Was anyone else watching this programme last night with their blood boiling? I had to turn it off three quarters of the way through as I was so incensed. If ever UKIP needed an advert for them this was it.
I wouldn't confuse facts with cherry-picking a few outrageous cases to make a shocking story and good TV. There's always a couple of arseholes exploiting the system but for every one of those, there's a thousand just struggling to get by.
No surprise it was on Channel 5... It's full of sensationalist but completely non-informative programming. Lazy television - cheap to make and guaranteed to create a stir.
The fact that these programs can be made at all suggests something is wrong. To say that these are cherry picked outrageous cases does not make them acceptable or validate the system that allows them to happen. There needs to be responsibilities along with rights and expectations along with benefits.
This may sound rather harsh but benefits need to be suspended and natural selection given space and time to work
Mmmmm...and you know why happens then, right? The people concerned get desperate and turn to a life of crime. At best you end up paying for them to be kept in jail, which is more expensive to the taxpayer than giving them benefits/education in the first place and at worst, the mug your granny/wife/kids and the streets become unsafe. No, the way to handle this is to provide the best education possible for kids to discourage them from being dependent on benefits and for the people who fail, provide some sort of safety net to prevent the above.
This may sound rather harsh, but that doesn't even make sense... Natural selection is an evolutionary model. Are we suspending benefits for many generations whilst we wait for some sort of genetic adaptation that will stop human beings abusing the system / taking the piss?
I've said it before and I will say it again, The government is to blame for this. If you were a family man and benefits gives you more monthly income than working then why the fuck would you work. And if the family are several generations of none workers then tell me how to break that cycle? I tend not to watch these "Benefit" programmes as these people are an easy target for sensationalised media. We do lose sight that at the other end of the scale there are very wealthy tax dodgers who in effect are just as bad if not worse by not contributing fairly. But again that's the governments fault for leaving loopholes open because I would pay less tax if I could, who wouldn't? Lets say suddenly all the people on benefits suddenly found work and the benefits bill was slashed to a fraction of what it is now and all the tax loop holes were closed and and extra Gazzilion pounds was found for the treasury. You and I would still pay the same tax we do now. So I have come to the conclusion that its not worth busting your spleen over.
I did not see this particular programme but the system is crazy in many ways and incredibly inefficient. People working on low incomes pay a % in tax and then get benefits so two lots of work to be done . Fair enough top up the low paid with benefits but don`t tax them in the first place. I have two guys that work for me who both turned down pay rises as it would make them worse off as their benefits would be cut by more than the after tax increase offered. How can a system that does that be right ?
The best way to deal with the benefit problem is to lower the cost of housing and to increase the number of jobs paid a living wage. The minimum wage is £6.31 for over 21's. The living wage is £7.65. That's not a wealthy life, but one with enough food and the basics of living. If a single male has 2 children from a previous failed relationship he would have to pay 20% of his income as CSA payments, putting him on £5.05/hour. That's only 2p above the minimum wage for an 18 year old and £2.61 per hour less than the amount deemed the minimum rate to live with the basics. If you consider the rate of separation, pre-marital birth rates and teen pregnancy across the nation as a whole and then again across the demographic earning less than £16k per year per household and it becomes clear why the system is broken. Families can't earn enough to cover the bills on a minimum wage job and men with CSA commitments are pushed even further in to poverty. A minimum wage job at 35 hours a week earns only £11,484 per annum before tax. If your rent was £750 as is the norm for a 2 up 2 down in my area then you'd be left with £207 per month to cover all other bills. £100 council tax alone leaves £107 for food for the month which becomes even less when transport to and from employment locations is considered. Clothing, healthcare, water, electricity, gas. Housing is unaffordable. Entitlement to housing benefit comes from either a low wage or through receipt of income support or job seeker's allowance. Those two benefits in themselves are low amounts, maybe £70 per week? It's the housing benefit that costs. Because housing isn't affordable on low incomes unless in state funded housing, there is no incentive to work. A £14k a year job won't even cover the rent in the south west so many families are caught in a system of unaffordability perpetuated by the wealth generation by the middle class; the very people who shout the loudest about abuse of the benefits system.
I can't watch those programmes I know they hunt out the worst cases but it just highlights the ingrained problems in this country. I don't need to go to bed grinding my teeth!
PS sorry for the typos in my previous post. I'm typing this on my new state-funded iPad while lying in bed at 11am with bottle of Scottish and a pack of fags at balanced on my chest so it's a bit tricky.
Didn't see the programme, but regarding the system. How can it be anything but shit when it's constructed, run and policed by the most incompetent fuckwits in our society, the politicians?
We need to incentivise good behaviour and disincentivise bad behaviour. But let's not forget the raft of liberal lefties who earn a good living providing these people with benefits. The welfare state should be a genuine safety net and not a lifestyle choice.
This idea that it's a life style choice completely disregards the fact that housing is the biggest cost for everyone, in every wealth bracket and that wealthy people own the houses, use them as a form of wealth generation and that poorer people are at the mercy of banks, interest rates and private landlords. If houses weren't a mechanism for wealth generation then they wouldn't be a target for capitalists looking to make money. A warm, dry place to sleep should be a bare minimum for everyone in a country that can send rockets to mars.
