Thoughts on the U K benefits system

Just been pondering about this story,  my first reaction was too bloody right don't pay them a penny.  However on reflection they are entitled as anyone else to use it how they wish and get some luxuries surely, and it was just a windfall.  They are entitled to blow it on what they want, they didn't have it before, and why should winnings pay for living??  How many of us would put it away and think I must keep it for a rainy day.... I bet not many of us if the truth is to be told.  Any thoughts?







Couple refused benefits after blowing lottery win

"It could have lasted a lot longer, I’ll admit that."

• By Emma Woollacott, Jan 8, 2016
  
  

A Guernsey couple is being refused benefits after running through a £50,000 lottery win in eight months.

Jamie and Abbie Hort won £50,000 in the Channel Islands Lottery in December 2014, but say they've spent the lot. They moved out of their bedsit and into a new flat, buying designer clothes, holidays and a 50-inch TV.

When all the money had gone, they couldn't afford their £890-per-month rent, and applied for income support and housing benefit. But this was refused, and they've now been evicted.

"When we first won the money, we were very excited and we helped sort our family out with some money, we went to Jersey shopping and sorted ourselves out with a flat," Mr Hort tells the Sun.

"We had no other income source so the money was going on things like food. Sometimes we were spending £70 a day on food. We were a bit silly with it, it could have lasted a lot longer, I'll admit that."
accused him of having half the money left hidden away after the couple was unable to prove what they'd bought.






Mrs Hort now has a job, but says she and her husband have been forced to sell many of their lottery win purchases, especially as the furniture they bought won't fit into their latest home.

"We are not scroungers. We just don't have any money and we think the government should be there to help us," she tells the Daily Mail.

Most people do spend a lottery win wisely and attempt to secure their future. However, the average winner buys five cars and goes on three holidays a year, and some just blow the lot.

In 2014, for example, it was revealed that Lee Ryan, who won £6.5 million in 1995, managed to spend the lot on cars, a helicopter and a £1 million mansion. By 2010 he was penniless and living on the streets.

And Callie Rogers, who became the UK's youngest lottery winner at the age of 16 in 2003, managed to run through £1.9 million in just ten years.

And in a survey carried out this week for financial website Money.co.uk, most people say they'd push the boat out a bit if they won.

"When asked the age old question 'what's the first thing you would do if you won the lottery?', almost half of the people we surveyed would travel the world and just one in five would quit their jobs," says editor in chief Hannah Maundrell.

"A further one in five would start their own business. Reassuringly just 1% claimed they would leave their partner, while more predictably 14% claim they would 'spend spend spend'."




http://money.aol.co.uk/2016/01/08/couple-refused-benefits-after-blowing-lottery-win/

Some slight variations here.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/lottery-couple-blew-50k-winnings-143221688.html

Here both of them are unemployed, they have not yet been evicted and they apparently have children - though the reference to money put aside for their children could mean their plans for a family in the future.

Yes I am sympathetic because I remember how daft I was at that age!

Lot of comments calling them scroungers etc.  Hmmm, I wonder how many of those if they didn't have much wouldn't go out and have a spend!  I am not talking about those earning nearly that much per week of course!  £50,000 is hardly a huge amount anyway, so like you Freedom I am sympathetic too.  Not just because they are young either, anyone has a right to enjoy life, no matter what age, if we all horded and saved and didn't spend money the country would go bust!!

Those of us of a certain age will remember the pools winner Viv Nicholson who vowed to spend, spend, spend in the early 1960s. She certainly kept her word on that but didn't achieve any lasting happiness.

£50,000 is a comparatively small amount when you think that some people have won millions; not enough to last a lifetime by any means.

All I can say is WTF!!!!!!  Angry doesn't cover it  


Benefits family turns down 5-bed home - because it doesn't have a dining room


A French family of ten have turned down a five-bedroom council house, claiming they should be offered something bigger.

Arnold Mballe Sube and his wife Jeanne, both 33, moved to the UK from France in 2012, so that he could study mental health nursing at the University of Bedfordshire.

The couple, whose eight children range in age from 16 down to just a few weeks old, were initially housed in a hotel, at a reported cost to the council of £21,000.

After four months, they were moved to a three-bedroom terraced house, with the £1,278 per month rent paid by Luton Borough Council. According to the Sun, the family has received £108,000 worth of help in the last 12 months - in the form of the hotel stay, housing and child benefit, child tax credits and the fees for Arnold's course, which are being paid by the NHS.

They've since been offered a five-bedroom home, but have turned it down on the grounds that it doesn't have enough storage space.

"There wasn't space for the things of ten people - it didn't even have a dining room," Arnold complains to Luton Today.

"The council is trying to make things hard for us, my wife is a full-time mother and I am a student. They're just making excuses, we need a five- or six-bedroom house with double rooms to comfortably fit our family in."

The council, though, says it's already done more than enough. "Despite difficulties, we managed to find Mr and Mrs Sube affordable housing that is large enough to house them and their eight children," says a spokesman.

"After a generous offer on our part, we have done our bit and if housing is offered and declined without, what we judge, good reason, then we will offer the property to another family."

With far less social housing than there used to be, councils are these days scrutinised for their decisions. In recent years, both Ipswich Council and Gloucester Council have been slated for the accommodation they offered to families of 12.

However, it's worth remembering that cases like this make the headlines precisely because they're so very rare. And, now that the Subes have rejected the five-bed property offered by the council, they'll be stuck where they are - unless they can sort something better out for themselves.



MSN News

Link to AOL Money story...

http://money.aol.co.uk/2016/09/08/benefits-family-turns-down-5-bed-home-because-it-doesnt-have/

I read this during the week when I was on holiday in Greece. I have just come home after witnessing real deprivation. There are people living on the streets of Athens who would thank their lucky stars to have a tenth of what these ungrateful so and sos have been given. I saw young mothers with babies who looked like a bath would be the ultimate luxury. I saw young kids playing accordians on the tube to earn a penny or two and heard from the residents of Aegina, what austerity means in real terms.
One shop owner told us that the migrants refused aid parcels because they were given by the Greek Red Cross, yet Greeks are being taxed to the hilt and having their pensions cut every month.
Yes it's an ill divided world as the rich Athenians catch a helicopter to their 5 star resorts and Russian oligarchs throw money around like it grows on trees, but those who need our help would never dream of complaining if they had what these people have been given.
Stop having children and stop thinking the world owes you a living.

Some people know all about their rights but nothing about their responsibilities.

Shocking. There'll be wanting an indoor swimming pool to go with that dining room table next.

P!ss take.

If this story is true then it is disgusting. They moved here of their own free will so that the son could better himself to study here at one of our universities. What is wrong with French Universities, don't they have them? So they come here, and expect this country to house a family of 10 and pay for them all, it really is truly beyond belief.

[snipped]

"The council is trying to make things hard for us, my wife is a full-time mother and I am a student. They're just making excuses, we need a five- or six-bedroom house with double rooms to comfortably fit our family in."



They really are taking the p!ss, you are right Andrew. How is this allowed to even happen

It's the husband who is the student.

Studying mental health nursing? This country is mental for allowing abuses like this to go on!

Freedom wrote:It's the husband who is the student.

Studying mental health nursing? This country is mental for allowing abuses like this to go on!

It has really annoyed and upset me. So many kids not having proper meals and living in poverty, so many older people suffering in the cold because they can't afford to keep warm during the winter, yet these hangers on want a huge house......... go out and bloody buy one then and have a nice fat mortgage like countless other struggling families!

To me this shows two things: Firstly there appears to be a difference in the level of expectation between here and the continent. In France they clearly expect to be treated with dignity and have a home that is large enough to comfortably accommodate the whole family. Here, poor people are demonised and made out to be scroungers who should be grateful for the crumbs that they get from the rich man's table. We live in one of the richest countries on the planet - why shouldn't everyone have an expectation of a reasonable standard of living?

Secondly, it demonstrates the inadequacy of the social housing stock in the UK, which has now passed crisis levels. Of course neither of these points are brought out in the article's successful attempt to make the family out to be the problem rather than the UK's Victorian social policies.

I'm quite disgusted with the lack of compassion shown in this thread and the readiness with which people are ready to join the witch hunt against people that are different from themselves

Good for you Andy, glad you are so compassionate.  I am a very compassionate person too, as I said, there are old people dying because no one cares and they cannot afford to heat their homes, that to me is a real need, not some family that comes over expecting the best housing and it paid for by the State, sorry if that is uncaring, but I will stick with my own opinion.  I would like to see you or anyone here move a huge family over to another country purely because you want to better yourself, and not for humanitarian reasons, and expect them to give you a huge house to house them for free!

To me it's their attitude that stinks. Coming over here and making these sort of demands. I'm not saying they shouldn't be re-housed. Of course the kids need to be in a safe and warm environment but to turn their nose up at a 5 bedroom place because it didn't have a dining room etc just stinks some more. £108,000 spent on them by the taxpayer in the last 12 months is a lot of money.

He might want to consider giving up his student life to go out and get a job to provide. But of course he won't because if did that he'll be far worse off financially than he/they are at the moment. So he'll carry on being a student for many years to come, have the easy life and sponge as much as he possibly can from the state. Which will never be enough as proved in the article.

But I guess that's the 'system' for you here and why there'll always be these sort of problems.

I find it difficult to sympathise with people who continue to have children when they can't afford to support them.

They have apparently been here for four years. How long will he be studying, for goodness sake? Courses seem to last for three years on a quick check and is it usual for the NHS to pay for them? Most students have a grant and end up with a millstone of debt around their necks.

I sincerely hope that this family won't be harassed and intimidated by racist thugs but they really have put themselves in the firing line for seeking publicity.

I am so upset about this.Portuguese couples have stopped having any children as they don't have the means to support them.This is with 2 wages which many use to look after their parents or grandparents. Children are abandoned or brought to the children's homes in each town that rely on charity, nearly all from ex pats. It breaks my heart.

Some photos of the new house here.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3888206/He-s-living-like-king-Fury-neglected-family-10-44-000-year-benefits-moved-425-000-four-bedroom-house.html

44k a year tax-free and a £425k house. Not bad for doing absolutely sod all.

I wonder if this will encourage some people out there to have more kids so they too can have their dream home.

Supposedly dad is a full-time student; there can't be much incentive for him to get a job as all the handouts would stop.

All I can say again is Grrrrrrr, there are pensioners out there who will die this winter of cold and no food!!!



From article.....

HANDOUTS FOR FAMILY

It is not clear exactly what benefits the family claim, but as EU citizens they would be entitled to up to £25,000 a year in handouts while receiving housing benefit.  
In their home they have flatscreen televisions, games consoles and a Sky HD box.

They have received hand-outs worth more than £103,000 in the last 12 months, including:

• £44,000 in housing and child benefits, child tax credits and NHS course payments worth £27,000
  

• £38,400 four-month hotel stay
  
• £21,000 in room service  
  

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3888206/He-s-living-like-king-Fury-neglected-family-10-44-000-year-benefits-moved-425-000-four-bedroom-house.html#ixzz4Og4Sktkw

I know it's The Mail and, perish the thought, it may not all be accurate but it says that Mr Sube started a 3 year mental health degree in 2012.

If that finished in 2015, what is he doing now?

It makes you even more disgusted when you read something like this:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/elderly-couple-each-others-side-9164416

An elderly couple who have been by each other's side for 70 years are being 'forced apart' by social services - as they 'don't meet the criteria' to live together.

Jessie and Ray Lorrison, of South Shields in South Tyneside, have spent nearly every day of their lives together since they first met in 1946 - but have now been told they must live separate lives.

Ray, 95, is living at Westoe Grange Care Home in the town, while his heartbroken wife Jessie, 88, is in hospital after being told she 'does not meet the criteria' to join her husband.

Their daughter Cheryl Bates, 60, is desperately trying to reunite them in the care home.

Today she slammed South Tyneside Social Services' treatment of her parents as "disgusting".

Mum-of-three Cheryl said: "It is heartbreaking - and so cruel!

"Why should they be apart after all this time? What gives social services the right to play God?

Hope wrote:I am so upset about this.Portuguese couples have stopped having any children as they don't have the means to support them.This is with 2 wages which many use to look after their parents or  grandparents. Children are abandoned or brought to the children's homes in each town that rely on charity, nearly all from ex pats. It breaks my heart.

Hope, have you been up near Beja lately? The development along the Western side and the upgrades to the IP2 are total overkill for the present population. I wonder if they are anticipating an influx....?

Freedom wrote:I know it's The Mail and, perish the thought, it may not all be accurate but it says that Mr Sube started a 3 year mental health degree in 2012.

If that finished in 2015, what is he doing now?  

Not sure but just read this in The Sun article:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2081271/fury-as-benefits-dad-of-eight-who-complained-house-was-too-small-handed-keys-to-plush-425000-4-bed-detached-pad-on-posh-street/

When asked about her new home, Mrs Sube claimed: “Arnold does not live here.” She refused to pass on contact details, demanding: “How did you get this address?”