A credulous person might accept what any salesperson including a prostitute or street beggar claims to be true.
I looked on the official tables of benefits. Elsethread someone posted of a woman she knows who claims housing benefit and free school meals, legally, because the (£300 p.w. each ?) extra income she gets from ex. is called child maintenance. On the table of benefits, it showed she could have earned herself another income, also openly declared, of yet another £300, every penny of which would also be discounted, because she could state she needed to spend it on childcare, which offsets £300 of her earnings to zero to enable her to claim Housing Benefit. (I didn't look it up, but some areas of London have an astounding rent allowance.)
Maternity Allowance, maternity and paternity pay £151.20. (State Pension £80.45 ) Universal Credit £409.89 plus corona bonus (£20p.w?). £281.25 for a child, £1,108.04 for two.
Claimant and first spouse for polygamous marriage £265.20 plus £91.45 for additional spouse.
Being a polygamous spouse supported by the taxpayers' purse at £91.45 compares well with the £74.35 for standard unemployment pay out-with Universal Credit, and of course the older pensioners' £80.45. (over 80's get an extra 0.25p (!))
More recently retired get £175.20, but older ones even if street homeless and without a penny in savings can only get maximum pension credit to bring income up to £173.75. Modest life savings mean the same very elderly person would get only the £80.45 .
Savings is a huge illogical distortion problem within the benefit system. No distinction is made between having a house worth billions and no known savings, therefore eligible for full benefits, school meals and everything else, and having a pathetic amount of life savings, no private pension at all (normal for older people, especially women), and no roof except a private rental, with the entire rent, food and all bills coming from the basic State Pension of £80.45, and the remaining life savings.
Life savings mean no Housing Benefit, no Pension Credit, no eligibility for council housing even if street homeless, 90, and wheelchair using.
(The infamous Bournemouth Bus Shelter couple were one of the rare examples of a journalist having the plight of old people right in front of him, but that didn't change the system, nor did it change the age hate sneering in this country.)
A poster on this thread describes a clued-up supportive community where mums claim benefits plus earn in undeclared ways of various kinds, while using a babysitting network for one another's children. Of course, the extra income of being a 'single parent' is a disincentive to admit cohabitation. So is the inconvenient merging of two adults in the means assessment. If mum's partner is well supplied with money, mum can be assessed as penniless, provided dad officially doesn't spend more than so many nights at what other people might call the marital home.
Footballers who influence followers and governments might suggest two things: Dads, don't create single mothers: Governments, don't incentivise it.
Footballers anxious for justice and worried about real hunger might put the attention on the weirdness of age hate and savings punishment and the fact it is ordinary rule-abiding people in old age who are truly desperate and failed by every official system, every journalist and every popular clamour for attention.