https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/iain-duncan-smith-iain-duncan-smith-to-live-on-53-a-week#

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21993453

politics of envy, sure, but id love to see millionaire IDS live on £53 quid a week

On this morning’s Today Programme David Bennett, a market trader, said that after his housing benefit had been cut, he lives on £53 per week.

What is he selling on the market then, dog poo? He may want to consider a career change.

I was thinking that, must be fairly crap at it too….

I’d rather see a few of STW live on £53/week first.

What is he selling on the market then, dog poo?

Why do say that – because the cost of living, including housing, is very cheap in the UK ?

Signed. At 95K-ish now.

Me. And I ‘shared’ it heavily, too. It doesn’t even have to be about politics – he said he would, so he should. Simples.

Don’t have a clue how to enforce it, sadly…

wow good stw response, personally have no idea what a market trader earns but cant imagine its very much!

fwiw my JSA- 70 quid a week doesnt go very far!

Market trader=cash=minimal/no tax, I’ve known a few and none of them were skint.

IDS is a tit.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the “Well get a **** better job then” response. It’s almost refreshing. 🙂

I can’t see what it will achieve to be honest. Even now a department of civil servants is working out exactly how the money will be spent.

It’s not as if he’ll just hold his hands up and say ‘sorry it can’t be done’

Depressing because IDS probably spends more than £53 on wine with his lunch.

It’s not as if he’ll just hold his hands up and say ‘sorry it can’t be done’

You don’t think this government is capable of carrying out an abrupt U turn ?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/may/31/coalition-u-turns-full-list

Unpopular taxes have often been reversed, from the Poll Tax to the Pasty Tax.

“Politics of envy”? If anything, the exact opposite. I doubt most people support the petition because of their own politics of envy but because IDS’s politics is the politics of complete ignorance and non-empathy. I’m guessing most signatories are simply fed up with the government’s bullshit rhetoric of victimisation and its shamelessly brutal assault on vulnerable people, and simply want to kick bricks out of their stinking ivory tower and would dearly love to see one of the sanctimonious, pious little gobshites fall out and see what it’s like on the ground.

</rant>

It’s not politics of envy- he’s behind the benefit cuts and said on live tv he could live on that amount per week.
Its not like the petition will have any impact on the policy, but hopefully it’ll publicly humiliate him and help highlight how isolated he is from real poverty.
Does make me wonder what treats the condems will pull out the bag before the next election to try and get themselves re-elected. Not that they actually were in the first place tho!

Required reading: http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/08/24/65000-hate-crimes-against-disabled-people-and-rising-this-has-to-stop/

Not saying IDS is right, but I could easily live on that. 🙂

Ignoring the fact that sobriety would turn me insane, of course. 😆

What the petition asks is pretty unworkable once you factor in expenses and whatever it is MP’s get subsidised these days. (what help does he/doesn’the get for commuting in from greater london as opposed to having a second home near westminster?) I expect that £53 a week will go unexpectedly far for anyone that well connnected. Plus like cabinet ministers of all flavours, I bet he hasn’t paid for a meal in a restaurant for a wee while. 😉

Nevertheless I added my name to it.

I don’t know whether IDS doesn’t understand the impact of the cuts, or doesn’t care- he seems like less of a **** than many, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s ignorant rather than a bawbag. But either way it works- either get some grasp of what it’s like, or get hit with his own stick.

Edwina Currie’s just been on the Today programme and said that IDS is probably more likely to be able to live on £53 a week than most people given that he was unemployed for a long time after leaving the Army.

If that is true, and most other stuff is paid for as part of “benefits”, then it would be interesting to find out what would happen.

Did anyone actually set out rules? Is the £53 quid after housing, etc?

Edwina Currie’s just been on the Today programme and said that IDS is probably more likely to be able to live on £53 a week than most people given that he was unemployed for a long time after leaving the Army.

I’d still like to see him try…

He does like to help the unemployed back into work. Who can forget when he gave his wife a taxpayer-funded job as his secretary?

I just have 2 points to add to this thread:

1. Around 63% of the population are net recipients from the state I.e. take more in tax credits and benefits than they themselves pay in tax. Given that government spending is still not at a sustainable level, the only alternative to cuts is for many of the 63% to pay a lot more in tax. So of the many who have signed the petition – how willing are you to pay more tax to offset a cancellation of the benefit changes?

2. IDS probably knows his brief better than many government ministers past or present – he’s been studying poverty and its causes in detail for at least the last 15 years, quite possibly longer and up until now has been generally recognised for being extremely knowledgeable, compassionate and willing to focus on the real root cause rather than the direct causes – even peers from other parties and charities working with the poor have recognised this.

Having read a lot of the work he’s done in this area ( which most haven’t) it’s clear to me that the convenient and predictable characterisation of him as a toff does him a grave diss-service and runs the risk of a change in minister that would simply maintain the status quo in the benefits system so just delaying reform and continuing to perpetuate the unfairness currently built in to it.

According to wiki :

Military service

He was commissioned into the Scots Guards as a second lieutenant on 28 June 1975. He was assigned the service number 500263. He was promoted to lieutenant on 28 June 1977. He was moved to the Regular Army Reserve of Officers on 2 April 1981, signalling his retirement from the military.
His six-year service including spells in Northern Ireland and Rhodesia, where he served as aide-de-camp to Major-General Sir John Acland
Other work

Upon leaving the Scots Guards, Duncan Smith spent a period applying for jobs and claiming unemployment benefit, during which he joined the Conservative Party.
He took up employment at GEC-Marconi in 1981, selling armaments. He then moved to property firm Bellwinch, but was made redundant after six months. He then joined Jane’s Information Group, initially selling gun-related magazines, eventually rising to the operational board.

And he comes from a well off family background, so yeah…..i’d like to see the wnaker live off £53 a week.

And he comes from a well off family background,

Well that’s it, hang the mofo.

the mash

signed and shared

The point i was making was i bet he’s never been sent round to his grans house to get his tea coz his parents never had enough £ to feed him, i imagine he was brought up in a household where heat and food and the ability to pay for basic amenities was taken for granted.

Politics is a rich mans game whilst career politicians are bred at a young age, of course there is a few exceptions to this rule but once you get involved in modern party politics you soon realise that it is necessary to toe the party line as there is no place in modern politics to be outspoken or independent of thought.

I just have 2 points to add to this thread:
1. Around 63% of the population are net recipients from the state I.e. take more in tax credits and benefits than they themselves pay in tax

Care to quote a source on that? Not saying you’re wrong, but I find that hard to believe, and would like to see a source, ONS, etc

The great Mr P has this one covered:

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

Politics is a rich mans game whilst career politicians are bred at a young age, of course there is a few exceptions to this rule

And IDS seems to be one of them with a six year stint in the army, a spell on the dole, a couple of private sector jobs, redundancy etc etc. That was from your Wiki quote BTW.

thekingisdead:

I can’t find the article I read but the figures on this BBC page are broadly similar:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13633966

but the majority of the benefits bill 2/3rds? is pensioners and as they are big voters funnily enough pensions have been untouched

limiting benefits is fine but wages are falling in real terms, travel costs , fuel bills, food bills are all rising there a chronic housing shortage, not enough jobs and the government has failed to address any of these before attacking the worst off

PhilO has hit the nail on the head.. well done Mr Pratchett, the scribe of our time

IDS may have been on the dole.. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that he may have been a benefits cheat at that time

How much extra support did IDS get from the trust funds etc bestowed upon him by the long line of military Captains that he’s descended from..?

Unpopular taxes have often been reversed, from the Poll Tax to the Pasty Tax.

Is that a bad thing?

How much do you think military Captains get paid?

Enough to leave their kids a trust fund?

FWIW – I lived on £35 a week for three years as a student, allowing for inflation I reckon I could get by on £54 if I needed to – OK, we’re not talking luxury, but is that what benefits are supposed to be for (and to be fair, IDS isn’t under 25, so he or I would be on £71 per week – £307 per month after rent and council tax, I’d be willing to bet there’s a few people on here getting by on not much more than that!)

don’t think the ONS can add up ! 😕

didn’t realise the TV licence was variable dependent on your income percentile

Television licences 112 113 104 110 115 118 121 131 131 138 119

It seems loads of people are signing it and just wait till midday when the students and people on the dole wake up!

How much do you think military Captains get paid?

Enough to leave their kids a trust fund?

a bit more than £57 a week

I’d be willing to bet there’s a few people on here getting by on not much more than that!

guilty

The mash article though exaggerated (I hope three courses at the house of commons is a little bit more like what it costs elsewherein westminster, and I hope atos sometimes slum it in £100 a cover restaurants) still has a useful point to make about the viability of the ‘challenge’:

Sunday: Final day. Secretly borrow a fiver from old woman who lives downstairs. Use it to buy delicious three course lunch at House of Commons restaurant. That evening the lovely people from ATOS take me to Savoy Grill for dinner.

Should have just done this every day. Would have been a piece of piss.

Also how would you adjust for realistic housing payments, over-the-top keycard meter energy payments and so on. I am confident that given his family and support network, IDS’s life on the dole was absolutely nothing like it is for most people. I have a friend who is a PHd’s up university lecturer now, and yet claimed JSA for a few months between phd finishing and his first job: his standard of living was nothing like as poor as most claimants.

[edit]

and to be fair, IDS isn’t under 25, so he or I would be on £71 per week

Did he say he could live on benefits, or did he say he could live on £53 a week?

[double edit] ah, under Humprys duress, he answered the question of £53 a week with “If i had to I would.” Nicely ambiguous reply…

I reckon he genuinely believes he could get by on £53 a week, quite easily.

However, once he discovers that he actually has to buy meals, transport, moat cleaning services and duck houses out of his own pocket, as opposed to just bunging it on his taxpayer funded expense account, it might provoke a re-think

Did he say he could live on benefits, or did he say he could live on £53 a week?

Fair enough, however thats £230 per month after housing & council tax, and accounting for travel to work expenses etc, I’d be willing to bet there’s still a few on here getting by on not a lot more than that.

I’d be willing to bet there’s still a few on here getting by on not a lot more than that.

guilty