How about all the other benefits of being on low income including council housing (no need to pay rent), no council tax to pay, whole heap of other benefits including free school lunches, PC for kids, etc I can't find the article right now but I think The Sun (I know not the worlds most reliable source) worked it out that you would need to be earning £3000 a month gross to have the equilvant money/lifestyle a family of 4 could get in benefits.
Now of course given the chose that many people would prefer to work for the money and to be honest things like social care in this country would be fucked if so many people did not do voluntary work. But its a kick in the teeth when you find families being moved into brand new housing, given a couple of thousand to furnish it and then having days of leisure (using facilties that they have free access to), going on flash holidays, when you have to scrimp and save.
BTW, this is based on real life experiance of people I know in these situations. I know that lots of families end up in damp crappy bed-sits and struggle to make ends meet but their are cases out there where it is not the case (*cough* single mum *cough*)
And in case you are wondering I am totally for having a safety net there for people who through no fault of their own end up in shitty situations.
A think this is where your argument got a bit confused in earlier posts fella as i agree with a lot of what you say in this post.!
A dont really believe anything written in the tabloids as its usually a lot of shit and the Sun should really have been renamed the Scum during this election.
There is no doubt that there are certain people who kick the arse out of the system and i agree that they should be dealt with or the system should be changed to deal with that.
I haven't got a scoobie how they will do it but it does need taken care of.
My only problem with earlier posts was the attack on genuine people who were down on their luck and trying their best to get employment being branded in the same category.
I was on ma arse a few years ago and i had to claim benefit and it wasn't very pleasant and a burst ma arse to get a job and a was lucky enough to get one quickly.
A took all the help available in benefits and other things like free stamps and envelopes and training on how to write a cv and perform at interviews.
These small things make a big difference when you are at your lowest and they do help and should always be available.
We need to look at how the social side has failed in Britain and to an extent education has slipped ,and why kids are growing up with this mindset that living off benefits is a good thing.
We have the highest divorce rate per head than anywhere else in the world,why?
Am only 39 but a was brought up in a stable working class family and we were taught to get out of bed and get a job and do your bit.
Kids are now being brought up from a broken background where benefit fraud is a way of life so they don't know any better.
Our government needs to tackle this asap if they seriously want Britain to get back on its feet and slashing benefit and help will only hurt the genuine people who are doing their best.
This slide has been going on for a few generations now and has been ignored and sometimes immigrants have had to take the blame as they have taken up the jobs that some of our people ignored.
When a global meltdown and recession is thrown into the mix then things get messy as jobs become rare and everyone blames each other.
Labour and the Conservatives were guilty of ignoring this for years and both are equally to blame.
Thatcher's axe destroyed familys in the 80,s and early 90,s by turning Britain from an industrial powerhouse into a retail nation too quickly which was devastating to our social structure.
Her reforms were too extreme which resulted in working class familys being chucked on the dole and the ones fortunate enough to stay in work bought their council houses whilst the rest remained unemployed and broken.
She created a new class overnight and created this benefit way of life for people who couldn't adapt.
When Labour came to power they also ignored it although they did try at first with breaks like working tax credit but on a whole they failed to fix a problem on the increase.
They boosted production by using cheap foreign labour and that was fine when the country was in boom and jobs were ten a penny.
People who wanted to work, could work but the maths didn't really add up for some single parents who quickly worked out that they were not that much worse off staying put.
Nobody was really that bothered at first when the economy was booming but when the crash came it all went Pete Tong and now we are blaming immigrants,single mothers the unemployed and Partick Thistle supporters..
The truth is our governments and the banks systems failed us and we are pissed off as we need to take the pain of their failure.
The general election result says it all,,we don't really trust any of them.
One thing a do know, a made up coalition government of left to centre and right wing parties desperate for power is not the way to go.
Am fooked and going for a nap and am sure ma post will get ripped apart.
roud:
