In a story that displays everything that’s wrong in the Welfare benefits system in the UK, the BBC has run a post about the proposed cap on the amount of benefits a family can receive. I can only assume that the BBC picked this particular family of unemployed husband and wife and their seven kids living in north Wales, so that we workers can feel sorry for them.
He was an I.T. programmer who found that work in his ‘specialised field’ dried up, and he stopped work 10 yrs ago – he apparently didn't feel the urge or need to retrain or branch out into other programming fields. Frankly any programmer worth their salt could have found contract work easily up until a couple of years or so …. There are I.T. contractors working at my office now.
This man and his families current benefit level is £30,284.80 pa net (US $47,943.87 pa) .... and he justifies his benefit levels and the expenditure it supports as follows:
He goes to bed and gets up as he wishes – he has no worries over having a roof over his head, he has no issues about commuting to work every day, or losing his job, or where the next mortgage (rent) payment is coming from. In fact his only concern is that by capping his benefits he may have to give up his 24 cans of beer, his Sky movie package, his cigarettes, or his Mobile phones.
We have posted on this benefit trap once or twice before, and in one of those posts we highlighted the case of a woman who while not working and apparently medically disabled, was having children with different men, and who considered that ‘the state is my breadwinner’.
This lifestyle is so attractive, that millions in the UK apparently aspire to it – family and security with no worries … indeed many people in the EU and elsewhere in the world share this same aspiration, which is maybe why getting into to the UK and on to the benefits gravy train, is such a popular pastime at Heathrow and other entry points in the UK. As a government minister recently said “Importing economic dependency on the state is unacceptable”.
In the meantime the political cronies of the Labour and Liberal Parties in the House of Lords (there are no real lords there anymore), have voted consistently to ensure that there is no adequate cap on benefit payments, despite the obvious public appetite to stop this gravy train.
Many of us would suggest that the limit of £26,000 (US $41,160.60) is still far, far, too generous, and with way too many exemptions on even that amount. A limit of closer to £20,000 net pa (which would still be very generous), would be more likely to encourage the idle to return to work, and prevent people like this man from drifting into to the comfort zone of a supported lifestyle that most can only aspire to, and that couldn't reasonably be attained by normal work.
There is something very rotten in the state of the UK (or Denmark if they are stupid enough to be as generous), when it’s benefit culture and the lifestyle that it can support, props up so many who require so much and who return so little.
He was an I.T. programmer who found that work in his ‘specialised field’ dried up, and he stopped work 10 yrs ago – he apparently didn't feel the urge or need to retrain or branch out into other programming fields. Frankly any programmer worth their salt could have found contract work easily up until a couple of years or so …. There are I.T. contractors working at my office now.
This man and his families current benefit level is £30,284.80 pa net (US $47,943.87 pa) .... and he justifies his benefit levels and the expenditure it supports as follows:
- Pubs - 'I go out once a week, on a Friday night. I meet up with my mates in the pub and have three or four pints'... most married men can only do the same.
- Satellite TV - 'We get the Sky Movies package because we're stuck in the house all week - otherwise we wouldn't have any entertainment.' – Freeview TV is not good enough for a man who hasn't worked for a decade
- The family all have mobile phones - 'My wife and I have mobile phones, and so do all of the teenage children. You try telling teenagers they're going to have to do without their mobiles and there'll be hell to pay.' – noticeably he doesn't need one to look for work.
- Cigarettes and Alcohol – His weekly household shop includes 24 cans of lager, 200 cigarettes and a large pouch of tobacco - ‘On the cigarettes, my wife tried to give up, but she missed one appointment on the course and they threw her off it.' – he apparently has never tried to give up, but then he needs his beer and cigarettes to sit and watch his satellite TV package when he’s not going to the pub.
- Life in North Wales - 'this is social housing in Wales, so the rent is hardly massive. If we rented privately in this area, then the cost would be four or five times as much.' – meaning he has a house which is subsidised already and for which the government pays the rent.
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| North Wales - There are worse places to be. |
He goes to bed and gets up as he wishes – he has no worries over having a roof over his head, he has no issues about commuting to work every day, or losing his job, or where the next mortgage (rent) payment is coming from. In fact his only concern is that by capping his benefits he may have to give up his 24 cans of beer, his Sky movie package, his cigarettes, or his Mobile phones.
We have posted on this benefit trap once or twice before, and in one of those posts we highlighted the case of a woman who while not working and apparently medically disabled, was having children with different men, and who considered that ‘the state is my breadwinner’.
This lifestyle is so attractive, that millions in the UK apparently aspire to it – family and security with no worries … indeed many people in the EU and elsewhere in the world share this same aspiration, which is maybe why getting into to the UK and on to the benefits gravy train, is such a popular pastime at Heathrow and other entry points in the UK. As a government minister recently said “Importing economic dependency on the state is unacceptable”.
In the meantime the political cronies of the Labour and Liberal Parties in the House of Lords (there are no real lords there anymore), have voted consistently to ensure that there is no adequate cap on benefit payments, despite the obvious public appetite to stop this gravy train.
Many of us would suggest that the limit of £26,000 (US $41,160.60) is still far, far, too generous, and with way too many exemptions on even that amount. A limit of closer to £20,000 net pa (which would still be very generous), would be more likely to encourage the idle to return to work, and prevent people like this man from drifting into to the comfort zone of a supported lifestyle that most can only aspire to, and that couldn't reasonably be attained by normal work.
There is something very rotten in the state of the UK (or Denmark if they are stupid enough to be as generous), when it’s benefit culture and the lifestyle that it can support, props up so many who require so much and who return so little.
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