[Closed] I see eight people here having to choose between eating or heating

24 cans of lager a week + 200 fags + pouch of tobacco + top Sky package = Raymond probably won't be around to worry about it much longer anyway.

Says Ray: "The market for my skills dried up 10 years ago - there's a total lack of work in my area of expertise."

Thats made my day that has 😀

'I'm just waiting for COBOL to come back into fashion' 10 years to retrain?

Jesus wept. My tax pays for his booze, fags, Sky package and pouch of tobacco! I cannot even afford top Sky package...

Calm down.. TJ and his cronies will be here in a moment to tell you the BBC are liars.

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24 cans of lager a week + 200 fags + pouch of tobacco + top Sky package

This is why those on benfits don't always get much sympathy - none of the above expenditures are 'essential'

e.g. school books, uniforms & trips,clothing, shows, white goods replacement

Says Ray: "The market for my skills dried up 10 years ago - there's a total lack of work in my area of expertise."

24 cans of lager, 200 cigarettes and a large pouch of tobacco

That's some fine trolling by the BBC, it's made me cross 🙂

Just found this bit too:
[i]"On the cigarettes, my wife tried to give up, but she missed one appointment on the course and they threw her off it"[/i]

So that was that, then. It's [i]their[/i] fault, obviously.

Note to self:
Must. Calm. Down.

Hmm... choosing between eating and heating?

Surley it's choosing between drinking/smoking/watching TV and heating?

I am surprised at their energy bill. All those people rammed into a tiny house I'm surprised it needs any heating at all!

It doesn't really mean choosing between eating and heating although it is a nice tag line to uses. It just means the same as it does to everyone else. You cut out the luxuries in your lifestyle till you can afford them again.

Seems like a perfect time to teach the kids the value of money and get them out doing paper rounds or working in a restaurent to pay for there phones.

4 beers a night and then a night out to the pub a week, i wish i could do that and still function at work!

BBC breakfast news had some reporter visiting a family somewhere in London bleating on about their benefit cuts. In the background was a big LCD tv, surround sound system, sky box and PS3.

My. Heart. Bleeds.

How much does 200 ciggies cost ? (no idea here, never touched one)

I am surprised at their energy bill. All those people rammed into a tiny house I'm surprised it needs any heating at all! [i]

Plus burning that amount of fags/baccy must cause some heat too!

Shopping at Tesco/Morrison's too, they aint cheap.

Cheap ones are £5 for 20.

an interesting hierarchy of needs there....

If you read Orwell's A Road to Wigan Pier there is a very interesting commentary on this....

How much does 200 ciggies cost

a pack of 20 is about £6???

So £60 a week on fags?

[i]How much does 200 ciggies cost ? (no idea here, never touched one)[/i] £70-£75 quid, £18-20 for case of lager, £8 for pouch of baccy.

So, about half of the "grocery shopping" is going on tobacco and booze.

Demonise the poor by picking a few profligates, then it's easy to get public support for persecuting them.

It's a sick country that can't look after those who need looking after.

It's a sick country that can't look after those who need looking after.

They're currently being looked after to the tune of £30K / year.

Demonise the poor by picking a few profligates

I'd bet there are much much more than a few people living like this.

Everybody's going to overlook that the wife has a serious illness then?

After 10 years of not working through one of the biggest booms (and busts, tbh) in the last century as what he wants to do he should be taking anything going as he's, effectively, unskilled labour now.

This focus on 'I'm an 'x' and that's what I'm going to stick with' is why people often

a) end up as long term unemployed

and

b) see the unemployed as doing little to help temselves back into work.

Does she need 200 cigarettes, 24 cans of lager and a big pouch of baccy as her treatment?
If not, it's pretty irrelevant.

So £357/month worse off.

£128 a month on mobile phones? How? PAYG costs next to nothing, and they're already paying for a home phone.

£60 a month on Sky? Freeview.

Cut down to 10 cigarettes a day each, drop the tobacco and that's £87 saved.

Cut out the "three or four pints" in the pub each week and that's another £80 saved. There we go, crisis averted and they can still afford to eat, sitting around all day smoking and drinking Asda value strong lager.

I'm all for looking after the needy. That doesn't include paying for them to get lung cancer though does it.

Fraser Hughes - Member

"an interesting hierarchy of needs there...."

If you read Orwell's A Road to Wigan Pier there is a very interesting commentary on this....

When you are unemployed, which is to say
when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to
eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is
always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have three pennorth
of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and
we'll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are
at the P.A.C. level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don't nourish you
to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than
brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery
that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the
English-man's opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a
temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread.

Teh whole text is available here. makes interesting reading

http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/5.html

I don't get it.

If money's that tight then you tell the kids their phone's going, you don't stop eating just so they can text their mates and don't get me started on the "they'd be mad" excuse. You sure as hell don't go out once a week (I don't even go out once a week!) and you cut back or stop smoking and drinking.

I wonder how much Taxpayer money is spent on Beer/Fags/Sky TV?

Going to stop typing now before I get too annoyed.

mebee's the new bairn was a bad move eh ? 😕

One of the issues is that these people also vote 🙂

At least with beer and fags a fair amount of their discretionary spend goes straight back to the treasury.

Anyone how much beer and fag tax they'd pay in a year?

Slightly skewed priorities, lots of room for belt tightening, but I'm not sure how much economising I'd be interested in doing after 10 years of no work, stuck somewhere in North Wales, not much chance of a job for the rest of my life. Pretty bleak really.

edit: The Orwell quote sums it up better than me.
Was thinking 'No future' now got God Save the Queen stuck in my head.

'I go out once a week, on a Friday night. I meet up with my mates in the pub and have three or four pints.'

Cost £20. Thought London prices were extortionate.

Interestingly, if the wife was single and on benefits, would her smoking be affordable?

The family receive a total of £30,284.80 a year in benefits

My piss poor public sector wage is £31,263.

Hmmm

Everybody's going to overlook that the wife has a serious illness then?

I'm sure she does. Most probably plays up to it to make sure she's kept signed off on the sick. There's plenty of people with bipolar and anxiety realated illnesses who still manage to work and hold down jobs.

It's people like the ones in the article that screw the system and cause problems for the genuinely needy. This couple are spending £100+ a week on luxuries that plenty of working families can't afford. We shouldn't be paying for it.

I regularly deal with patients at work who are life long benefits claimants. They feel that they're entitled to it and for some unknown reason, deserve the money. It's not out of the ordinary for these people to have the big screen tv along with Sky HD, PS3's, Xboxes and all the other things that the rest of us have to work hard and save for. It's disgusting.

The more I see of it, the more I thnk that food vouchers rather than cash should be given to benefit claimants.

Hold on a minute.... seven kids... SEVEN?!

Also was there ever a market for computer programmers in north wales? Would love to live up there but had to move down south for work.

mebee's the new bairn was a bad move eh ?

Seems to be a topic lots of people don't like to broach.
When the former Mrs Rogg and I were thinking about having a [b]second[/b] child, I was working full time, she was working part time, and we still had to think very carefully about whether we could actually afford a bigger family. Now I know we could have had loads more!

Four pints for £20, pricey in the outposts eh.

[i]My piss poor public sector wage is £31,263.[/i]

and you'll take home a lot less than that after tax and NI.

My piss poor public sector wage is £31,263.

Mine's a lot less, and I don't receive any benefits - but yet I'm not about to froth.

The fact is, I'd rather some people abuse the system, but we made sure those that really need it are cared for - than have a very strict system which means that some of the poorest/most vulnerable people don't get what they need.

grum - I think the balance seems to be shifting towards people seeing a life on benefits as some sort of 'human right' and all the time they can live more than a 'basic' lifestyle there's no incentive to do anything else. In my view, if you have a PS3/Xbox/Sky in your life you're living beyond basic.

yes, there are always people for whom regular paid employment will never be an option but there's really not that many.

I'd rather [s]some people abuse the system, but[/s] we made sure those that really need it are cared for

See? Simple, really.

stuck somewhere in North Wales

oi take that back 😀

There have got to be as many examples of truly deserving people on benefits as there are those that abuse it (probably more). Yes it needs to be reviewed and managed better but to publish propaganda to incite public outrage and to demand cuts is irresponsible ... not that I read the article, or claim benefits for that matter.

Is it not possible or reasonable to ask for a few hours graft in return for benefits?

There's an army of unemployed people in this country, the vast majority of whom do not spend every hour of every day actively seeking work. If each of them did a couple of hours volunteer work a week then surely we could do some good with that resource and make our little island a nicer place to live?

I'm not talking chain gangs or anything too extreme but look how much councils pay to pick up litter each year, that money reinvested in retraining welsh educational software programmers to get them back to work must be a good thing.

* sorry that should be wales based, I've no idea if the bloke is actually welsh

I'd rather some people abuse the system, but we made sure those that really need it are cared for
See? Simple, really.

Yes, simples. No-one's ever struggled with implementing that, have they 🙄