Welfare Reform Bill

[Niall_Quinn]

A colleague has the idea that if anyone is out of work for a certain amount of time they should not be allowed to have Sky.
That would get them off the sofas

There's a very good reason why this would never, ever happen. Without TV people might educate themselves and I can't think of any establishment that would approve of such a drastic shift in society.

[Shaqiri Is Boss]

Isn't that what the housing benefit cap is about?

In a way but those same landlords will still charge the extortionate rents and it wouldn't surprise me one bit to see them follow those who are kicked out to cheaper homes and bump the price up there too. The idea that the landlords would lower their prices in line with the cap is ridiculous. We'd still have the same problem, just in a different place. I guess it can be chicken and egg though; the landlords charge how they do because they know it will be subsidised but the government has to give out that much because it has become market value (and I'll probably get ripped apart by Syn for getting that completely wrong)

The problem is though if you don't tackle the low wages etc you aren't "making work pay" you're just making welfare too meagre to live off. The workhouse was exactly the same principle, though granted slightly more extreme. It's not just the unemployed who this will hit either.

I just don't think it will work unless you try to tackle the problems like housing and pay and those who actually charge the rent in the first place, which the government don't seem to be doing.

[Flavs]

[PGFC]

Benefits? maybe they should try turning it off and turning it on again.

[Xhaka Can’t]

As a general rule, the most expensive benefit is housing benefit. When the Government scrapped rent controls in the 80s this had the effect of sending rents soaring. Rent inflation was to a large degree artificially driven by the benefits system.

It is this, more than anything else that is costing the Exchequer. Landlords are coining it in with far more people living in shitholes funded by the state. It is this scenario that is more prominent than the stories that gain wider exposure of people living in luxury. It has also had a devastating effect on people living on modest earned incomes.

It is this more than anything else that requires tackling.

I also believe that benefits staff should be equipped to deal effectively with scroungers. When I worked in a Jobcentre it was nigh on impossible. It sickened me, especially as more vulnerable members of society are being tarnished with the same brush as them.

I believe our benefits system should be MORE generous, especially where children are involved. Contrary to popular opinion it is not the gravy train many make out and when people fall in to genuine need they should be looked after.

But tied in with this, we need fair rules, strictly applied. The benefits system is one area where we truly could do far more with considerably less.

[Niall_Quinn]

As a general rule, the most expensive benefit is housing benefit. When the Government scrapped rent controls in the 80s this had the effect of sending rents soaring. Rent inflation was to a large degree artificially driven by the benefits system.

It is this, more than anything else that is costing the Exchequer. Landlords are coining it in with far more people living in shitholes funded by the state. It is this scenario that is more prominent than the stories that gain wider exposure of people living in luxury. It has also had a devastating effect on people living on modest earned incomes.

It is this more than anything else that requires tackling.

I also believe that benefits staff should be equipped to deal effectively with scroungers. When I worked in a Jobcentre it was nigh on impossible. It sickened me, especially as more vulnerable members of society are being tarnished with the same brush as them.

I believe our benefits system should be MORE generous, especially where children are involved. Contrary to popular opinion it is not the gravy train many make out and when people fall in to genuine need they should be looked after.

But tied in with this, we need fair rules, strictly applied. The benefits system is one area where we truly could do far more with considerably less.

Fucking easy for people to say let's just take a hatchet to the whole benefits system in the hope of flushing out the minority of abusers. Many people safe in their (so far) non-outsourced jobs or (so far) still open factories will cheer that on if given enough encouragement by the shit coming out of the TV screen or off the pages of the daily rags.

So if they do this, if they drive a section of the population below the poverty line, what's the payoff? A sounder economy? Fuck off will it be. The money saved won't be returned to the taxpayer, a war against Iran is far more likely.

[Letters]

Define 'below the poverty line'? Not having Sky?

[LDG]

Define 'below the poverty line'? Not having Sky?

Stop it. He'll whip his iPad out in a minute

[Letters]

I wish I scrounged off benefits, then I could afford an iPad of my own

[Niall_Quinn]

Define 'below the poverty line'? Not having Sky?

Not being able to pay the racketeering power companies the extortionate amounts they demand, so you don't have heat or light. Not being able to pay the racketeering water companies the extortionate rates they demand, so you don't have water. Not being able to pay the racketeering supermarkets their inflationary hikes, so you eat less. Not being able to service the little brown envelopes that regularly arrive from government demanding this fee or that charge.

You really think the majority of people on benefits have been that way all their lives, don't you? It couldn't be their industry was destroyed regardless of the social cost, it couldn't be their job disappeared as bankers popped their latest bubble, it couldn't be the central banks inflationary racket and the government regulations that make it easier than ever to discard employees when a couple of columns in a table don't meet the shareholders' approval? It has to be sheer laziness on the part of the victim, no other possible reason.

Sure, if you're going to have a consumer debt society then let's make Sky TV a necessity instead of a luxury. Why not? Why would that be any more fucked up than converting a durables based economy into a throwaway consumer debt based economy?

Do you prefer it if people who have worked and paid tax for the majority of their lives and suddenly have their job whipped out from under them and handed to an Indian (so some rich cunt can make a bigger profit) go and sit in an empty box between job interviews? Should it be a criminal for these scroungers to demand back a fraction of what they have paid under the very terms agreed when they were parted from their money? How about no benefits at all? How about they have their lives destroyed, everything they managed to build under this consumer debt society clawed back? Hit the fuckers hard and maybe stick a camera on them and make a reality TV show out of it. We could vote for our favourite scrounger and he'd get benefits that week. The rest of them and their kids could starve. Mind you, why do they have kids anyway? They should be sterilised so we don't have to pay their sprogs too when they grow up. Fucking hit them hard.

And then get your arse into church and pray it's not your job next.

I had Sky TV all the way through the period when I was on my fucking knees because everything had been suddenly whipped away after years of working and paying out half of what I earned. Never watched the fucking thing though, I was too busy doing the fucking horrendous things it takes to get your head back above the water. It was for the kids, so they didn't have to live through the shit with their parents, so there was some pretence of normality. Evil perhaps, but maybe not on the same scale as creating economic bubbles and bursting them to allow a few to gain while millions lose everything.

In the long run it's going to be a lot safer to remember the difference between "us" and "them". "Them" don't give a fuck about you by the way. They don't give a flying fuck about you, the fucking Tories, Labour, any of the cunts. They don't work for you. In case you haven't noticed, you work for them. And the minute they don't need you you might just need the people you find it so easy to generalise about.

I used to be the same myself until I was forced to wear another man's shoes. Boy do you wise up quick when that happens. And I wouldn't change it. It taught me how to be human rather than a media toy.

Anyway, fuck it. I'm sure there are a lot of other things we could blame the poor for. Much simpler than calling out the bastards who actually built and perpetuate this shit mess because that would take courage.

The Tories have proposed something have they? Well don't even bother telling me what it is - I'm against it.