Survival of the Unfittest and the UK Benefits System

reply to post by christina-66


I hope your right. Landlords in London take the piss and it's also annoying that tax payers money goes pretty much straight to these dodgy land lords in housing benefit. The rent is too damn high.

reply to post by christina-66


its stupid isnt it, i have anxiety and i am bi-polar, i work hard and dont need a carer, so she is using it as an excuse! .. people can lead a normal life with bi-polar its not disabling.

Agree OP! cutting out the sky, sky movies , cigerattes AND booze will certainly put the heating on. The cheek of it. i dont have sky or sky movies nor can i afford to go out every week

hmm wonder if goin to university to get this job was worth it instead i could of poped out children and have a free ride.

i think that the government should help familes with upto 3 children,. if you want anymore after that then you should pay for it youself. dont see why tax payers should have to pay for a family like this. they get to live a wonderful life of freedom and luxarys .. no wonder people are getting pissed off!

The Benefit System was designed to be a temporary crutch to the needy and disadvantaged and those in society unable to help themselves.
And it should remain that way.

Instead it has become a convenient lifestyle choice for far too many.

The reasons for this are many and varied, but the bulk of the blame should lie with successive governments who have stripped the manufacturing heart out of this country for personal gain and political idealogy or have been guilty of social engineering, political correctness and the imposition of the nanny state.

There is obviously something seriously wrong when pensioners who have worked all their lives, the genuine disabled and ex-servicemen and women suffer whilst foreigners, free loaders and the downright lazy and selfish seem to prosper.

The whole system needs a drastic review and overhaul with resources being directed to those that need and deserve it.

Unfortunately elected officials place a greater priority on following political dogma and party line rather than delivering what is best for the country and it's people.

reply to post by christina-66


I agree the benefit system is jacked up.. it favors those who do not contribute to society and is completely unfair to those of us who do work.

But I don't think Darwinism comes into this scenario. Most of the millionaire+ population in the United States for instance (82%) are self made, grown up in large poor families or middle class families to become the "elite".

It's not quite as high in the UK because the UK has a culture of inheritance ..

My point being wealth does not equate intelligence or physical fitness. Nor does occupation, education or social status. My American ancestors were poor farmers in the Great Depression, lost their farm and all. Before that their parents lived in a hovel in Western Ireland and used their life savings to come to America. Where they still didn't get rich. But I certainly don't consider myself to be a Darwinian oddity? Poor people mooching off the system suck, there's no other way to put it. Their lazy cheats. But their kid one day might be the doctor performing open heart surgery on you, or be your child's teacher, or hell, be the Prime Minister.

reply to post by christina-66


I have an anxiety disorder & don't leave the house at all. However, I worked from the age of 13 until 2008(I'm 38) and my husband for the same company for 27 years. Now, my very real, disorder makes it impossible for either of us to work & our two children are taken everywhere solely by him-my son has many medical appointments
We never go out, we don't drink or smoke & we struggle week to week
I get tired of hearing these families have the latest this & that and goodness knows how many children and get tired of us all being tarred with the same brush
I'd love to be doing the job I loved-far from glamorous but I loved it. My husband began suffering from depression after giving up his work
It's not always the easy option

We are all in it togeather says Cameron.
Benifit scams?
Just more bs from the elitest w***kers....

www.guardian.co.uk...

Yes those on benifits are worthless lay abouts ect ect
Benifits?
These were won with the blood and lives of our parents and grand parents. Laying down their lives in the millions. In stupid wars for the rich banksters and their cronies.

Its OBVIOUS that benefits need to be capped. Where does a working man get paid more according to the amount of children he has .

Hopefulluy Raymond will end up divorced and down to recieving a single persons payment soon or when hes older . Lets see how he copes on that NOT ..You dont cope on a single persons payment .

The problem with these reforms are that those who are fortunate enough to be working are now starting to look down on those who need support and have begun judging them as wastes of space.

What people forget is that it is the same government that wants to strangle the life out of its citizens under the false pretense of austerity cuts as it is the same government that wants to stop migrants from coming into the country, that wants to stop the freedom on the internet, that wants to stop vitamins in food, that wants to stop any form of rebellion once it imposes its laws through a fear of imprisonment... and worse still its the same government that pumps extreme quantities of tax payers money into building more war machines, bombs and weaponry to fight their unjust wars... if they were to take only 20% of the annual war budget and pump it back into the benefits system there would be more than plenty to support every individual that needed it.

So many times i hear.. yes but its my tax payers money..i pay my taxes..why should they sit at home on their lazy backsides and take my hard earned money...

And yet those same people don't bat an eyelid when their money is used to construct a bomb that takes the lives of hundreds of innocent babies..

It's never you against your own people... don't ever forget that.. if anything it should always be you against the policy makers...

The only thing that needs `capped` are the knees of these political crooks, who try to scam the working classes of the world. Work? We have machines that can do most of the work that needs to be done. As for govts, whats wrong with employing a pc to do their job? Then they wont be able to be bought off or do deals for the old boys club.
Get rid of money=enslavement.
Work for the benifit of the world and all the people. Not just the landed gentry types who couldnt survive if they didnt have some skivy to do their work for them. Im sick to death of these wasters looking down their noses at every one and slagging them off, whilst at the same time they are robbing us blind. So that they can rape and murder the people/planet.

Make them work 30 hours a week for free and give them food coupons .. Also to be honest min wage has to go up (£10 an hour) and the price of living has to go down..big companies make huge profits while there employees need tax credits from the government ..that's not right

reply to post by christina-66


Extremely one sided OP IMO... looks like it was lifted from a Daily Mail article (Are you a DM Journo?)

Its written in that way that has some valid points (yes Raymond is lazy etc etc and no one is going to condone his spending on ciggys and sky tv)...However, Raymond IS NOT a fair representation of all unemployed people; the article and your OP doesn't even touch on employment, lack of jobs, an infrastructure that was destroyed by Tory Guberments of the past, lack of jobs that actually pay more than being on benefits, why do you think they chose him as a case study???? jeez....

What does really piss me off though is politicians constantly focussing on this whilst they were guilty of expenses fraud for decades.

And it's the politicians policies that have caused it all.

I suspect there maybe more than just an element of deflection tactics involved in this.

reply to post by Freeborn


You’re right – this all started back in the day with the mass unemployment generated under Thatcher. They say present youth unemployment is at its ‘highest levels since records began’ – but the records only began in 1992 !!! So that conveniently wipes my peers’ experience of their youth under Thatcher completely off the record books. Clever that.

Or how about when Thatcher was in office and unemployment way exceeded 3 million. At the time you claimed unemployment benefit for 12 months – as long as you claimed the benefit you counted among the unemployed. Thatcher’s government changed the rules so that unemployment benefit could only be claimed for 6 months. Over night the unemployment figures almost halved. Neat trick.

Despite this manipulation of stats yet more people were losing jobs– or failing to gain employment -throughout the 90’s and Noughties (with hindsight that decade should probably have been called the Naughties). Commonly, after a few months of unemployment people get depressed....they can then conveniently be moved to ‘incapacity benefit’ and once again the unemployed numbers can falsely be reduced.

Going back to the late 70’s and early 80’s when the manipulation of stats started to become an art form is three generations. And while the Whitehall lackeys and city slickers have been having a wheeze doing tricks with their calculators three generations of unemployment has had serious social, economic and health repercussions for individuals, families and communities.

They’ve spent so long dodging reality – denying and hiding fundamental flaws with our society – that they’ve failed to deal with them and they’ve festered. The mole-hills of 30 years ago have become an entire mountain range today.

reply to post by slinkey10


In the past people marched demanding the right to work. That’s not what’s happening here. What is being demanded here is the right to a lifestyle equivalent to that of a working family (a better lifestyle even) without the whole inconvenient little work thing getting in the way.

The majority of the working population in this country do actually work and we each have a punitively high tax bill because of these shenanigans. A couple with children with one earning average salary (say £25k) and the other part time pro rata, pay tax, national insurance, and council tax before they look at allocating the remainder to actually live. That means a couple working say 56 hours a week between them have way less to live on than Raymond & Co. (circa £30k with which to pay rent/mortgage, food, utilities, transport, clothing, How’s that family’s moral doing? It’s a smack in the face.

Raymond & Co are not so exceptional....given their housing benefit amounts to £76 per week you might say that his is a more modest example of how insidious this problem actually is (given the exorbitant rents paid to private landlords with housing benefit under the present system).

It’s the system that’s shot. ...and certainly wasn’t only the Tory governments who shot it. Labour got off a good few good rounds too. All through their time in government jobs were created but mostly in the public sector. My personal pet hate in regard to their policy is the much hailed ‘tax credit’ which ensures employers can continue to pay lower than a living wage.

I have a large gas/electricity provider’s head office not far from here. That office employs literally thousands of people working 3 shifts a day 24/7. That company declares annual profits in the billions. That company is causing real financial pain to its customers who have to pay exorbitant bills. That company pays the majority of its staff minimum wage. Most of that company’s staff claim tax credits. Why is the government subsidising this profitable company’s wages bill?


Successive governments have turned a blind eye to what’s been going on. They’ve been that busy telling us we’ve ‘never had it so good’ and massaging the figures and reality to suit that they long ago forgot that there’s a real live country out here – with real live people – who know different.

We need a reality check. If we don’t acknowledge the problems exist we can’t tackle them.

BTW the OP cites today's BBC News as the source of Raymond's tale of woe not the Daily Mail.

reply to post by Marlborough Red


Since I dont trust the accuracy of the official figures id have to spend a couple hourssearching the net, when I get a couple hours free to do this then ill get back to u, might be waiting a while tho mate

If local councils cut the salary of the top few people incharge (mostly getting 6 figure salaries) then they wouldnt have to lay off the minimum wagers and there would be less people on benefits, go ahead check your councils website, they have to show their salaries, what possible reason is there to pay one public sector employee that much

While I'm usually very serious about these things, I saw this vid today and having read the article on BBC this morning, i thought to myself "this sounds like them!". Hope this will lighten the mood until I come back with my usual head on because there are some serious flaws with the benefit caps... but for now:

reply to post by christina-66


I honestly cant name anyone I know that earns more than 16k a year, but then I am from an actual lower working class background, the sort that just scraping by on minimum wage

Our great and good have decided unemployment is how we get out of a depression. They have turned being unemployed into an industry in a country that has very little industry.

Some people thrive and know how to work the system. Most do not.

Lets look at other moochers shall we with far less reason.

Many workers in the UK earn so little they have to have government top ups to make their wage to a barely liveable one. Is the company paying this low wage ever audited to see if it could pay more rather than the tax payer propping up his/its profit margin?

Multinationals that move to an area with government grants to lower unemployment only to leave as soon as that grant runs out for its next government grant? Dell anyone?
Multinationals that pay no tax at all and even get rebates on zero tax

Tax relief denied to those that need it but given in spades to those that do not need it.

Do I need to mention the banker bailouts? Probably not but I will anyway. People that have destroyed the savings of many who have worked hard all their lives. Made pensions nowhere near liveable despite years spent building them up. Bankers bonuses well they did earn them, didn’t they?

Politicians second homes. Paid for out of tax payers money but owned by the politician for him to sell on or rent out as he wishes.

Our wonderful house of Lords peopled on the whole by rich moochers, matey with the governments or inherited seats. How many are ex bankers, ex politicians, directors. How many are nurses, GP's, cleaners soldiers and I don’t mean generals or admirals.

All of the above are paid out of tax that you pay. Do you know how much that costs? Neither do I as the costs are buried deep.

But hey only the dastardly low class unemployed are classed as moochers. Let us never look higher or we may have to face the real truth. That we are mugs and all the time we blame the lowest only we deserve to be treated as mugs.

This raises a number of points:

1. It only takes one to make a headline and I can guarantee that it would be possible to find at least one person to prove anything you want! What matters is how a system applies to most people.

2. No system is perfect and can account for all possible scenarios. That said the benefits system needs a re-build since it has grown arms and legs since its inception post WWII. However, on the other side of the coin the tax system has the same problem. The solution is simple combine tax+benefits into a single system that does not work against itself. Currently tax and benefits come head to head with people caught in the middle. Basically tax gross income and apply a post tax state allowance for every single citizen. The net effect for an average earner is exactly the same as the current tax system. Work it out it is quite surprising.

3. There will ALWAYS be lazy people. Let me ask you something : would you like a system whereby someone is forced into work that does not want to and could conceivably work in area that affects YOUR childrens lives (bus driver, crossing warden etc). I think the answer is no. I would rather they fester at home on a minimum income safely out of harms way. How about putting them in a position where they commit crime to survive and steal form YOU...no thanks I would rather they fester all day at home. If they commit crime and are caught it would cost more than the benefits to lock them up DUH!!

4. The benefits system is only "generous" when compared to abysmally low wages in an economy so distorted that most of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of very very few. Ever noticed who winds people up about benefits? The millionaire owners of tabloid newspapers.......go figure why!

regards,