famous, rich and hungry for sport relief

[misstiredbuthappy]

Anybody watching ? I watched it last year realy hit a nerve with me.

There really are a couple of cunts on this thread. Let's just hope they are never made redundant, become seriously ill etc.

Humans are imperfect and make mistakes and unfortunately some never learn from their mistakes but it doesn't mean they have to continually be kicked in the face by society.

Nice to see the thick twats with an empathy bypass are out of the woodwork yet again...

I think it's patronising to suggest that some people are incapable of making choices . We are all different but each of us must take responsibility for our own lives as much as we can.

A mistake is having too much to drink or jumping a red light.

Having kids when you have no money to support them and buying fags when you can't eat aren't mistakes.

And can we please have this debate without all the personal abuse? It's tiresome, detracts from the discussion and demeans the abuser not the abused.

What the three families had in common was debt.
It's so easy to get in that situation. You don't get benefits the very second you claim.

We had a couple of grand's debt by the time our benefits got properly sorted. It's still not completely repaid four years later as we get the minimum we're legally allowed to live on. Plus with debt interest keeps going on. Mine's low cost debt with the bank by the way not doorstep lenders or payday loans that escalate even worse.

Once you're in that cycle it's very hard to get out.
No I don't smoke.

So circumstances never change, whine?

Signed former higher rate taxpaying homeowner who could well afford the children she had before their disabilities became apparent.

Should the widow have somehow prevented her husband from dying?

The painter/decorator brought up 8 kids without state help whilst earning £700 a week. Why shouldn't he get help now?

Back to the programme.

I was surprised that it took the turn that it did. I expected t to be very biased towards the people involved but I felt it was actually quite fair. I do think that it i sright to question why people are in poverty. It's all to easy to assume it's because there is not enough money rather than what we clearly saw - there is enough money but not if it is spent unwisely.

Do people here really think we shoudl provide people on benefits with enough to have everything they want?

'Everything they want'

On £71.70 a week JSA?
On £59 a week carers allowance?

Oh you are funny.

It's like the Sun saying people on JSA can afford holidays abroad.

Why are you making it about benefits when one of the families was a working one, by the way?

No one at all is saying we shouldn't have a welfare state gobby . No one. What some of us are saying is that the benefits do not allow for luxuries and that choices have to be made . You have to cut your cloth just as we all do.

You cannot CHOOSE to buy xmas presents , Sky, dogs, fags and " keep up with Jones;s " and then complain you're broke. Life doesn't work like that.

We all know that is not all people get gobby

Free prescriptions
Free school meals
Housing benefit
Tax credits
Child benefits.

Benefits are sufficient. In fact, if you are a single parent they are more than sufficient. That doesn't mean you get a blank cheque.

I put my own details into the entitled to website out of curiosity and if I were a single parent I would have a tax free welfare income of 27 K. I can't quite get my head around that. 27K.

Fine. See what you need to to suit your ideology.
I'm not saying the examples given had made the best choices in the world, but to make it about benefits when one of the families was a working single parent one is skewing the facts.
They are also not representative of people on benefits or working poor as a whole.

How do you know the widowed lady didn't borrow that money the first Christmas after her husband died? To try to get her kids through that hell?

Keep squawking your ideology. People will still shake their head at the lack of empathy.

Only caught the last few minutes of the programme but what struck me was how nice their houses were compared to mine. The one with the stainless steel oven and the fitted kitchens. Mine has no tiles on the walls just chipped bare plaster, a hob that doesn't quite fit the hole and only 1 kitchen cupboard door that is hanging off its hinges. The rest of the doors fell off and were binned.
I came in at the point where this woman was saying she had made this stew that had cost £7. I nearly choked, my shopping bill for the whole week for 4 of us is £35-£40 and I have a cat and that includes toiletries and washing powder. I shop at Lidl who provide a free bus service to get there.
Oh and the poster who said upthread that they were in their late 40's and everyone smoked when they were younger is wrong. I did not smoke I couldn't afford to take on a habit like that. I grew up in real poverty in a very very rough area of Manchester in a 3 bed council house with 10 family members, uncles, aunties and g.parents. I would sleep on the sofa. There was no fitted kitchen no inside loo and no bathroom and no central heating.

gobby are you suggesting the entitled to site was wrong? Because it isn't just me squawking ideology.

I am shaking my head at the naivety of some to be taken in by these sort of programmes, quite honestly.

I have no idea when that woman borrowed all that money. And pertinently, neither do you.

annie shoudl have said everyone we knew - you are right .

To be fair, the chap who was a smoker with a collapsed lung had a beautiful house. Far better nick than my own rather crumbling and shabby old place. And we wear sweaters all evening and wrap up because we can't afford to heat the house sufficeiebtly either. That's very old houses for you.

annie I have always been able to make great food cheaply too - goes back to my student days!

Oh , right Whine, so my dad chose to have a massive heart attack at 57 & be unable to work again after his quadruple bypass, ......
And , before anyone asks, he has never smoked.

Whine - how much of that 'lovely house' was done when he earned £700 a week? That was only 3 years ago.

I do have experience of the entitledto site getting it wrong, yes. It often gives good ball park figures but doesn't allow for individual circumstances.

We're not talking about ill health nor are we talking about not having a welfare state.

We are talking about why people are poor and some of it - SOME of it - is down to choices we make.

Again, you cannot claim you are too poor to eat with a fag in your mouth.

I don't begrudge anyone a beautiful home gobby. But it's hard to equate poverty with one.

I often cringe with shame when I think of what people living in true and absolute poverty abroad think were they to watch these programmes .

I've got really lovely leather sofas.

Bought 10 years ago pre benefits.

Whoopie doo.

It's hard to equate people's circumstances changing in a heartbeat, whine? Why?

No. it's hard to equate going to a foodbank with smoking. Or paying for Sky.

Right off work now , at the job that I now have because I was lucky enough to be able to go back into education when my kids were little.
Same course levels not funded now, so if I were 10-15 years younger I could have been in minimum wage or not in employment.
Circumstances, not choices.

The family that went to the food bank wasn't the one that bought bootleg Russian cigarettes nor the one that was paying out for sky and most of her income in bank fees. It was the other non widowed single parent who also lost her home at the end of the programme.

To lump their circumstances into one homogenous mass would either suggest a lack of intelligence or a dogged ideology.