Jaywick - How did it get that bad?

Q. How do they staff the benefit office?
A. In my day it was by forcing someone on benefit into the job and I doubt that's changed.
Result - everyone on benefit street becomes aware of available benefit be it a new washing machine or whatever and exactly how to get it.
I know of this happening first hand.
Shot in foot or what!

 

The "friends" that I am specifically talking about have confirmed your thoughts and also confirmed that they were taught in school how to claim the max possible, in fact it was one of the few lessons they bothered attending!

 

Don't have time to do all the maths just now but that doesn't all add up. In the following example:

•JSA £112.55;
•Child Benefit £33.70;
•Child Tax Credit £114.94;
•Housing Benefit £86.88 (for rent on a 3-bed terraced house);
•Council Tax Support £20.59 (of a bill of £22.50);
•Total disposable income £259.28.

The total cost of that added up is 368.66. Equates to 19170.32 per annum. I have full time staff with families on less than that.

So that's 19k for doing nowt. As a safety net payment to someone that would normally work but doesn't that seems reasonable to me. What else is there they get that's free?

 

I understand that there will always be a number of people who abuse the system for personal gain...no one's disputing this....nor do I condone it. I agree that measures need to be taken to address the problem, but I simply don't believe that the problem is in any way as great as the media and government would have us believe. I see issues for sure, but I also see scapegoating and obfuscation.

 

That doesn't include unemployed rates for:
Travel
Entertainment - cinema's, museums etc.

And:
Prescriptions
Dental care
School meal vouchers
Grants for heating, insulation etc.
Education grants
Access to free training that those in employment are not allowed

 

Because our youngest is disabled and we were still working to provide for the family, our social worker told us that we would be better off quitting work and living on benefits. Needless to say that didn't happen but it shows how easy it is to take the benefits route.

 

That's effectively 'after tax'. You'd need a job paying £32k min to take home the £500.

 

Add in a 'gammy' leg/back/foot etc and you can have a brand new car, replaced every three years for you. Or can you take the money.

 

That is all I'm saying!

 

Id say it ended up like that because poorer people were looking for cheaper housing to live in and so it goes on , cost of housing ,just makes the rich richer and the poor poorer but the property bandwagon keeps rolling on, even when the tax payer keeps bailing the banks out . It bothers me more why we have to pay our taxes to bail them out ,they are the ones contributing to this poverty .

 

So what this means is the Governments getting tough on benefits and capping at £26k a year is just rhetoric ... I don't know but it looks like it, my local MP told me they were going to reduce the cap to £23k but not sure if that happened. The £19K is of course in pocket so someone earning same needs to allow for tax & NI.

 

The Victorians had the same problem of how to help the deserving without wasting it on the feckless.... nothing changes.

 

Hopefully some things have changed, children are no longer thrown out onto the street or sent up chimneys. Not many poor people die on the street from starvation. I haven't seen a shoe shine boy in Cambridge for ages. Come to think of it, match sellers are quite scarce now as well.
It's been literally months since the last outbreak of cholera.

 

Maybe in your area, however elsewhere....................

 

All that involves working for a living. You'll see them all at the benefits office now.

 

Sooo youth unemployment has gone up..but food banks open and Cholera isn't the problem it used to be provided an appointment can be made with a GP within a week or two of symptoms appearing. We have indeed progressed...would converse further but the carriage awaits.

 

From the Joseph Rowntree Foundation:


In 2008, JRF published the first ‘minimum income standard for Britain’, based on what members of the public thought people need to achieve a socially acceptable standard of living. A year later, and in changing economic circumstances, the standard has been updated for inflation.

Key points

• Based on views of members of the public, a single person in Britain needs to earn at least £13,900 a year before tax in 2009, in order to afford a basic but acceptable standard of living. A couple with two children need to earn £27,600.
• The cost of a minimum household budget has risen by about 5 per cent for most families. This is well above the general inflation rate, because someone on a minimum income spends a greater than average portion of their budget on food, domestic fuel and public transport, whose prices have risen by 7 to 12 per cent. The minimum budget also does not include a mortgage or running a car, whose falling costs have pulled down the general inflation rate.
• Working-age people on benefits remain well below the minimum income standard. Even though benefit rises in April 2009 exceeded the published inflation rate at the time, they were similar to the rise in the cost of a minimum household budget. This means that people on benefits have got no closer to reaching an acceptable living standard.
• The official poverty line is set relative to average incomes, which have stopped growing. People on low incomes whose benefits are still rising may appear to improve their position relative to this poverty line. However, this does not take account of their increased costs, which mean their living standards may not have improved.
• With people losing their jobs, maintaining a minimum acceptable income has become more important than ever. Exploratory research, asking members of the public about their attitude to essentials in light of recession, suggests that they continue to believe that a minimum standard of living should allow people in Britain not just to survive, but to play a full part in society.

Meanwhile:


Britain’s poorest families have suffered the most from the coalition’s welfare cuts and tax rises, according to a study by the UK’s leading tax and spending thinktank.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said households were on average £1,127 a year worse off after the implementation of reforms since 2010.

Figures that assess the impact of the VAT rise to 20% and higher personal tax thresholds alongside a range of benefit cuts, found that the income of the lowest 10% of earners fell by more than 4% while the richest 10% suffered a drop of 2.6%.

The so-called squeezed middle were the least affected by cuts to tax credits and housing benefit that hit the poorest families. Middle income groups also avoided income tax rises and limits on tax-free pension contributions that affected households at the top end of the income scale, it said

and while this has been going on:

The cost of tax evasion to the UK economy spiralled to more than £80 billion last year, according to new figures for Public and commercial Services Union

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "While politicians of all parties are falling over each other to claim there is less money around, this important report reveals why and how we can tackle it.

"Collecting even a fraction of these stolen billions would change the debate about public spending overnight and allow much-needed investment in our communities instead of more damaging cuts."

Richard Murphy, director of Tax Research UK, said: "This report provides the most detailed explanation of tax evasion in the UK economy offered by anyone to date, revealing it could be almost four times as much as HMRC's estimate.

"HMRC has persistently refused to engage with alternative calculations of evasion even though the International Monetary Fund has suggested it is not as good as it likes to think it is in identifying tax losses.

"If we are to have a fair tax system in the UK that creates a level playing field for everyone, we need a tax system run by a tax authority that seeks to collect all the revenue due to it. We do not have that right now and the result is social injustice throughout the UK."



Berate the poorest members of our communities by all means, but maybe we should turn our attention to the corruption and incompetence of the so called experts formulating the policies...

Unsurprisingly, donations to both Labour and Conservative Parties came from known tax avoiders with substantial assets lodged with HSBC.....