Benefit fraud: £1.2bn (0.8% in all) - Corporate tax avoidance: £120bn

[Happ Hazzard]

If it isn't true why do I know so many cases of it?

[Biopunk]

"The researchers tested the accuracy of recent government pronouncements and found them lacking. It highlights that ministers – including chancellor George Osborne – had claimed there were families taking £100,000 a year in housing benefit. In fact there were five such families in the UK. Last year ministers appeared to brief that 1,360 people had been off work for a decade with diarrhoea – when in fact they had severe bowel diseases and cancer.

 

The repeated use of dubious statistics has a drip, drip effect. The report notes that the Observer's left-of-centre commentator Will Hutton, now head of an Oxford college, wrote that "the welfare state was not set up to support vast families… in inter-generational welfare dependency".

 

This idea – that benefit spending is high because of large families on out of work benefits – has become a staple feature of welfare stories in Britain. Stories referring to large families had more than doubled in frequency since 2003, accounting for some 7.4% of articles.

 

The facts are that families with more than five children account for 1% of out-of-work benefit claims. Very large households with ten or more children are a staple of tabloid shock stories: there are, according to DWP, 180 such claimant households in Britain.

 

Another favourite trend that the coalition likes to focus on is "intergenerational worklessness". In 2009 Iain Duncan Smith, now cabinet minister in charge of welfare, said: "Life expectancy on some estates, where often three generations of the same family have never worked, is lower than the Gaza Strip".

 

Looking at all of those households where there were just two generations living in the same household, the report says that academics have found less than half of a percent had two generations that had never worked – 15,000 households across the UK."

 

Anyone would think they represent the majority of claimants, the way the media goes off - they are overwhelmingly not representative of social security / welfare / whatever.

[tinfoilhat]

@ dragonfall:

 

You don't seem to have read the articles - that is the very myth they demolish systematically.

 

This mythic idea of people not working for generations, that social security has become a lifestyle.

 

That is what the media has painted, and is patently untrue.

 

Yes it is. It might not be in the numbers the mail likes to throw around, but they do exist.

[Biopunk]

If it isn't true why do I know so many cases of it?

 

Well, I know a few Sheffielders who love saying 'I know this one guy near where I live who hasn't worked a day in his life' and all that kinda thing.

 

Lets look at this logically:

 

- Knowing one person, or a couple, in a massive city, and surroundings (1.4 million in the Sheffield Urban area), does not equate to a 'culture'.

 

- The existence of extreme examples, is picked up on by media outlets who have a clear agenda, and are reported on, until everyone believes they are representative.

 

There are 2 million jobless - as well as perhaps another 2 million jobless, who don't claim JSA, and therefore aren't listed in unemployment figures. There are also people who are in work part time, on temp basis, etc, who further lead to an under-reporting of actual unemployment. These several million people are vilified, because the media chooses to associate all welfare with a few scare stories, selectively chosen, to further their editor's opinions, or the opinions of those they owe favours.

 

---------- Post added 10-01-2013 at 19:03 ----------

 

I mean look at it in terms of decimal places:

 

1,000,000

 

10

 

The difference would be four or five powers - that means, a person knowing 10 'scroungers' (debatable if some of them might have mental health problems, etc, and appear dishonest as a result), would still only know 0.0001% of the population doing it.

[Uptowngirl]

Well, I know a few Sheffielders who love saying 'I know this one guy near where I live who hasn't worked a day in his life' and all that kinda thing.

 

Lets look at this logically:

 

- Knowing one person, or a couple, in a massive city, and surroundings (1.4 million in the Sheffield Urban area), does not equate to a 'culture'.

 

- The existence of extreme examples, is picked up on by media outlets who have a clear agenda, and are reported on, until everyone believes they are representative.

 

There are 2 million jobless - as well as perhaps another 2 million jobless, who don't claim JSA, and therefore aren't listed in unemployment figures. There are also people who are in work part time, on temp basis, etc, who further lead to an under-reporting of actual unemployment. These several million people are vilified, because the media chooses to associate all welfare with a few scare stories, selectively chosen, to further their editor's opinions, or the opinions of those they owe favours.

 

---------- Post added 10-01-2013 at 19:03 ----------

 

I mean look at it in terms of decimal places:

 

1,000,000

 

10

 

The difference would be four or five powers - that means, a person knowing 10 'scroungers' (debatable if some of them might have mental health problems, etc, and appear dishonest as a result), would still only know 0.0001% of the population doing it.

 

Well actually it does. Because if you know 100 people and you know 2 who are benefit cheats that's 2% and rolled out across the 1.4 million folks you quote for Sheffield district would amount to 28000 on the fiddle-dee-dee.

 

I think we can all take it that maths isn't your strong point.

[Biopunk]

I think we can all take it that maths isn't your strong point.

 

If you ask someone from Dore/Totley/Ecclesall, how many they know, the answer would probably be low - if you ask someone who lives in an area with high structural unemployment and rates of depression, they will likely know more. But neither is representative of every UK constituency.

 

I thought people would be reasonable enough to understand this, that you can't extrapolate personal experiences onto the entire UK, but you chose to take a cheap jibe about maths skill instead. I'm not bothered, but let's stick to the topic without all that usual rhetorical back-and-forth.

 

---------- Post added 10-01-2013 at 19:44 ----------

 

A final point before I bugger off for today:

 

I find it amazing that the media has everyday people defending companies who pay no taxes, saying "at least they work" - that kind of loyalty you cannot buy - it's priceless.

 

Anyone would think that the poor 99.5% of legitimate benefits claimants in this country created the financial problems we face as a nation - certainly, every punitive measure is directed at them, and most of the vindictiveness I see also is - yet they did not create our budget deficit; the richest classes did, when they recieved a handout of £800 billion in bailouts - and left their jobs with gold-plated pensions and payoffs.

 

It is amazing, how the media has successfully made the people who stand to lose the most as their services are cut to shreds, the most voracious defenders of this bent game - look at this thread - you people are my compatriots, and we live in the same city - so I know that you are directly or indirectly effected by cuts to our local council, to charities, to unemployment and disability stipends - yet, if this thread is anything to judge by, and my own experience talking with people in the city, everyone loves to defend the very ideas that led to this, and resent the people who suffer them most.

 

We ignore expensive wars, expensive bailouts, MPs salaries, MPs expenses (it's all forgotten about in months), but are fed a drip-drip-drip of stories about how awful people are taking our taxes - stories that statistics show are ridiculous examples - and we get riled up over this, nobody Islamic types, and immigration, whilst ignoring people who actually have the power and wealth to make a difference.

 

You can't buy that kind of loyalty - it's incredible.

 

---------- Post added 10-01-2013 at 19:47 ----------

 

Redundancy is a life wasted. I am now nothing but a threat

 

Daily I write job applications, and long to be productive, yet I am treated as a scrounger, bullied and feared by the system

 

Redundant

1. No longer needed or useful – superfluous;

2. Able to be omitted without loss of meaning or function.

 

I have now lived through 683 days of redundancy, each one against my embattled will. Like 26 million people across the EU, I long, desperately, to fall asleep with the contentment and exhaustion of a full and productive day.

 

My time is spent writing application after application, repeating the same information in different words. A wearisome and unproductive task: it is rare to receive an acknowledgment, let alone an invite to interview.

 

I lead a life without achievement. In fact my life is quite the opposite: a life waiting to begin again – a waste.

 

Finding myself unemployed I am no longer immune to the aggressive and hateful propaganda that is pitched against people in my situation. Regardless of our employment histories and efforts to find work, we are labelled scroungers and treated with contempt. Many people treat me with an air of superiority while others, some friends and relatives included, doubt me.

 

The jobcentre and my Work Programme provider (WPP) have become significant in my life. Yet I only attend the former fortnightly and the latter monthly to prove, in both cases, that I am searching for work.

 

It hangs over me daily that if I make a mistake, I stand to lose the £111.45 a week that my partner and I rely on to survive. The prospect of one week without that money is terrifying; now consider the new maximum sanction, introduced last October, of 156 weeks without help. Of course this might only be used in extreme cases, but it still exists as a very real threat – the will is there to punish, and drastically.

 

I have now reached a point where I wonder what the purpose of the jobcentre and WPPs is. So let's take a look at them.

 

Four, maybe five, large security staff line the entrance of the jobcentre. Their stances relax as I flash an appointment card in their direction. Their presence strikes a complex balance: threatening violence should I misbehave, while offering me protection and security against the other jobseekers – though I see no reason to fear anyone. I have only seen trouble once, and the security team were powerless to intervene; the man knew it. In any case, his anger was justified. The jobcentre is intentionally made to be an intimidating place.

 

The pitch is that these places are here to help jobseekers. For example, my WPP call their advisers "tutors".

 

These tutors lead mandatory group workshops, covering material such as communication, motivation and personal hygiene. We are treated as though we have never been employed or lived in the outside world. In reality we are an educated bunch and many were previously highly paid professionals – a very different picture of the unemployed to the one most often projected.

 

I have a typical workshop handout in front of me now, entitled, Where Can I Find Work? The list ranges from "the internet" to "a life-changing job hunt", each set against the "Potential Success Rate … in 2006". Of those using agencies, it says, between 5 and 28% were successful, while a life-changing job hunt saw a whopping and definite 86% success rate. My request for the source of this data was unfortunately denied.

 

After introducing himself to me, one of the "tutors" even joked, "What, are you too poor to afford clothes that fit properly?", pointing to the shirt that sagged slightly around my reduced middle. Bullying is also the norm.

 

It strikes me that these organisations are not really here to help the unemployed. Finding employment may be their preferred solution, but in an economy that favours high unemployment, that cannot always be the case.

 

Being "redundant" (a word that both the jobcentre and WPP avoid but imply, for example I've been told that, "unemployed you're no good to man nor fowl".) I provide no function or meaning in the world because I do not perform a role for someone else, I do not produce profit. Even voluntary work does not shake this idea – paid work is key. Those that employ us define who we are.

 

As a judge or magistrate hands down a sentence they will often contextualise the decision of the court by acknowledging the previous good character of the convicted, in part by their employment history. Unemployment is culpability, guilt.

 

The reason is that employers require us to abide by their standards of behaviour and presentation. They control how we must be in order to become or remain socially acceptable.

 

The unemployed, however, live day-to-day unchecked and separate from such a social hierarchy. I am now an unknown entity, and so I pose a threat. I may not have financial freedom, but potentially I have far more valuable freedoms: time and perspective free from the constraints and interference of an employer.

 

This makes the plight of those on workfare clearer. More important than free labour is the need to monitor and regulate behaviour. Time is filled, groups are separated and deviation is nipped in the bud.

 

Likewise, the role of the jobcentre and WPPs is to impose a hierarchy. And they achieve this with efficiency. During short and intermittent meetings with jobseekers, they check that the person's time has been used in a particular way, they belittle and bully, backed up with threats of hunger and homelessness. The unemployed are left blind to their own potentials and the potential of the world.

 

And this surveillance and control infiltrates ever deeper as Iain Duncan Smith proposes to extend Universal Jobmatch, a new government job search website, making its use compulsory for all jobseekers.

 

Those who become free from the system of employment are perceived to pose a threat. This is dealt with by aggressive browbeating: a system embedded in our law and culture.

 

But we must not fear the unemployed because of someone else's paranoia.

 

Pretty awful place to be.

[Dragonfall]

@ dragonfall:

 

You don't seem to have read the articles - that is the very myth they demolish systematically.

 

This mythic idea of people not working for generations, that social security has become a lifestyle.

 

That is what the media has painted, and is patently untrue.

 

 

My opinions are based on my own experience & knowledge - I tend not to believe 90% of what I see in the press (or at least, don't take it at face value). Unlike yourself - you appear as willing to believe the left-wing scaremongering stories, as much as Daily Mail readers believe the right-wing stuff in their paper. True independence of thought, doesn't rely on cobbling together a series of newspaper articles.

[*_ash_*]

Well, I know a few Sheffielders who love saying 'I know this one guy near where I live who hasn't worked a day in his life' and all that kinda thing.

 

Lets look at this logically:

 

- Knowing one person, or a couple, in a massive city, and surroundings (1.4 million in the Sheffield Urban area), does not equate to a 'culture'.

 

So according to your own logic, knowing people doesn't count as evidence; this is written in one of the first links you quoted...

 

Almost a quarter of parents (24 per cent) reported knowing of children in their local area who do not have enough to eat.

-

- The existence of extreme examples, is picked up on by media outlets who have a clear agenda, and are reported on, until everyone believes they are representative.

 

You mean like this from one of your links?

 

We have kids who were so starving they stole frozen meat from a flat they visited and they ate it raw.

-

The title of one of your links is 'sharp increases in the number of children going hungry', yet when clicked on it says 'Two children in every classroom go hungry as neglect takes its toll'. There's a huge difference in what you write and it actually says.

 

You are doing exactly what you are complaining about!

 

-

 

The Guardian quotes I've not read as they do the same as what you complain about.

 

-

 

The big companies that pay small amounts of tax are now well known, so if people still use them and don't like their policies, then they are hypocrites/liars/morons* (*delete as appl) as none of the examples you have stated have the monopoly in their fields.

[Mecky]

The media report on the worst cases because it makes for a story. Couple with 1 child trying really hard to wind work isn't a story. Somalian with 7 kids and no intention of working living in 2 million pound taxpayer funded mansion is. However I don't think highlighting the outrageous cases makes people think everyone without a job is like the worst abusers of the system.

 

It shouldn't do, but media try to inflame public opinion so that any legistlation becomes more sociably acceptable and therefore easier to implement and people are falling for it. Divide and conquer and all that rubbish.

[maxmaximus]

@ dragonfall:

 

You don't seem to have read the articles - that is the very myth they demolish systematically.

 

This mythic idea of people not working for generations, that social security has become a lifestyle.

 

That is what the media has painted, and is patently untrue.

You would need to know everyone in the country to come to that conclusion, but you only need to know of one family that has never worked to form the opposing conclusion.