[kirklancaster]

Originally Posted by joeysteele

The vulnerable and those doing things right suffer heavily when attacks like this are made on them, then they have the added insult of the stigma of being on benefits and people branding them all cheats and scroungers.
Even govt; ministers.

I agree in part with how you ended your post as to if you think someone is getting benefits wrongly report them,I agree it would then be looked into obviously.
However should someone accuse someone wrongly I would like to see the book thrown at them, after some of the horror stories I have seen happen to people in dire need who then often have a long road of appeals and trauma before getting all re-instated.

Absolutely a brilliant post from you on this topic,I have to say,one that leaves me dismayed so many can be swayed by govt; propaganda and the medias gross misrepresentation of the facts.

I am not swayed by any government propaganda Joey - no more than I am about to capitulate and change the truth of what I know from personal direct experience just because my view is unpopular.

If the government officials and medical staff wrongly asses genuine claimants as fraudulent or able to work, then those injustices are later officially overturned and benefits rightfully restored - then that is very welcome. But all this means is that genuine people are wrongfully being targeted and having their benefits wrongly taken away by an inefficient government screening process. It has no bearing whatsoever on the very real examples of benefit fraudsters who are cheating the system - irrespective of numbers.

If anything it further scandalises government policy, because their initiative should be screening out these fraudsters not wrongly victimising genuine claimants.

I'm afraid that merely reporting benefit fraudsters does not always result in the cheats being punished. If only it was that simple.

I had the tenants of a detached house in Burnley, Lancashire 'do a moonlight' and they left the property in a trashed condition. To cut a long complicated story short, the property was left empty for several months awaiting the catalogue of works needed to restore it. When I went to the property to start work, the next door neighbour told me that the ex-tenant was regularly coming back to the property and entering it by key and collecting his mail despite the fact I had changed all the locks.

When I left the property after working on it, I screwed up and secured the all the external doors from inside. The next day when I entered, there were several letters addressed to the ex-tenant on the hall floor which had been posted through the letterbox. One - clearly - was a Housing Benefit giro cheque, yet these toe-rags were both self-employed and ran 2 businesses in Burnley, and were supposed to have been funding the rent from their own pocket.

I rang the Housing Benefits and told them what had happened and pointed out that they may have been fraudulently claiming from day one without my knowledge. After some time, the HB employee I was talking to said that they had - over £6,000 in total - and that she was putting me through to someone else. She did put me through and the person I was then talking to said; "Just tear it up love if you will and bin it". I had quite an argument with her but got nowhere as she kept maintaining that; "there wasn't anything they could do", even when I said that surely it was obtaining money by deception - especially the 3 months which he had continued to claim for when he wasn't even living in my property.

Like all customer services via phone, the degree of response and service you actually obtain depends on who you end up talking to - some just can't be bothered.

Anyway, I have no problem with anyone disagreeing with my view - that is their prerogative on a forum - but I have a problem understanding just why they should disagree when all I am attacking are those who are fleecing the system.