The jobless are no shirking scroungers – you try living on £65.45 a week

lostinrates

robpw2 wrote: »

question for you
would you leave your children with a 28 year old male who has disabilities ? :eek:

Age and sex wouldn't bother me, it would depend on the disabilities...there are plenty of disabilities I think would not leave someone unable to childcare, and plenty I think would.

carolt

custardy wrote: »

i said how it can be an issue,not everyone has the same situation
for example I had to give a deposit for the nursery,IIRC it was about £700
where would you get that on £65 a week?

I sent my kids to an expensive private nursery and paid no deposit - and certainly state nurseries would require no deposit. So your experience seems - if not unusual - certainly not the rule.

You seem determined to see only the barriers put in your way, or others' way, even if they are easily overcome or non-existent. Rather than the opportunities.

Why is that?

custardy

carolt wrote: »

I sent my kids to an expensive private nursery and paid no deposit - and certainly state nurseries would require no deposit. So your experience seems - if not unusual - certainly not the rule.

You seem determined to see only the barriers put in your way, or others' way, even if they are easily overcome or non-existent.

Why is that?

not at all,providing some balance to the get a job,lazy scroungers,its easy etc argument
its not easy,especially not now
have a look on the likes of the job centre site(in Edinburgh at least) and you will see theres really not that many jobs
you keep referring to me,yet i am not talking about any barriers in my way? i work,have my child in nursery,a car,my health(mostly) and at the same time am sorting out a return to uni or OU depending on how i get it sorted
so this has nothing to do with me,perhaps my upbriniging and not so great start in life gives me a more rounded view on life

Jomo

carolt wrote: »

You seem determined to see only the barriers put in your way, or others' way, even if they are easily overcome or non-existent. Rather than the opportunities.

This happens a lot!

lostinrates

Jomo wrote: »

This happens a lot!

It is my belief that ''the system'' has exacerbated this fairly understandable tendency.

The thing is, having spoken to people arguing against the ''benefits culture'' for a few years now I see that it is routinely possible for people to both be compassionate yet feel how things are now is wrong...for most people. No one wants people genuinely unable to work to be in miserable conditions...no one here I've spoken to. Even the most offensively vocal people have shown themselves to be compassionate when ''dealing with'' individual situations. Most people want a better situation for both themselves and for society...just approaches differ.

Rupert_Bear

If any of the tv docs are anything to go by I thought some unemployed boosted their benefits by having lots of children. In particular there was a guy featured who I think was in his twenties and a wife of 29 and he was on his 5 child. He had not worked for eight years and the reason was because of death of his first children. The strange thing is it did not stop them having more children at the tax payers expense afterwards.

custardy

lostinrates wrote: »

It is my belief that ''the system'' has exacerbated this fairly understandable tendency.

The thing is, having spoken to people arguing against the ''benefits culture'' for a few years now I see that it is routinely possible for people to both be compassionate yet feel how things are now is wrong...for most people. No one wants people genuinely unable to work to be in miserable conditions...no one here I've spoken to. Even the most offensively vocal people have shown themselves to be compassionate when ''dealing with'' individual situations. Most people want a better situation for both themselves and for society...just approaches differ.

well put
for the record,i have no time for dole scum
those who leech off benefits with no intention of ever working
often using crime/drugs to fund a lifestyle way beyond their legal income

however i accept 'normal' people fall on hard times,need help or have problems getting into work
especially now with job cuts and redundancies,i am seeing friends in what would have been thought to be safe jobs losing or under the threat of losing their jobs
these are decent people who live average lives and have average outgoings

tcr_3

The real problem isn't JSA at £64.95 pw, it's the army of low paid people slogging their guts out for little more ... and in many cases less ... than they could get on benefits.

I'm only better off by approx £250 pcm for working full time, compared to what I would receive on JSA, Housing Benefit & Council Tax Benefit. If I deduct the £120 pcm it takes to get to and from work, that financial bonus for working is reduced to £130 pcm. So that's 182 hours work pcm for £130 pcm, less than a pound an hour.

My job ? Oh, I work at the Job Centre.

I had a customer screaming the place down this week, she'd been refused her gazzillionth crisis loan application and wasn't amused. I did the maths, she gets paid more than £300 pcm than I'm working for, once you factor in her Income Support, DLA, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit and all the rest. Plus she's got access to interest free Social Fund loans, grants, cheap bus fares, free entry to all the council leisure facilities which I've got to pay for twice (I pay full Council Tax, yet have to pay to go swimming ... she pays no Council Tax and pays nothing to access such things).

And she gets all her benefits paid weekly ... I get paid once a month. The week before payday, my God, it's beans & toast city in my house. I say week, it used to be a week. But my "skintness period" seems to be getting longer and longer as each year passes, what with almost non existent pay rises (and that's true for many civil servants, especially in DWP, a department with one of the most convoluted pay/reward systems ever devised).

Yesterday, being the Friday before a bank holiday, we were totally swamped with Crisis Loan applications. Funny, that, considering all the holiday Monday payments were paid early. Being "end of month" too, I had a ton of paperwork to clear. So I worked 07:00 to 18:15, with 5 mins for my morning tea break, 30 mins for lunch. I'm only supposed to work 7 hrs a day. Went to bed last night at 9pm and slept thru til 10am this morning.

I'm physically & mentally exhausted & nearly keeled over in the supermarket this morning. So it's a quick lunch for me now, and back to bed.

You gotta ask who the real poor people are in this country, seriously.

custardy

tcr wrote: »

The real problem isn't JSA at £64.95 pw, it's the army of low paid people slogging their guts out for little more ... and in many cases less ... than they could get on benefits.

I'm only better off by approx £250 pcm for working full time, compared to what I would receive on JSA, Housing Benefit & Council Tax Benefit. If I deduct the £120 pcm it takes to get to and from work, that financial bonus for working is reduced to £130 pcm. So that's 182 hours work pcm for £130 pcm, less than a pound an hour.

My job ? Oh, I work at the Job Centre.

I had a customer screaming the place down this week, she'd been refused her gazzillionth crisis loan application and wasn't amused. I did the maths, she gets paid more than £300 pcm than I'm working for, once you factor in her Income Support, DLA, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit and all the rest. Plus she's got access to interest free Social Fund loans, grants, cheap bus fares, free entry to all the council leisure facilities which I've got to pay for twice (I pay full Council Tax, yet have to pay to go swimming ... she pays no Council Tax and pays nothing to access such things).

And she gets all her benefits paid weekly ... I get paid once a month. The week before payday, my God, it's beans & toast city in my house. I say week, it used to be a week. But my "skintness period" seems to be getting longer and longer as each year passes, what with almost non existent pay rises (and that's true for many civil servants, especially in DWP, a department with one of the most convoluted pay/reward systems ever devised).

Yesterday, being the Friday before a bank holiday, we were totally swamped with Crisis Loan applications. Funny, that, considering all the holiday Monday payments were paid early. Being "end of month" too, I had a ton of paperwork to clear. So I worked 07:00 to 18:15, with 5 mins for my morning tea break, 30 mins for lunch. I'm only supposed to work 7 hrs a day. Went to bed last night at 9pm and slept thru til 10am this morning.

I'm physically & mentally exhausted & nearly keeled over in the supermarket this morning. So it's a quick lunch for me now, and back to bed.

You gotta ask who the real poor people are in this country, seriously.

i have seen these crisis loans mentioned before
never really understood however,given the JSA is the minimum to live on (isnt it?) how are they supposed to live and pay it back? (going by the government lines,not real life IYKWIM)

tcr_3

custardy wrote: »

i have seen these crisis loans mentioned before
never really understood however,given the JSA is the minimum to live on (isnt it?) how are they supposed to live and pay it back? (going by the government lines,not real life IYKWIM)

Crisis Loans are there for when there's some kind of catastrophe ... you collect your benefit, lose your wallet/purse, that kinda thing. You pay it back by instalment from your benefit.

All too often the crisis loan system is abused, with people using the Social Fund almost as a personal loan facility ... the fridays before a Bank Holiday being one of the most busy days for Crisis Loan applications.