A little anecdote about a friend of mine to add to the "scrounger" theory.

His mum had given up work to give birth to him, there not being much in the way of maternity pay at th time. His dad was in a decent, fairly well paid job. Then she had become pregnant with his younger sister when he was about 5. So obviously did not seek employment.
The plan being, in 4 or so years when his sister starts school then his mum would probably find at least part time work, but even then she wasn't receiving benefits. But his sister had severe MS and needed a large amount of care. So she stayed off work. The money from his dads job just about seeing them through.
Then, when he was 13, my friends dad died suddenly of a heart attack. Suddenly there was no income and 2 kids to look after, 1 with serious issues. Fortunately there was a safety net there for my friend and his family. The benefits his mum received (I'm unsure what exactly they were but some form of housing benefit, income support etc) enabled them to stay in their modest house and just about scrape by. She couldn't get a job, she was essentially a full time carer. Then, a few years later she did, in my opinion, a wonderful thing. She adopted a 4 year old deaf boy with severe MS.
Now if you take the Daily Mail route you could say, single mum with 3 kids who hasn't worked for decades scrounges off the state. I'd rather say incredible woman deserves all the help the state and society can give her.

Its not an unusual story, the circumstances are unique but changing circumstances are the cause of most peoples reliance, short or long term, on state help.

Of course it doesn't make for newspaper headlines or for politicians spin to say "This family's main breadwinner has been made unemployed because of the recession and so for the next year or so, until things pick up, they will rely on benefits", no its much easier to call the unemployed "shirkers" to deflect blame for the fact that its you, the politician who caused the unemployment, directly or indirectly, and its you the politician who has it within their means to do something about it, but you won't, because your political machinations haven't gone far enough yet and the shirking unemployed are a price worth paying as long as everyone believes the spin.

The stories of a lifetime spent unemployed refer to small numbers, the stories of generations of unemployed have been proven by their own f'kin statisticians to be outright lies, yet still they print them.

Given that his area of representation was contained within Greg Mulhollands constituency I tweeted the House of Commons most prolific tweeter too asking him what he thought of one of his coalition partners being so ignorant of facts, surprisingly he did not reply either.

What arrant nonsense! Even by Southstanders diminishing standards, that is a pretty poor attempt at fake outrage. No mention of rickets.....sleeping 4 to a bed under a pile of old overcoats.....the mockery of the other schoolkids at the holes in their secondhand clothes, etc etc.

Perhaps a second look at what has been actually written, both here, and in that particular article will help clear the fog?

One simple question people.....Are none of you surprised at the amounts being handed out to these claimants? And yes, we are aware that ticking the required boxes on the pro forma will result in x amount being dished out.

Why ?

Type as much flummery as you like, it doesn't cover up the fact that have either failed to answer (or are ignoring) the vital question.
What would you do about the children?

I'm sorry, is there something in the AUP that requires either me, or the author of this particular article to provide a solution?

Perhaps you could take a moment to answer what was a very simple question......

You are the one getting in a froth about the amount of money in benefits being paid to one family ... but, so far, you appear to be deliberately avoiding saying what you would do otherwise.
I am reasonably sanguine about it because I believe that we, as a society, have a collective responsibility, especially where children are involved.

No. Because the amounts available are set out in DWP/Benefits Agency/etc. guidelines and rules and these are subject to scrutiny by Ministers and Parliament. If a person is eligible they get the amount set out. Simple. No need for surprise.

What's your view?

Seems to me you are very good at ignoring others questions and quick to ask your own.

Unless you are thick you know full well cases like the one in question are not typical and are in a minority. I am sure you also ought to be able to work out it would be best for government to direct resources at increasing its revenue to where the great gain can be realised. That isn't by spending time and effort reducing or restricting the benefits this woman receives or looking for houses that have the curtains closed at 11am in the morning.

It would gain fair more by closing tax avoidance loopholes, being better at dealing with tax evasion and doing things like imposing a rent cap which would at a stroke reduce the housing benefits bill. Many more billions to be saved here. You may well say I'd like them to to both, deal with the benefits "scroungers" and deal with tax avoidance, evasion etc but it is simply not practical to do so. So which would you prefer they directed their resources at?

From reading your posts it seems to me you are not interested in the government maximising its revenue but are simply outraged that this woman lives off the state and for some reason give the impression that this exception proves the rule.

You said earlier people should be be incentivised to work as opposed to being able to live off benefits. How would you suggest we do that? Threaten them with poverty and starvation if they don't take any job on offer?

Where are these jobs when we have millions unemployed anyway? What about when the jobs that are available don't pay enough to live off? Would you as a taxpayer be happy to subsidise low paying employers profits just so people "contribute"?

I'd be careful of how you phrase things if I were you. It could be you one day and I presume, due to your opinion you wouldn't claim diddly squat and you would live off fresh air?

FWIW I think this government know that 99.99% of benefit claimants are not scroungers, shirkers, liars and fraudsters and don't keep their curtains drawn until lunch time but its called propaganda. They churn out these stories day after day, week after week in the likes of the DM to keep the Great British (hardworking tax payer?) Public angry therefore justifying everything they are cutting to the unemployed, the disabled, single parents etc, etc. Just on Monday, the day that DLA ceased to exist to be replaced by PIP the DM ran a story of x% of disability claimants claimed for a bad back. A coincidence? Not on your nelly. They did it because every news channel was reporting that day of the changeover and you would remember the article you read in the DM and get very angry about the "bad back brigade".

Take a step back rumpelstiltskin, do a bit of research and find out for yourself the real stories of these people and don't believe everything you read in the "news"papers.

No. There isn't. Nobody has suggested otherwise.



Perhaps you'd take a moment to contribute to the discussion with some sort of a reasoned response other than your usual little 'outraged of wherever but offering no possible solutions' routine – not least since others contributing to this discussion have done precisely that.

And just for clarity, that is nothing to do with the AUP and everything to do with debate.

Well said.

Very good question.

To which, I suspect, you won't get an answer because no realistic answer would conform with the ideology.

And you could add to that, the increase in underemployment.

To which, for the sake of old Rumples, I'll reiterate what I've said more than once before: when we have jobs available for every member of the working-age population, perhaps then we can start bothering about all those nasty shirkers and skivers. Until then, it's all – as plenty of others have pointed out – just propaganda to take in and deflect the gullible.