A benefits sob story
As the Welfare Reform Bill returned to the Commons, the BBC decided to take up arms against the proposed benefit cap on behalf of one family (comprising two parents and six children) who would be affected if they were limited to £26,000/annum.
That family’s income is helpfully laid out in the graphic below:
Looking at their outgoings the first thing that struck me was the amount being spent (per week remember) on alcohol, tobacco and Sky TV. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against smoking, drinking and watching TV but I am not in favour of (involuntarily) paying for others to do so.
Assuming that the family visit the ubiquitous Tesco for their shopping, that the prices online match those in store and they are buying in bulk then we can estimate the alcohol and tobacco expenditure as such:
Alcohol: Between £18 and £24
Cigarettes: Between £60 and £70
Tobacco: £12+
You can probably do better if you shop around a bit but even at the lower end the estimate for alcohol and tobacco expenditure is £90+, rising to over £100 depending on personal preferences.
Add in £15 for Sky TV and that’s at least £105, which is well above the £82.40 the BBC reckons they would lose under the benefit cap.
The second thing that struck me about this sob story was the what the father does (or rather doesn’t) do for a living:
Raymond, a former educational software writer, has been jobless since 2001. His wife Katherine suffers from bipolar disorder with an anxiety disorder and is also unable to work.
Says Ray: “The market for my skills dried up ten years ago – there’s a total lack of work in my area of expertise.”
Seriously? Your skill-set has been obsolete for 10 years and you never even thought at retraining yourself into another area? Even with the dot com crash, it isn’t as if there has been a shortage of IT jobs (I assume that an ‘educational software writer’ has some programming skills) in the last decade.
And as if that wasn’t enough, my eyebrows almost shot through the ceiling when I realised that dear old unemployed Raymond and his disabled wife, already having six children between them from previous marriages, also have a 5 year old son as a result of their union.
No cutting your coat according to your cloth for these two. Oh no, the poor bloody taxpayer all the way it seems…
The father reckons that, as a result of the cap, I see eight people here having to choose between eating or heating
.
I reckon he needs to pull the other leg, the one with bells on it…
XX His wife Katherine suffers from bipolar disorder with an anxiety disorder XX
Doesn’t everyone who achieves their 15 minutes of BBC fame?
Except for actual “news” items, do they ever feature any one who is NOT ill, conected to someone ill, or does the BBC cause illness in the first place?
(Makes me throw up….so…)
In many parts of the world, the people can’t eat and they don’t have clean water to drink or wash in. If he thinks the benefits cap would mean hard choices, then he doesn’t know how fortunate he is.
Indeed. The irony is (although he – and others – won’t recognise it) that he is already part of the top 1% of the world by income…
Good article MA. I note that neither the BBC nor Raymond even question their – frankly offensive – definitions of “poverty”. One of my friends also just pointed out that he can’t work out how they’re spending £91 on “school books, uniforms and trips, clothing, shows, white goods replacement” EVERY WEEK.
To quote Raymond regarding the £91/week (or £4,732/year):
It does seem somewhat excessive but there are too many variables in there to be able to rip it apart with any confidence.
The most amusing thing about the piece is that almost every comment under it (though I’ll admit I haven’t read them all) was universally hostile. 🙂
It still boggles my mind. Poverty would mean no school trips at all never mind school trips that are more than ‘just a trip to Alton Towers’ not to mention the fact that presents at birthdays and christmas would be low priorities if heating or eating really was an issue.
The whole thing smacks of the years of Labour’s “entitlement poverty” thinking…
And they’ve now closed comments!
They closed them on Wednesday evening and never bothered re-openning them.
If you go to CWJOB.co.uk and type in “software” within 30 miles of “Cardiff” you find 109 jobs.
true some of them are in the 50,000 a year range but a lot of them are in the 20,000 to 30,000 range.
No jobs my arse,he’s better off on the dole and he knows it.
Sorry that’s
http://CWjobs.co.uk
[…] A benefits sob story February 2, 2012By Andy JanesA benefits sob story […]
Ah, the Beeb do not include their TV tax in the weekly breakdown, but they do have a pop at Sky. I saw a packet of 20 fags on sale for £7.10 at the co-op. Now if that is a true reflection then 200 fags is £140 a week, or £7280 a year. All they will have to cut down on, rather than stop, is smoking so much to comply with the benefit cap. the BBC got it so badly wrong with this example. I don’t begrudge folk smoking or drinking, but I do begrudge having to pay for it. He could surely have retrained as a teacher if he has an IT background. Or written code for website development.
Whilst having a TV is a luxury, the TV tax – at less than £3 a week – is less than one fifth of what they are spending on Sky and wouldn’t make a dent in their ‘shortfall’ and I can live with it a damn sight more than I can their fag and booze bill!
Not forgetting that this parasite’s income is more than most skilled workers get, his income is greater than that of a plumber, who has done an apprenticeship and gets his hands dirty. This is a bloody joke.
It took me 12 years post-uni to make £26k post-tax. It’ll be a few more pay rises before I take home as much as he currently is for doing sweet FA.
Which of us is the idiot I wonder?