Page 26 | To ask what's the beef with benefits?

mytartanscarf · 2015-01-04T14:33:34+00:00

Do people think they are too little? That they should be more? There's always a lot of upset on here about them - about how wrong the government are and how awful life is on benefits. I've never been on benefits so obviously can't judge. But what are the solutions? I suppose I am asking what should the government do?

ghostspirit · 06/01/2015 22:41

rufus she could have known all the facts... all the teenagers i know. know everything and they are never ever wrong..

RufusTheReindeer · 06/01/2015 22:51

Oh god ghost

Good point well made!!!

notauniquename · 06/01/2015 23:00

but at the end of the day she shouldn't be able to pay for things like that, loans or no loans, fair enough have a tv, fair enough have an xbox, but all 3 kids don't need one each.

I used to go out with someone who's parents lived in a housing association house. (that's the new name for a council house).
Essentially, they couldn't afford private rent, and so have a subsidised lower rent house provided for by the government.

(as it happens, they ex's parents both worked).

but in applying for and living in a housing association house they were "on benefits"

My ex, and siblings each managed a TV in their own room, as well as a games console.

You do understand the difference between being able to save up to get something that costs £100 (such as a TV) and being able to find a spare £100 or £300 every month for rent?

Not everything is as crystal clear as it may seem from the outside.
Not everyone who receives benefits gets everything provided for them
I suppose it's probably just as important to say that not everyone on benefits wants everything to be provided for them.

writtenguarantee · 06/01/2015 23:27

Commercial rents don't work the same as private rents, the market is very strange. lots of the landlords involved outright own property (as a lot of high street retail spaces in market towns are what were family businesses) there is no money lost, (it's not like loans or mortgages are still being paid)

I know commercial rent is different.

rent not being paid is money lost. You said the battle has been going on "for years". something is off. even at minimal rent that's a ton of money down the toilet.

BreakingDad77 · 07/01/2015 09:37

Commercial rents don't work the same as private rents, the market is very strange. lots of the landlords involved outright own property (as a lot of high street retail spaces in market towns are what were family businesses) there is no money lost, (it's not like loans or mortgages are still being paid)

Also don'y you have rates to contend with as well? Cant the leaseholder also hold rents by expecting the council to reduce its rates?

There needs to be more social housing, (corrupt) local authorities need to stand up to developers and stop the social housing % being cut/removed from new developments, but that is another thread.

53Dragon · 08/01/2015 00:58

I used to go out with someone who's parents lived in a housing association house. (that's the new name for a council house). NO - it's not. Housing Associations are non profit-making businesses where the operating profit is ploughed back into the business. The rents are often slightly higher than Council homes and the tenants have slightly different rights. There's even an organisation called ARCH - the Association of Retained Council Housing for the few councils in England that haven't sold their housing stock to a new housing association.

Allonthesametrain · 07/07/2026 18:59

I think the 'beef' is SM showing the mouthy entitled ones and people thinking claimants are all like this. The programmes show examples of a gobby cider swilling, chain smoking, tattooed, uneducated/lower intellect, overweight mam with 6 kids all to different dads who aren't around in a cesspit of a house uet wear armani tracksuits.

Woah, need to take a breath there! The portrayal and narration are what others see and therefore condemn I guess?

Allonthesametrain · 07/07/2026 19:07

MagratsHair · 04/01/2015 21:42

I'm on the mobile app so haven't read past the first few pages so apologies if this has been said before.

I claimed benefits for a couple of years after I left my ex husband as my maternity leave ended and I moved back to my home city after a decade of living elsewhere whilst married. Previously I had worked full time since I was 18. I've had money, I've had no money and I've had everything inbetween. When I first moved here to my rented house I could only afford a deprived area and the local school served this area and I speak from my experiences of chatting with mothers in the playground and the friends I made there.

My experience runs the whole gamut of the discussion on this thread. Yes I've known the families who struggle for every meal and I know the single mothers who work every hour they can and its still not enough so they take on second then third jobs taking their children with them while they clean offices in the evening and their houses are cold and the children go to school with no breakfast as there's nothing to eat. I've known women living with abuse who are too scared to leave as they are afraid of what will happen to them once they do and they have to ask their husband for money for tampax and are told no as its another way to humiliate them and keep them where they are.

I've known the families who go to the food banks for food yet stand outside said foodbanks smoking whilst the children freeze. I gave up smoking as I couldn't afford it (cold turkey as I don't see why the NHS should pay to help me stop something self inflicted) and I want to scream at the parents to stop smoking and buy your shivering child a decent coat instead. But I also understand the addiction and the feeling that cigarettes are the only treat you have. I understand still further that people will stop contributing to food banks as they observe that they will not subsidize smokers who choose to smoke instead of buying food.

There are also others who lie and commit fraud, who live with working partners and claim as single parents and there are generations of families who do not work as their parents never did. Its an unpopular view on mn but it happens. There are people who expect the council to deliver them a new washing machine on the following day that theirs breaks. I once had this exact conversation when a mother told me her washing machine had broken that morning. I commiserated and told her about when mine had broken and i was hand washing for 3 weeks in winter until a very kind relative gave me her old one which was an absolute godsend. The mother then told me she had phoned the council/HA I forget which and she was ranting about how disgraceful it was that she would have to wait a week for it. The entitled attitude was jaw dropping, anything that broke she expected to be replaced free of charge immediately.

This is long sorry, I suppose I'm trying to say that I've seen desperate mothers who cannot feed themselves and their children and for whom every day is a struggle. I've also seen rampant abuse of the system and understand why people who have no experience of benefits are angry when the DM run their stories and there are constantly stories in the press of benefit fraud as the day to day struggles are not represented.

The whole issues around benefits are not as black and white as people wish them to be.

Indeed! Yes there are those who come from generations of benefits and have an entitled attitude, expect the council/schools/social services to provide for them. They're just so used to it, know every part of the system and first to shout and go to the papers about a self perceived injustice.

Unfortunately this makes a mockery of those who genuinely need it, for whatever reason, it's their much needed incomee to survive. Xx

Allonthesametrain · 07/07/2026 19:36

RufusTheReindeer · 06/01/2015 08:59

Thanks eat

I now understand where I have been going wrong

I've been assuming that people who receive benefits (including DLA and other in work benefits and pensions, child benefit etc) know how the system works and can see the flaws

Really what I should have been doing is making up what ever I like based on the fact a friend of mine saw someone she used to know 10 years ago and who is on benefits getting her hair cut...obvs benefits are dead easy to get, pay out too much and allow you to live the life of Riley. What do all these people need with medicine and heat anyway

Silly me!!

I'm off to check out my new lifestyle choice

And by the way, I absolutley believe that there are some people out there receiving benefits who are taking the mick, but very few!!! And probably proportional to this tax payers who are taking the mick as well. But I assume that the vast, vast amount of people claiming all the many forms of benefit there are out there (child benefit anyone? Pension? Or are you going to be handing that back?) are doing so because they need to

I think state pensions should not be labelled as a benefit. You can only claim it if you have paid NI for 38 years, every contribution you make is part of your pot.

MyLemonPoet · Yesterday 10:36

The beef on benefits is how the government funds them: by taking from the working class, instead of billionaires. Government does a stealth tax , taxes work, taxes homes, and now wants to tax homes more if they are worth over a million. Let's be honest, not everyone that has a home worth a million is swimming in it or making a killing...they target the middle class and the upper working class time and time again to find the benefits system instead of billionaires and hundred millionaires.

Propagandalf · Yesterday 11:32

@Allonthesametrain
@MyLemonPoet

You are replying to a thread that is over 10 years old.