Yet more feckless wasters.

[GavinPearson]

martin84 said:

Aren't we bored of these stories yet?

Bored of people pointing out other countries' successful solutions? Bored of people resenting working their tails off so that total layabouts can do nothing all day and still be materially better off than them?

There's an awful lot more to bore you with then......

[GavinPearson]

12gauge said:

Because the govt prices 30-40% of the population out of housing through an artificial scarcity of planning permissions.

If benefits were capped at the level of the state pension then rents would drop to fill the houses. That's the market at work.

[GavinPearson]

King Herald said:

There is no law stating that you can't have more kids than you can comfortably support by your own means. Maybe there should be, but the government does hand out child benefit to EVERY parent in the country with a kid under 16. They must have a reason for subsidizing every family.

It's going back to a bygone era when the head of the household spent more money on beer than he gave to his wife for the kids, this way the kids always have money allocated for them....

.... except nowadays the parents are often living separate lives, the CSA takes the money from the father and the money gets spent on cellphones, shoes and tat, and doesn't actually go to the kids.

It would be better to just abolish the whole child benefit system and add to the allowances for taxpayers with kids.

[blueg33]

GavinPearson said:

If benefits were capped at the level of the state pension then rents would drop to fill the houses. That's the market at work.

We have a shortage of housing supply and current Housing benefit rents are not enough to cover the costs of building new ones

[TwigtheWonderkid]

What has happened to the supposed benefits cap, where no one household could claim more than £26K in total? Has that been dropped?

[Exoticaholic]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

What has happened to the supposed benefits cap, where no one household could claim more than £26K in total? Has that been dropped?

April 2013.

[Jimbeaux]

King Herald said:

They must have a reason for subsidizing every family.

They do, it is called a generational voting base.

[AJS-]

These Mail articles always make me think of this from Viz

Viz said:

SCROUNGING bdS
This family deserve to DIE

Meet the Dougan family, husband Bill and wife Doreen are Britain's biggest scroungers. They pocket an amazing £120 a week in handouts and live a life of luxury in a three bedroom house paid for by the council.

Bill hasn't done a single days work in the two years since he was blinded and partially paralysed in a car accident. He claims he's not fit for employment. But he still manages to get to his front door mat once a week where he picks up a whopping £85 state benefits cheque for so-called 'invalidity'. Unable to walk he sits at home on his arse all day counting his cash.

Dole family Dougan claim to be hard up - yet they still have TWO children, and soon there'll be more. They breed like RABBITS, and yo-yo knickered slut Doreen, 28, is hoping for ANOTHER sprog later this year, leaving tax payers like YOU to fork out another £12 a week in child benefit.

Perhaps next time she should spend some of it on contraceptives.

Free school milk for their ugly brood costs YOU the taxpayer another £2 a week. Yet bone idle Bill, 33 still wants MORE "It's difficult getting by on benefits and I'd like to be able to provide better for my children" the grasping git told our reporter.

Kids Michael, 9, and Angela, 5, have already jumped on the gravy train. Like their work-shy parents they expect something for nothing and collect a thumping 50p a week EACH in pocket money

Their house is crammed with tell tale signs of their cushy lifestyle. In the kitchen Mrs Dougan offered us a cup of "tea or coffee". Oh yes the big spending Dougans have BOTH. Their fancy swan kettle probably set them back £20 and a swish pedal bin in the corner must have cost thirty or forty quid.

But then that's hardly surprising. Because wife Doreen isn't short of a few bob. she works nights as a cleaner picking, up a hefty £42 a week as well as cleaning up on state hand outs. Nice work if you can get it.

But she still MOANS "What I'd really like is to take the family on holiday." she told us. "We've never been away at all since before we were married.". But wait a minute that's not all.

"With Bill unable to work I'd like to go out and pursue a career of my own. But it's difficult finding people to look after the kids." said the money grabbing bh as she sat there sipping her expensive Nescafé coffee and offering fancy chocolate biscuits like there was no tomorrow.

Doreen's weekly shopping bill comes to £60 and she claims it's hard to make ends meet, despite raking in POUNDS in discount vouchers at the supermarket check-out. And the whining sow isn't even happy with her FREE council home. "One day I'd like to own a house of our own, with a garden for the kids to play in", groaned the grasping trollop.

Last night a senile Tory MP stopped wking for five minutes to BLAST the Dougans before we'd even told him anything about them: "These people are a disease on our society", he ranted drunkenly "Why should the taxpayer fund their disgusting, depraved lifestyles? They should send them back where they came from and beyond."

A spokesman for the Labour party failed to say anything we could use out of context, despite several cleverly weighted questions.

What do YOU Think?

WE'VE whipped up our ignorant readers into a bigoted frenzy of hatred. Here's the kind of hand outs THEY'D like to see doled out to the money grabbing Dougans

"I think it's disgusting" said Dawn stehouse, bulldog faced moron mother of six.
"Their house is better than mine. People like that don't deserve to die, never mind live." she added.

"They should tattoo the words FILTHY SCUM bdS on their foreheads and put their children in a mental home". said neighbour Edna Pigst who gets 20p an hour LESS than Mrs Dougan at her cleaning job, "They're just vermin that's what they are. Hanging's too good for 'em they should string them up and throw away the key."

"Cut off his cock and make him eat it" said disabled war veteran Joe Mengler, 82, of Leeds. Plucky Joe who lost all his teeth biting a U Boat gets by on a paltry 2p a week army pension and is regularly mugged in his home by glue sniffers. "And I'd pull the lever myself", he added.

"They should cook him in his own blood and make him eat himself, then stone him to death with his own knackers", said taxi driver Ron Bigot, who works a 60 hour week and comes home with less than £200 since all the foreigners came over here an took all the jobs and the women. "If he has any more babies the doctors should pop their heads with their fingers like baby rats", he added.

Ring our HATE LINE

Have YOUR neighbours got a nicer house than you?
Do they appear better off than you are?
Or perhaps their garden is a mess or their kids have got snotty noses.
Ring us today on 0171 922 7386 and tell us about your nightmare neighbours. Perhaps we can arrange for a lynching. Rind us today. There's dozens of jumped up little reporters fresh out of college and with no morals whatsoever waiting to take your call.

[Halb]

AJS- said:

Very very good.

[AJS-]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I think that one was the Daily Star, if my Google detectivery is up to speed.

[Ari]

blueg33 said:

We have a shortage of housing supply and current Housing benefit rents are not enough to cover the costs of building new ones

Housing shortage? Really? That's odd, there are thousands and thousands languishing unsold on Rightmove...

[blueg33]

Ari said:

Housing shortage? Really? That's odd, there are thousands and thousands languishing unsold on Rightmove...

Dammit, didn't realise that all the houses on the market are empty........

Unsold does not mean unoccupied!

Plus if there were enough houses don't you think the affordability ratio would be better? It costs circa £80k to build a 3 bed detached house, plus land at circa £40k a plot. You don't get many new detached 3 bed houses for £150k. If supply was better the land price would be even lower. (Basic economics)

Edited by blueg33 on Friday 1st June 20:11

[Halb]

There are plenty of unoccupied streets in Liverpool, almost apocalypse like.

[King Herald]

GavinPearson said:

King Herald said:

There is no law stating that you can't have more kids than you can comfortably support by your own means. Maybe there should be, but the government does hand out child benefit to EVERY parent in the country with a kid under 16. They must have a reason for subsidizing every family.

It's going back to a bygone era when the head of the household spent more money on beer than he gave to his wife for the kids, this way the kids always have money allocated for them....

Good point. When we moved to the UK ten years ago I applied for Child Benefit for our daughter. I made all the applications myself, filled in all the forms, waited months for it to be processed, then were told they always prefer to pay to the mother, rather than the father, so my wife then had to apply all over again herself.

And then they proceeded to send it to my account.....

[martin84]

blueg33 said:

I fear that settlements like that have no chance of getting out of the rut. Its too far to commute to anywhere unless you can afford a car, if you are unemployed how do you afford to move?

But, why should taxpayers pay to perpetuate that rut?

Because looking after the entire country - not just the City of London - is exactly what taxpayers money should be spent on. I dont want half of the country to be an empty desolate wasteland just because we've become too South-East-focused as an economy. Improving failing parts of the country is precisely what the Government should spend money on.

blueg33 said:

Mining towns grew in areas where the ONLY reason to live there was exploiting the resource, when that resource is gone people should move on.

Its not like the mini mining towns in America which have been deserted for 100 years are a comparible example. People only lived there on a temporary basis anyway. What we're talking about here is entire towns and cities. If you moved all the skyscrapers and the financial centre of London up to Humberside all the moneymen would follow, London and the South East isn't an economic hub due to natural resources or anything other than the fact we actively put it there.

Fittser said:

Why is unacceptable to rellocate people from areas without work to those with work?

Not got a job up North? Well take a vacancy in the S/E, stay in a dormitory. It's not as if there are huge distances, language or cultural barriers that need to be overcome.

Its unacceptable because you therefore do nothing to solve the problem, you further engineer a North/South divide and if anything make several problems worse. You might be able to 'take' a vacancy in your middle class world with a long CV, but most people dont have that luxury, they take what they're given. A company in the S/E does not offer its minimum wage job to someone in Hull. Obviously. And if they did, there'd then be someone in the S/E without a job as a result of that.

Munter said:

I should be able to walk into a job center, search the system, it says a relevant job exists in Barking. I apply, get an interview, and get the job. I should be packed off to accommodation relevant to working in barking. Better to pay a couple of train tickets for interviews and relocation, than have someone sat on benefits for years

Remarks like this prove how out of touch PH'ers are with reality sometimes. This idea of relocate to get a job might work in the middle class world where relocation is worth while and companies will look further afield for the talent they need, but it doesnt apply to working in JD Sports. When a company wants someone to fill an ordinary job on £7 an hour, they dont consider candidates from 100 miles away. That place in Barking will be able to find someone fit to be a shelfstacker in Barking. The first thing they'd say when reading your application is 'this person lives too far away' and they'd put it in the shredder.

Even if that person did get that job in Barking, there'd then be someone in Barking sat on benefits for years instead. You dont achieve a positive net result from that. The brutal fact is there's not enough jobs. For the vast majority of jobs theres somebody local who can do it, people from 100 miles away are about 800th in the pecking order for the job.

This PH attitude of abandon the North to a desolate wasteland largely mirrors the Conservative's attitude to the north of the country, hence why they never do particularly well up there. You're all too interested in looking after the South East and the rich centre of London, you're perfectly happy to abolish the rest of the country. London didn't become an economic powerhouse due to natural metamorphisis, man created it. Those skyscrapers didn't sprout out of the ground themselves.

Theres also practical things to consider. We cannot all live in the South East, for a start theres not enough jobs in the South East to employ the entire country. If northerners come down and take them then people in the South East are then unemployed, and due to the Government's benefit cap those people will then have to move up North, where there's no jobs, to sit on benefits for years, so the net result is the same as it was before. You dont solve anything. Inferstructure is another issue, only a few weeks ago PH'ers were banging about how the growth of population in the South East has contributed to water supply issues culminating in a hosepipe ban. We dont have the road inferstructure, railways, water supply, housing or jobs to cage everybody in the South East and abandon the rest of Britain. Hell the South East's inferstructure for all of those things is creaking under its current demand, it couldn't handle anymore.

The only solution is to improve the economy in the rest of the country. We've become too focused on the South East and Government has looked after the City of London far too much. We need economic growth in the Northern towns and cities to actually get people off benefits, not just move them down south and replace them with a southerner on benefits. Thats the only solution.

Closing the door on the north is not a solution. Its the rantings of an out of touch mad man.

[blueg33]

martin84 said:

blueg33 said:

I fear that settlements like that have no chance of getting out of the rut. Its too far to commute to anywhere unless you can afford a car, if you are unemployed how do you afford to move?

But, why should taxpayers pay to perpetuate that rut?

Because looking after the entire country - not just the City of London - is exactly what taxpayers money should be spent on. I dont want half of the country to be an empty desolate wasteland just because we've become too South-East-focused as an economy. Improving failing parts of the country is precisely what the Government should spend money on.

You are being an idealist, it patently hasn't worked, because you are trying force an econmic situation that is out of kilter with what would have happenned there. With no coal these places would not have been settled. As I said my company has spent millions in these locations and Europe much more and the benefit has been negligable.

The economy doesnt have to be south east focussed and that is not what I meant, there are plenty of places that can and do work up north, but the small settlements based around mining are not going to improve. I know south yorkshire well, I know the welsh valleys well and I see the same pattern in these places.

martin84 said:

blueg33 said:

Mining towns grew in areas where the ONLY reason to live there was exploiting the resource, when that resource is gone people should move on.

Its not like the mini mining towns in America which have been deserted for 100 years are a comparible example. People only lived there on a temporary basis anyway. What we're talking about here is entire towns and cities. If you moved all the skyscrapers and the financial centre of London up to Humberside all the moneymen would follow, London and the South East isn't an economic hub due to natural resources or anything other than the fact we actively put it there.

We are not taling entire cities, they work better than the small mining settlements, the example use of Goldthorpe isn't even a town its really a large village. Millions of £'s have been spent, but business does not locate there. Empty business parks prove it.

You comment about skyscrapers moving is correct but you ignore the reason, the reason is that the market and the demand remains. You have actually made my point for me if you think about it.

Social engineering is the wrong approach, why perpetuate something that's bound to fail?

[martin84]

blueg33 said:

You are being an idealist, it patently hasn't worked, because you are trying force an econmic situation that is out of kilter with what would have happenned there. With no coal these places would not have been settled. As I said my company has spent millions in these locations and Europe much more and the benefit has been negligable.

Refusing to close the door on parts of our country just because the powers that be totally ignored them after shutting their mines 30 years ago is not idealistic.

blugnu33 said:

We are not taling entire cities, they work better than the small mining settlements, the example use of Goldthorpe isn't even a town its really a large village. Millions of £'s have been spent, but business does not locate there. Empty business parks prove it.

Business parks either comprise of B2B reliant companies or retail. Retail is a dead sector, the high street is dead, the retail park is still alive but its minimum wage guff at best. When Tesco talk of 'creating jobs' they're creating 8 hour a week shelf stacking jobs. Thats not jobs. B2B reliant companies find themselves struggling in these areas because they're too far away from the things they need.

However this not prove that other things could not work very effectively instead.

blugnu33 said:

Social engineering is the wrong approach, why perpetuate something that's bound to fail?

But you do acknowledge people cannot apply for minimum wage jobs 200 miles away and we cannot all live in the South East? You also acknowledge if a Northerner took a job down South that just means someone else down south is then on benefits because theres not enough jobs? Do you also acknowledge the benefit cap would actually mean you replace a northerner on benefits with a southerner on benefits because it'll force people to these low-work cheap desolate areas?

I'm not talking about social engineering, natural market forces have done that job much more thoroughly than any Government. I'm also not just talking about dead former mining villages, the problem is more widespread than that, the North-South-divide is still very much with us.

My main objection in this thread is to the idea that someone in Hull can just get a job in Barking and the whole world will be fixed. There is not enough jobs and that place in Barking doesnt need somebody from Hull to do their basic job because theres a jobseeker just round the corner. Too many PH'ers live in (or claim to) a middle class world of home ownership, three cars, a good education and a professional career. It pays to relocate if you live that sort of life and companies will sometimes even pay to get you. However its a life alien to most people.

[martin84]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Which is 5 million less jobs available for us. If we start settling for Eastern European standards - doing a 15k job for 8k and living in a tent - this country will never get anywhere.

[RoadToNowhere]

iphonedyou said:

Just give the bloody benefits as vouchers. There's a stigma attached to foodstamps and the like, so few people will want to be on them, and those that are perfectly happy to be on them will at least be forced to 'spend' them on necessities.

This - can somebody explain to me why this wouldn't be workable? Genuine question.

[blueg33]

martin84 said:

blueg33 said:

You are being an idealist, it patently hasn't worked, because you are trying force an econmic situation that is out of kilter with what would have happenned there. With no coal these places would not have been settled. As I said my company has spent millions in these locations and Europe much more and the benefit has been negligable.

Refusing to close the door on parts of our country just because the powers that be totally ignored them after shutting their mines 30 years ago is not idealistic.

blugnu33 said:

We are not taling entire cities, they work better than the small mining settlements, the example use of Goldthorpe isn't even a town its really a large village. Millions of £'s have been spent, but business does not locate there. Empty business parks prove it.

Business parks either comprise of B2B reliant companies or retail. Retail is a dead sector, the high street is dead, the retail park is still alive but its minimum wage guff at best. When Tesco talk of 'creating jobs' they're creating 8 hour a week shelf stacking jobs. Thats not jobs. B2B reliant companies find themselves struggling in these areas because they're too far away from the things they need.

However this not prove that other things could not work very effectively instead.

blugnu33 said:

Social engineering is the wrong approach, why perpetuate something that's bound to fail?

But you do acknowledge people cannot apply for minimum wage jobs 200 miles away and we cannot all live in the South East? You also acknowledge if a Northerner took a job down South that just means someone else down south is then on benefits because theres not enough jobs? Do you also acknowledge the benefit cap would actually mean you replace a northerner on benefits with a southerner on benefits because it'll force people to these low-work cheap desolate areas?

I'm not talking about social engineering, natural market forces have done that job much more thoroughly than any Government. I'm also not just talking about dead former mining villages, the problem is more widespread than that, the North-South-divide is still very much with us.

My main objection in this thread is to the idea that someone in Hull can just get a job in Barking and the whole world will be fixed. There is not enough jobs and that place in Barking doesnt need somebody from Hull to do their basic job because theres a jobseeker just round the corner. Too many PH'ers live in (or claim to) a middle class world of home ownership, three cars, a good education and a professional career. It pays to relocate if you live that sort of life and companies will sometimes even pay to get you. However its a life alien to most people.

You have your quotes all wrong and you are attributing statements to me that I haven't made.

Despite all that, I would urge you to study the theories of Thomas Malthus and then apply them to modern economy and you will see where I am coming from.

I havement made statements about people from Hull working in the south east, but if I look at my office in the City of London the staffing are broadly as follows:

4 of us including me from the West Midlands
3 from the souh east
2 from the east
2 from scotland
1 from Yorkshire
i from Romania

If I look at our Yorkshire office

1 from Yorkshire
3 from the south east
3 from greater manchester

Looks like your broad assumptions that people can't move are wrong.