit recipients. I do feel rather sorry for Fungi though - addictions can be terrible to live with and bloody hard to overcome.

I think those of us who have some understanding of the way in which the people seen on the first programme have indeed been "Born to Fail" are in the minority but that doesn't mean we have to keep quiet! Incidentally "Born to Fail" is a sociology book and very old now as I read it many years ago, but it's maybe still available and the reasons given for these children who are failed from the moment of birth is as true today as it was 20 (or more) years ago.

I don't propose trying to have a debate with the reactionary posters on here as they will think what they think regardless of how much explanation is given by those of us who have worked with these kind of people for many years.

It's a bit strange how people are now all in favour of Romanians because they were shown to be the "deserving poor" rather than the "undeserving poor" and of course I have every sympathy for migrants caught by these thieves and crooks who refuse to pay them proper wages, but it doesn't mean that none of them ever commit crimes, it's just that this wasn't shown on the programme. People of all races and nationalities will commit crimes (stating the obvious there) but not wanting anyone to think I was singly out Romanian

The sad thing for me is that those who rally against the benefit claimants actually help prop up the capitalist society where a small percentage of the population own vast amounts of wealth. The govt want people to be horrified by benefit claimants because they know "a dog bites dog" mentality helps prop up the capitalist system. While ever people are up in arms about their neighbours who don't work or people trying to make a quid or two here and there, then they won't be bothered about the huge injustice of corporate companies dodging their tax bills, wealthy bankers with ever increasing bonuses (Salary of a banker 1million - bonus 1million) makes the likes of Fungi look small beer doesn't it.

They won't concern themselves when MPs fiddle their expenses by thousands of pounds, and wealth people accumulate even greater wealth by hiving their money off into offshore accounts. Cameron and Osborne are millionaires, as are most of the Cabinet, yet they tell us "we are all in this together" and a large proportion of the population believe it...........and the politician know this and so they have a vested interest in banging on about benefit claimants, scroungers etc. as they know it will appeal to the populace. The vast majority of the country read a tabloid (The Sun) or the DM and both are Tory papers and will only show the side of the govt and will do their best to whip up a frency about the benefit claimants, and do ye know what IT WORKS LIKE A DREAM.

Are any of you concerned about the billions of pounds that are paid to private companies to take over pubic services and run our schools and prisons etc. Do you know that SERCO is being investigated for fraud but is still being bankrolled by the government. Do you know why..........because wealthy people are shareholders of these companies and making a healthy profit for doing fuck all.

Do any of you know that IanDuncanSmith has already wasted 40 million pounds of taxpayer's money on his beleaguered "Universal Credit" failed IT systems. One govt dept has pulled their IT specialists out and so the DWP has to hire more IT specialists and so further millions will be wasted on a system that is never going to work.

But hey why worry about that when you can carp about Fungi and his mates struggling to get by on £50 a week and trying to make a bit more on the side.

I'd better stop as I'm sure my blood pressure is rising.

NanaNina you make some excellent points. It's horrifying to think that the wealthiest and most powerful in society are getting away with pulling the wool over our eyes like this, but while they have such influence over the popular media and while we invest so much of our popular opinion in that media, then there will always be unfortunate, disadvantaged and in many cases undeserving scapegoats in our society.

I have always been in favour of families who do best by their children rather than families who neglect theres despite getting all the help in the world.
Propeganda or not, bad editing or not, this stuff does happen! Channel 4 havent photo shopped the shoplifting druggies into it.
People with half a brain do realise most benefit claiments are not like this but some are.

Yes some are, but what do you propose we do about them? Someone below had mentioned making their lives as uncomfortable as possible as this will spur them on to find jobs. It won't. I have yet to meet a social worker or anyone in a similar field who thinks cutting benefits is the answer. In the area I work in the local council is actually funding court cases against themselves!

I have no idea, thats what we pay taxes for.... to employ people to think of things like this. Ive said i think that making people worse off wont change their mentality. I don't have anything constructive to say.

Well exactly, there is no easy answer, but the current plans are certainly not helping anyone and just driving more and more children into poverty and in the long term, into care. It is beyond ludicrous.

Well exactly, there is no easy answer, but the current plans are certainly not helping anyone and just driving more and more children into poverty and in the long term, into care. It is beyond ludicrous.