Ids Petition Nears A Quarter Of A Million Signatures

[Gromit]

IDS has dismissed it as 'a complete stunt'. But 250,000 have signed it in 48 hours.

He has rather shot himself in the foot with the comment he could live on £53 a week.

Do you think he will take up the challenge? Maybe not for a year but maybe a fortnight/month. It will be embarrassing and damaging if he shirks out of it.

[emmie]

Bob Crow is most definitely not a tory voter, as to Dobson a more bumptious person you wouldn't wish to meet.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/4869602/Bob-Crow-council-house-row.html

[Noth43]

A week every week UXd, you pay your mortgage, run your car, feed your family on that.

[emmie]

a Labour man through and through, they are all at it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2003995/Former-minister-Frank-Dobson-afford-private-rent-66k.html

[bibblebub]

Matthew Parris was the first MP to try for just a week back in 1984 and ran out of money before the week was up http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/shortcuts/2013/apr/02/iain-duncan-smith-mp-living-on-benefits

[emmie]

if you had no one to take care of but yourself, and all the other bills were taken care of then perhaps, but there are so many things that crop up that take your money, things that are unseen until they fall on you.

[vakayu]

Well said factor,totally agree with you,Michael Portillo did it on tv,supposedly to prove it could be done easily (or not),surviving is no problem for a short while as hopefully nothing wears out,breaks down or needs replacing,so it is merely feeding yourself and having power,no worries about bills coming in.

[jim360]

It's not "many people" at all who are defrauding the benefits system. A small but sadly visible minority, is far far closer to the truth. So seriously we need to stop this divisive and silly attack on those who receive benefits. For most it's an important safety net still. Let's not ruin it for them just because of the small number of people who cheat the system.

[Noth43]

Thank you Jim360

[emmie]

jim, if this was possible i could kiss you, you have said what i have been saying all along, i hate being labelled as a scrounger, after a lifetime of work you need some help. all the while i have come against a few who have never ever worked, one is a distant relative, and she was the laziest c o w imaginable, and got everything that you could from the state.

[Old_Geezer]

It's all a game isn't it.

I could live off nothing for short periods as long as my friends allowed me to sponge off them for a while.

No I don't think it'd be either damaging nor embarrassing to not take up the challenge as it isn't seriously expected to be taken up. It's out there to embarrass regardless, and folk know this to be so.

The real discussion ought to be about the details, whether it will cause unfair hardship to those is need as claimed, or not. It is a stunt but a common enough and easily predicted one.

[emmie]

it's going to cause me difficulties, i do know that.

[Boto]

I have no problem with anyone receiving benefits if they are in genuine difficulties but we all know that there are MANY benefit cheats/shirkers, people who refuse to look for work, pretend to be ill, etc. It is possible to be in work and still have little money, have to live very frugally. The cap for benefits is now £26000. I know not everyone receives anywhere near this amount but some do. How many in work would like to get this amount of money?
On another point why should any more publicity be given to the church's views on benefits than to anyone else's?

[jim360]

Boto - see my earlier post. There are not MANY. Not even close. Stop exaggerating.

[Boto]

I think there are many and my opinion is just as valid.

[jim360]

Not if it's wrong.

[emmie]

one thing i would say is that some give others a bad name, like the stupid woman the other day, who appeared on a breakfast tv show, and was featured in the paper, whinging she couldn't make ends meet on 70k of benefits, now that does piss me off. If she really gets that, suggest she doesn't say anymore.

[Boto]

My opinion is just as valid as yours. You think I am wrong, I think you are. I am not saying that everyone is a shirker etc, or that anyone who has posted on here is but some are.

[Noth43]

Boto, your opinion is valid by virtue of the fact you exist and have expressed it.
Lest you have fact and figures it ends there.

[jim360]

Boto - in a somewhat more respectful answer, some stats for everyone. Government figures suggest that benefit fraud accounts for 0.7% of the Welfare budget (or about £1.2 billion). The website benefitfraud.org.uk claims that this is a serious underestimate, and guesses the true figure to be about £5.5 billion. In which case, even an organisation accusing the government of lying only estimates that a little over 3% of all benefits claims are fradulent. Or, put another way, nearly 97% of all benefit money is claimed honestly and decently. That's such a massive majority, that to claim that MANY people are benefits cheats is just a massive exaggeration, a gross distortion of the figures.

So again, no your opinion is not just as valid, since it is wrong.

[kylesmum]

I have signed it.

My niece, who has to do agency work, as permanent work is hard to come by, has to, on occasion sign on.She gets £50 odd a week and she does have utilities to pay from this.I defy anyone to live on £25 a week, its soul destroying, she is 'lucky' to have a family who help her.

So, if you take family 'help' (taxed, earned money) into the equation it might be feasible for a week or so but not for a month or so. She walks for miles to look for jobs, she jumps through hoops at the Job Centre, because she has to, they hold the aces, she often misses Jeremy Kyle which is a bind....

She is a worker not a shirker but I feel that too many people think it would be a stroll in the park being on the 'dole' it's not, it's humiliating and soul destroying.