'Policing benefit bashing in the forum: valid debate or hate crime?' blog discussion

WhiteHorse

amy0611 wrote: »

WhiteHorse: Funny how snipping someone's message completely changes the meaning...

It might, if that is the intention.

You have deliberately misconstrued my message ...

Hm. Aggression.

I'm sure people that are not out to fan the flames will read my message in full as posted earlier

Your post is quite clear. You want benefits information removed from MSE.

WhiteHorse

viktory wrote: »

A large number of posts on the benefit board are clearly people looking to claim fraudulently or looking to find a work around.

Um. Would you care to substantiate that?

WhiteHorse

gilligansyle wrote: »

I thought the problem with the 'publicly available' information was that it wasn't always that clear. The Benefits board helps people to know exactly where to look.

Just so. Not only is the published information often unclear, it's sometimes incomplete or out of date.

Dealing with the benefits system is a nightmare for anyone with no experience of it (come to think of it, it's not so jolly for those who have, either).

Perhaps the 'anti-informationists' think that the CAB, or DIAL should be shut down as well?

WhiteHorse

bat-out-of-hell wrote: »

Not just representing government and business, some on certain other forums gleefully pat each others on the back for the disruption they have caused, and plan the next invasion, nothing to do with views or right and wrongs [...] Martin and this whole forum has its enemies, and it is not always to do with any view or belief, it’s just for the pleasure of causing agro in a lot of cases.

Yes, I have also noticed that the same people often cause trouble on more than one forum.

John_Pierpoint

bat-out-of-hell wrote: »

To get a together mortgage, you must have had a job, so paid taxes too, and most that now know how foolish an idea it was still work and pay tax,so its not just your tax 'bailing them out'



Why do you think that would happen?

the book of debts would just have been sold to the highest bidder, best return for the least work, why would a liquidator go to all the trouble evicting people? by the time they had done, the legal fees would offset a big junk of what they could ever possibly make.......

The whole point was that nobody would touch Northern Rock (or its funny Channel Islands registered securitised mortgages) with a barge pole.
So we the tax payers were forced to take out a massive mortgage on the country, which devalued our currency and the 135% mortgage, by (say) 25% and cut the living standards of anyone getting paid interest.

At the time interest rates were rising rapidly - so the 135% mortgage people would have been facing very serious problems had the tax payers in general not bailed out their situation. I remember the days when Abbey National branches had a warning notice that a mortgage was repayable on demand.

I am pleased to see that Northern Rock Asset Management is now back into profitability. Perhaps us tax payers will one day get some return on our forced investment.

seven-day-weekend

In my experience as a regular on the benefits Board, the main people who take offence are those who do not like the answers they are given, even though those answers may be accurate.

Such as:
'if you are living with your lover and have a baby together you should not be claiming single person Benefits'.
'If you have over £16k in savings you will not be entitled to means-tested Benefits'
'If you come into £50k from an inheritance and then give it away/hide it/ spend it on non-essentials/swing it from the chandeliers you will come under the deprivation of capital rules and will not be entitled to means-tested Benefits and will have to pay your own Council Tax'.
'There is no organised Government conspiracy to unlawfuly cheat people out of sickness and disability Benefits'.

And so on.

People quite often do not like the anwers they are given, do not agree with the Benefits legislation, and because of this they then shoot the messenger.

I do agree that a small minority of people are out to cause trouble and these people should be reported to abuse, but in the main any discord comes from people not liking the answers they are given,

JimmyTheWig

WhiteHorse wrote: »

Dealing with the benefits system is a nightmare for anyone with no experience of it

I agree. And these (as opposed to the "serial claimants", if such a thing exist) are who I presume those generally anti-benefits would be reasonably happy to help...

JimmyTheWig

viktory wrote: »

A large number of posts on the benefit board are clearly people looking to claim fraudulently or looking to find a work around.

WhiteHorse wrote: »

Um. Would you care to substantiate that?

I can't personally substantiate the claim, but I certainly agree - particularly about the work-around part. That's what many of the posts on the benefits board that I read are about. Seven-day-weekend's post above confirms this from their experience, too.

A great deal of this site is about finding work-arounds and loopholes to systems put in place.
E.g. in many cases we would suggest someone gets a 0% credit card and then shifts the balance when the deal runs out. We wouldn't suggest that the borrower has some sort of duty to the credit card company to pay their high interest rates after this point. We have work-arounds (such as using Egg Money as a mule) to get this money out in the first place.

Equally we have people who come here asking for work-arounds to pay less tax.

I don't see the problem with people asking. If there was a loophole which meant I could pay less tax I'd like to do it. If there was a loophole which meant I was entitled to benefits then I'd like to do it.
When people ask they are told that there are no loopholes. You almost never see posts on here suggesting that people lie or cheat the system.


So while it is what people are looking for, I'm not convinced that it is a monster. I'm sure there are communities (online and elsewhere) where claimants get together and discuss ways of increasing their benefits through lying and cheating the system.
MSE is _not_ one of those places.

robpw2

i think that as long as people do not get personal then , debating should be allowed , i appereciate not everyone agrees but often amongts the different views is often some great help

seven-day-weekend

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

I'm sure there are communities (online and elsewhere) where claimants get together and discuss ways of increasing their benefits through lying and cheating the system.
MSE is _not_ one of those places.

Absolutely. This is what causes many of the problems on the Benefits Board.

Another one is people not giving enough information and then taking offence when asked for more so that people can give an informed answer.