Families where no one has ever worked, nor wanted to, and claim all the benefits they can.

I know a number of people/families who subsist on benefits. These are either friends or family members. My heat goes out to them, they're living hand to mouth and under huge pressure to find work. One individual was persuaded to become self employed last year, he has serious health problems and is long term unemployed. He is in his late 40's and is now earning slightly less than he got on JSA but said his mental health is improved because he's away from the pressure to apple for x amounts of jobs before breakfast etc. I worry about what will happen to him if he becomes too ill to work.
Other very close family members are disabled or terminally ill but can't face the stress involved in applying for any benefits.

In the course of my work I came across endless situations like this and occasionally came across people who were exploiting the system. "occasionally" is the key, whereas the vast number of people were truly struggling to make ends meet. The myth about flat screen tv;s and holidays abroad applied only to criminals, like successful drug dealers.

I Have posted about my step daughter on the Tory Welfare cuts thread, so I'm not going to repeat that. Suffice it to say that I know it is true because I've been in the room when she's been boasting about how much money she gets. I have reported her - without DH's knowledge- and nothing was done apart from a warning. That was last year and she is still thinking up new ways to cheat the system. No doubt some bleeding hearted liberals will think that she is just a victim of society/struggling single mum etc etc but she is not.....she is a benefit cheat and I am ashamed of her.

Ooh, I see you've lifted the title thread from one of my posts, Gracesgran! How flattering...

My DIL is from an Indian (Sikh) family. We were staying with them a couple of weeks ago and went with them to a ceremony at the temple. We met a lovely young couple who were expecting their first baby. They had only been married a few months and the husband could speak very little English and had obviously only recently arrived from India. I asked my DIL what job he could do with so little English. She replied that 'their caste' (whatever that is, obviously a low one) don't work - they just come over to England and live on benefits. Seemingly there are generations of them! I had no idea, I don't know how they get around the JCP stipulations - possibly because they don't speak English they are not considered fit for employment?

There are benefits cheats - of course they are. I met a few when working as a social worker for 30 years.

The operative word there is "few" - I met many many disadvantaged families who were struggling on benefits through no fault or desire of their own; and they were often reluctant to apply for the benefits to which they were entitled.

There are also tax cheats - often with a better education and more money at stake.

It is a question of getting things in proportion - I would not like to live in a society where the sick, disabled and unemployed are left to fend for themselves. I am prepared that we should shoulder the very tiny minority of benefits cheats in order to defend a civilised society.

Anecdotal examples of cheats are not helpful - they set up a negative expectation that results in honest people who have fallen on hard times being unjustly judged adversely.

Which is precisely the response that I'm sure the OP was hoping to elicit, Luckygirl, and one with which I have no argument.

I did say in the rest of my post on the original thread (yes, this is yet another 'thread about a thread') that abusers of the benefits system are in the minority, but they exist.

As for reporting one's neighbours etc., not everyone feels able to do that. It might be the right thing to do, but there are often children to consider and it's sometimes easier just to grumble. Not an ideal solution, I know, but that's human nature.

This is another potentially contentious thread, where it seems the OP ( yet again) is lighting the blue touch paper and then standing well back.I hope that nobody is taken in by it, or it will become another bloomin' great row.

Is it Bonfire Night yet? Or is OP just getting in some firework lighting practice.
I agree with rosesarered this thread title is wrong on so many levels and deliberately inflammatory.
No doubt some people will rise to it.

The one's who are making this thread yet another inflammatory thread are those who leap on and criticise the thread , why not ignore if it doesn't please?

Ignoring . . . . . . .

Having read the OP twice, perhaps I'm being dense but I really don't see it as "inflammatory".

The anecdote about the MP's experience when door stepping shows how someones situation is not always what it appears to be.

I wasn't going to comment but ok one comment, I did see the post as an inflammatory posting.

It's a bit of a dumb question or statement [sorry] well in the OP anyway ... no one else could possibly know whether someone has ever wanted to work. So to me it's a bit of a non-starter. This dragon is out!

Tax evasion £5bn PA ---- Benefits fraud £1.2bn PA

www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/its-time-to-bust-some-myths-about-benefit-fraud-and-tax-evasion-9520562.html

Indeed, despite tabloid headlines about a feckless underclass intent on milking the benefits system, tax evasion is a far bigger social scourge than fraudulent benefit claims. Just 0.7 per cent - or £1.2bn - of total benefit expenditure in 2012/13 was overpaid due to fraud. This compares with £5bn a year that the government loses through tax avoidance.

GrandmaKT, I am puzzled by your post on the young man from India, how were this couple allowed to move here, no work, no family support ? I have close friends who came from India and they have countless forms to fill in when a family member wants to come here for a holiday , my friends run a business , are not of a low caste . The application for a family visit is quite unbelievable , for the family in the the UK and the relatives in India

The original post is, and, I think, was meant to be, challenging.

That's fair enough.

As I read down the thread I waited for the tax evasion v benefit fraud to come up again and it did. I don't understand the point of the comparison. If I bruise my husband it is still as wrong as if I break his leg! Both things are wrong so if we are going to compare them why not list all the things people do which are wrong? Not personal Nellie it just keeps coming up.

How can anyone know the extent of tax evasion or of benefit fraud? They can only be a guess as many are getting away with it without anyone knowing. Why isn't this obvious?

Yes, I do know someone who claims for something they shouldn't and uses the system. I know more than one and I am not living in a deprived area. You can take my word for it that it is accurate.

GrandmaKT, I think your DIL must have misunderstood the young family's situation.

Nonnie In the interests of a balanced discussion based on facts rather than media spin I have raised the issue again.

I have raised it, yet again, because yet again, we are hearing so many more adverse comments about benefit fraud than we do about tax evasion which is a much more serious problem for the government coffers.
It seems that people keep forgetting this important fact.

However it seem that for the media, benefit fraud is the issue that they rant about not the tax evasion issue.

It's the blame the poor yet again, but don't mention the greedy bankers who crashed the global economy in 2008.

Nellie how do you think we should deal with tax evasion? What process should we use?

I've posted here before of my experience of a family who openly boasted of working (!!!) the system. I was working in Care in the Community, and this family were the grandson and his wife of my client. Their method was to be out of work and have a new baby as often as they could, collecting the appropriate benefits as and when. I was slightly envious of their People Carrier vehicle, their four bedroom, free house, and benefit covered bills. Another family, in work, with two teenagers, and looking after their elderly mother in their home were sadly struggling financially with the minimum of government help.

Benefit fraud only £1.2 bn PA hardly worth bothering about is it?

The poor are entitled to milk the system just as much as the rich.

So often people who boast about a comfy lifestyle on benefits do so because they know some want to believe it's true and so this covers up the fact they are into shady dealings

I'll bow to your superior knowledge of the world of benefit fraud and shady dealings Anniabach