Forums Forums General Forums A - Z Lifestyle The Benefit Cheats / Cheaters

THERES A D I F F E R E N C E!!!



See, there is work for you out there, you would make a great writer, i for one actually enjoyed that story

You never know, you may just be the next stephen king!!!

Calm down calm down

What on earth are you on about? I'm not tarring people on benefits, I'm just saying there are too many people who are very happy to milk the system and have no intentions of finding work.

i think they are on to much, my answer is give them food vouchers, the local off licence or betfred wont take them, so BUY FOOD for yourself and kids, they dont get benefits to "treat" themselfs, people spending hand outs on nights out ect, yes i understand that there are people out there that do struggle and depend on benefits, but that leaves the scroungers that do take the piss, false claims and people on the sick, bad back and depression change the record it makes me

I haven't read through all of this but seems like most discussions with some for and some against.

I think we have to be very careful about labelling people. One young man is in a mortuary at the moment probably because he was about to lose his job and couldn't see a future. Perhaps he didn't want to be thought of as a benefit scrounger? Maybe the homeless guy they have also found dead on Bidston hill didn't want to be known as a scrounger hence his homelessness?

The welfare state was created for everyone who might fall on hard times. Certainly Thatcher and her ilk used it to massage the unemployment figures when it suited them by handing out incapacity benefit to anyone who had as much as a cold and no job in the eighties and nineties. Now I am told they employ some private firm to get people off the benefit and it costs more than they are recovering? Doesn't matter though because its private enterprise.

It's the same old story, divide and conquer. There but for the grace of god go any of us. Think!

Well I suffer from a bad back (occasionally) and depression and I have never claimed a penny in means tested benefits in my life !!.....Agree totally that most benefits should be paid in vouchers, this should have been brought in years ago.

hey sneezy, if your entitled to it claim it, im 37 and have paid into this benefit pot for 20 years now so if i can get something back i will, i have never claimed im lucky to have had a job since ive left school, and yes i feel for the people like john how worked for blockbusters so so sad

Well said wise one, i applaud you.

hey sneezy, if your entitled to it claim it, im 37 and have paid into this benefit pot for 20 years now so if i can get something back i will, i have never claimed im lucky to have had a job since ive left school, and yes i feel for the people like john how worked for blockbusters so so sad



Thanks ....but as you say ...never been entitled to anything, worked all my life since I was 16 so have had to pay my way all of my life.

Maybe the word 'Scroungers' is wrong, as it does give a slightly different slant than,

'Benefit Cheats'.

Many of us have possibly heard of or come across a person who 'cheats' the benefit system and not necessarily on a personal level. There are a lot out there and we all know it.

As someone who has recently been unemployed for a period of six months (I have had the good fortune to be starting work in a few weeks), it does appear to me that a large number of people have fallen for the lie that is peddled about benefit scroungers (as they probably did about single mothers and immigrants and gay people).

Anyone claiming JSA has to attend the job centre every two weeks. At the meeting you have to provide details of all your work-related activity for the prior two weeks. At the meeting, your advisor will recommend a few jobs which you must then apply for (even if you do not think they are suitable work for your skills). If you do not, your JSA will be withdrawn.

A large number of JSA claimants are also now on the work programme. A private company is paid to find you work, and will ask you to attend several times per week for meetings at which work will be discussed. If you do not attend, or do not follow an instruction, again your JSA will be withdrawn (leaving you with no money to live on).

Recently they have started putting forward people for unpaid 'training' (compulsory) at big companies - where in effect the big companies are getting staff paid for by the taxpayer (at £1.75 per hour to the person working!)

The level of JSA for all of this is the princely sum of £70 per week. To pay the gas, electricity, water, telephone / internet (necessary for jobsearch work), TV license as well as your food and travel bills (and clothing).

In April, the £70 (which is being increased by 70p per week) will also have to pay a proportion of Council Tax.

Now I have found a job (with no help from the work programme private company provider), the company will now receive £2000 of your money...

I would ask anybody who thinks that benefits are in any way an extravagant lifestyle to try it for six months and see of their opinion changes. Perhaps we should not take what the tabloids (who have their own agenda) tell us as the gospel truth...

Does anyone know if it's illegal to eat poor people? Apparently poor people are fatter.

Asking for a friend.

Poor people may be fatter because they can't afford fresh fruit and veg every day. Cheap frozen food is unhealthy it's full of fillers and buying chips is cheap. People don't realize how expensive some food items are.

Unfortunately I am unemployed and I am always struggling. I have to buy cheap food, plan my money out and I never have any spare to spend on anything other than food and bills. I don't drink or smoke so I don't waste it on that. I find it really hard and soul destroying. It's embarrassing having to go into the job centre and be labelled as a "bum". It's hard at the moment I lost my job a few months ago and I've been looking for work ever since.

A few people mentioned food stamps but only a proportion of that could be stamps because people need the money to pay bills. I still have to pay water, electricity and gas out of that money.

I went to the job centre the other week and some young girl was standing outside just shouting I AM NEVER GOING TO BE ON THE DOLE fooking .... She was basically trying to start an argument with anyone. I thought how narrow minded is she, just wait until she loses her job (if she has/gets one) and is on her arse and see if she comes crawling for help.

Benefits are good and I am glad they are around to help people but the people who are taking advantage shouldn't ruin it for everyone else. Instead of trying to give people less/more the people who are clearly alcoholics, drug users, gamblers infact have any addiction and people who are clearly not doing enough on their job search should be thrown off. That goes for all other benefits too. Instead of everyone else getting this view of being lazy arseholes.

What really gets me is the myth that the majority of benefits claimants are not genuine, and are therefore somehow deserving of scorn. However these damaging untruths may have started, they have rapidly pervaded into everyday consciousness, to the extent that it becomes widely accepted that they are true.

To a large degree, I believe it suits this government's agenda for wider society to view benefits claimants in this manner, as evidenced by several ministers' lazy claims that it is not fair that other people have to go to work whilst those not in work sit around watching Jeremy Kyle on their plasma TVs, because it entitles them to attack the otherwise unjustifiable. Do government ministers have specific figures for how widespread their claim is I wonder, or is it merely convenient speculation?

Don't get me wrong, anybody abusing the system should rightly be condemned, but to use an emotive stereotype, which plays on the prejudices and fears of the uninformed, is disingenuous, and very damaging to the majority of benefits claimants. To skew public perception to the extent that the starting point should be to view claimants as scroungers, unless they can somehow justify that they are not, flies in the face of any notion of natural justice, and is cynical in the extreme.

One particularly vile piece of cynicism by the Tories is to have a preconceived target of how many claimants it wishes to remove from Incapacity Benefits. Notwithstanding the now notorious behaviour of ATOS, who have the contract to review claims, if, as the government state, every claim will be judged entirely on its own merits, how can there possibly be a target, as that indicates pre-judgement? As Minister for the Disabled, Wirral West MP Esther McVey is culpable for this sham.

When David Cameron talks of "fairness", I feel he fails to acknowledge that when making cuts across the board, these decisions have a wholly disproportionate effect on the poorest and most vulnerable in society. Whilst the more affluent may bemoan not being able to afford a desirable but non-essential things, those at the bottom have much more immediate problems, like keeping any form of roof over their heads, clothing themselves, and having sufficient food and warmth.

Being on Benefits is bad enough, without being perceived as a scrounger, or having even the most basic means to support yourself being ideologically attacked by the Tories in the name of "fairness".

We are not all in this together, and at some point, there will be inevitable repercussions to the audacity of any political party proceeding on the basis of this falsehood.

Nice post 24424m,lucid and perspicacious.

I tend to agree with what 24424m has posted.I wonder why the media don't keep banging on about the banks, huge corporations and really rich folks who avoid paying taxes by loopholes etc made by the rich and their croniesthemselves. They own the media and the government that's why

What gets me angry is when the government appoints someone like ATOS and doctors to examine the claims of sick and disabled people.
These appointees are going to do their best to disqualify claims so they can keep their nice lucrative contracts.
Don't they believe that our own GP's are good enough.

By the way I don't claim any benefits for myself in any way