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How Do You Solve A Problem Like Stupidly Frittering Away £100,000?

Started by fol de rol, April 09, 2008, 08:17:42 PM

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fol de rol

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article983713.ece

Whoopsies. I can't really bring myself to get worked up about this, for some reason. Of course what they did was rather silly, but it's understandable - as someone on the Digital Spy forums points out, "these people have been a bit daft with their money, but so have thousands of others before them, and so will thousands more in the future". And as for the "scroungers" crap - in reply to a post describing the couple as "workshy layabouts", someone replies:

"They're on incapacity benefit. So they can't work, and the DWP seem perfectly happy to accept this, so unless you know more about their situation that the government appointed doctors and the professionals who work in this area, I suggest you retract your statements that they are scroungers."

Even if they were "scroungers", they'd still be totally unrepresentative of the vast, vast majority of IB and DLA claimants - something which Ronnie the Raincoat, aka Seaneen, has written about brilliantly in her blog. No, what I'm more interested in is the issue of how on earth the situation ought to be resolved.

It seems to me pretty fucking onerous that they're being required to provide proof that all the money has been spent. I don't know, maybe I just spend too much time around people who seize on stories like this as "proof" for their favourite tunes, and am jumping to this couple's defence a little too readily as a result. I don't think so, though. I've been meaning to do more research into this for a while now, but everything I've read so far indicates that (a) the benefits system is something we can easily afford, that (b) benefit fraud costs us nowhere near as much as people assume it does, and that (c) it would cost us far, far more (not just in monetary terms - the erosion of privacy and trust would simply not be prices worth paying, not to mention the indescribable harm which would be inflicted on eligible yet refused claimants) to clamp down on false claims than to accept that where the state gives people money on the basis that they're looking for, or are unable, to work, then unless we're willing to tolerate massive intrusion into our lives and the punishment of many desperately needy people, such claims will have to remain an unfortunate reality. I mean, statistically we are more or less totally unjustified in doubting these people. Why can't there be a bit of leeway?

Ugh, I have no idea where I'm going with this, as you can probably tell. I suppose the other thing I wanted to flag up was that a number of people on the Digital Spy forums suggested that they should be made to sell the items they bought and live off that money. Again, it just seems distasteful. Their situation is surely no different to some bloke who earns 100K and spends it - just as that he shouldn't be made to sell his belongings upon falling on hard times, they shouldn't either.

Well at least the thread title is good. You know, in an endearingly crap way.

El Unicornio, mang

Christ, looking at the pic of them, which one is the husband?




shiftwork2

Blowing 100k on fruit machines and holidays probably made more financial sense than buying a stake in their flat during 2007.

I assume people shafted by articles such as this are completely mislead by the newspaper?  Can't think why they'd pose for a picture to be humiliated like that.

Catalogue Trousers

The great thing, of course, is that they've done exactly with their £100 K what most typical Sun-readers would have done with it. But, because they're scrounging benefit scum, rather than being people like us, they're suddenly pariah dogs. Marvellous.

El Unicornio, mang


shiftwork2

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on April 09, 2008, 09:20:19 PM
Fruit machine money?
Quote from: nice journalist
KNOW any worse scroungers? Call us on 0207 782 4104

Maybe but I'm guessing the civic-minded person phoning the Waster Hotline line gets the real money.  Like that's hard work.


Suttonpubcrawl



sproggy



Geraint

one of the linked stories: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article945842.ece
Quote
Yet a visit to the JobCentrePlus, ten minutes walk away, revealed 1,630 jobs on offer, from non-skilled cleaners to £30,000 managers.

The centre — where 425 vacancies were posted in the last week alone — was busy.

But most people were claiming benefits, not looking at the work on offer.

that's monstrously misleading journalism. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the JobCentrePlus system but you have to define parameters including how far you can travel from your home postcode, or by selecting regions on a crude map - The Sun don't specify, so we can't tell if they've gone for 5 miles or 300+. More importantly, quite a lot of employers place their vacancy as 'nationwide' or 'england'/'scotland'/'wales'  which means it shows up no matter what geographical limits you put on your search. some of these are armed forces recruitment, which means there'll pretty much always be a seperate advert for each core role in the army, and usually loads for the RAF and Navy too. most of the rest are door-to-door sales jobs, which naturally are written as adverts for the company, misleadingly high 'ot earnings' figures etc. they've been so lax in the recent past at least with vetting job vacancies before adding them that many pyramid schemes and fraudulent companies have gotten through the system and been able to get their 'job' on every jcplus terminal and the very popular website for months on end. I would estimate that at any time, nearly half the jobs on the jobcentre plus system are commission based sales jobs, mainly door to door.


Santa's Boyfriend

We really need to accept that any social system like this will be taken advantage of to a greater or lesser degree.  It's simply not possible to stop all those from claiming who might otherwise be able to work without stopping the benefits system itself.  As it is, you're made to feel like worthless scum for claiming any benefit at all, which is not exactly a good way to feel when trying to go back to work.  I don't claim to know the solution, but I really wish claimants would stop being portrayed as scroungers.

I was given an interesting statistic (albeit estimated) the other day by someone who works in mental health - 80% of incapacity benefit claimants are on the benefit at least in part due to mental health problems.  Now I'm no expert, but to me that rather suggests something has gone seriously wrong with our society.


The Masked Unit

Can anyone point me in the direction of where I can get a "giant" TV for £500?

Thx.

Santa's Boyfriend

Can anyone point me to where I can get £500 for a "giant" TV?  It's not nicked or anything.

Well maybe a little bit.

(A mate of mine has 500 TVs for "giants".)

biggytitbo

According to this, Gordon has spent an extra £1 trillion on what was already been spent in 1997 -

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/09/ccjeff109.xml

£343bn extra on top of 1997 levels for benefits. Last year they gave out £156bn to 30m benefit claimants. 30 million people! The welfare budget is 30% of all spending and more than education and the NHS. We work until May until we earn a single penny, and work until late Feburary just to pay peoples benefits.



Quote from: Santa's Boyfriend on April 09, 2008, 11:09:07 PM
We really need to accept that any social system like this will be taken advantage of to a greater or lesser degree.  It's simply not possible to stop all those from claiming who might otherwise be able to work without stopping the benefits system itself.  As it is, you're made to feel like worthless scum for claiming any benefit at all, which is not exactly a good way to feel when trying to go back to work.  I don't claim to know the solution, but I really wish claimants would stop being portrayed as scroungers.

I was given an interesting statistic (albeit estimated) the other day by someone who works in mental health - 80% of incapacity benefit claimants are on the benefit at least in part due to mental health problems.  Now I'm no expert, but to me that rather suggests something has gone seriously wrong with our society.
I don't want to ruin an otherwise brilliant thread of bizarre scrounger monging, but isn't it the case that being on benefits does very little to improve one's mental health. Dependency is very difficult to shift. The real question is what the turnaround is for people on benefits, how long the same people spend on them. Whilst people here may rightly dislike the media protrayal of those on the dole as scroungers, it is certainly true of many.

petula dusty

Quote from: biggytitbo on April 09, 2008, 11:21:16 PM
According to this, Gordon has spent an extra £1 trillion on what was already been spent in 1997 -

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/09/ccjeff109.xml

£343bn extra on top of 1997 levels for benefits. Last year they gave out £156bn to 30m benefit claimants. 30 million people! The welfare budget is 30% of all spending and more than education and the NHS. We work until May until we earn a single penny, and work until late Feburary just to pay peoples benefits.

You do realise that it's not just workshy dolescum pretending to be mental or have bad backs that are in receipt of benefits don't you? And who's 'we' anyway? I'm one of those single parents who are raking it in so I'm not in your gang. And have you looked at the figures for unclaimed benefit? Do you think there shouldn't be a welfare system and what would you implement instead?

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=414109&in_page_id=2


QuoteFigures from the Department for Work & Pensions showed that there was between £4.8bn and £8bn of unclaimed income support, housing benefit, council tax benefit, job-seeker's allowance and pension credit in 2004/05.

QuoteEarlier this year, HM Revenue & Customs revealed that around £5bn of working tax credit and child tax credit goes unclaimed annually, bringing the total of money that fails to reach those in need to £13bn.

There is a point to be made here but I'm too knackered to articulate it.




Heh, they fat aren't they? Fat with a caravan. They should just die.


Evil Knevil

Quote from: biggytitbo on April 09, 2008, 11:21:16 PM
According to this, Gordon has spent an extra £1 trillion on what was already been spent in 1997 -

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/09/ccjeff109.xml

£343bn extra on top of 1997 levels for benefits. Last year they gave out £156bn to 30m benefit claimants. 30 million people! The welfare budget is 30% of all spending and more than education and the NHS. We work until May until we earn a single penny, and work until late Feburary just to pay peoples benefits.

That includes child benefit, which is given to everyone[!] and tax credits given to low paid workers, as well as short term and long term sickness, maternity benefits etc
Slightly more than 1/3 of the total welfare budget is spent on the state pension, hardly a reward for scroungers.
The rest of your figures are so misleading as to be completely pointless. The ~40% tax burden includes business profits and excise duties as well as a myriad other fees which don't affect us directly... although that much money passes through the treasury, it ends up be distributed out again (i.e as benefits)

I don't really have a point, just don't be so daft.

fol de rol

Quote from: biggytitbo on April 09, 2008, 11:21:16 PM
According to this, Gordon has spent an extra £1 trillion on what was already been spent in 1997 -

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/09/ccjeff109.xml

£343bn extra on top of 1997 levels for benefits. Last year they gave out £156bn to 30m benefit claimants. 30 million people! The welfare budget is 30% of all spending and more than education and the NHS. We work until May until we earn a single penny, and work until late Feburary just to pay peoples benefits.

According to "A Survey of the UK Benefit System", published by the IFS in December 2007: "In 2006–07, about £147.1 billion was spent on social security benefits in Great Britain. This amounts to approximately £2,430 for every man, woman and child in the country, and represents 28.2 per cent of total government expenditure (11.4 per cent of GDP)." However, the following breakdown is revealing:

Benefits for families with children: 16.33%
Benefits for unemployed people: 1.74%
Benefits for people on low incomes: 22.03%
Benefits for elderly people: 42.85%
Benefits for sick and disabled people: 16.37%
Benefits for bereaved people: 0.57%
Other benefits: 0.10%

Within the "sick and disabled" category, Attendance Allowance, Carer's Allowance, War Pensions and Motability aren't really relevant as regards unemployment, bringing the percentage relevant to my (probably rather shit) inquiries down to 12.02%. Add this to the unemployed category, and we get 13.76%. This constitutes 3.88% of government spending. As you can see from the breakdown, the majority of the £147.1 billion is spent on the elderly and on those whose jobs pay them such pitiful amounts of money that they actually need their incomes topped up by the state. I know, it's still a lot of money, but when people hear that nearly 30% of government spending goes on the welfare state, they seem to instantly think "lazy dole scum", when in reality the "lazy dole scum" (whose reasons for not being in work are complex anyway, and certainly cannot be explained with simple reference to laziness) consitute a small minority of approximately 3.88%.

Apologies if I did my sums wrong, by the way.

fol de rol

Quote from: petula dusty link=topic=18090.msg879279#msg879279date=1207780995
QuoteEarlier this year, HM Revenue & Customs revealed that around £5bn of working tax credit and child tax credit goes unclaimed annually, bringing the total of money that fails to reach those in need to £13bn.

Ugh, that is depressing. The research carried out in relation to the tax credit system by the PSI, the PFRC and NatCen for the DWP has shown that it's been really quite brilliant at helping reduce child poverty - where the money has been claimed, of course.

Quote
Lifted out of the worst poverty

New research on living standards shows the government's tax credits have been more effective than it thought in reducing extreme hardship
Alan Marsh
Tuesday August 5, 2003


In only two years - between 1999 and 2001 - the government made more progress towards abolishing child poverty than it may have realised. Officially, families are in poverty when their incomes fall below 60% of average (median) income among all households. The extra money given in benefits and tax credits to families since 1999 moved relatively small numbers above that line - perhaps less than 400,000 out of more than 4 million children. However, two new reports by the Policy Studies Institute (PSI), based on surveys of 8,000 British families, show dramatic reductions in child poverty defined in terms of their living standards rather than their family income.

The surveys used a comprehensive and careful measure of hardship. It first counted 40 items that families ought to have but went without because they "cannot afford them" - essential things like hot meals, shoes, coats and family outings, together with modern needs like TVs and washing machines. Then it added problem debts that families say they can do nothing to repay, and signs of overcrowding and poor housing conditions, such as being too cold in winter. Eighty items like these added up to a nine-point summary score. It is not the only valid measure of child poverty but it is a good one.

What were the results? Overall, seven out of 10 British families in 2001 scored zero on the nine-point hardship scale, 23% registered one or two points and only 8% were in "severe hardship" (three to nine points).

This last figure is the one to watch because it was deliberately designed to divide the poorest from the poor. And the first job of the welfare system is to keep low-income families and their children out of severe hardship. This is especially true of out-of-work families, who have about 2 million children between them. In 1999, 41% of out-of-work families were in severe hardship - a teeth-grindingly high figure after two years of Labour government. By 2001 this figure had dropped to 28% among lone parents and to 22% among out-of-work couples.

These improvements were in direct response to the chancellor's 2000-1 increases in out-of-work benefits for families with children. These improvements ought to con tinue as the new money starts to affect the less responsive items that make up the hardship scale, such as being able to afford family outings and consumer durables.

Those in low-paid jobs and receiving working families' tax credits in 2001 were doing even better: fewer than one in 10 were in severe hardship, down from 13% in 2000. There is little doubt that the extra support from tax credits is responsible for encouraging more poor families into work and keeping them there.

There is still quite a way to go: 8% of all families in severe hardship in 2001 was still too high a figure, accounting for almost 1 million children. But because the hardship scale is scored so conservatively, it ought to be possible to reduce this to something close to zero in the reasonably near future. The research shows us where remaining problems lie, since some particularly vulnerable families still have high risks of hardship. More than one-fifth of families with four or more children remain in severe hardship, for example, rising to 39% among the now fairly rare lone-parent families with four or more children. Concentrations of hardship were also found among some ethnic minority groups, es pecially Pakistani and Bangladeshi families - three times higher than among white families. Health is important too: reporting a long-standing health problem doubled severe hardship among lone parents from 15% to 30%.

The surveys maintained a core sample of families interviewed in each year, allowing a glimpse of how some individual families get out of hardship. The net effect was striking, with nearly half of low-income families improving their position on the hardship scale, while 17% slipped back.

Out-of-work families from 1999 who managed to get a job by 2001 saw their rates of severe hardship plunge from 31% to 11%, moving close to the 5% recorded by the families who stayed in their low-wage jobs throughout. The impact on families who managed to jump from income support in 1999 to a job which also gave them tax credits in 2001 was considerable, reducing their rates of severe hardship from 42% to 14% in two years.

Is any of this surprising? Surely if you give poor families more money, their living standards ought to rise? Yet a lot of people will tell you that if you give poor parents extra cash they will spend it on alcohol, cigarettes and lottery tickets. It is not true. They spend it on food, children's shoes and getting out of unmanageable debt. No one has ever been able to show this before, not with hard evidence like this on a national scale.

PSI had the luck of starting this year-by-year study of families just at the point that Gordon Brown's new money flowed families' way. What a pity for New Labour it didn't set a target, say to "reduce severe hardship among low-income families by 40% in two years". The prime minister could have ordered church bells rung. When Labour came into office in 1997, poverty lobbyists begged it to get low-income families another £25, perhaps another £30, a week. They said it would make all the difference.

They got them this money; and it has already made a great deal of the difference. The evidence shows that tax credits are effective at abolishing the worst of hardship in work. This leaves plenty of room to continue to drive up living standards among the fewer remaining out-of-work families without damaging their will to rejoin the workforce when they can.

· Alan Marsh is professor of social policy at the University of Westminster and deputy director of the Policy Studies Institute.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/analysis/story/0,,1012220,00.html

"[A] lot of people will tell you that if you give poor parents extra cash they will spend it on alcohol, cigarettes and lottery tickets. It is not true. They spend it on food, children's shoes and getting out of unmanageable debt. No one has ever been able to show this before, not with hard evidence like this on a national scale."

Marvellous stuff. The reports themselves make for excellent reading, in fact, and they can be easily found online. I'll post links later on if anyone's interested.

biggytitbo

Quote from: Evil Knevil on April 09, 2008, 11:48:36 PM
That includes child benefit, which is given to everyone[!] and tax credits given to low paid workers, as well as short term and long term sickness, maternity benefits etc
Slightly more than 1/3 of the total welfare budget is spent on the state pension, hardly a reward for scroungers.
The rest of your figures are so misleading as to be completely pointless. The ~40% tax burden includes business profits and excise duties as well as a myriad other fees which don't affect us directly... although that much money passes through the treasury, it ends up be distributed out again (i.e as benefits)

I don't really have a point, just don't be so daft.

Mmm I wasn't actually trying to draw any conclusions, I just thought I'd post some interesting stats about how much is spent. For what it's worth, I think it's way too much, of course. Why give people benefits then tax them? Why tax them and give them benefits? Why tax the 1/5th of people employed by the state?


Pinball

Redistribution of wealth at its bureaucratically, finely crafted finest.