As someone who had to stop working 5 years ago to be a carer, I can assure people it is way more beneficial to work than not work.
WORKERS are regrouping and are going to be getting back to having the most stuff, firms are already fighting to find workers and can’t hold off on pay-rises for long, the ones that don’t will shrink away and get replaced. Benefits have a bad future because the country is transitioning away from being as rich as it once was, possibly due to dwindling fossil fuel reserves which we pretty much wasted/
He kicked off because the caller was implying people on benefits are “idle/lazy” when in reality alot of benefits are either people in work, long term sick & pensions. The sad reality is some people are better working part time & claiming UC for a top up thanks to the shit rate of pay some employers off. Instead of attacking those who need to rely on benefits to get by, attack the shitty companies using the govt to subsidise their shit pay.
It’s pretty sad that there are still people out there who believe that ‘living off benefits’ is a lifestyle and that we are too generous as a country. If people are refusing to work overtime because they’ll lose their benefits, doesn’t that imply that you’re not paying your staff anywhere near enough?
As a carer of an autistic and diabetic kid, working makes 0 sense as I have to be “on call” 24/7, he can not handle full time school so working for the 2 hours he is out of the house makes 0 sense. But because i am on benefits from it, i have been insulted plenty of times, a couple of times even by family (who live the other side of the country and seen us 3-4 times in 8 years), the attack on those on benefits is designed by certain people to deflect from themselves. The rich taking tax breaks, using tax loop holes and being given contracts by their mates in government do far more harm than any using the benefit system, that includes the tiny % who “abuse” it.
Ah the old reductionist chestnut. After years of stagnating wages and eroding of workers rights. The reactionaries and the right still believe in Harry Enfield sketches. Most people on benefits are working because it suits mega corporations. The Tories vehemently know this, and know their high wage high skills economy talk is bollocks as they nuked all that in the 80s.
I am tired of all this punching down and what about imaginary X and y or my uncles room mates cousins wife’s dog claimed 500k from the same DWP that killed 120,000 disabled people whilst Ian Duncan and his rats charged the tax payer 50 pounds for a Breakfast and 10k to drain a motte.
I am just tired of the utter stupidity and an outright attack on the young, disabled and poor because 2% of people on welfare choose to be dicks and usually get caught, and probably wouldn’t cheat if there was actual opportunities, and all the while we bitch and whine a100% of Tories and wealthy dodge their civic duties to save what is the equivalent of 10p to them.
Can we stop this bullshit, and focus on the issues?
3 adverts ? for a clickbait video… he doesn’t kick off but i thought he might have because all you goons upvoted this
It takes a special kind of brain to look at a system where millions live in poverty and rely on benefits to top up their wages and may in some cases end up slightly better off working less and claiming more and think “benefits are too high” and not “wages are too low”.
That website is awful. Does anyone have a link to the actual clip?
Yep, I work fulltime and still need UC to top up to a livable wage. The minimum wage should be raised to a point where benefits aren’t necessary. As previously stated it’s another way of government handing tax payer money to their mega wealthy chums and ensuring that the working class have to be grateful for their “gracious government providers”. People need to realise that other poor people aren’t the reason that most people are skint. It’s people on 100k plus bribes plus expenses plus subsidised gatherings and parties that are the problem, you know the same ones that make the rules and maintain the establishment. Nothing has really changed they just got a lot better at deflecting the peasants attention. Why do you think the Tory scum and their media mates have only recently started up on immigration stats again? To set poor people against poor people.
I work 4 days a week and get UC to help towards childcare costs otherwise I wouldn’t be able to work. I’ll go back to work 5 days a week when I finish maternity leave but for the past few years it hasn’t been feasible for me to work full time because of the cost of childcare.
I now have this stigma attached to me because I claim benefits because I chose to have children. I’ve worked since I was 15 and worked all throughout university etc.
My sister claims benefits because she has autism and mental health issues. She works very part time.
Loads of people work whilst on benefits due to loads of reasons. I wish we’d get rid of this stigma. You never know when you’ll need to claim help.
I didn’t envision myself ever claiming benefits when I was studying at university.
I’m ill with Long Covid. Previously worked constantly since I was 18 and I’m now 29. Had to quit last month because I can’t even focus on a simple Zoom call.
Now having to force myself back into work because I didn’t realise how shitty Universal Credit/ESA was, which will probably make me more sick anyway.
Man you should have seen the comments on FB and tiktok when people on UC were getting the uplift payments.
Seriously these payments were £350 quid and the working class folk were going absolutely nuts about it.
“Be nice if they helped workers for a change”,
“might as well go on the dole if this is what they get”,
“it doesn’t pay to work anymore”
I hope anyone who looks down at people on benefits ultimately ends up on benefits. And with the way the UK is going that could actually be likely!
This is years of propaganda. They will demonise anything that requires the government to spend money and create policies – those on benefits, refugees, public sector workers wanting fair pay.
It makes my blood boil. How are so many people blind to it. Where is the outrage for the Tory peers and friends who made gross profits from dodgy PPE and test and trace. Who avoid tax. That’s what we should be outraged by.
I’m so sick of this country being led by such heartless, selfish, lying criminals.
If I work an extra 20 hours a month I’m taxed as much on that as I am the other 116 hours. This is why “no one wants to work!!”. I’m on £10 an hour.
Do bookies take bets if he will be knighted anytime soon?
Hard to argue he hasn’t been a positive contribution to our society.
What a bullshit headline.
He didnt kick off. He put a nasty ignorant caller in his place.
But it’s inevitable. The media will turn on this guy. Can’t be having a champion of the poor getting too big for his boots. I wonder what they will use against him…maybe an antisemitism slur, maybe a mistaken tax submission, maybe a relationship with an ex….but come after him they will.
Jesus Christ do people actually use that site on mobile?!
It is always ~~funny~~ sad how people try to cut money transfers to the poorest people whenever shit hits the fan.
Even if its macroeconomicly insane to reduce the money in the pocket of poor countrymen/customers, while noone ever asked if companies and thier international shareholders should take 25% of the wealth out of the system which is working for it.
As somebody who spent nearly 18 months unemployed (several of which were on JSA) after finishing my History degree, I think that anybody who thinks a household can survive on the Universal Credit standard allowance of £265.31 to £525.72 a month is a moron.
There are only three ways in theory that you can benefit from Universal Credit in any meaningful way:
* Local housing allowance, which in many cases is a lot lower than what private landlords charge you. It’s also means tested and reduces the standard allowance you’d get from UC, unless you get the allowance for disability-related reasons.
* Disability – If you have a disability which significantly impacts your ability to work, or care for a disabled child, you can receive further payment. This system is a mixed bag though. I know two mothers with disabled children who have had mixed experiences with claiming disability benefits for their child. One is severely disabled and has received the full benefit with no dispute while the other scored zero points on a PIP assessment despite having autism, psychosis and other behavioural problems, prompting a fight to get the verdict appealed. Unfortunately British society is very unfriendly towards the disabled. There is a whole fucking scandal surrounding the DWP’s (and Atos’s) institutional attempts to pull benefits from the disabled who genuinely need it that would have ended careers if it occurred anywhere else in the EU…
* Having more kids, if you did this prior to the early-2010’s – At one point you could get decent sum added to your allowance per child in your family. This unsurprisingly created a strategy of breeding like rabbits to game the system. This loophole was plugged long ago by David Cameron’s government.
People instinctively know that they are being taken advantage of by someone, that someone is getting away with not doing much work and getting lots of money anyway. Those people are actually at the top of society. The reason they don’t focus their attention on the wealthiest who accumulate their wealth at the expense of the country is that they’ve all been taught from the cradle to admire and emulate rich people.
Wow that took far too long for me to wade through all the adverts on that site and disable adblock just to see a video which wasn’t even theirs to start with . Just someone filming their TV. Sigh
The employer claiming people won’t work overtime for fear of losing benefits…
Has he tried paying them enough to not fucking need benefits?
The worst thing in my opinion is zero hours contracts. You think that in theory you could do a few hours for one employer, a few for another, gig economy, flexible working, lean working last minute supply chain efficiency, two thumbs up.
What actually happens is most zero hour employers want you at their beck and call, and it you say “sorry, I’m working that hour for someone else, can’t be helped” you don’t get asked to work again. For deliveroo/Uber type stuff you get more complex conflicts, but typically the big money is made in the same small window and the in-theory earnings never actually work out for you. Maybe you can find a handful of guys doing this successfully to point at, but that’s because it’s competitive for the best gigs: the existence of every success story stands on ten+ hidden failures struggling to get by; *if* everyone was earning what the top earners were, the whole system would have to collapse.
Most all of these have hefty incurred costs for transport and you have to have 24h mobile internet access that no back-of-an-envelope “see you can buy beans on toast for 18p” know-it-all ever factors in either.
So you end up not being able to earn enough to cover the cost of living and you end up on UC to top-up to a bare minimum. Thing is, the employer needs you to be fed, clothed, washed, and housed in order for you to fulfil the required function, but they don’t want to pay for it. Without UC, their business model wouldn’t work. The biggest benefit claimants are in fact zero hour employers.
They should try living on benefits if they think its so easy.
>“I’m an employer and staff won’t work overtime because they lose benefits. That’s a real issue.”
There’s plenty of people at all ends of the tax spectrum who don’t understand it. That doesn’t mean the people refusing overtime are right in their assertion that they will lose out more by not working. Just like there’s plenty of people who think that when you hit £50k a year your entire salary is then taxed at 40% rather than just the bit over £50k.
Oh here we go again, the “benefits freeloader” trope doing the rounds again.
Really winds me up how the damned media/Tory rhetoric still sits in people’s minds. “scroungers”, “dolies”, etc. What about the companies who skim off the top, getting away with paying little to no tax?? Not to mention the literal millions of people who work full time and still have to claim Universal Credit to pay their rent and put food on the table. Honestly Martin Lewis has a lot of my respect but all he does is tell it how it is, trying to undo the damage done.
These are probably the same people who are against immigration because “we need to help Brits at home first”.
In the UK, class is just as big an issue as race is in America.
People will make demons of the unemployed or professions they don’t like because the ignorant like to view their own work as some sort of martyrdom or that their work is actually “work” while the teachers, IT workers, train workers etc all just do “nothing but talk”.
Members of my family (unfortunately ) are like this and never stfu about how “the real workers of the UK need to rise up and say enough is enough, people on the dole get more than me & the government needs to tell the unemployed to either get on the streets or take whatever job is given to them”. Just nut cases.
When I went unemployed shortly after uni, one of my neighbours even said it was OK because I was “one of the good, honest ones”. Replace unemployed with any race or religion and that’s out of order, I think it’s out of order for the unemployed too obviously.
The folk who complain about the unemployed religiously are typically either sad folk with nothing better to than complain or people who are stuck in the mud complaining about those in the mud with them rather than the folk who boot is firmly planted on keeping them in the mud.
Why are some brits keeping to this bizzare opinion that people on benefits are well off and scroungers, I’m certainly not well off on £330 a month and I’d rather not be but it is what it is.
it really is, though.
my wages, rent, and medical bills combined don’t give me the total amount that benefits would cover for me.
housing benefit,
Council tax reduction,
universal credit
and
heavily subsidised medical treatment, along with free prescriptions on the NHS,
together, mean that I would be financially better off claiming those benefits at present.
The difference is, I can do overtime, and we get 12500 tax free before paying tax on income, so there are ways and means to get more money whilst employed, but let’s make it very clear..
if inflation continues to rise, taxes continue to go up, and wages continue to stall, benefits WILL be a better option, and I drive forklifts FFS! it’s not unskilled labour, so God alone knows how minimum wage earners are coping?!
God help us, cos these tory fkers won’t.
can we stop posting links to the awful ladbible/unilad websites? they’re fucking awful
Honestly, what is the argument for not raising minimum wage so that a 35 hour week ensures you’re earning enough to not need to claim UC?
It just makes no sense to me that we all pay tax, and lots of it goes to essentially make sure companies don’t have to pay a living wage to their workers, because the workers can just pay more tax to top them up.
35 comments
As someone who had to stop working 5 years ago to be a carer, I can assure people it is way more beneficial to work than not work.
WORKERS are regrouping and are going to be getting back to having the most stuff, firms are already fighting to find workers and can’t hold off on pay-rises for long, the ones that don’t will shrink away and get replaced. Benefits have a bad future because the country is transitioning away from being as rich as it once was, possibly due to dwindling fossil fuel reserves which we pretty much wasted/
He kicked off because the caller was implying people on benefits are “idle/lazy” when in reality alot of benefits are either people in work, long term sick & pensions. The sad reality is some people are better working part time & claiming UC for a top up thanks to the shit rate of pay some employers off. Instead of attacking those who need to rely on benefits to get by, attack the shitty companies using the govt to subsidise their shit pay.
It’s pretty sad that there are still people out there who believe that ‘living off benefits’ is a lifestyle and that we are too generous as a country. If people are refusing to work overtime because they’ll lose their benefits, doesn’t that imply that you’re not paying your staff anywhere near enough?
As a carer of an autistic and diabetic kid, working makes 0 sense as I have to be “on call” 24/7, he can not handle full time school so working for the 2 hours he is out of the house makes 0 sense. But because i am on benefits from it, i have been insulted plenty of times, a couple of times even by family (who live the other side of the country and seen us 3-4 times in 8 years), the attack on those on benefits is designed by certain people to deflect from themselves. The rich taking tax breaks, using tax loop holes and being given contracts by their mates in government do far more harm than any using the benefit system, that includes the tiny % who “abuse” it.
Ah the old reductionist chestnut. After years of stagnating wages and eroding of workers rights. The reactionaries and the right still believe in Harry Enfield sketches. Most people on benefits are working because it suits mega corporations. The Tories vehemently know this, and know their high wage high skills economy talk is bollocks as they nuked all that in the 80s.
I am tired of all this punching down and what about imaginary X and y or my uncles room mates cousins wife’s dog claimed 500k from the same DWP that killed 120,000 disabled people whilst Ian Duncan and his rats charged the tax payer 50 pounds for a Breakfast and 10k to drain a motte.
I am just tired of the utter stupidity and an outright attack on the young, disabled and poor because 2% of people on welfare choose to be dicks and usually get caught, and probably wouldn’t cheat if there was actual opportunities, and all the while we bitch and whine a100% of Tories and wealthy dodge their civic duties to save what is the equivalent of 10p to them.
Can we stop this bullshit, and focus on the issues?
3 adverts ? for a clickbait video… he doesn’t kick off but i thought he might have because all you goons upvoted this
It takes a special kind of brain to look at a system where millions live in poverty and rely on benefits to top up their wages and may in some cases end up slightly better off working less and claiming more and think “benefits are too high” and not “wages are too low”.
That website is awful. Does anyone have a link to the actual clip?
Yep, I work fulltime and still need UC to top up to a livable wage. The minimum wage should be raised to a point where benefits aren’t necessary. As previously stated it’s another way of government handing tax payer money to their mega wealthy chums and ensuring that the working class have to be grateful for their “gracious government providers”. People need to realise that other poor people aren’t the reason that most people are skint. It’s people on 100k plus bribes plus expenses plus subsidised gatherings and parties that are the problem, you know the same ones that make the rules and maintain the establishment. Nothing has really changed they just got a lot better at deflecting the peasants attention. Why do you think the Tory scum and their media mates have only recently started up on immigration stats again? To set poor people against poor people.
I work 4 days a week and get UC to help towards childcare costs otherwise I wouldn’t be able to work. I’ll go back to work 5 days a week when I finish maternity leave but for the past few years it hasn’t been feasible for me to work full time because of the cost of childcare.
I now have this stigma attached to me because I claim benefits because I chose to have children. I’ve worked since I was 15 and worked all throughout university etc.
My sister claims benefits because she has autism and mental health issues. She works very part time.
Loads of people work whilst on benefits due to loads of reasons. I wish we’d get rid of this stigma. You never know when you’ll need to claim help.
I didn’t envision myself ever claiming benefits when I was studying at university.
I’m ill with Long Covid. Previously worked constantly since I was 18 and I’m now 29. Had to quit last month because I can’t even focus on a simple Zoom call.
Now having to force myself back into work because I didn’t realise how shitty Universal Credit/ESA was, which will probably make me more sick anyway.
Man you should have seen the comments on FB and tiktok when people on UC were getting the uplift payments.
Seriously these payments were £350 quid and the working class folk were going absolutely nuts about it.
“Be nice if they helped workers for a change”,
“might as well go on the dole if this is what they get”,
“it doesn’t pay to work anymore”
I hope anyone who looks down at people on benefits ultimately ends up on benefits. And with the way the UK is going that could actually be likely!
This is years of propaganda. They will demonise anything that requires the government to spend money and create policies – those on benefits, refugees, public sector workers wanting fair pay.
It makes my blood boil. How are so many people blind to it. Where is the outrage for the Tory peers and friends who made gross profits from dodgy PPE and test and trace. Who avoid tax. That’s what we should be outraged by.
I’m so sick of this country being led by such heartless, selfish, lying criminals.
If I work an extra 20 hours a month I’m taxed as much on that as I am the other 116 hours. This is why “no one wants to work!!”. I’m on £10 an hour.
Do bookies take bets if he will be knighted anytime soon?
Hard to argue he hasn’t been a positive contribution to our society.
What a bullshit headline.
He didnt kick off. He put a nasty ignorant caller in his place.
But it’s inevitable. The media will turn on this guy. Can’t be having a champion of the poor getting too big for his boots. I wonder what they will use against him…maybe an antisemitism slur, maybe a mistaken tax submission, maybe a relationship with an ex….but come after him they will.
Jesus Christ do people actually use that site on mobile?!
It is always ~~funny~~ sad how people try to cut money transfers to the poorest people whenever shit hits the fan.
Even if its macroeconomicly insane to reduce the money in the pocket of poor countrymen/customers, while noone ever asked if companies and thier international shareholders should take 25% of the wealth out of the system which is working for it.
As somebody who spent nearly 18 months unemployed (several of which were on JSA) after finishing my History degree, I think that anybody who thinks a household can survive on the Universal Credit standard allowance of £265.31 to £525.72 a month is a moron.
There are only three ways in theory that you can benefit from Universal Credit in any meaningful way:
* Local housing allowance, which in many cases is a lot lower than what private landlords charge you. It’s also means tested and reduces the standard allowance you’d get from UC, unless you get the allowance for disability-related reasons.
* Disability – If you have a disability which significantly impacts your ability to work, or care for a disabled child, you can receive further payment. This system is a mixed bag though. I know two mothers with disabled children who have had mixed experiences with claiming disability benefits for their child. One is severely disabled and has received the full benefit with no dispute while the other scored zero points on a PIP assessment despite having autism, psychosis and other behavioural problems, prompting a fight to get the verdict appealed. Unfortunately British society is very unfriendly towards the disabled. There is a whole fucking scandal surrounding the DWP’s (and Atos’s) institutional attempts to pull benefits from the disabled who genuinely need it that would have ended careers if it occurred anywhere else in the EU…
* Having more kids, if you did this prior to the early-2010’s – At one point you could get decent sum added to your allowance per child in your family. This unsurprisingly created a strategy of breeding like rabbits to game the system. This loophole was plugged long ago by David Cameron’s government.
People instinctively know that they are being taken advantage of by someone, that someone is getting away with not doing much work and getting lots of money anyway. Those people are actually at the top of society. The reason they don’t focus their attention on the wealthiest who accumulate their wealth at the expense of the country is that they’ve all been taught from the cradle to admire and emulate rich people.
Wow that took far too long for me to wade through all the adverts on that site and disable adblock just to see a video which wasn’t even theirs to start with . Just someone filming their TV. Sigh
The employer claiming people won’t work overtime for fear of losing benefits…
Has he tried paying them enough to not fucking need benefits?
Video mirror
https://www.tiktok.com/@johnmclain81/video/7169290371049082118?is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7169290371049082118
Or non-tiktok
https://streamable.com/vr7q3o
The worst thing in my opinion is zero hours contracts. You think that in theory you could do a few hours for one employer, a few for another, gig economy, flexible working, lean working last minute supply chain efficiency, two thumbs up.
What actually happens is most zero hour employers want you at their beck and call, and it you say “sorry, I’m working that hour for someone else, can’t be helped” you don’t get asked to work again. For deliveroo/Uber type stuff you get more complex conflicts, but typically the big money is made in the same small window and the in-theory earnings never actually work out for you. Maybe you can find a handful of guys doing this successfully to point at, but that’s because it’s competitive for the best gigs: the existence of every success story stands on ten+ hidden failures struggling to get by; *if* everyone was earning what the top earners were, the whole system would have to collapse.
Most all of these have hefty incurred costs for transport and you have to have 24h mobile internet access that no back-of-an-envelope “see you can buy beans on toast for 18p” know-it-all ever factors in either.
So you end up not being able to earn enough to cover the cost of living and you end up on UC to top-up to a bare minimum. Thing is, the employer needs you to be fed, clothed, washed, and housed in order for you to fulfil the required function, but they don’t want to pay for it. Without UC, their business model wouldn’t work. The biggest benefit claimants are in fact zero hour employers.
They should try living on benefits if they think its so easy.
>“I’m an employer and staff won’t work overtime because they lose benefits. That’s a real issue.”
There’s plenty of people at all ends of the tax spectrum who don’t understand it. That doesn’t mean the people refusing overtime are right in their assertion that they will lose out more by not working. Just like there’s plenty of people who think that when you hit £50k a year your entire salary is then taxed at 40% rather than just the bit over £50k.
Oh here we go again, the “benefits freeloader” trope doing the rounds again.
Really winds me up how the damned media/Tory rhetoric still sits in people’s minds. “scroungers”, “dolies”, etc. What about the companies who skim off the top, getting away with paying little to no tax?? Not to mention the literal millions of people who work full time and still have to claim Universal Credit to pay their rent and put food on the table. Honestly Martin Lewis has a lot of my respect but all he does is tell it how it is, trying to undo the damage done.
These are probably the same people who are against immigration because “we need to help Brits at home first”.
In the UK, class is just as big an issue as race is in America.
People will make demons of the unemployed or professions they don’t like because the ignorant like to view their own work as some sort of martyrdom or that their work is actually “work” while the teachers, IT workers, train workers etc all just do “nothing but talk”.
Members of my family (unfortunately ) are like this and never stfu about how “the real workers of the UK need to rise up and say enough is enough, people on the dole get more than me & the government needs to tell the unemployed to either get on the streets or take whatever job is given to them”. Just nut cases.
When I went unemployed shortly after uni, one of my neighbours even said it was OK because I was “one of the good, honest ones”. Replace unemployed with any race or religion and that’s out of order, I think it’s out of order for the unemployed too obviously.
The folk who complain about the unemployed religiously are typically either sad folk with nothing better to than complain or people who are stuck in the mud complaining about those in the mud with them rather than the folk who boot is firmly planted on keeping them in the mud.
Why are some brits keeping to this bizzare opinion that people on benefits are well off and scroungers, I’m certainly not well off on £330 a month and I’d rather not be but it is what it is.
it really is, though.
my wages, rent, and medical bills combined don’t give me the total amount that benefits would cover for me.
housing benefit,
Council tax reduction,
universal credit
and
heavily subsidised medical treatment, along with free prescriptions on the NHS,
together, mean that I would be financially better off claiming those benefits at present.
The difference is, I can do overtime, and we get 12500 tax free before paying tax on income, so there are ways and means to get more money whilst employed, but let’s make it very clear..
if inflation continues to rise, taxes continue to go up, and wages continue to stall, benefits WILL be a better option, and I drive forklifts FFS! it’s not unskilled labour, so God alone knows how minimum wage earners are coping?!
God help us, cos these tory fkers won’t.
can we stop posting links to the awful ladbible/unilad websites? they’re fucking awful
Honestly, what is the argument for not raising minimum wage so that a 35 hour week ensures you’re earning enough to not need to claim UC?
It just makes no sense to me that we all pay tax, and lots of it goes to essentially make sure companies don’t have to pay a living wage to their workers, because the workers can just pay more tax to top them up.