On benefits and proud.
 

Did anybody else watch this last night.

Quite the eye opener.

The sooner they bring in a cap as to how many kids the state will pay to keep the better. Might change the attitude of " I will have as many kids as I like..it is not illegal".
No problem with someone having 11 kids..as long as they get off their backsides and work to keep them. I do object to the attitude that the more the merrier as a meal ticket.
£900 a week on benefits...it is beyond my comprehension.

Sensationalist propaganda using a highly unusual example to further the belief that ALL benefits claimants are "scum". Hate this type of show.

I'm not, in theory, against capping benefits at maybe 4 children - but then, the upcoming £26000 cap with universal credit should cover that anyway?

This just seems like needless fodder for Daily Mail readers to gnash their teeth over. It's like when a major newspaper did a "breakdown" of the expenses of a family on benefits and included cigarettes and beer in the calculation. Sigh. Again ridiculous propaganda suggesting that people on benefits are "living it up" somehow.

If you can't take care of your kids they should be put up for adoption imo. There are plenty of parents in America who would like to adopt white babies from disadvantaged backgrounds.

So glad you have posted this and put my thoughts far more eloquently than I ever could.

People criticize American adoptive parents for adopting black babies or asian babies, but it's because there aren't enuf white babies for us to adopt. There are so many good parents wanting to adopt in America, but there arn't enuf white babies. maybe we can solve this if the UK allowed us to adopt the white babies from UK.

If they can't care for their own children then they have no business having them.

:joker:

Society makes a bet that for every scrounger looking for a meal ticket, there are hundreds or thousands who need the help of the government to provide a social safety net, and do you know what? It generally works out well. At the moment the gap between the bottom and top is getting wider and wider. That's not because of the people at the bottom.

No one ever makes a programme like this about the many ways millionaires and billionaires swan around avoiding their tax burdens (which costs the state more than all the scroungers do) How about seeing guys on yachts bragging about how they pay their accountants an extra zero to make sure none of their money goes towards feeding the children of poor families?

I viewed a clip of it.

It looked bad.
Stuck in a rut

Watch here

45mins
http://www.channel5.com/shows/on-ben...benefits-proud

Tick you are over 16 , first


Posted on the above site Ch5 site :

[AndrewZoey :
I am Dutch, living in The Netherlands,
and was amazed by this programme.
Why isn't there any shame
amongst these people? I was shocked! ]

I have no objection to people who genuinely need help.
I disagree with the fact that this is HIGHLY unusual, it might not be the norm, but it s not that unsual.
Nothing new either, it has gone on for generations and time something was done about it.
The upcoming cap will have no bearing on this family, the mother is on disability etc and she will still receive her £60,000 a year from the taxpayer.
The fact that she reckons she has to do her "shopping" from the shoplfters as she would not manage otherwise makes me wonder just how much she does spend on cigarettes and takeaway food.

I totally agree about the millionaire and billionaire tax dodgers.
This should be sorted out, all the loopholes could be taken care of.
I am all for the safety net for the needy, heaven knows any one of us could be in the position of needing help.
I just strongly object to people taking the money then sticking two fingers up and saying f* ck you if you don't like it.

If we look at the top and the bottom of the wealth scale, the ones at the top cost us the most, and by that factor alone do way more damage to the country, than people at the bottom. However the only fixes we see or hear about seem to include reducing the services/funds of the people at the bottom.

It's a nonsensical approach to a societal problem. The money wasted at the top takes money from infrastructure repairs and community investment, which in turn creates jobs for people at the bottom. Until we tackle the problems with tax avoidance then I have no interest in waging a war on the poor to ensure we get the minority of a minority of scroungers.

Yes, more should be done to make the fat cats pay their taxes, without a doubt.
I should imagine that if they paid their way it would make us all happy .

Nothing stopping the government sorting it at both ends of the scale....if they REALLY wanted to.

Most people given the chance will work some will work hard but no one will ever convince me that some people are able to work so hard that through the fruits of that extra labour they are now millionaires or multi millionaires.

No , they were in right place right time and found a way to amass these fortunes. The point here is that for every billionaire out there are a million desparately poor people with nothing . This is the true nature of Capitalism it is inherently unjust as it redirects a finite wealth resource and distributes it unfairly as can be seen in the current extremes of wealth and poverty in most developed western capitalist countries.

Having a system that tries to help disadvantaged people can only be a good thing but programmes like these seek to publicise the extreme examples that do appear unfair. This is typical Tory biased press propaganda to make the dismantling of our Welfare state easier to do under the noses of the public.

We must resist this and cling tighter to our current system, in fact we should limit the amount of wealth creation in this country, we should tax individuals and businesses more so that the net amount of profit they make should not become obscene like most banks.

Utility companies should be tightly regulated and ALL profits should be fed back into the infrastructure NOT paid to bloody shareholders...

I could rabbit on about this all day but suffice to say channelling all ones anger and frustration about the unfairness of the state of our Society onto a family who can't master birth control , is in my opinion rather feeble and lazy...!!!

Hows that? I thought the cap affected everyone?

And yeah, it is highly unusual for someone to have that many kids and be on benefits

I will use a daily mail article PURELY because if anything, their results will be overstated. There is no chance at all that there are less people than the mail claim on benefits with loads of kids

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...it-broods.html

Also worth baring in mind with that list, that those on income support..many of them will be working too.

In theory a cap sounds good. But theres the problem of those who had kids when they could afford them, and then lost their job. Also the problem of no contraceptive being 100% effective. Unless we expect people to go celibate/get sterilized if they are out of work at any period in their lives.

I'm no expert on this, but I watched the programme and the narrator did say the cap would not apply to the woman with 11 kids as her daughter was on DLA.

DLA is in the late stages of being phased out

BIB - That's terrible. These kids are at a disadvantage enough without being forced to live in a trailer park fed a diet of Burger King.

No, apparently her benefits are not to be capped. Makes a mockery of all the spouting done by the Tories.

It's being changed to PIP as far as I am aware.

If this lady can't manage on £900 a week, gets stuff on the knock and has no chidcare to pay for I would be astounded at how most working people would even dream they could afford it.

My problem with the cap is this, you can not make kids starve no matter how irresponsible the parents are.
Alright to warn people this will happen but a bit late for people with larger families already.
Aren't they on about no child benefit beyond the first two kids?

I didnt watch the program. But you need to remember this is one lady. One selfish ****er by the sounds of it. 900 quid a week should be enough for anyone to live on (including bankers and politicians :whistle: )

I dislike how cases like this make the tv/the rags so often. Some people (mainly daily mail readers) then get it into their heads that this is a common way to live. You never hear about Mr and Mrs Smith down the road from these lot, who are struggling to get by.

I suspect if a cap came in it wouldnt affect those already claiming. Though I thought that about the 25k cap too so I could be wrong.

Even if it was just for the future though..I don't think a blanket approach helps at all. You could have someone who had, say, 5 kids when in a well paid job. Then got laid off.

You could have someone with 2, who is being careful and still falls pregnant. Is it fair to expect them to have an abortion/put kid up for adoption?

You could say they wouldnt be forced to have an abortion, and that would be true, but their current children and the expected one would suffer.

There will be, and is a minority of pisstakers in every system. But thats what it is, a minority.

Exactly, with any law/regulation/system there will always be the ones wanting to take advantage of it. And they're all from every class/background etc. Demonisation of an entire group of people from a few examples is nonsensical.

They need to work on targeting the criminals and pisstakers rather than punishing everyone.

No easy answers here.

We always took the view that 2 were as much as we could ever afford to bring up, hubby had the snip. Down to personal choice I suppose. Although I would have loved another baby..hubby won out due to my health issues and common sense.
One of my friend sons had the snip and his wife fell with baby number 3, so mistakes can and do happen.