Panorama: Don’t Cap My Benefits
April 9, 2014
I’ll be watching this edition of Panorama, 9pm tomorrow.
As the government’s benefits changes begin to bite, Panorama gains exclusive access over six months to Brent – one of London’s worst-hit boroughs – and follows the personal stories of some of the people most affected by the changes. As claimants struggle with the loss of hundreds of pounds of benefits and have to move to other parts of the UK where rents are cheaper, we follow people battling to stay in their homes and a local authority forced to ask to them to leave as their benefits are capped.
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Same Difference 
Thanks for highlighting this programme. I’ll be taking a keen interest in it too.
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Im watching it now and it sickens me to my stomach just how much all these immigrants have been getting in benefits and subsidies, its an outrage. No wonder the UK is in a complete mess supporting this staggeringly hopeless bunch of wasters. Where do they get all these children from, give me strength.
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Just watching and am in shock these Foreigners getting all our money, a disgrace. Thank goodness we have a Government that finally is ending this theft. They should be made to use contraception, 2 children max any additional be removed!
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Your argument is lopsided. Any person should only get children they can support period be they ethnic British or otherwise, there are far two many similar cases both British and otherwise. It is high time the benefit system was remodeled to the African way. You can only be fed and housed by the state (Guest of the state) when in prison. Not many people who understand this will relish such a benefit.
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We have all heard about immigrants with huge families living in well above average accommodation/luxury claiming huge amounts in benefits, but this lot absolutely take the biscuit. I don’t have a racist bone in my body but this lot are shocking me to my roots, how has this been allowed to carry on for so long. Disgraceful.
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To the blonde woman who belives scrubbing toilets for a living is below her and feels its not setting a good example for her children has riled me, I clean for a living a support my family so we can hav enice things in life and pay our rent!! Get real no job should be beneath you!! You need to get a grip!! My children know their mum works hard for a living and they will gtow up with a work ethic!!!
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My hubby is working 14 hours a day, I’m self employed working my butt of and we sleep on a sofa, so the kids can have a bedroom. Then there is somebody turning their nose up on Luton 3 bedroom house? Can I have that house instead please! Because its so much better in Ethiopia!
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And the Government should prioritise hard working people instead of lazy people.
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The complete lack of any thanks for what the UK Taxpayer has already done for all these people is what struck me most, their attitude is one of greed and larceny. The UKIP vote will go through the roof based on the shocking images shown this evening. Is this what is meant by Multi Cultural Society as preached by Tony Blair and New Labour…..God Help Us All.
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Multi-cultural society is not bad. As long as people are contributing to the betterment of this country and not as a liability. And I agree UKIP have chance…
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I’m sorry but this programme made ma quite angry but probably not in the way the makers intended. I sometimes work 50 hours a week but cannot afford anywhere near the standard of accommodation that the people shown were living in or being offered. I was also watching the programme on a far inferior T.V to that in one of the claimant’s houses. There used to be a concept of not having families unless or until you could afford them (it was also bound up with the quaint concept of marriage.) I have every sympathy for Palestinians and their plight but clearly the refugee shown had acquired his massive family since he had come here. It annoys me too when women who are clearly not in a stable relationship continue to get pregnant and expect the rest of us to subsidise their irresponsibility.. I know everyone’s terrified of being judgmental but there is a short and concise answer to that in this case.
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One of the crucial points being missed here is the massive rents being charged by disreputable landlords in London. Government legislation is needed to stop overseas buyers buying up properties and blatantly exploiting Councils and tenants alike. This programme clearly demonstrated that London has a completely different economy to the rest of the country – it is clearly now a ‘world city’ with different values, culture and values – a great place to visit but not to live
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Why did the journalists not ask some probing questions?
E.G. What contribution are the fathers making? If this is so awful, why don’t you go back to Somalia? Why are you unwilling to live in an area of the UK with lots of white people? Why have you had so many children when contraception is widely and freely available? If immigration brings such huge benefits, why is Brent so “disadvantaged”?
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Absolutely no sympathy for these people. I only have one child BECAUSE I CANNOT AFFORD TO HAVE MORE. These people have as many children as they like and then have attitudes that the govt is not willing to support them. Sorry, I don’t even care if your children end up homeless. YOU should have thought about whether or not you can afford to have all these children BEFORE you had them. Birth control is free, or if you don’t believe in birth control, close your legs. The attitude of every single one of those people was SHOCKING. Entitled, greedy, self important leeches on society.
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Denise says: “Entitled, greedy, self important leeches on society.”. Sounds like the ‘Windsors’!
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Many of the people featured in this programme have created their own poverty by being feckless and breeding excessively with errant partners who are quite happy for the state to pay for their offspring. Enough is enough. We have to stop allocating homes for the sole reason of pregnancy. If people choose to have a family then they should plan and provide for it. Many hardworking indigenous people are struggling to get onto the property ladder to either buy or rent properties with their own money and they cannot get anything due to the places being occupied by the feckless. The government has to call a halt on giving out homes to such people. Over time, we may hope to see a decline in unplanned pregnancies which is what is required.
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I don’t think it was just a case of ‘immigrants’ getting lots of benefits. The Afro-Caribbean woman wasn’t an immigrant, she was born and bred in Britain, as was the white woman. What I found appalling about the lot of them, was the sense of entitlement. I moved out of London four years ago, because I couldn’t afford to buy a house in London and so live in Hertfordshire now. I have to spend £428 a month commuting into London – and I pay £962 a month in tax and national insurance. Why didn’t I go and hold a sit in at Barnet Council’s offices and demand subsidised housing? Or better, camp out at Westminster City Council’s offices and request a nice des res in SW1?
What irritated me about the programme was that no one asked pertinent questions like: Why did you have nine children, when you can’t afford them? Why do you keep having children, when you can’t seem to keep a man? Where were the fathers of Miss Arsey-Bitch’s and Miss Manipulative-Cow’s brats? Why weren’t they helping pay to keep over a roof over the children’s heads? How did Miss Arsey-Bitch afford a new hairdo (and weaves are expensive) in almost every shot?
The immigrant question is just a load of UKIP nonsense, if we didn’t have immigrants (particularly in London) inflation would rocket, because they are prepared to work for minimum and below wages and thus keep prices down. And to be honest, the vast majority of immigrants work hard and get on – particularly East Europeans. Odd too that Hindu and Sikh Indians and the Jew before them, came to Britain and some became the ‘haves’ of our society through hard work – and also not wanting society to bend over backwards to accommodate them. It is not about immigration, it is about the sense of entitlement.
I left school at 16 with no qualifications (in the early 1980s, in a northern mill town, when jobs were scarce) – yet I have never been out of work: I now have a doctorate and a nice middle-class income. I’ve never expected the state to keep me and I’ve had to work hard to get where I am. Yet my partner and I are looking at moving Northwards after living in the South East for 20 years because it is just getting so expensive… Perhaps I should ask the state to subsidise our lives…
There needs to be a real change of the benefits’ system – with the exception of those with disabilities (and I mean real disabilities, not malingerers’ charter ‘illnesses’ like fibromyalgia (I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2005, by the way – a look on line told me it was a joke)) – we should only pay cash benefits to people who have paid in at least five years National Insurance – everyone else should get food stamps and vouchers for charity shops for clothes. Hurray for the cap on benefits to the average household income.
We need a change of attitude in the UK – and the sooner the better!
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When I first came to this country I work everywhere, as cleaner, a factory worker, etc just to have an income to pay our rent, food and necessities. We don’t have any right to recourse to public fund but even if we could I wouldn’t ask the government to support us.
As a tax payer and now a citizen. It sickens me how some people take advantage of the system. And it’s more shameful that the government let them. It might be orthodox for an immigrant like me but I like what the Conservative is doing (Keep it up!). Tax payers money should only be given to those who deserves it not to those who are able to work but chose not to work because the government will support them. What’s more annoying is these people have the audacity to complain as if they have they should because in my opinion they SHOULDN’T.
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