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.

Indeed. Although I am at a loss to understand why any sane person would expect our current unemployment figures of around 2 million to be vastly reduced any time soon. By any Government.

And as equally preposterous, would be the idea that someone sitting at home for the last 20 years, and currently being subsidised to the tune of 32k, would be motivated to apply for any of those jobs.

My view is, if you had read and understood what was written in the last sentence of my previous post, you would not be stating the bleeding obvious, re DWP guidelines! And as I am not familiar with their pamphlets/guidelines etc, I was indeed gob smacked that you could receive 32k.

Would it not be a hell of a lot cheaper, if all Agencies simply handed out a Cosco card to those with a large state subsidised family, enabling them to bulk buy, and possibly leading to increased job vacancies created by this hitherto untapped market??

Bulk buying of garlic bread....it's the future!

That would a reasonable point, and I recall the "poverty trap" when I studied economics many moons ago, but the report states"

[i"She currently receives around £31,200 a year – £2,600 a month – through a combination of housing benefit, child benefit, child tax credits and income support."[/i

Given that if she was working she may well receive a similar amount (certainly the child benefit and possibly reduced amounts of housing benefit and child tax credits), then the motivation to work may be there as she could end up with more than the £32K.

Which previous post?

If you have a beef with the amounts available, take it up with your MP, and don't pick on the people who claim what they are permitted, under the law, to claim.

So that means we will always have around 2 million on benefits for the foreseeable future. I presume you are OK with these people receiving benefits while they look for work?



What would you suggest would motivate her to apply for these jobs? Simply reducing her benefit? The threat of prison maybe?

A job on minimum wage for 40 hours a week for 48 weeks a year gives you just over £12K a year outside London so if her benefits were cut to less than that so she was incentivised to look for work would that suit you?

The fact she then wouldn't have enough to pay the rent or live off would be by the by??? If not then you must be in favour of her wage being topped up to a level that would be adequate for that. In which case you are simply subsidising employers profits.

And of course we are assuming she could even get a job that was full time on minimum wage that wasn't casual or on a zero hours contract/temporary work.

There are alternatives to the austerity that even the IMF, that bastion of lefty thinking, thinks is holding back growth.



Yes. You keep repeating this one example. And you keep telling us all how dreadful it is – and demanding that we all go 'how dreadful!' too and throw up our little handies into the air.

Are you really so stupid that you 'think' that there is a mass number of situations exactly like this?

I don't think you are that stupid. In which case, you are clinging to this one example for precisely the same reasons as the rag that published it – as a way of attacking a far wider number of people, and without offering any sort of an actual response to the issue beyond that throwing of your mitts into the air in horror and demanding that everyone else do the same and, when they don't, effectively changing tack to attack them for not following your example.

Oh, behave yourself M. It is a matter of complete indifference to me personally, that a quango of bolshie Left wingers and a couple of the bewildered and lost souls you find posting on the Sin Bin, do not agree with me.

I was genuinely surprised that sort of money was available, and yes, the slant of the article, 20 years without a job etc did nothing to mitigate that feeling. I always smile though when people take the time to point out the obvious, ie, "this is an extreme example, blah blah....." and then post as an example a salary on minimum wage! So one dimensional don't you think? As is measuring your response, not to the contents of the article, but to the newspaper which published it.

There's nowt so queer as folk.

Poor little lambikins.

Thankfully you don't come into the "bewildered and lost souls you find posting on the Sin Bin", eh?





The [iMail[/i is a publication that sexualises underage girls, lies about goodness knows what else and perverts still other stories in order to provide the daily dose of 'shock and scandal' that Rothermere openly wanted as selling points. If you 'think' that such a rag is an acceptable source of pretty much anything, it reflects rather more on you than anyone who considers it a rag.

And of course, this is yet another way of illustrating that you can do a knee-jerky little reaction but have absolutely no suggestion beyond that. You cannot even offer up a suggestion of what you think should happen in such as case as this lone example you've found – and yopu have been specifically asked that question (not by me).

Mind, [iMail[/i readers are not renowned for their ability to think past the propaganda.

Well this is quite insightful as it points to ignorance on your part. Not of how much is available so much but what the costs are such as housing benefit. Unless she is in an area where the governments experiment of paying housing benefits direct to claimants is going on (and failing) she won't even see the housing benefit as it goes direct to the landlord. So she won't get £32K a year paid to her anyway and that will be a large part of that cost.

Your taxes line the landlords pockets, not hers.



That is ironic coming from you. You moan she isn't incentivised to work yet when the reality of what that would mean is pointed out to you all you can do is "smile" because clearly, you haven't got a clue.

Most people recognise that the system isn't working, and this is reflected by the fact the majority are in favour of welfare reform.

You got a link to back that up?

I don't necessarily disagree, but you need to back up statements about what you claim the "majority" wnat.

£8580 per annum paid direct to the landlord.

£4524 per annum paid as child benefit, a non means tested benefit that every parent in the country gets, even David Cameron.

£15024 per annum paid as child tax credit, a benefit which at that level is income based and not contributory, the actual figure dependant on the number of under 16s or under 18s in full time education living at the property in the parental care of the claimant, a figure that is carefully calculated according to stringent rules and not just handed out willy-nilly as anyone who has ever claimed it will confirm.

The Mail claim that she gets £303 a month in income support which cannot be correct as this is paid at a maximum of £56 per week, income support is for those exceptional circumstances when a person or family are literally living below the poverty line, you have to be working less than 16 hours per week (or not at all), pregnant or a carer or a single parent with a child under 5, and have no other source of earned income, it can be claimed by the homeless, you do not qualify if you are claiming job seekers allowance - in other words its for the destitute and those who cannot work through circumstances other than disability and its the claiming of income support that then entitles you to the full rate of income based child tax credits.


So she starts off with no income and no support from her estranged husband, the state pays for her rent after she is evicted from her own house and because with young children she is a priority for social housing, and then gives her £56 a week income support which then entitles her to the child tax credit, the child benefit is paid as a matter of course whether she was a millionaire or penniless.

She does herself no favours by claiming that she can't survive on less but even so I can see that it would be a challenge to raise seven children on £1900 a month, its do-able though.

The proposed cap of £26k will remove £5000 straight out of the household cash budget because I don't suppose for one minute that the landlord will agree to shoulder some of that reduction, so £1400 a month to raise seven children and pay all of the utility bills etc etc (bear in mind that the house will be occupied right through the day with a young child and will need heating in the winter), its probably pitched at a level that most would think reasonable but it will be tight.

I think he may mean the majority of right-wing nutjobs and those too thick to see behind the Wail and Sun's agendas

I'd additionally ask what someone means by "isn't working".

In what way? How would they change it? etc – not least when we have such high levels of unemployment and underemployment.