Wealthy UK politician reckons he can survive on £53 a week.

Originally posted by angelchemuel
I can't see the petition challenging IDS to take up the challenge...here is the link
www.change.org...

The last figure I saw was 365,000 signatures...and I can't find the link, but IDS basically said he would not be taking up the challenge.

Rainbows
Jane

Hardly surprising really...hollow words from the outset - the temerity to challenge people less fortunate than himself - classic bully-boy tactic...runs away when confronted...moron...

A99

Duncan Smith like most Tory MP's is an idiot, he's since claimed that he did have to survive on the dole (slang name for our benefits system) as he was unemployed twice. I doubt this was a hardship as you will notice he's a double barrelled name and actually comes from money so I don't think he had a hard time.

These idiots like him and George Osbourne are so far from reality I doubt they even knows the cost of basic food, if they did they would know 7.50 a day is almost insulting. As its cold at the moment I'd say at least £2 of that is on electric, add another £2 if there a gas boiler, so there's £3.50 for food.

Good luck on getting 3 meals out of that unless its toast every time and the estimates for electric and gas could well be too low as ours is easily near enough £6 a day between both.

Its no wonder that 330,000 people signed a petition to ask him to actually live on that money.

Originally posted by Mclaneinc
Duncan Smith like most Tory MP's is an idiot, he's since claimed that he did have to survive on the dole (slang name for our benefits system) as he was unemployed twice. I doubt this was a hardship as you will notice he's a double barrelled name and actually comes from money so I don't think he had a hard time.

These idiots like him and George Osbourne are so far from reality I doubt they even knows the cost of basic food, if they did they would know 7.50 a day is almost insulting. As its cold at the moment I'd say at least £2 of that is on electric, add another £2 if there a gas boiler, so there's £3.50 for food.

Good luck on getting 3 meals out of that unless its toast every time and the estimates for electric and gas could well be too low as ours is easily near enough £6 a day between both.

Its no wonder that 330,000 people signed a petition to ask him to actually live on that money.

Because balance is an important thing, are you going to give any of it to your opinion? I'm neither a fan or a hater of IDS personally, but it's worth stating some factual points isn't it?

First off, my boss has a double barrelled name and she is far from a moneyed background. She simply wanted to maintain her surname as part of her identity after marriage (this is not uncommon), so to say it implies a wealthy background I have to say with respect, is plain inverted snobbery. I also assume you have looked into his family history? No records of being related to the gentry as such although his father was the son of an officer (IDS also served in the forces).

Now, before calling him an idiot, balance that with 2 things. Which politician is not an idiot because they have come up with a more workable yet still affordable solution (hardly Ed Balls, Milliband etc), and also the total you believe should be paid to a single person without kids on a weekly basis as unemployment benefit and how you arrived at that figure.

I'm neither pro nor anti on this, just that throwing out an opinion without any backing to it is just a rant.

When that dickhead said he wanted work to pay then that dickhead should raise the minimum wage or in work benefits. Instead that dickhead cut the income of some of the very poorest members of society 20percent. Pure evil.

They're begging for more crime, i only hope its this scumbags family who are the victims.
Just wait until they get paid monthly,due to start in october, drugdealers and loansharks are rubbing their hands together. Big society my arse.

reply to post by samerulesapply


You know what? You have to know how to control your spending to be able to live off benefits!!

For instance... if you don't go out for a month, you save on costs of travel, entry into clubs or/and buying drinks!

If you dont really feel the cold, you dont need to put your heating on much.

If you can get by on just 2 meals a day which lets face it, is all you need.

If you can manage to not shop for the latest toys, clothes and other stuff (which isnt really needed) you can actually save cash.... trust me..... but THIS Politician wouldn't be able to.

There is something which I have witnessed lately though coming from the Leaders and Politicians and its not sounding too nice or great.... I've sort of been taken back to the days or the Romans when they had whips for those who were against them.... I have been waiting for those whips to come back.... these guys are sounding like they want to crack that whip onto every mans as s!!

Originally posted by AK907ICECOLD
reply to post by samerulesapply

 

He can kiss my ass..!!!

How does this contribute to the debate?

Should we have a petition to force him to do that?

My wife and I survive on that a week without benefits and no luxuries, he is correct you can survive on it, like the many private renting working families and average earning families with mortgages have been doing for a good few years now.

This is the silent majority that everyone, including the press, seem to forget about. The government, both past and present, don't forget about us though when it comes to striking the hammer down, we are the sizeable majority that are keeping this landfill above water and seemingly subsidising both rich and perceived poor at the same time.

Want to know how to survive on that? Speak to an average working family who private rents, they will show you exactly how to.

reply to post by SecretFace

Want to know how to survive on that? Speak to an average working family who private rents, they will show you exactly how to.

The thing is you or no-one should have to 'survive' on that.

Is that what this country has come to that we accept that a large percentage of our nation should be happy and content to exist on subsistence level wages and benefits?

This country is going backwards.

Originally posted by SecretFace
My wife and I survive on that a week without benefits and no luxuries, he is correct you can survive on it, like the many private renting working families and average earning families with mortgages have been doing for a good few years now.

This is the silent majority that everyone, including the press, seem to forget about. The government, both past and present, don't forget about us though when it comes to striking the hammer down, we are the sizeable majority that are keeping this landfill above water and seemingly subsidising both rich and perceived poor at the same time.

Want to know how to survive on that? Speak to an average working family who private rents, they will show you exactly how to.

oh yeah whatever. Do you have any idea what having no money whatsoever feels like? People with mortgages are not skint. Oh dear.
Same as the people pulling up in cars to go to foodbanks,jeeze they are not skint either.
Some people make me puke. No idea what its like to be absolutly pennyless. Evil people.

Originally posted by symptomoftheuniverse

Originally posted by SecretFace
My wife and I survive on that a week without benefits and no luxuries, he is correct you can survive on it, like the many private renting working families and average earning families with mortgages have been doing for a good few years now.

This is the silent majority that everyone, including the press, seem to forget about. The government, both past and present, don't forget about us though when it comes to striking the hammer down, we are the sizeable majority that are keeping this landfill above water and seemingly subsidising both rich and perceived poor at the same time.

Want to know how to survive on that? Speak to an average working family who private rents, they will show you exactly how to.

oh yeah whatever. Do you have any idea what having no money whatsoever feels like? People with mortgages are not skint. Oh dear.
Same as the people pulling up in cars to go to foodbanks,jeeze they are not skint either.
Some people make me puke. No idea what its like to be absolutly pennyless. Evil people.

I take offence to that, real offence to that, like I've almost put my fist through the monitor offence to that.

How about you work full time and have to go without food to make sure your kids eat. How about you have to beg with water companies, gas and electric because you cant afford the rates that they are doing to the point where you are choosing to turn the light on or keep the house heated. How about you have to skrimp and scrpae to find food for kids pack lunches while others get school dinenrs for nothing. How about you go to the school playground and listen to parents who haven't got jobs spend thousands on their kids at Christmas, for my wife and I to save half the year and still barely have pounds and instead try and be as traditional as we can with kids and make things and what not, but feel sick when they go to school and are told by their friends that they have got the latest electronics etc from parents who don't even work! How about you sell your car and travel everywhere on the bus with kids, walk as much as you can, simply because can't afford to run a car. How about you live in a private rented house thats falling apart for the Landlord to tell you find somewhere else.

I tell you, if you had said that to my face right now, I would've been probably sitting in a cell tonight, don't ever assume that people don't know what its like to have no money, you have no right, you have no idea how many working families are struggling!

People with mortgages aren't poor? What choice do those people have, they can't get on social housing because they work or are not foreign, private renting is total drain on finance that more and more families can't afford. So they've worked and worked and worked hard just to save up and get their deposit, simply to have a bit more security for their kids and all you do is sneer at them?

I'm not being funny but you should look at yourself in the mirror, you are totally detached from reality.

Originally posted by Freeborn
reply to post by SecretFace

 

Want to know how to survive on that? Speak to an average working family who private rents, they will show you exactly how to.

The thing is you or no-one should have to 'survive' on that.

Is that what this country has come to that we accept that a large percentage of our nation should be happy and content to exist on subsistence level wages and benefits?

This country is going backwards.

I agree mate, but I'm too seething at the comment below yours to even think straight.

Originally posted by RoScoLaz

He could probably survive on just the fat for a year never mind the 80 dollars a week!

This is perhaps the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Politicians may be second only to actors and lawyers in terms of being professional liars, but this stretches the truth beyond even the limits laid down by thier example.

There is NO way that he could continue to do his job and live on that amount of money, not without abusing his expenses allowance in a massive and utterly spurious manner. As someone who has had to live on the parlous amount referenced, I can assert that to do so without running over the limits of ones funds, requires one to have either an entirely preturnaturally good grasp of finance and figures, or no overheads, like light, heating, a roof over ones head, fuel to travel on, or public transport costs, leave alone the need to eat.

Last time I was in that situation I lived on a roundabout, under a tree. Still found life tough despite all that. No matter what state you find yourself in financially, life is ALWAYS harder at the bottom end. It is also, proporitionally more expensive. A rich man, or a simply well off man, will feed his family without thinking about the numbers, purchase and fuel a car without springing into a sweat, house himself and his family all without a catastrophic dent being made in thier finances. People like me however, cannot move forward in life without risking the devastation of whatever modicum of saftey and security we might have been able to scrape from the rotten carcass that is the modern way of life.

IDS has no idea what life is like for folks who require government assistance, otherwise he would not express a level of eagreness to live in that way. The only reason he has made this foolish statement, is because he knows that he will not be forced to walk the path laid by the toil of his tongue, and because he knows that the idiots who follow his party will be roused by them, despite thier fallacy.

His words, thier intent, thier very origins, speak volumes of how little the poorer folk, and thier value to our land are understood. Never mind the fact that a capitalist economic and political structure REQUIRES a poor working class in order to function, the working classes are also those who have traditionally fought wars, and protected the nation from destruction. It wasnt lords and ladies, and captains of industry who were the majority that fought off the Nazis, nor flew in the Battle of Britain against the Luftwaffe.

Nor is it the suits who made possible the industrial revolution. They would have had nothing, been NOTHING without the sweat of the working people, those whose sweat and blood and very LIVES were the ones being expended to make it happen.

And nor, will it be the politicians, the bankers, or the tycoons of this country who make it possible to get out of our nations dire financial state. It will be the efforts of the working people which save the day, once again. The constant abuse and oppression of the working class, will only slow that process down. The government should make thier savings out of the masses they waste on bad contracts in all departments, from the HMRC to the MoD, and STOP victimising people for working hard and getting no where, which is PRECISELY what is happening now.

The governments current policies pander to the misapprehension, that people on benifits are to a man jobless, feckless morons with no aspiration, happy to stay on benifits and do nothing. This is false. Most people recieving benifits are working people, and of the small proportion who are not working, only another, small proportion are actually happy to be in that state.

IDS's statements try to legitimise a lie which has been published hundreds of times, but remains a lie. A lie repeated a million times is no less a lie, and IDS cannot change that, no matter how much he and his party full of entitled fools might wish it to be otherwise.

reply to post by SecretFace


Like i say you have no idea what its like to be pennyless. You come on here claiming your hard done by. Your poverty is riches to some people i know. How about the credit union taking your child benefit,friends crying with hunger, sitting in the dark because the electrics gone, i could go on and on...
My heart bleeds for you andhow dare you be offended?

A few people don't seem to get it. I, personally, probably could scrape by on 53 pounds a week, I lived on jobseekers for a few months at a time when I was a temp working in factories.

I did without, it wasn't easy but I'm still alive, because I'm more than happy to eat super noodles, or cheese sandwiches for dinner if I must.

But I've a sneaking suspicion that Ian duncan smith couldn't, and wouldn't. He probably doesn't know how to prepare super noodles, not that he has to cook for himself - he can employ a butler to cook them for him. When it comes to it, if we were all stripped of our wealth and put in the same boat...I'd live, he'd most likely expie due to the fact that he's inadequate. In a real dog eat dog world, I'd be the rottweiler and he'd be my dinner.

The point is this, many of the people who will suffer as a result of his idiotic policies aren't like me, or you...they're disabled, ill, people who have problems and in many cases special needs. So it's irrelevant if you or I can survive on it, not everyone can, that's the point.

At a push, I'd survive, it wouldn't be fun but I've been there and done that, IDS has not and couldn't possibly hope to do so if his life depended on it...and some peoples lives WILL depend on it, not his...with his insane salary - and with regards to his background... isn't his wife a millionairre from a wealthy family? He's certainy not from the same neck of the woods i'm from.

They wouldn't know real poverty if it pinned them face down and molested them, sexually.

Pathetic that this idiot thinks he can manage on such a paltry sum of money, and equally pathetic that some people are actually trying to defend and justify his stupidity. Nice one.

reply to post by NeoVain


You're right, I don't think he can do it. You're also right about it not being about money, see...if I were homeless and had nothing, and push came to shove, I'd hunt wild rabbits, I'd fish...II'm not some pretentious, middle class snob who has to dine on fine cuisine, though.

I'm used to eeking out a living and being thrifty...is he? I'd happily go up against him on this issue, 53 pounds a week or not, I'm quietly confident that I'd fare better.

And this is exactly what TPTB want....dissent in the ranks, divide and conquer. Guess what THEY'RE WINNING.

The whole point is....this is affecting everyone, and I don't just mean IDS's spurious and arrogant remark. The whole 'system' is turning on us all. When it all goes 'tits up' we'll all be in the same boat, I don't care how much money or gold anyone has stashed away...because the more you have the bigger a target you are.

Wallmart in the US has got empty shelves...they (wallmart) are blamming the lack of shelf stackers!! Can you believe that when there are millions unemployed over there! Tie that in with the 3 year in a row that crops here in the UK will not be supplied and we have to rely on imports and the price of food has to go up! Oh, but add to that...when the Euro goes AWOL...do you honestly think the Spaniards are going to be sending their tomatoes and cucumbers over here!????

We all have our own levels of poverty......and so will the elite when they can't find food and wont have a clue how to survive. Please don't come back at me with 'they'll be ok'...they wont, they will be the first that will be ransacked of whatever they have.

We all have to take responsibility for the positions we find ourselves in, and having a go at individuals or the corrupt system ain't gonna cut the mustard when it comes down to it.

Rainbows
Jane

reply to post by SecretFace


I hear you, at least you own a house...my parents worked damn hard to raise us as best they could, they could not afford a house.

I work full time and don't have a high quality of life, I can't even remember the last time I bought new clothes, have a cheap phone, very little luxury items, nor do I own a home, or have a mortgage.

I'd love to own a home, at least have the opportunity to own a home, if I'd the choice of live as I am now, or live on £53 a week with the prospects of eventually owning property...I'd do so, and it'd be my choice.

Self inflicted, I get your point, but at the same time - if you didn't have said mortgage perhaps you'd live off more than the £53 a week you claim both you and your wife live on.

I read some were that 10% of the UK population are millionaires. Yet out of the 650 MPs representing us there is 70% of them, who are millionaires. So what would they know about being skint? Having to go to the sally bash for food or one of the other home less units. We have problems paying for the electric gas and water. Yet these companys were ours, the peoples. Paid for in blood by our ancestors, by laying down their lives in the millions in some rich banksters war.
Yes i can just see IDS queuing up with the homeless people for a meal
Dream on is all I can say.
Survive? What kind of a life is that? Survive on £7 a day? What year is this? 2013?
What a load of bollocks. Its about time we had a revolution and strung up all these rich thieving lying assholes in govt.

reply to post by SecretFace


Again, I get your point here, but do the kids who have all the latest clothes and tech have parents who decided it's best for their kids to sit either in the dark or in the cold so they could own their own home?

People make choices, some people choose to rent and have a little more to spend. You are right, though...there's too many scroungers who live relatively comfortable lives and seem to have everything that is going without having to earn it.

Those are the people that should be punished, unfortunately as well as targetting those people, people who are genuinely unfit to work, have problems...real problems - are also being stung by this. As I said earlier - I could live on £53 a week, not everyone can. Some people have special needs, don't judge the world by your own standards, be conscious of the notion that not everyone is as fit and healthy as you are.