Panorama Britains Homeles

retirement pensions. These are not a benefit, they are earned and paid for.

You do realise don't you, GillT57, just how many ministers would be spluttering into their tumblers of Glenfiddich hearing those words being uttered

I didnt really mean that DC and buddies actually make or commission the programmes, it is just convenient to allow the tabloid type of programmes to distract people from the real villains. I also get really annoyed when figures are spouted about how much the welfare state is costing, when the figures include retirement pensions. These are not a benefit, they are earned and paid for.

They do use those tactics though Ana and may well 'nudge' tv programmers in a certain direction - divide and rule has always worked well; if they can get us fighting each other, who will notice what's going on right under our noses let alone have the energy to fight them as well! They may even be shareholders or board members of those companies that produce the programmes - it wouldn't surprise me, they seem to belong to everything else!

I don't think Cameron or his buddies have time to make tv documentaries as well as ruin running the country, Gill! The programmes attract viewers, that's why they're made.

My feelings exactly Hollydaze, undoubtedly there are a few people who milk the system, and we can do nothing about people who have no conscience or sense of responsibility. I strongly suspect that this is another case of red herrings or smoke and mirrors or however you want to describe it; a distraction to get everyone hot under the collar about a small percentage of people while the major frauds and cheats are getting away with it. I keep going on about it adnauseum, and will say it to anyone who will listen ( and to those who will not ), but how is it that as a very small business I pay more Corporation Tax than The Ritz hotel? I do not understand how a business that is physically based in UK, provides services in UK can possible get away with it? They are not even doing a shipping it in from Jersey fiddle like Amazon. If you go to The Ritz ( not that I would) you buy tea and cakes in London, and eat it in London, so how can this be? Cameron and his buddies throw these programmes about 'benefit scroungers' in to distract and inflame, and I for one am not falling for it.

Thank you rosequartz

I meant to say also that I think that is very wrong, Mishap. She will not be feeling well enough to explore all avenues and I do hope she has someone who can help her do so. I wish her well in her recovery.

Holly, no need to apologise about the links. Some posts seem to be aimed at posters rather than discussing the OP and I should just disregard those.

I will read your link later but have to go out shortly so will not comment, only on what I have noticed previously in the press.

What I have noticed is that the media do report quite often on cases of feckless families who have many children (although there are of course families with many children who are not feckless); conversely there are many young women who are intelligent, thoughtful and hardworking but who do not wish to have children - Lucy Worsley being a prime example. She says she has been educated out of the reproductive process. I may get a lot of flak here, but I think that is a great pity. And many sensible, thoughtful, intelligent people will tend to limit their families as the OP suggests, whereas the feckless will nt and I think that is a worrying trend.

I so agree Mishap.

How can there NOT be help for people like this ??

It's the same with the NHS. Breast enlargements funded, a child in need of a £12,000 operation which is approved by NICE is refused finding.

Something is so very wrong with the system.

I agree Mishap. It certainly is an absolute disgrace that people who are very ill also have the added anxiety of getting into serious debt - this is not the way a civilized country should be.

Aka Flickety also said that the number of families in the UK with more than 5 children is under 10,000 but why, out of this barely significant figure, is it those that are on benefit and leading fairly chaotic lives which programme makers concentrate on?

And for those who keep saying it is the welfare state that is draining the economy, please look at my above link which shows it is the financial sector which caused and continues to cause mayhem. New scandals of mis-selling, reckless behaviour and various types of illegality/"insider dealing" are still popping up but the sector continues to resist change.

Many apologies for the links - I know it will get some of you spitting tin tacks! It isn't easy for me to chop it up and paste as it will be a very long post in order not to lose context and I can't post the pie charts.

It would seem that the birth rate in England & Wales is falling and has been since 2008:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/7764311/Birth-rate-falls-in-England-for-first-time-in-almost-a-decade.html

Maybe these programmes are leading viewers to believe the opposite of what is true? Does the timing of these programmes coincide with the public getting 'uppity' about corporation tax evasion?

Another link that verifies this is:

www.economicshelp.org/blog/6348/economics/cost-of-benefit-fraud-v-tax-evasion-in-uk/

I find it difficult to get hot under the collar about welfare fraud when tax avoidance/evasion costs so much more. Welfare fraud is, as stated, a drop in the ocean compared to tax 'irregularities'.

But there are those in great need who get nothing. A friend in her 50s has breast cancer and has had a double mastectomy. She is undergoing chemo and is just broken by it - barely able to function for nausea, diarrhoea, headache, anaemia. She has been denied most benefits and gets the very base level of Income Support - about £50 per week. She cannot pay her mortgage and the company will not defer has payments as hers is interest only. How is she supposed to live without borrowing? She is not "feckless" - for every benefits scrounger there is some poor soul like this. It is a disgrace.

Flick has made her point well.

I think what is often forgotten (or ignored by some) is that those who have no intention of ever working, whole generations of families in some cases, are draining the Welfare State and leaving less for those who fall on hard times.

www.leftfutures.org/2012/04/the-best-graphs-are-the-ones-osborne-doesnt-publish/

Graphs showing the various areas of UK indebtedness show that the major area of indebtedness is attributable to the financial, not the public, sector. It is not the high cost of welfare (which includes state pensions) that caused this country's economic crash but the mismanagement of the financial sector.

Of course.

The Welfare State is a Sacred Cow Which Must Not Be Meddled With under Any Circumstances.

Surely we are allowed an opinion even if we do not watch every programme and read every article, including all the sometimes tedious links constantly posted on GN?

IDS has poisoned the chalice himself. He's messed up everything he's touched.
I find it quite amusing the number of people who say they never watch programmes like this but then pontificate on them.

Good post, FlicketyB.

I would also like to mention, with reference to a previous post, that there is a difference between 'vulnerable' and 'feckless'. I agree we should look after the vulnerable but should be careful as a society not to encourage fecklessness.

The media will always seek out the cases that will cause the most controversy, and for that reason I rarely watch any of those programmes. I do not want to go through life with my 'head in the sand' but equally do not want to be wound up by some of the sensationalism portrayed on tv and in the newspapers.

Iain Duncan Smith has come in for a lot of flack on GN but quite honestly I think his job is a poisoned chalice and he has to do something to cut the huge welfare budget, which is not at all what Labour intended when they introduced the Welfare State. Some people (albeit only a few) look on 'welfare' as a right to do as they wish and have as many children as they wish and not as a safety net for when times are hard.

Well said FlicketyB

There was an interview in the DM yesterday with a family with between 10 and 15 children, I forget the detail. The council were knocking two council houses together to give them a bigger home. No member of the family were in employment.

The man's attitude to peoples reactions to him about children and occupying two council house was the inevitable 'human rights' argument to have as many children as he liked and a threat to have more if people kept complaining.

My reaction was that in the past if a man and women had more children than they could support the excess children died from starvation or diseases caused by malnutrition thus solving the problem. Today we quite rightly consider this unacceptable, so we do what we can to make sure every family has sufficient food and a roof over their head. Now that safe and effective means of contraception exist it is reasonable to accept that the quid pro quo for this security is that no-one should have more children than they can reasonably expect to be able to support by their own efforts until maturity.

The purpose of the welfare state is to support those who fall on bad times despite all their efforts to be self supporting not to support those whose own actions actively contribute to their welfare dependency.

I remember watching Cathy Come Home and being horrified with what happened to the family, but I do wonder now, whether family benefits, including housing benefit should be capped at the family size then in being when the family first start receiving benefits with no provision for extra children until the family has been self supporting for six months.

But let us put it into perspective. I remember seeing statistics that showed that the number of families in the UK with 10+ children is only about 1,500 and under 10,000 have more that 5. Many of whom have working parents. These cases make good TV and news because they are so exceptional.

I have known single parents deliberately get pregnant to ensure themselves a council flat.

Lucky you Aka - I am envious of you living in such a beautiful part of the country

Landlords only get away with what the law allows them to - I remember the place where my aunt was, they loved it, it was well cared for. If the law fails to keep feckless landlords in line, those that fall into that category will always try to get away with doing as little as possible whilst charging as much as possible. As usual, it is the legal system that lets ordinary folk down.

How hard it is for young couples - unless you are very rich there is no right time to have a child. I know that the arrival of our first lass put us into some financial difficulty and I am sure I am not alone in that.

What should they do? The right time financially may not arrive till they are past child-bearing age?

That's what has annoyed me about my employee. I will obviously pay her maternity pay, but she was moaning that they wont get any benefits, but why should they? They haven't fallen on hard times, they haven't lost a job, they have chosen to have a baby when they could easily, at their age have waited a couple of years.

Gagagran

What I object to is the sense of entitlement that is so prevalent. It's as if there is no understanding that it all has to be paid for by somebody and that somebody is the taxpayer.

Governments don't have funds of their own - just what they collect from various sources of taxation. The idea of personal responsibility seems to play no part in the thinking of some sections of the community and I think programmes like the Panorama one illustrate this perfectly.

The welfare state was supposed to be a safety net not a goodies box to be plundered by the idle and feckless.