Illegals - such a lovely description, don't you think?

Same goes for tax dodgy Witzend.

I do not know any 'benefit cheats'. I am interested in how so many on here do; how do you know that the owners of the big house are claiming benefits/understating income/not declaring true income? Are you party to their bank accounts? Are you their accountant? Or just spending your period of self isolation reading the Daily Mail online?

Anyone crossing the channel is not escaping war or famine; they are coming from France, a place many go on holiday to frequently! When the Romans and Vikings landed on our shores uninvited, we called them invaders.

12 flights are being chartered to bring back 3,000 Brits back from India next week. Will they be isolated when they land at Heathrow ? This is no worse than immigrants coming in unchecked is it ?

You can be sure most of the would be illegals are economic migrants they all claim to be asylum seekers, very few are, life as an illegal here is far better than the life they had at home.

My brother in law was the worst kind of benefit cheat/fraudster - when he died he left £500,000 - he claimed every type of benefit under multiple aliases- ostensibly to be utilised to care for my niece who has Downs/multiple attendant illnesses/an is an amputee. He had 3 cars yet still claimed DLA. They both lived in abject squalor and not one of our niece’s needs were met - quite the opposite. He considered himself a pillar of the community and was a Knight of St Columba - oh the hypocrisy and irony - Jesus wept. Fortunately one of our niece’s carers or social worker who realised the extent of the impact on her informed the relevant authorities.

GillT57, because I know them personally. It isn't something they keep secret.

FYI, I am a Guardian reader. I wouldn't touch the Daily Heil to wipe my bum on.

Ellen and Hetty, having recently, last week flown into HR I can reliably assure you that there is hardly any information about isolating. I noticed 2 posters but as we were all walking, at a reasonable pace, we didn’t really have time to read them. No leaflets, nothing.
We have been isolating but apparently didn’t “have to”.

vampirequeen Sat 11-Apr-20 13:17:13

Thank you very much for finding those figures VQ.

£2Billion (at least) unclaimed. I bet those people could really do with that cash.

Another £2Billion in errors and fraud. So, given the system's unwieldiness, at least half is errors. So that leaves about £1Billion in fraud. That sounds like a huge amount.

What if the fraud component is, say, £1/2billion or less?
Because they're not publishing the actual figures for error and fraud separately because they want to perpetuate the hatred of claimants and make themselves look good?!! (It's all political, don't forget!)

We could probably double the £35Billion tax evasion by companies. Thus £70Billion (that's based on figures from 5 years ago).

So, actual benefit fraud may turn out to be around 1% of everything else that the Treasury loses out on?

For another perspective on this we can look at what UK retailers call 'shrinkage'. That is losses from supermarkets and shops.

In the UK in 2019, stores lost a total of £4.8Billion from shoplifting, employee theft and supplier/warehouse theft.
Shoplifting accounted for 34.6% of this figure, staff theft for 22.1% and warehouse theft 18%.

In other words, staff theft alone at £1.3Billion was likely more than DOUBLE the amount of benefits fraud.
www.retailresearch.org/crime-costs-uk.html
(Another report from a few years back says that this adds £73 per customer per year to our shopping bills.)

So why do people feel the need to pick on people claiming benefits?!
Why not pick on store staff , shoplifters and warehouse/supplier staff? Because they are actually and directly costing us each much more.

Witzend Sat 11-Apr-20 13:27:53
Not so long ago, I read of a disabled women whose neighbours reported her for putting her bins out. Apparently, to the neighbours that meant she was fit enough not to be claiming benefits. An investigation ensued.

What if that was the only exercise she could physically do in a week? What if she had to go and lie down/take painkillers before or after her exertion? What if she just wanted to try and feel/be normal...? What if she was following doctors'/OT's orders to gently stroll out now and again?

My point is that no one except the disabled person, their friends and family, doctors and the assessment people know the exact extent of disability/illness.

I guess the same goes for other people who claim benefits. You just don't know what their actual circumstances are.

Couple of years ago, I heard of a man bragging to neighbours about getting lots of food off the local foodbank here when they'd spotting him going in there, whilst apparently going off to work everyday. It later turned out that he was actually sacked for being genuinely ill and was on benefits desperately job hunting every day. He'd just been acting all macho. Some people make up stuff because they're just ashamed to be claiming anything. Which is how those who judge benefits claimants as 'scroungers' make people feel.

This is a complete disaster just waiting to happen.

How many of the migrants could be carrying the virus? Judging by the fact that they were standing bunched up in a line, the number could be quite high .

They are in Calais for one reason only - to try their luck in getting here illegally, and obviously some will succeed.

A well thought out and researched response JE, as always.

Regarding " scroungers" I know of one who has had hundreds of thousands of tax payers money in grants for a community group. The things she bought languish in the back of a cupboard, while she claims everything she can.

well, I must lead a very sheltered life, all of these GN members surrounded by benefit cheats......

If you know of someone who is cheating benefits or tax then you have a civic duty to report that person. It's no good complaining on a forum like this whilst doing nothing about it. You can report people anonymously.

Jennifer Eccles...why do you fear a handful of immigrants more than a plane full of ex pats?

Has anyone ever met an asylum seeker, refugee or 'illegal'? I've met people who fall into a these categories. You need to listen to their stories before you judge. You need to comfort a child who's family has been told they can no longer stay even though the children were born here and know no other life, or a child who is coming to terms with seeing her mother gang raped on multiple occassions, or a child who saw scars on my arms and thought I'd been attacked with a machete. You need to see a parent's terror when they're told they have to take their child back to a place where they're not safe. When you've seen someone in fear for their and/or their child's life you may see refugees, asylum seekers and 'illegal' immigrants in a different light.

I didn’t say I did vampirequeen

Both groups are a hazard to any country on lockdown.

I’m friends with a family of asylum seekers. The mum in particular. They’re lovely people. Very gentle and kind. We became friends long before I realised they were asylum seekers.

They would be a credit to any country.

I taught an adult asylum seeker. She was a teacher hoping to retrain to work here. Her young children were not given places in school. Her husband, a professor of medicine, could not even work as a volunteer porter in a hospital.
Asylum seekers are an untapped resource under current legislation. What a waste.

I can't believe I'm reading this. So, some of us are living out our lockdown life with our internet, freezer full of food, tv's, dvd's, Netflix, hot and cold running water etc etc thinking to ourselves 'just imagine what life would be like if it was like this but without a home and all of our creature comforts'. And others are just fretting about all those bloomin 'furriners' arriving on boats....….

It is just a matter of luck where a person is born and some people are extremely unlucky.

Even in the depths of this crisis we cannot compare our lives to the lives of many people who may be suffering war/persecution/famine/drought/locust infestation/disease/poverty. I feel quite sure that if we were all in a similar situation we would be trying to find somewhere safer that offered more hope of a better future. That is presumably why lots of people from the UK in the 60's snapped up the cheap passages to Australia.

People putting their lives at serious risk by getting into often inadequate, overcrowded boats to cross seas that can change quite quickly from calm to choppy do not do so lightly. They are human beings with hopes and fears just like our own and to reduce them to the single word "illegals", I think, dehumanises them - and dehumanises us.

vampirequeen addresses a reality of unbridled immigrant control. I live very near the border with Mexico. We have an almost constant flow of illegal drugs (there are even fully lighted handmade tunnels across the border where cartels run rife), human trafficking is a daily issue (imagine your 10 yo GC smuggled in for a life of prostitution), hospitals have no NHS relief and must absorb the cost of care (not only for the truly ill, but A&E visits for runny noses, etc.), our crime rate is at an all time high (69% committed by illegal persons this year already). I do not wish to ban these people from what they hope is a better life...just do it legally!

Txquiltz - I read that the reason so many immigrants in the USA are apparently committing such a high proportion of crimes is because entering the USA illegally is now ipso facto a crime. I believe this is a relatively recent initiative.
What are the figures if you remove this group from your statistics do you know?

I personally think the drug trade has spawned much of the criminal situation here. Our border has been undermanned since I was a kid. An independent country should be able to have monitored borders. I never entered the U.K. without having to show the govt. had approved my visits and later extended stay. This was fair and reasonable. If someone is truly seeking asylum they should be welcomed. That doesn't mean they were tired of basic day to day living. I do not have tolerance when attempts overthrow the political and legal system that took them in are made. I cannot cite the most recent figures, but it must certainly be online. Great question.

1. There are ways to emigrate LEGALLY into a country.

2. If you've come to the UK from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, etc., you're not truly a refugee. You're an economic migrant. You've come to a prosperous country with an intent to make a life for yourself - passing through numerous countries along the way where you could have stayed.