With a massive labour shortage in the country at the moment

[QUOTE="Brush, post: 2813570, member: 6770"I went tatie picking one year as a school kid, wouldn't do that for a living....[/QUOTE]


I wouldn’t do that for way in excess of minimum wage.

Money is not the be all and end all for lots.(no offence to those struggling to cope) Job satisfaction, as in a long term career is far more important. Mentally.

Any major company not paying the Living wage should be ashamed. The minimum wage should be abolished in my view. To make going to work more attractive than the benefits system. For those that are able to work.

 

There's 20 million football fans in Britain but we still need a centre forward.

 

The country has a lot to worry about.

 

Which is just as well that the guy at the helm is a safe pair of hands!

 

There is no end to this argument as one side refuses to acknowledge that some are just unable to work and the other side refuse to acknowledge that some are just unwilling to work. Round and round time

 

this is so little understood by people. As someone who for quite a lot of time investigated benefit fraud it is blindingly obvious.

 

It's absolutely fact that it's a mixture of both.

Having had experience early this year of trying to claim Universal Credit, anyone who manages to get a reasonable living out of the miserable b@st@ards is clearly a very talented individual and should be head hunted to replace some of the poo-for-brains that are running the country just now.

We've all heard stories about scroungers who somehow live a reasonable life on benefits but I've personally never met one and I bet those that trot these stories out have never met one either.

 

I've met quite a few. I know quite a few. I've absolutely no idea how they do it because the amounts that we are told they get for various things largely doesn't add up to the lifestyle I've seen them have so god knows what's going on. The only thing I can think of is that it isn't just the money they receive but the things they get discounted or paid for entirely which makes the difference and the sad thing is that many who are entitled to these things and genuinely need them won't know about them but all those who play the system will claim the lot.

I'd love a world where the benefits scroungers are given sod all and the money saved is distributed towards those genuinely people on benefits who could actually do with a bit more but then I guess that's no different to wishing the rich would pay their tax bills so that those who need it have more too.

 

Daily Mail alert!

 

Does the daily mail often call on the rich to pay more tax so that the poor can have more money?

 

They often run stories about an imagined class of "benefit scroungers".

 

It's not imagined though. They exist. We all know they exist. They key thing is separating those from the many genuine claimants who need more help than they currently get. If that makes me 'daily mail alert' then so be it

 

"We all know". Really? Evidence?

So far as I am concerned, if anyone wants to try and make a "living" from existing on state benefits, then good luck to them. I don't buy it, because I think that would be a pretty miserable existence. If there are such people then I don't care if my taxes go towards supporting them. I think we have a better duty of common humanity than to want to make such people destitute. Only my view of course, and I appreciate others may have a different outlook.

 

A single person in receipt of JSA will receive £74.70. From that they will need to pay council tax as they are no longer exempt. If they are under 35 they will be expected to live in shared accommodation and be paid only at shared accommodation rate.

If the people you know are living an extravagant life they are undoubtedly funding that through other means and not through benefits.

Having worked in benefits for 10 years as an investigator and then a investigations manager I genuinely never met anyone on long term benefits who wasn’t eking out a miserable existence though did come across some who supplemented benefits with illegal activities who did pretty well.

 

It must be that then, that or they also claim all the other benefits such as disability and things because they're so good at playing the system. As I've said before though I'm not having a go at the vast vast majority of genuine people it's just frustrating that the minority of scroungers are taking money that could be otherwise distributed to those who need it.

 

In all honesty no one has less sympathy with benefit fraud than me. The vast majority I came across were desperate people usually women with feckless partners who contributed nothing to a household other then kids and domestic violence.

Fraud against disability benefits was shockingly rare. It gets the headlines as you do Obs and film them but was a tiny fraction of the caseload. Again if you genuinely claim disability benefit it is literally aimed at just enough to keep you alive.

The tiny minority motivated by greed alone were usually pensioners or landlords. One usually escaped with a slap on the wrists despite defrauding thousands and the others there was never the money to go after.

of course there should be action against anyone defrauding or gaming the system but the amount of money lost is dwarfed by unclaimed benefits. Most years around 10/1

 

I think where you are going wrong is thinking that this money would be redistributed to those who needs it. Would it ****. The people who genuinely need it aren’t receiving peanuts because there’s some people claiming who don’t need it, they’re receiving peanuts because the Tories don’t give a ****. The same Tories who encourage you to be angry at the few people who do claim it erroneously so that you don’t complain about those who do need it who are literally starving to death. It’s not a set , unchangeable amount of money in a giant pot and some people taking it stops others getting more, the government can pretty much make this pot as big as they like, they’ve made a conscious decision to pay next to nothing and give the money to their mates instead.

 

Do "benefit scroungers" take more from the exchequer than " tax dodgers"?

 

I know that. I don't think it would be redistributed. What I was saying is that if it was up to me then it would be, just like if it was up to me the rich would be taxed and that would also be redistributed. I'm under no illusions that they'd do it, it's just what I'd like to happen