The BBC

yep

Yes, it's a great review. I can't really blame people on low incomes for being angry that their quality of life is no better than standard the state regards as the bare minimum for survival. That anger needs to be directed in the right place though. The divide and rule approach to the less-well-off is horribly effective.

One thing I had hoped people would have learnt from the last recession was the fact that anyone can become unemployed. It has nothing to do with how hard you worked at your last job. I've been unemployed and I've been on 13 week schemes in rooms full of people from all kinds of backgrounds and experiences, people who thought they'd never be made unemployed, but they were. I would have thought that every adult in this country in the last ten years would either have been unemployed themselves at some time, or known someone who was, and consequently known that unemployed people are not lazy or workshy, and that the image of the 'benefit cheat' is by and large a myth. But it's a lesson that seems to be getting ignored in some kind of rush to be a judgemental right wing armchair shitbag.
And for the record, I've never met a single person who fits the media stereotype of the 'dole scrounger'. Everyone I've met who's been unemployed has wanted to work, wanted to get a job, wanted to get off JSA.

Idea for a follow-up programme: license fee payers question Mountford and Hewer about how much they were paid to appear on that 'documentary' and what they've spent the money on.

Can't add to or improve what Suzy said above. Snoball also OTM. Next on BBC1: two overpaid presenters try to justify why they should be paid public money for wagging their entitled fingers at people who are paid public money.

I would suspect that the BBC paid St**rt H*ll more money in six months than the single dad on incapacity benefit has received in a decade. Are we going to see a programme explaining the justification for that? (answer: nope)

idk ye all seem to be getting great value out of it tbh

Watching the BBC is SKIVING!

suzy that review definitely needs to be put up somewhere!

darragh your non sequitur arguments are so fucking basic, as are your ~arch~ ripostes

Can I just point out that this meretricious piece of shit has been running since 2009

idk ye all seem to be getting great value out of it tbh

^ WOUNDING ^

The food bank worker who told Nick and Margaret that people were begging for bog roll scared the shit out of them, BTW.

That programme needed an informed smartarse who's been on benefits to explain stuff like the above to their allocated hardwhinging ignoramus. I'd volunteer, but if the price of sanity is no direct contact with the Chicken Fillet Ladies of this world, I'll pay it. £40 is the cost of a cheap night out, or taking you and two kids to the cinema. Apparently, despite constant shaming propaganda, there is a stubborn 27 per cent of British people who believe that benefits should be higher and there's probably a correlation between those people and the percentage of people who feel insulted at the use of terms like 'welfare'. I'm sure working people who received child benefit at the same rate as their unemployed neighbours don't figure that in to their assessment of themselves as somehow superior to that neighbour.

There was absolutely fuck-all on telly last night, but before that we were treated to the sight of three nice chefs who get it intervening to help working poor and disabled people manage their food budgets, which were often £2/day per head after all the other bills went out. It was a much more compassionate programme. The chefs just got on with it and remonstrated with the mum who was giving her kid all the food while filling the gap with 20 cups of three-sugar tea and one meal a day, but instead of endless whinging they sent the lady to a dietician to scare her out of slowly killing herself and helped her to recalibrate her shop so mother and daughter were both eating well.

I can relate: I've been ill enough to be allocated a council flat and when I was getting IB of about £350/month plus a small declared retainer from ESM, I could make it work because I was single with low outgoings, good at both bureaucracy and cooking - I grew up with a single mum who is a ruthless quality food shopper - my 'job' was to get better and I did it well. Not for one second did I ever think I'd be the one having to do this, but I've never begrudged a claimant for any reason; being an immigrant I've of course paid NI and tax from the second I arrived here 22 years ago. I'm back at work developing a long-term project on spec but only doing a feature or teaching work each month so I can focus most on this one important thing. So I'm having to budget on food more than usual, often on less than I got on IB, but I'd probably tear my hair out if I was for real spending less than £20/week to feed myself if it didn't start falling out as a result of malnutrition, anyway.

Ah yes, all those nappy valley RBKC Giraffe World Cafe/Brampton's-subsidising ladies of leisure who whinged about child benefit being cut because it was their "pocket money." No thunderstorms about waste of taxpayers' money there.

Also, if you are still dependent on "pocket money" in the 21st century, the Revolution still has a long way to go.

i don't think that's what suzy meant

i was against the means-testing of child benefit because once something stops being a universal benefit it becomes easier to stigmatize, whittle away and then get rid of altogether

I didn't say that it was.

No, I'm in agreement - give child benefit to those who need it to feed and clothe their children. What is income tax if not means-tested?

But the cost of means testing usually ends up being more than the 'saving' of paying those that 'don't need it'.

Oh, but it's the principle isn't it?

Step one: "I don't claim this benefit"
Step two: "Therefore, I can look down on those that do"
Step tre: "It really should not be as much as that!"

and so on...

I'm against means-testing for the same reason as Tracer and Mark G, who is OTM about the false economy aspect.

But the cost of means testing usually ends up being more than the 'saving' of paying those that 'don't need it'.

Usually down to the cost of having to pay for all those civil servants to do little more than run personal details through a computer rather than someone who can just look at a payslip/bank book and say yes or no. As used to happen.

I don't see what's socialist about giving public money to people who don't need it.

An egalitarian baseline followed by 'according to need'? No, you've lost me ;-).

Why should money that ought to be directed towards families in genuine need be frittered away in the boutiques of Sloane Street? It's as grotesque a waste of public funds as the BBC.

It's like arguing that everyone should only pay 10% income tax because if you ask some people to pay more it will stigmatise tax and, why, at such a low rate they might as well whittle it down and do away with it altogether.

so a benefit is the same as a tax? not heard that one before, marcello.

At what point do you stop defining people as "genuinely in need"? At the moment it's £50,000. Could the money going to people earning £40,000 not be better spent on the poorest? How about people earning £30,000? Surely those earning nothing need the money more? Repeat until it's like legal aid and virtually abolished. The "savings" are never passed on to those in need, either way.

No. But they should be, in the same way as there should be peace on Earth and mutual understanding.

Because then you go back into "what about the middle classes then?" and before long you've argued yourself into being a Tory.

But it's the Tories that seem keen on having this means-tested..

Does that alone make it wrong to do so?

Do you not think they might have an ulterior motive for wanting to stop people being given things as a basic right of citizenship?

Would you support wealthier people being barred from claiming unemployment benefits if they have savings, or being made to pay for NHS treatment?

It sounds to me like you're very keen on supporting wealthier people.

It's a couple of quid a week from each taxpayer that isn't getting spent on Trident. All of that money goes straight back into the economy, regardless of whether it's spent in Sloane Street or Green Street. Just as I'd never dream of telling an unemployed person how to spend their benefits, I'd never tell a middle-class mum how to spend hers.

But if it were child benefit, it wouldn't be "her" money. It would be the Government's money. If funds are set aside for a specific purpose and the recipients are using it for another purpose then that is, technically speaking, fraud.

w/e about wealthier people getting child benefit. Socialism is a bit more than just being all boo to rich people.

Again you seem to be eager to defend rich people.

It sounds to me like you're very keen on supporting wealthier people.

i don't doubt this, but i also think it probably doesn't sound/read like this to anyone else reading this thread

If you support redistribution and inequalities of income being reduced as much as is practical, there isn't a contradiction with universal benefits.

You cannot have a "universal benefit" because not everybody is equal.

If you assume that they are, then there is no reasonw why we could not simply say, to hell with it, let's abolish income tax altogether, keep (and spend) everything you earn, and we'll all get on splendidly, like in the Lebanon.

sp: "reason"

You cannot have a "universal benefit" because not everybody is equal.

Why not?

If you assume that they are

Why would I do that? That would be demented.

tbh if doing away with universal child benefit was the worst thing this government did things would be pretty sweet tho

that argument makes absolutely no sense, Marcello.

The fundamental point isn't about supporting "rich people" it's about making it more difficult to erode the rights of everyone else, but that should be pretty obvious.

xp
maybe you would next like to suggest that hospital visits be means-tested "because not everybody is equal"

marcello is this like when you said the royal mail should be privatised because a package of yours took too long to arrive?

The other thing about Child Benefit was to promote actually having kids, which is why my parents didn't get any until they had their 2nd child.

also it's money that (in most cases) goes directly to the mother, not to the household, which can be incredibly important.

Well yes, because then the affluent mother can spend it on herself.

Otherwise you have to say that you're on the side of the affluent neoliberal middle classes and it's all right for public money to go towards subsidising toys and luxuries rather than spending it where it is needed (as in other areas of modern life).

oh my days, god save us from the UNDESERVING MOTHERS who spend public money on TOYS

it's nice that you would rather refuse public money to women because you suspect them of immoral spending habits - they are, after all, so frivolous and awful - than consider that women in ostensibly affluent households can often be completely cut off from control over the finances they need to support themselves and their children.