Hmmm ... so this is what awaits me

[Sukerkin]

I received this from an army friend of mine:


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OH BRITAIN, where did we go wrong?

We're "broke" and can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, Homeless etc.?

Are you aware of the following?


The British Government provides the following financial assistance: - ​

• BRITISH OLD AGED PENSIONER - (bearing in mind they worked hard and paid their Income Tax and National Insurance contributions to the British Government all their working lives.) Weekly allowance: £106.00
• IMMIGRANTS/REFUGEES LIVING IN BRITAIN - (No Income Tax or National Insurance contributions whatsoever) Weekly allowance: £250.00

• BRITISH OLD AGED PENSIONER - Weekly Spouse allowance: £25.00
• ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS/REFUGEES LIVING IN BRITAIN - Weekly Spouse allowance: £225.00

• BRITISH OLD AGED PENSIONER - Additional weekly hardship allowance £0.00
• ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS/REFUGEES LIVING IN BRITAIN - Additional weekly hardship allowance £100.00

A British old age pensioner is no less hard up than an illegal immigrant or refugee yet receives nothing!​

• BRITISH OLD AGED PENSIONER TOTAL YEARLY BENEFIT - £6,000
• ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS/REFUGEES LIVING IN BRITAIN TOTAL YEARLY BENEFIT - £29,900

Please read all and then forward to all your contacts so that we can lobby for a decent state pension.

After all, the average pensioner has paid taxes and contributed to the growth of this country for the last 40 to 60 years.
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I wish I could say categorically that this was nonsense ... but I can't .

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Suk, I distinctly recall you saying that a certain amount of 'do nothings' and 'undeserved' types are ok, and that society should just take care of them.
This is what happens when you have such a policy.
Hard working folks like yourself get screwed, and the slackers reap the rewards.

If the illegals weren't coddled so, they'd go elsewhere.
My own State basically rolled out the welcome mat for them.
We're pretty much broke, but our new governor still says "Illegal? Welcome!"

I hear there's a serviceable catapult in the Tower.
Point it at France and let it rip.
Your call on what you load it with. The illegals bleeding you dry, or the politicians who let it happen.



Oh for the Americans:

• BRITISH OLD AGED PENSIONER TOTAL YEARLY BENEFIT - $9,664 US
• ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS/REFUGEES LIVING IN BRITAIN TOTAL YEARLY BENEFIT - $48,156 US

A hard working Englishman who puts 40+ years into their system gets a piddly $9,664 a year back, while an illegal who hasn't put 5 minutes in can get over $48,000 a year in benefits. Doesn't sound right to me.

 

[Tez3]

Actually that's not accurate, immigrants and asylum seekers aren't entitled to anything, they may get some benefits under certain circumstances.
http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/practice/basics/facts

See what they may get here.
http://www1.arun.gov.uk/assets/Business_website_docs/MythBustingDec07.pdf

 

[Thesemindz]

Or here's a crazy thought. Quit stealing and redistributing money in the first place. Let people make it on their own, or through the legitimate charity of voluntary association.

Then it wouldn't matter if you were "legal" or "illegal." Because the government wouldn't be stealing from anyone or giving to anyone.


-Rob

 

[Tez3]

It's a big thing among certain groups to say that immigrants are taking British jobs and British tax payers money, many chose to not believe that immigrants and asylum seekers aren't living in luxury paid for by us.

The figures quoted for state old age pension are incorrect as is the statement that you don't get any other benefits, you do.
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Pensionsandretirementplanning/StatePension/DG_188551

 

[billc]

I'll wait for the numbers to be verified before I weigh in. Sukerkin, I will trust whatever you may find out as to how accurate the numbers are. that isn't to say that I don't trust Tez, buy I believe that you, Sukerkin, are an economist, so you can dig deeper into the numbers when you have the time and if you don't mind.

 

[Sukerkin]

Aye, I'll have a look later on, tho' the precise figures aren't really all that relevant.

The OP was just a quick 'pass on' post before bed as I thought that it might spark a bit of a discourse on the nature of support structures in a society and who they are legitimately for. As I said, I wished that off the cuff I could categorically gainsay it as hogwash but I can't so say without some research.

 

[Tez3]

I'll wait for the numbers to be verified before I weigh in. Sukerkin, I will trust whatever you may find out as to how accurate the numbers are. that isn't to say that I don't trust Tez, buy I believe that you, Sukerkin, are an economist, so you can dig deeper into the numbers when you have the time and if you don't mind.

The site that gives the amounts you get is a government site, not a charity or political one. If you look at the web address you will see it says 'gov.uk'. So thanks for that sly comment that you think I've slanted the amounts.

 

[billc]

Actually Tez, if I thought you slanted the amounts I would simply say so. I trust you Tez, and I trust what you found. I just thought that since Sukerkin is an economist he can weasel out data that regular folk may not be able to find. I trust him as well. As you like to point out, I am in America and am not familiar with all the silliness in the British government system. I have enough trouble dealing with the silliness here. Do you really think I would be subtle if I was going to criticize what you found? Also, if it is a government site, that automatically makes it a political site. A lot of people who work in government are just as agenda driven as anyone else.

 

[Sukerkin]

A brief dig on the Net brought to light a few tasty morsels:

[yt]KFyw7ew5xMc[/yt]

Law has been twisted to force payment of benefits to the wife and children of a migrant father who has moved back to Denmark {the whole thing smacks of a 'marriage of convenience' to me}.

Here's an article about how on earth can illegal immigrants gain access to government assistance:

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view...dal-of-150-000-illegal-immigrants-on-benefits

This is the problem of course - people who are in a country illegally are not going to be following the law like dutiful citizens


This is a government response to the very e-mail that my army friend forwarded on to me:

http://www.parliament.uk/briefingpapers/commons/lib/research/briefings/snsp-05621.pdf

Why the numbers don't 'add up' is because, not surprisingly, the progenitors of the mail more-or-less fabricated them.

 

[Sukerkin]

So, the e-mail is categorically wrong, according to the government. But does that mean that the problem is, therefore, non-existent?

I may be a Liberal but I'm not blind, deaf or stupid and I certainly don't like having my sense of fair-play being taken advantage of. By dint of having my eyes and ears open, I know that it is the case that an awful lot of our taxi drivers, chef's et al are not 'official' migrants and that an awful lot of them claim benefits whilst also illegally working.

What we don't know is the scale of the problem - by it's very nature it is shadowy and undocumented.

Even when it comes to legal (or nearly so) employment, it's the case that indiginous people are being squeezed out of the market-place by much cheaper 'imports'. My own company recently underwent a large recruiting drive for a new £10M contract we've won. We have so many new staff members that the car parks can't accomodate them all and we've been squeezed into a new 'call-centre' type arrangement of desks (which is fine for a call centre, rather useless for a working engineer). How many were actually British? Maybe 10%. Yes, we have a shortage of trained and qualified engineers in this country but are we really that short? It's a companies right to shorten it's wages bill as much as it can, of course, so if it can get a suitable employee for £25K rather than £35K then why shouldn't they?

Well for a start it's short-sighted and exacerbates the skill shortage. Regretably, these 'cheap' employees aren't actually qualified to do the job either and the rest of us subsidise their shortfall with our skills and experience. So, as the 'cheapness' is an illusion, why not take on a British candidate and we'll train them instead?

Anyhow, that's a different topic (tho' one I feel very strongly about) that's about the national suicide that is the globalisation of labour.

I'm off to water the garden and cool off :lol: {bad, bad, day at work}.

 

[billc]

See Tez, that is what I meant by asking Sukerkin to look into things. He fleshed it out rather nicely and hopefully, with time, he might be able to look deeper into it. For the Record Tez, I think you are a good person, at least from what I can tell from your posts here on the study. I also think you are an honest person and you care about other people, which are good things. I think you are misguided on some things and wrong on others, but that doesn't impact your basic goodness as a human being. If you were to run for political office in America, after becoming a citizen that is, I would vote against you because we disagree on things. Other than that I like reading your posts and getting your perspective on things.

 

[Tez3]

I wouldn't stand for any political position anywhere because politics is something I wouldn't touch with a barge pole. Bill you don't actually know which way I vote and who I vote for, it would probably surprise you as you have me pigeonholed as something else. I'm too old to be misguided I'm afraid, too experienced, too cynical, too old and too tired. American politics is very different from European politics, when Sukerkin says he's a Liberal that's nothing like your liberals at all, when we talk of national socialists here we mean the nationalistic, militaristic and fascist governments that have been and in some places still are, it's not that long ago that the Greeks got rid of their fascist military government. Socialists aren't national socialists, they aren't communists either, two separate groups though similiar. Politics is rarely about economics, it's about idealology.

Yes we have illegal immigrants who are accessing the benefits system but having chatted to my civilian colleagues I know that by far the largest group of people claiming benefits illegally or immorally are the British themselves. If you look at percentages of people claiming money you will find it's the Brits rather than the non Brits, it's just that the non Brits make the news, people get more irate about them than entire housing estates of home grown benefit cheats and layabouts who are claiming while refusing to work. It may or may not be true that immigrants are taking jobs but at least they are willing to work! You can look back to the Thatcher years for the root of this evil, the greed is good and where working hard was thought to be for idiots, money was made in the banks, the stock market etc not in getting your hands dirty.

I talk to the teenage lads in our club, we have several who have just left school, they don't want apprenticeships, they want jobs with 'loads of money'. there is an attitude among our young people they see programmes like 'Pop Idol' 'X Factor' where you get fame and fortune without hard work and they don't see why they should work. Recent graduates think they should be on high pay straight away.

If we spend too much time focusing on the 'immigrant problem' we miss what's really going on here.


I like facts to be facts, the amounts quoted in the email were incorrect therefor it makes everything doubtful. If I interview a suspect and he lies to me, it makes me wonder how much else is lies. You can't quote random numbers to make your point hence my posting the correct numbers. It's all about integrity. If the email had quoted the correct amounts I would have taken it seriously. I have seen similiar emails btw being sent out by the BNP and similiar groups, they are being passed on by ordinary people unaware of their provenance.

 

[Sukerkin]

people get more irate about them than entire housing estates of home grown benefit cheats and layabouts who are claiming while refusing to work.

Not me, my friend. You wouldn't like my solution to this problem ... it's a bit 'Final' and all too reminiscent of what the Fascists carried through in the 40's. The one decency I'd have is to use bullets to get the job done. Being a dirt poor 'oik' from an unskilled labour background and growing up on an estate that was considered the 70's equivalent of todays 'sinks', I have the unfortunate ardour of a 'born again convert' when it comes to things like this .

 

[Tez3]

Both where my son works and my son in law they recruit staff from agencies, these are mostly immigrants as very few Brits will apply for the jobs which are available as they are basic food production line work. My son who was dealing with the agency asked why they only had immigrants, the answer was simple they were the ones that applied. Among those doing the basic, minimum rate jobs are doctors, lawyers and professors all of whom work while re taking or waiting for their professional qualifications to be recognised. There's also a lot of Eastern Europeans who work and do fit the stereotype of being hard workers who do the meinal jobs without whinging, at least not publically!
We are near enough to Middlesborough where unemployment is widespread and will stay so as most aren't bothered about working. My old shift partner lives there and says there's people there who have never worked in their lives, it's also the home of the women who shop in pyjamas! It's also where the agencies recruit and the immigrants live who work at these companies.

 

[Sukerkin]

Suk, I distinctly recall you saying that a certain amount of 'do nothings' and 'undeserved' types are ok, and that society should just take care of them.
This is what happens when you have such a policy.
Hard working folks like yourself get screwed, and the slackers reap the rewards.

Your memory is not faulty, Bob; that is indeed something I believe. Part of the main reason for my feeling thus is that it is less damaging to a society to 'carry' a certain number of members than have those members either turn to crime or drop dead on the town hall steps, so to speak. It is indeed a question of simple mathematics where the point is at which such a 'liberal' policy is no longer viable.

 

[Tez3]

Your memory is not faulty, Bob; that is indeed something I believe. Part of the main reason for my feeling thus is that it is less damaging to a society to 'carry' a certain number of members than have those members either turn to crime or drop dead on the town hall steps, so to speak. It is indeed a question of simple mathematics where the point is at which such a 'liberal' policy is no longer viable.

And if you watch Shameless (the original Brit version) you'll know how 'amusing' these people are!