Sky TV when claiming benefit?

Cassie Please don't think you're the only one on GN with nothing and a grim future. I've bored people often enough with my own problems, so I won't repeat them.

I would seriously advise you to go to CAB and get a benefit check-up. They might also be able to advise you about moving somewhere cheaper.

Don't be put off by people looking down their snotty noses at you. Just remember that you'e just as good as they are.

And if someone who is dealing with you is 'snotty' then politely ask if you can see someone else instead; as a poster up-thread said, the staff who dealt with her were helpful and pleasant. There is no need for anything less.

I work as a benefits adviser. If I was working with someone who was in debt I go through a list of all their essentials that must be paid to keep a roof over their heads such as rent, mortgage, council tax, gas and electricity and insurances. Any other contracts such as mobile phone or sky are not classed as essential and so go into the general debt pot along with all other people you owe money to. Once all the essentials are accounted for the surplus if any is arrived at and this is carved up percentage wise to go to your debtors. A loan company is not going to think its ok that you pay Sky £50 per month while it's only getting 33% of its agreed payment. Maybe the forms are different in Northern Ireland but I've never seen Sky mentioned on benefit forms as essential expenditure.

This whole thread seems to arise because of a confusion between a benefits claim form and a debt repayment form.

Or it could be that some people like to think that people on benefits are living the life of Reilly, so they needn't feel any compassion or sympathy for them.

Can I also say that in my job I see both sides of the coin. I see people in very obvious desperate need and I go way out of my way to get them sorted however I can now spot the scammer a mile away. I've actually been asked "What are the symptoms of fibromyalgia" I've been told its an easy one to put on the pip form to get that benefit. It's shirkers like that that give genuine claimants the bad name. I was divorced aged 27 with 2 small children. I know what it's like to struggle and live out of the mark down section in the supermarket. I have only remarried 6 years ago and my children are now married with children off their own. It makes me so mad to see anyone who claims benefits labeled as a sponger. I don't want anyone to think my original post on Sky TV was in any way judgmental. It's just the way the companies that are owed money see it. They also see haircuts and buying clothes as a luxury too incidentally.

there is a simple solution to all these problems. Bring back the workhouse.

When someone is forced to look to the state for support because they have been made redundant, are ill or disabled, they should be expected to dispose of all their belongings and have themselves admitted to the workhouse. There the money from the sale of their effects should go to the WH to pay their keep so that the point at which the state has to spend money on them us delayed as long as possible. The disabled and sick should be put in specialised asylums so that their spouses/partners can return to work full time and split their wages with the asylum, half for them and the other half for the support of their economically useless partner.

The running of the WH would of course be outsourced to private companies. They could hire out the inmates to local employers - jolly useful for the strawberry picking when we finally Brexit. Children, especially pretty young girls, could fetch quite a premium, one way or another. It would be very important that all married couples, regardless of age, be split up on entering the WH and children, of course, be separated from their parents.

There's a flat for sale in the workhouse in my village.
I can't afford it.

That is real irony durhamjen

Would you have to register as 'pauper' first before you could go into the workhouse?

Would they have Sky TV?

I don't think so, Jalima.
When we first moved here there was a bungalow on the site for sale. It looked absolutely fantastic.
Then we found out it had been the mortuary.

"glammygranny" it takes a hell of a lot more than quoting thesymptoms of Fibromyalgia to get PIP ....my daughter was diagnosed 3 years ago after a couple of years of doctors trying all sorts of things to relieve her chronic PERMANENT pain.She had assessment after assessment ,it went to a tribunal type meeting she was told she would get PIP then she got a letter saying the DWP were contesting it again...thats over THREE years it took ..and she got the minimum award ,just as well she wasn't after cash ,she just wanted a blue badge so she could take her kids out when she was feeling well enough.She spends 5 out of every 7 days bedridden.Fibromyalgia is not an "easy ride" through the benefits system and I can assure you ,neither is it an easy condition to live with!

Married couples would be separated to stop them bringing any more pauper children into the world to be a burden on the state. Jalima, I agree, registration as a pauper would be a prerequisite.

On the other hand it would be good if all of us remembered that most people at every income level are are often only one or two missing pay cheques away from relying on the state. Only those over 65plus have the security of a sure pension payment every month. When people have a reasonable regular income coming in they indulge in all kinds of unwarranted pleasures like mobile phones (even smart phones ),Sky TV, internet connections, dancing classes and music lessons for their children, donations to charities and they do not immediately strip their expenditure to the bone the day the redundancy notice or sack comes in. Most will hope/expect to get back into work quickly. Many will make sacrifices to protect their children from the full shock of unemployment. Others have commitments that cannot immediately be shed.

The form the OP is referring to is a form asking about current income and expenditure, not a claim for benefit based on what is on it.

I am a case worker with a national charity and I regularly visit people and complete income and expenditure forms as part of our assessments of their application for help from us. We simply want to know what income is coming in and how much is going out and whether they can make any contribution towards their particular need.

paddyann I meant the person coming to me said they had heard it was easy to get PIP by claiming you had fibromyalgia. I suffered from this dreadful illness for over 3 years so know only too well how debilitating it is. I was very lucky to be able to hold on to my job. my heart goes out to your daughter. Fibromyalgia is often referred to as an illness that's all in the mind and a label given when the professionals can't find anything else to label you with. It's anything but all in the mind and I certainly wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

I am a benefits specialist working for a legal advice charity and there are no benefit claims that ask you to list your expenditure! The only time that expenditures are discussed would be making an application for a social fund loan or if as a universal credit claimant you attend a budgeting appointment to help you manage the transition from weekly or 2 weekly income to monthly!

Monica, I took it that Jalima was asking about the flat for sale in the workhouse in my village. I don't think they looked like that in the 1800s.

Perhaps workhouses are a good idea and should be brought back.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2017/07/27/more-than-a-million-children-could-go-hungry-this-summer-figures-show_n_17605904.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-politics&ir=UK+Politics

Watch the Angela Rayner video about her childhood.

M0nica and djen

You're both right!
It's ironical that they're unaffordable for many now and I think the paupers of yesteryear would be flabbergasted

I'm disabled, 58 ad cannot work. With all the evidence I gave them, the DWP saw fit to class me as disabled so I am lucky to have an electric wheelchair, for which I pay £65 a month. It is the model I need because of where I live and the cheapest option. The only time I have seen 'TV' listed is on a budgeting loan form and I took that to mean the cost of a licence, not Sky or similar. Yes, I had to take out a loan as my washing machine and cooker (hardly non-essential) chose to break down at the same time. With the amount I was allowed to borrow I could only afford secondhand and they are still taking £15 a week from my benefit money. They certainly won't lend me any more until this lot is paid off so I live in terror of another breakdown. Actually the workhouse might be an improvement; I would not be able to be on washing or cooking duty!

No, DJ it was nothing to do with the sale of a flat in a converted workhouse, rather a string of posts through the thread up to that point, that essential were about the deserving and undeserving poor, what they should be allowed to spend their benefits on etc.

I just made a facetious/sarcastic (take it as you will) suggestion that the simple answer was a return to a workhouse. As we all know for every complicated problem there is always a simple solution and it is invariably wrong.

M0nica I was very shocked to see, when researching FH, that one of my GX3Grandmothers was noted in the census as 'a pauper' - after a lifetime of fairly skilled work. I presume her eyesight had gone because of the work she did in what was probably poor light.

As I said, if you look at the figures for the homeless and children in poverty, it might be an improvement in some of their lives.
At least in a workhouse they will all be fed in the summer holidays.

One of my cousins so many times removed was a schoolmistress in a workhouse. They obviously had to live in, as that's where she was in the census.