This guy should find a job.

[Fox92]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxYd-fK4mLs

People like this who get loads of money for doing fvck all, while our real heroes have to sell their War medals to live... Hate seeing stuff like that. Something in this Country is messed up.

[Corky]

I agree to an extent Empty, but for reasons no more cynical than this moron making good TV.

A nice, honest job seeker who'd given up the Sky and nights out to pay for bus fares and business clothes to seek a job wouldn't make the blood boil like this vile woman.

It's worth remembering that George Orwell's Two Minutes of Hate idea was in part inspired by his time at the BBC, Nineteen Eighty Four was an incredibly prophetic work when you think about it.

That rather misses the point though. There will always be the spectacularly lazy and the moronic in our society, but while the system allows people like this to slip through the net the media will continue to roll them out as and when they're needed.

But they wouldn't be given an interview, people doing the right thing are most likely to be quiet and reserved about it, it doesn't spark a debate and doesn't generate news really.

I just don't understand the mentality of wanting to show yourself up on national TV, radio, whatever. It'll come back at you at some point.

[BoneDog]

1) shared accommodation for all on hand outs

Who are you talking about here? Anybody on some kind of a benefit?

[MooseBreath]

Something in this Country is messed up.

Normal people not voting is the problem. Gives far too strong a voice to the filthy liberals with their shamefully simplistic one dimensional activism which leads to all sorts of convoluted mess like this.

Who are you talking about here? Anybody on some kind of a benefit?

Anybody who has their accommodation paid for presently.

[Rincewind]

What is "fair"? They don't work, they get given shit for free, and that's not fair? Come off it.

Raise the tax free allowance so they pay less tax and therefore don't need benefits.

The majority on benifits are low paid workers. The unemployed are a small percentage as are the ones who are classed as 'work shy'

[Rincewind]

See the ’No Clear Benefit’ report by Matthew Pennycook and Alex Hurrell for the Resolution Foundation into the impact of council tax benefit reform on low income households.

In the conclusion the authors state:

“The precise social and economic implications of these changes are as yet unknown. Yet we can be reasonably confident that the result for some of the poorest households in England, when considered within the context of stagnant wages and ongoing reductions in tax credits and other in-work support, will be extremely painful. There is not only a very real possibility that large numbers of CTB recipients currently receiving maximum support will struggle to pay small amounts of monthly Council Tax but also that some of the poorest households in England, who rely on partial support to help them meet their Council Tax liabilities, will see their hard-pressed household budgets squeezed even further and, in future years, their work incentives undermined.â€

See the full report at:

http://www.resolutionfoundation.org/media/media/downloads/No_Clear_Benefit.pdf

[MooseBreath]

The majority on benifits are low paid workers. The unemployed are a small percentage as are the ones who are classed as 'work shy'

So you keep saying. But what's your point? Raise the tax free allowance, remove benefits.

[RonnieTodger]

How the bloody hell did we arrive at this point?

Scrounging and proud, no wonder benefit claimaints get such a bad name in this country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxYd-fK4mLs

Fat Mess

[Rincewind]

So you keep saying. But what's your point? Raise the tax free allowance, remove benefits.

My point is you keep saying the unemployed are robbing you of taxes yet the ones working full and part time and on a low wage claim far much more.

[Harry - LCFC]

How the bloody hell did we arrive at this point?

Scrounging and proud, no wonder benefit claimaints get such a bad name in this country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxYd-fK4mLs

How many people are actually in this situation?

I hear people on the news saying they can barely afford to feed their children from their benefit income and then there's people like her who can spend on a variety of luxuries. It really confuses me. Just how many people are in that situation? I get the feeling she's a bit of a rare case and while I it does anger me it isn't a major problem if it isn't too widespread.

[Finnegan]

She's part of a fractional minority that get grossly sensationalised by the news media (owned predominantly by the mega rich) to take attention away from those who can easily afford to pay more (the mega rich) and to split opinion amongst the majority (who aren't mega rich) and turn us on each other.

That's not to say the benefit system is flawless and there aren't cheats, of course there are, but they're not single handedly destroying our economy either. Just as asylum seekers weren't ten years ago or whatever else the scapegoat's been over the years.

[Webbo]

Ahh I understand now, we;re being manipulated. It's not possible that some of us know people like this and are capable of making up our own minds.

[Rincewind]

There are some but not the amount portrayed by the media. Same as there are some mega rich tax avoidance people.

[MooseBreath]

The "mega rich" have never been so high profile. The shadowy, vaguely defined group called "The Bankers" have been a national scapegoat for years now. The tax avoidance thing was all over the national newspapers. Things like MPs expenses were also massively high profile. The youth, having grown up deep in Labour's entitlement culture, even rioted. They were so convinced that they deserved the material success of the rich without any of the effort, they felt it was justified to simply smash through windows and take whatever they wanted. Sections of the public resemble a lynch mob, ready to viciously attack any sign of success, regardless of how that success was achieved. The thinking seems to be, it doesn't matter that you've put your whole life into being successful and all i've done is sit around smoking fags, getting boozed up down the local and churning out scummy little rat-kids, the fact that you have become successful defines you as immoral and I deserve some of your shit. It's a truly horrendous state of affairs, where rather than being celebrated, being successful and making money has been demonised, while being unemployed and taking hand outs is fast becoming the default option for the young.

[leicsmac]

The "mega rich" have never been so high profile. The shadowy, vaguely defined group called "The Bankers" have been a national scapegoat for years now. The tax avoidance thing was all over the national newspapers. Things like MPs expenses were also massively high profile. The youth, having grown up deep in Labour's entitlement culture, even rioted. They were so convinced that they deserved the material success of the rich without any of the effort, they felt it was justified to simply smash through windows and take whatever they wanted. Sections of the public resemble a lynch mob, ready to viciously attack any sign of success, regardless of how that success was achieved. The thinking seems to be, it doesn't matter that you've put your whole life into being successful and all i've done is sit around smoking fags, getting boozed up down the local and churning out scummy little rat-kids, the fact that you have become successful defines you as immoral and I deserve some of your shit. It's a truly horrendous state of affairs, where rather than being celebrated, being successful and making money has been demonised, while being unemployed and taking hand outs is fast becoming the default option for the young.

Agreed, but there's a difference between being a national scapegoat (not that the popular media really made that much of it) and actually being brought to task for helping bring the current predicament about. Words are cheap (sticks and stones etc), and that's all they've had to suffer - which is something of an injustice IMO.

As for the tax avoidance, until there's a globally enforced tax rate, there's not an awful lot that can be done about that.

I do think that there are those who will look to attack any success whatsoever, but at the same time look at the Olympics last year and at the hard work stories that do pop up in the media from time to time. Most peoples responses to that tend to be congratulatory.

I think it's what the public perceives to be undeserved success (either by in the work put in or the money taken out, take 'overpaid footballers' as an example) is something to be gone after, not any kind of success.

[Rincewind]

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Benefit cuts: Monday will be the day that defines this government

Those on low incomes, after all the vicious talk dismissing them as cheats and idlers, will be hit by an avalanche of cuts

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    Polly Toynbee
    
  • The Guardian, Thursday 28 March 2013 20.51 GMT
    
  • Jump to comments (1321)
    

'The Guardian has revealed how jobcentre staff are under orders to find any sanction to knock people off benefits.' Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

Not many know what is about to happen on Monday: neither those about to be knocked down nor those sailing too high above them to notice. But historians will see it as the day that defines the Cameron government. An avalanche of benefit cuts will hit the same households over and over, with no official assessment of how far this £18bn reduction will send those who are already poor into beggary.

In his 2009 Hugo Young lecture, David Cameron spoke with apparent passion of the damage done by inequality: "We all know, in our hearts, that as long as there is deep poverty living systematically side by side with great riches, we all remain the poorer for it." The wise saw the wolf beneath the sheepskin: sure enough, once in power, the language he and his ministers used to blame the poor for their plight was cruder and fiercer than in Thatcher's day. You need to go back to Edwardian times to find ministers and commentators so viciously dismissing all on low incomes as cheats, idlers and drunks.

On BBC news, Iain Duncan Smith, confronted with irrefutable cases of hardship, said: "It's about trying to get as many people as possible out of the welfare trap and into lives they can control themselves." As the economist JK Galbraith observed: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

So far, public opinion seems alarmingly content with these cuts – but before we despair of human kindness, many can plead ignorance. The government relies on destitution staying silent and unseen, isolated in families with no collective voice. Dear Guardian reader, you know what's happening because we report on the social security calamity almost daily, as you would expect.

Readers of the Mirror have been briefed this week, and the Independent covered the bedroom tax on its front page. But look back through this week's Times, Telegraph, Mail and Sun to see how their readers are told nothing. They know a lot about immigrants. Sun readers were told the welfare bill is soaring out of control. They read a freak story of a woman refusing to take well-paid jobs to keep her children's free university places.

Times readers learned at length of Tanni Grey-Thompson's ordeal of hauling herself up 12 floors when her lift broke down, but only a very short story on her admirable campaign against cuts leaving disabled people £4,600 poorer. Telegraph readers were told "benefit claimants should be forced to seek extra work", with a battery of stories against unfair budget treatment of stay-at-home mums suffering a "traditional families penalty". The Bishop of Exeter pleaded their cause for tax relief, although surely he should be raising hell about the cuts?

People may read these papers to be protected from inconvenient facts about growing inequality and the catastrophic falling behind of the poor. The Brookings Institution reports that ever-worsening inequality will be "permanent" from now on. Most people would be alarmed at a never-ending widening of the gulf, if they knew. Most people want to believe the equal opportunities myth, but are easily comforted when told the poor are bad and the well-off deserving, so social justice prevails in this best of all possible worlds.

Here's an interesting brief story in the Telegraph: a report that young children moving home three or more times suffer serious behaviour problems. Unfortunately, the Telegraph made no mention of the many families about to be uprooted and sent far from relatives, jobs and schools, into temporary accommodation and B&Bs, then moved on each time their rents rise. With virtually no takers for Cameron's parenting class vouchers, it's the government that needs lessons in child development.

No amount of IDS newspeak can turn the bedroom tax into a "spare bedroom subsidy". Frank Field calls for social landlords to knock down walls or brick up rooms so people can keep their homes: it's all a fraud, since IDS knows that 660,000 tenants with a spare room can never be found smaller properties, they will pay the extra or fall into debt and arrears until they are evicted. From Monday, most of the poorest get a new bill of an average £138 for council tax. Landlords expect mayhem when tenants are paid rent directly every month: pilots show many fall into debt.

Now add in these: disability living allowance starts converting into personal independence payment with a target to remove 500,000 people in new Atos medical tests. The Guardian has revealed how jobcentre staff are under orders to find any sanction to knock people off benefits. New obstacles are strewn in their path: people must apply for their benefits online from computers they don't possess; many of these claimants are semi-literate. When in dire straits, there will be no more crisis loans, only a card for buying food, with not a penny for bus fares. Trussell Trust food banks expect a great surge of the hungry, so they ask everyone to donate the price of an Easter egg.

Here is the final wicked twist: legal aid has been removed for advice on benefits, housing, divorce, debt, education and employment. On Monday the budget of Citizens Advice for such cases falls from £22m to £3m. The few emergency cases still covered – families facing instant eviction – can only use a phone service, not face-to-face legal help. Law centres will close. There will be no help on school exclusions, landlord or employer harassment, or failure to pay wages.

Every new benefit system starts out with a high error rate: everyone knows the complex universal credit will leave millions with incorrect or no payments – and now, nowhere to go for help. Courts and tribunals expect chaos as people try to make their own cases without any help. Try to imagine the plight of people in debt because of the non-arrival of payments, with no credit on their phones to call and inquire, no crisis loan to buy phone credit, no internet access – and now no advice service either.

I refuse to believe most people would not be shocked if they knew, if they saw and if they understood. Even some of the 30% who always vote Tory might be appalled if they weren't so well deceived by their ministers, MPs and newspapers, who lie knowingly and deliberately. People should know that historians will record the earthquake of social destruction that happened in their name, while they read of nothing but "scroungers" and the "soaring benefit bill".

[Guest MattP]

About fcuking time.

Hopefully we'll see some real Tory policy on Monday and we can stop this fraud that has become a lifestyle choice.

[MooseBreath]

Will be interesting to see how many of these people who are set to be "sent into beggary" miraculously find a job just in time to save themselves.

I like Polly Toynbee though, I'm pretty sure that as a free spirited liberal in my early 20s, it was one of her ridiculous articles which alerted me to how stupid I was being. I'm sure she must be a plant, because surely any leftie with half a brain can see that she talks complete and utter bollocks?

[leicsmac]

About fcuking time.

Hopefully we'll see some real Tory policy on Monday and we can stop this fraud that has become a lifestyle choice.

Jeez Matt, the last time I saw something this self-centred was when I was doing control work with a gyroscope a few months back.

TBH though the thing that worries me most about that report is the depth of political agenda that the print media has (on both sides). There's not even a scintilla of balanced reporting anywhere.

[pSinatra]

God help anyone who find themselves out of work & at the mercy of the current government.

I hope they find getting a new job as easy at they think it is. I hope they are able to pay their mortgage & feed their family from the £71 a week from Tescos. That they don't lose their self-respect - applying for 50 jobs a week & never getting a response.......not just the ones you know you aren't qualified for, but the jobs you're massively over-qualified for. You would do any job would you? Clean toilets would you? So would hundreds of other people & they're all applying for that same job.

There's opportunities out there - you've just got to apply yourself.

I wish you luck & should things not turn out the way you expect........don't mind the rest of us labelling you a lazy, benefits cheat who chooses to live like that. It's because of people like you that this country is in the mess it is.

[Rincewind]

In a couple of weeks, the economy will be put right.

Because at last cuts such as the “bedroom tax†and universal tax credit come in, so we’ll finally get some money back off the richest people in this country – the poor. Any glance at our society makes it obvious who’s run up all the debts; the poor, that’s who, swanning around in charity shop cardigans and galavanting on shopping expeditions like the women in Sex and the City, squealing “Hey let’s go to Poundland and buy a dishclothâ€, in ways the rich can barely dream of.

The rich have to pay for the poor’s avarice, with many currency speculators at Price Waterhouse having to take on extra work to make ends meet. They’ve barely finished destabilising the yen when they take two buses to a cleaning job, polishing a bedsit in Tower Hamlets. Many CEOs find their salary runs out and live on cat food until their bonus arrives, and 40 per cent of the board at the Royal Bank of Scotland are now on the game.

This is mainstream economics, that the poor are richer than the rich. Modern politicians must see a film on Comic Relief about starving children in Somalia and cry: “What a tragedy. Is it any wonder Africa’s in a pickle while the extravagant pigs flaunt their mosquitoes like that?†Then they call the number on the screen and pledge to help out the village by shutting down their well.

It’s an imaginative approach, because less qualified types might imagine the banking crisis may have been caused, in some part, by bankers. But it takes a trained mind to understand that the people who robbed us are the poor. If a government minister stormed into a bank in the middle of an armed robbery, he’d yell: “There are the robbers; those bastards lying on the floor tied up and snivelling that they don’t want to die. And someone help out this man, the poor chap’s trying to carry a sack AND a sawn-off shotgun, he’ll pull a muscle.â€

It’s a tricky argument to pull off, that the poor caused the debt so they should pay it back. Maybe that’s why most weeks there are stories in certain newspapers about a woman with 45 kids on benefits, who then bought a giraffe and now that’s on benefits but she said it was cramped so the council has put it up in the Shard, and two of the kids have got Compulsive Potting Disorder so they’ve been given a snooker table but she couldn’t be referee because she’s allergic to white gloves so the mayor has to do it, otherwise he’d be put in jail by Europe.

Then they quietly drop the story when it emerges that the reporter missed out the detail that although it did happen, it was in a dream he had while suffering from food poisoning.

So it’s replaced with an article about a man on invalidity benefit who turned out to be secretly competing in triathlon tournaments in his loft, and there’s a woman who hasn’t worked since 1975 who receives so much in housing benefit that she pays Martin Amis to fill in her claim forms for more money. And they’ll print an extract that starts: “You ask why I have attended no job interview in 38 years and I can only weep the tears of a fallen angel, reach to the constellations and ask that you, dear assessor, replete in your cruddy crude crudeness, be spared the dodgy knee I’ve had all that time. Time. Whatever, whenever, whoever my succulent sobriquet, that may be. Oh, and I need a new fridge.â€

Iain Duncan Smith will raise the case in parliament, until it turns out it was made up on a website called “People On Benefits Are Aliens From Jupiter – FACT!!!†and it is never mentioned again.

Then they turn to immigrants, and this time all politicians agree we can’t carry on as we are, paying all these benefits to them because we’re about to run out of everything. If he was to glance at his own department’s figures, Duncan Smith would see that 6.6 per cent of immigrants claim benefits, compared with 16.6 per cent of non-immigrants. Which goes to show that he doesn’t have time to look at figures because he’s a very busy man given that he’s working, and anyone who receives benefits who quotes a statistic correctly should have their money cut since they’ve been arsing about looking at numbers when they should be trying to get work.

At least they’re attacking the poor, though, who caused the mess in the first place. Because the banking system, as we know, was ruined by the residents of a tower block in Toxteth. In league with a woman from Sunderland on invalidity benefit with chronic back pain, they lent vast sums to international investors at the bottom of a stairwell by the bins, with not a thought for the damage caused to the global financial system. So now they’re being turfed out of their house for having a spare room for their kids. That’ll teach them.