Taxpayer funds familys £1,600 per week rent - The Times

mitchaa

fc123 wrote: »

I will confess to being quite shocked at the amount of benefits/tax credits some households receive. I have read SOA's on other boards with single mum, 3 kids and a P/T job bringing in £600pcm...the other income in TC etc totalled about £2300pcm ....that's take home.

It just traps people and subsidises employers (it's all been said before).

Here's a good example..

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2098543&highlight=

This posters working salary is £927pm which works out at around £13.5k pa.
However, she is paid just over £2k in benefits bringing her total income to £2955pm which works out to be the equivalent of a £50k salary.

So this lady is in the exact same position (probably to her boss) as someone earning £50k pa

If you scroll further down, a lot of her benefits are spent on childcare but the point to note here is if you were earning £50k pa, you would not receive help towards childcare costs so the 2 examples of someone earning £13.5k vs £50k are identical.

Why do the government want her to work? It would be cheaper for us all if she just stayed at home unemployed as her tax contributions are minescule in comparison to the benefits she receives to pay her childminders.

Bonkers, maybe the wife and I should just get low end jobs and do the same, would be far less stressful.

Harry_Powell

fc123 wrote: »

OK..I usually avoid these threads now as they get so heated but it is the system at fault here...... the family and the fact they are refugees from 1991 is just a detail.

If the rules are as such then any one of us could have loads of kids and get supported if we chose to, but this family won't be on that 'income' for ever, nor live in a mansion for ever either.
At some point, the kids grow up and leave home, the money reduces bit by bit until all they receive is a couples unemployed allowance and a smaller place paid for....if that.
Isn't there a new rule that you have to go onto JSA once kids reach aged 7?

I will confess to being quite shocked at the amount of benefits/tax credits some households receive. I have read SOA's on other boards with single mum, 3 kids and a P/T job bringing in £600pcm...the other income in TC etc totalled about £2300pcm ....that's take home.

It just traps people and subsidises employers (it's all been said before).

The trouble is that the cost of benefits will increase rather than decrease as the kids age. After seeing what a cushy life their parents have had, how many of these 8 kids will have a strong work ethic? They will be straight onto benefits and continue to live with mum and dad until they can get their own council house. This one family could eventually end up taking over 9 properties, 10 if Dad continues to live away from Mum (by live away, I mean pretend to live away and sublet the flat).

This family is a microcosm of what is happening up and down the land, we have generations of family members who have never worked and have never seen their parents or sibling work. The rest of us will have to either take care of these people by benefits or via the prison system, they can't take care of themselves because they don't know how.

This is the legacy of a decade of Labour government.

moggylover

ILW wrote: »

I just cannot understand why this government is intent on setting up a whole swathe of society where working is for mugs. Unless they see their voters there.[/QUOTE]



Well they need to go to Specsavers then because statistically the disenfranchised are the least likely to vote in the UK:D

moggylover

fc123 wrote: »

OK..I usually avoid these threads now as they get so heated but it is the system at fault here...... the family and the fact they are refugees from 1991 is just a detail.

If the rules are as such then any one of us could have loads of kids and get supported if we chose to, but this family won't be on that 'income' for ever, nor live in a mansion for ever either.
At some point, the kids grow up and leave home, the money reduces bit by bit until all they receive is a couples unemployed allowance and a smaller place paid for....if that.
Isn't there a new rule that you have to go onto JSA once kids reach aged 7?

I will confess to being quite shocked at the amount of benefits/tax credits some households receive. I have read SOA's on other boards with single mum, 3 kids and a P/T job bringing in £600pcm...the other income in TC etc totalled about £2300pcm ....that's take home.

It just traps people and subsidises employers (it's all been said before).

Just when I start to despair of the education level of the general public someone comes along and applies common sense that involves looking beyond the headline and seeing some of the route causes!

That the case is totally wrong is not in question: it simply is! However, this is not what the system intended (in exactly the same way as the pitiful amounts of tax actually paid by the super rich were not intended) but come about due to loopholes which need to be plugged.

I agree totally with the tax credits assessment: these have actually allowed employers up and down the Country to hold down wage levels and to increase profit levels in a dramatically wrong way and I believe that getting rid of tax credits altogether and introducing a system that insists on a decent rate of pay for all and assistance ONLY to small companies/businesses (which would be strictly means tested so that the Government/taxpayer is not subsidising you because you believe that a property that fits your perceived status requirements and a new car each year means that you cannot pay your staff a living wage:D) that would struggle to pay those wages but which provide employment to their LOCAL community.

We need to look at the fact that we will NEVER encourage people to work by wielding a big stick, nor by paying them an amount of money that will never allow them to have even a reasonable life (and I do not mean lifestyle, I mean life) or by showing them disrespect when they do work (because believe you me, the very ones screaming that they would work in McDonalds rather than be on the dole are also likely to be the ones who treat the people that DO work there with scorn and arrogance;)).

We also need to show that we will not tolerate dishonesty and fiddling further up the chain. Much is being ranted about with politicians (from all sides btw) fiddling their expenses and yet time and again the worst right wing ranters on MSE can be found finding massively ignorant excuses for the same kind of fiddling in those who already have far more than they can ever NEED in the first place!

If we allow a lack of integrity and greed to be the message that those with the most put out: then we have fooock all chance of making those with precious little hope of opportunity and respect behave better!

I also agree with those posters who are far sighted enough to see that the benefit system was put in place to provide a panacea for the ills of the Country brought about by lack of inward investment by those that COULD and SHOULD be providing it (and the move to exploiting cheap, and often third World labour in the pursuit of bigger and bigger profits) and prevent those seriously disadvantaged by these moves turning to public unrest to get their case heard.

I do SO wish that we could see educated posters coming to the forum to put forward common sense solutions to the problems our Country will see more and more predominantly in the coming years of increased globalisation instead of those educated only by media sensationalism who come only to project their own anger on those least able to turn the situation around who are also often victims of the system not those that created it.

As a staunch lefty with a long history of working within social economics I know that many of the sensible suggestions made by people like myself get watered down by Governments to pander to those with money. That does not only include Tory Governments but in my experience they are the worst because they simply ARE out of touch with the real World and real people and have no experience of anything but their rarified atmosphere to bring to the table.

I am sensible enough to know that the reality is somewhere between the two perceived ends of the scale (and I have worked in factories, shops, offices, hotels and the corridors of power in my chequered and dissillusioned "career":o so think I have actually had a taste of many "strata" of the Countries diverse communities which might bring insights that others do not have) but I also know that even 40 years ago when the majority of the Country were working, the lack of disrespect and the condemnation of the less fortunate amongst them (i.e. those that cleaned toilets or swept streets or even worked in factories) was equalled by the same arrogant assumptions that some "jobs" make you so much better a person than others that creates the vile and inhuman suggestions for dealing with the less fortunate these days.

The majority of those out of work are probably there through little fault of their own. Even before the recession, there were areas of the UK where there were hundreds of applicants for even the most menial of jobs and the cost of moving to areas with jobs is often too high for those who would like the jobs were they available in their own area. The minority make it look bad for them and the press assists with its glowing stories about migrant workers that totally ignore the social cost of many of the problems these groups bring (i.e. drunkeness is NOT restricted to the UK chavs - our Eastern European migrants bring similar policing problems often accompanied by knives that would make Crocodile Dundee proud and a lack of respect for human life that is quite terrifying).

We need to get the basis of human life somewhere near right if we expect any improvement in the conditions in our Country and that means that those that defend the richest (who really DO have a lot of power to make or break your existence) and kick those with the least power need to take off their blinkers and start doing some much deeper and more lateral thinking about the problems because the next 50 to 100 years will bring MUCH bigger ones in facing up to the green issues that rampant consumerism and globalisation will accelerate and I, for one, would really like a World left for my children to inherit.

For them to be rich: not interested! Money may bring lots of "things" - but I do not believe it will make some miserable !!!!!! one iota happier or nicer a person in the long run:D. However, I would like them to have a World where they are respected as a human being whatever their job and where they can still find a green space to be and where we have not wiped out vast amounts more of the flora and fauna that makes the World such a beautiful place when we stop worrying about the unimportance of greed and the biggest screen TV and start thinking about what really matters.

Lastly, I really DO wish that we could get past the rather surreal and idiotic belief that the super rich are mainly rich because they have worked hard and deserve it! The vast majority of real wealth in this Country still remains inherited and the only thing those that have it have had to do is hold on to it and allow it to grow! There are also those who get paid vast sums of money for really quite minor contributions to the World state (footballers, pop stars, etc) and we will never address this until we put our spending choices into much deeper consideration. Those that are truly entreprenurial are seldom driven totally by monetary incentives in my experience and I do not believe that they would all flee the Country should they be expected to put a little more back. Furthermore, throughout history there have been many who have worked to create and achieve without monetary ambition and it could be argued that in disadvantaging those who do not have the dosh to persue those aims then money actually inhibits such skill and vision from being realised.


ETA: VSG? Will this do for my inauguration manifesto as chancellor in your cabinet:o:o?

ruggedtoast

PasturesNew wrote: »

Mathematically, the council lost the flat, your family member sold it to somebody ... probably a BTL person, who then set the rent at enough to cover a £130k mortgage, then got somebody in who will claim HB on the higher price. I've never understood why the council don't build houses because they can do it so much cheaper than everybody making a profit then just paying out the HB to the current leveraged owner.

Thats exactly right.

One of my first memories of the absurdity of the benefits culture was when I had a friend who left home (she got her mum to write a letter saying she'd been kicked out) and moved into a flat that cost the council £150 a week.

On the open market for that area at the time the LL would have got half that. In the end he asked her about raising the rent even more and offered to split the difference with her as a kickback.

dizzybuff

Okay , not read the whole thread,. but I have a neighbour , Lives ion his own ( with a subletting girlfreind) hes disabled because of his epilespy but alchoholic and doesnt take his medication because of this. He gets a taxi to sign on , the taxi sits outside and then brings him back (15mins) taxi to shop ( when he does eat substance that isnt liquid)

So he gets

Disability
JSA ?? ( dont know )
Housing benefit
council tax benefit

Keeps the local shop in buisness buying 9 bottles of cider and 1 bottle of spirits a day.

Keeps the emergancy services busy.

He boils my blood as I have freinds who are struggling to get housing and would be glad of a roof over their heads regardless of how many beds.

lostinrates

moggylover wrote: »

.....
As a staunch lefty with a long history of working within social economics I know that many of the sensible suggestions made by people like myself get watered down by Governments to pander to those with money. That does not only include Tory Governments but in my experience they are the worst because they simply ARE out of touch with the real World and real people and have no experience of anything but their rarified atmosphere to bring to the table.

I am sensible enough to know that the reality is somewhere between the two perceived ends of the scale....

As usual a quality post moggylover...good to have your input again.

However....I think its fair to point out that as someone who identifies with right more than left, much of the opinion and desired outcome is the same, but with a different answers and philosphies. I get frustrated with the left or righters who seem to feel those who do not share political philosphy must ''be mean'' or nasty or want less for their fellow man, or species. I agree totally, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle, but where and the drive behind policies is where the argument is. Its not always about money, on the right...for me its primarily obout personal choices. Money (and more importantly what money stands for) is a symptom of the philosophy from where I stand, not the cause.

The_White_Horse

they should just cancel all benefits.

the only people who should get them are those who have worked and paid tax for 5 years - as a safety net should they need them, and only payable for 12 months.

also, disabled people should get more (provided three independent doctors all agree that the person CANNOT work. That doesn't mean "may find it difficult". I have worked with blind people and people in wheelchairs.

apart from that, no other benefits to anyone.

dizzybuff

However one thing i can not understabd is how the Governebt classes Alchololism (self inflicted ) as a disability..

Grrrrrrrr at them too.

The_White_Horse

fc123 wrote: »

it could create a type of Ghetto that no-one can ever escape from.

even more reason to do it. let them all fester in there forever. the blood sucking leeches.