.

BargainGalore

Peachyprice I was referring to zanzen4 post hence I quoted itthey said "you do have to pay for fuel ect when you are on jsa"

dori2o

KimYeovil wrote: »

You receive a payment of £128.60 every fortnight. £130.90 from next month. Your utilities are free if they are paid from this. Plenty of working people have a lot less than £64.30 per week left over to live on. Nobody says it is easy to live on £64.30.

And if you are on a retirement pension then you have more than enough money to live on - your benefit doubles!

Honestly I've never had the mispleasure of meeting such a biggoted individual such as yourself.

myothercarisaferrari

I wish I could feel sorry for you

KimYeovil

dori2o wrote: »

Honestly I've never had the mispleasure of meeting such a biggoted individual such as yourself.

Please explain the bizarre non sequitur. What bigotry?

Fire_Fox

Cardew wrote: »

If I had an income of £64.50 a week, the internet might be low on my list of priorities.

Zinger549 wrote: »

They could be at the library or using internet cafe.

I am on contributions based JSA and home broadband is high on my list of priorities as it more than pays for itself. Not everyone can access a library without using public transport and internet cafes are far from cheap. My net connection with PlusNet is just £6 a month which in job hunting alone saves me in stamps, printer ink, public transport, net cafes and newspapers. I am also in contract, so presumably paying the bill saves me the cost of debt collection as well.

northernsoul

Hi Kim. I feel you are being a bit disingenuious. Yes, you get £64 a week, and you could say the utilities are free if you pay out of this money, but you could say the same for everything you have/need to buy until you use up the £64. By the same argument you could say your food is free, petrol you use, house insurance, water rates, clothing, TV licience, internet, TV package, telephone rental, car insurance etc-all free. Just that £64 does not go that far, so it does not really matter what you choose. In effect you get a 'wage' of £64 plus council tax (if i believe, nobody else is working in house) plus rent (i think) but not morgage.Maybe for example £64 + £20 (approx council tax per week for B band where i live) + rent(obviously only if you rent)-say 50 (no idea if this is correct), say total of £134 ish you in effect get from government etc (or £84 if you have a morgage). As for ' plenty of working people have a lot less to live on than £64' ,they would have to earn net less than £134 to be worse off (then that brings issues such as benifits into play). Its just an example, not an exact costing, but the principle remains. On a wider issue,I have been redundant 5 times since 2002. Previously, I worked for 26 years without any money off the government and when i collect dole money i do not feel any regret getting it off the government because for 26 years i paid my National Insurance and tax so i have paid my dues and deserve help when i need it. Think of it as paying an insurance. I feel the more years you have worked, the more you should get. It annoys me people who have never worked, who know the system, get as much or more than me. Currently unemployed and although i have paid NI contributions the NI office has no record of my contributions so i cannot get dole (thats another story)

Fire_Fox

Aunt_Harriet wrote: »

My electric direct debit has gone up to £39 a month. My gas has gone up to £71 a month.
I'm on benefits of only £64.50 a week. (thats £258 a month). The government says you are in fuel poverty if 10% of your income is spent on fuel. What do you call 110 pounds out of 258 pounds a month?
What am i supposed to do?

Landlord Wont allow pre-payment meters.

Fuel company has divided what i owe by 12 and added my usage. They take no account that they are now taking a 3rd of my income!

Other bills need paying too.
What am i going to buy food with?

The government actually says you are in fuel poverty if you need to spend more than 10% of your income to keep your house heated to a safe level. That should be calculated using your income from ALL sources (JSA, CTB and LHA) not only your disposable income. You also need to use the average cost over the year: calculating from a DD which includes a debt is cheating. Note the words 'need' and 'safe', being profligate or frugal with the heating should not affect your status.

I also live alone on JSA/ CTB (no rent or mortgage paid) and I am officially in fuel poverty even after heating my flat to 14C this last winter. I know of several other single people on a low income who were obliged to do the same, so I do have some sympathy with you. The first thing you need to do is move into a shared flat or lodgings - it is madness to be living somewhere where you need to top up your rent and you cannot afford to pay the heating bills. Please start reading your meters regularly so you don't get any unaffordable bills from now on.

Second thing is to cut back on your usage: I pay £30-40 a month all in for my electricity (no gas) by being frugal. Get an electric underblanket for your bed or an heated throw for your sofa and use that instead of the heating. Strip wash or turn the shower off whilst you are soaping up. Boil a kettle for washing up instead of heating a whole tank. Laundry at 30C and do not use a tumble dryer.

As far as affording to eat, it is possible to eat healthily on very little: read Weezl74's many threads including 'Eat Healthily on 50p per day'. It is possible to live alone on JSA and pay off that energy bill - I have to pay service charges, ground rent and buildings insurance out of mine which total £120 a month. I would suggest you apply for a crisis loan so that you are free to switch to a cheaper supplier/ cheaper accommodation. You do not require a TV license providing you are not watching live broadcasts: start making your net connection work for you with BBC iPlayer, 4OD etc.

Broadwood

KimYeovil wrote: »

If you don't want to pay for it why did you use it? The meters are in your home - if you were unhappy with how much you were using you should have turned stuff off. Why did you not put money aside as you went along? You still have £170 per month to spend on food. If you want to spend money on stuff other than food and fuel then go to work.

If we learn anything as a country from this credit crunch then at least we could all learn that money DOESN'T grow on trees or just appear in our bank accounts from nowhere. As individuals and as a country we need to pay off our debts and live within our means. It's always cheaper in the long run.

Maybe if we get a hung parliament in May, Vince Cable might get the job of Chancellor. He talks a great deal of sense.

If I could be President of UKplc for a year I would dismantle the welfare state. Nearly everybody who is currently long-term sick or unemployed could be matched to suitable work of some description. This could be found by making overtime above 40 hours per week illegal. That way most would pay less tax but also the benefits bill would be drastically cut too.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. We need to create a fairer society.

Broadwood

minjara wrote: »

So many hateful comments when the whole situation is not known. Take myself and my partner at the moment. Both of us were in good jobs. He has severe ulcerative colitis and since jan last year he has got worse and worse, then got given the boot by his employer from his £27,000 job by them not following the DDA properly, mortgage fallen behind, money piles, the small savings used. Myself, I've just been diagnosed in Jan this year with severe IBS and now find myself with agrophobia and anxiety because of it. Everything in our life has just fallen apart around our ears because of anomolies in the ESA system that has taken over from incapacity. No one at DWP knows what they are talking about, you go on to contribution based for life which gives you no help towards the mortgage, fuel and more importantly, our prescriptions at the moment as my partners crrently taking a cocktail of 30+ a day. Only the guy I spoke to today actually cared about the situation and thinks that ESA is so screwed up. My partner has now fallen into psychiatric help having been diagnosed as depressed with psychotic episodes and I'm trying to stay strong and support all the pieces and bills. All I can say to the bitter people on here as well is please don't be in peoples faces without knowing a bit more of the story, prejudice is something that isn't needed, especially here, thanks

Minjara

Hope your partner has a yearly season ticket for his prescriptions. Looks like it would save you money if he is taking that many pills.

What can make people bitter is the fact that for each genuine hardship case there are probably two cases of whingers who smoke and/or drink, generally live beyond their means, then lose their job or get ill with no savings backup and expect instant sympathy. Likewise for every genuine disabled blue badge holder, there are two who get out of their (newish) cars and sprint (almost) into the nearest shop to spend the money they have saved from parking for free. This CHEATING the system causes bitterness and the minority genuine cases invariably get tarred with the same brush.

mattcanary

God, there are some idiots on this forum. Why are there more people unemployed at some points in time (since the welfare state was introduced at the end of the Second World War) than at other times??!! Logically, the answer is because there are less jobs available than at other times. There are a shortage of jobs!! There were plenty of people unemployed in the 1930s depression when there was no such thing as a univeral welfare state, or do you bigots need to take some history lessons??!
That is why hundreds of people sometimes apply for a single job vacancy.

Additionally, some people find it easier to get a job than others. They have skills and abilities that are more desirable to employers than others. A single person withot children on JSA receives £64.30. Tell me of a job (even of 15 hours a week) that pays less than £64.30 per week, even after tax and National Insurance deductions are taken into account.

Even if someone chooses to stay on benefits (and of course if people are clever, they can do this - witness another poster on this forum by the name of Unemployedandlovingit or something similar), they aren't making the best of their lives. In reality, they are missing out on making the most of their life. They aren;t really living in paradise, you know. Might pretend out of bravado that they are but in reality they're not. People with the intelligence to get away with doing this long-term are in reality missing out on earning good wages persuading people to take out expensive personal loans or something equally worthless. Would get more money doing this.

Basic point - most people on benefits don't live the life of Riley. And many people in employment are doing jobs that in reality benefit no-one in society. People in work pay taxes, part of which goes to support those out of work, undoubteably but many also pay money to people in work offering pointless products or services that in reality they don't need!!!

I suggest certain idiots on this forum think before posting inflammatory rubbish - especially when this is meant to be an advice forum. If you haven't got any positive criticism to make then button it and p**ss off!