Benefits Street

Watched it for the first time last night. I ended up shouting at the TV …I have strong socialist credentials but some people bring out the inner fascist in me, I'm ashamed to say.

I agree that you could only avoid paying tax in France or England by acting illegally (of course you could be under the tax threshold, but you still have to declare). There is no a legal requirement to register for residency in France; I believe the carte de séjour went long ago for EU citizens. You do have to register with the tax authorities though and I believe the 180 day rule applies, so you pay tax in the country in which you are resident for more than 180 days. We were taxed in the UK until we had registered with the French tax authority so I don't know how existing tax payers would get away with it.
I have no doubt that there are people who live below the radar, but it isn't legal. You do hear stories of people who remain registered with their doctor in the UK and go back for medical treatment, but I am not sure why people would want to do that.

If you can Aka, watch last week's about the Romanians with 14 living in one house and being robbed by their gangmaster, having one mobile phone between them all to contact their families and not wanting to tell anyone back home how terrible the conditions are.
That will bring back your socialist credentials.
I watched it this week to find out about what had happened to them, but never saw any of them.
I admit the woman who had depression did not give a good account of herself this week, but last week and the first week, she was like the glue that kept them all together. That's what happens when you have over £100 per week taken away from a family.
If anyone interviewed people on my street by knocking on the door during the day, it would be thought that 90% of us are pensioners, and therefore scroungers on the state by some cohorts.

It's not the informers who bother me Jen less than 2% of the benefit bill goes to them. It's our own home-grown unemployable that get me going. These are the adult version of the kids I saw in secondary education whose dole sole (genuine slip, if Freudian) purpose was to disrupt the lesson, driving good teachers to drink and diminishing the learning opportunities of their classmates who wanted to learn.
If anyone knocked on my door they'd find this OAP 'scrounger' with three grandchildren under tha age of 5, about to go on the school run to get the 7-year old. And the playground will be populated with the over 60s all there for the same reason.

informers incomers

Aka - I also have increasing contact with my inner fascist. I didn't teach, but did work with children and still do some part time work with staff working with 'hard to reach' families.
I watched my first and so far, only, episode of Benefits Street last week. I'd avoided it for many reasons, but the publicity it's getting led me to think I'd watch 5 minutes. Needless to say, I was gripped.
The Rumanians were a joy to watch, I'm sure that as durhamjen says, your socialist feelings would emerge watching them.
The long term unemployed on the street just reminded me of being back at work. Third generation unemployed, no proper routines or boundaries for the children. Too much shouting, swearing and smoking around the children. Sense of hopelessness, combined with sense of entitlement. So depressing. I felt like Victor Meldrew, chunnering and grumbling to myself.

The lady referred to as 'white Dee' rang into Nick Ferrari's radio programme this week, when he was holding a question and answer session with Nick Clegg. She said they had been conned by Channel 4 and had been told that it was a programme about community spirit and that it had been edited to bits. She seemed in her element talking to Clegg, calling him Nick and inviting him for a cup of tea. She said he would find a lovely clean street, with nice decent people, clean children who all attended school. She said the amount of people in the street claiming benefits had been grossly exaggerated, at which point Ferrari interjected with 'it's actually 75%'. She said 'oh I don't know the figures'. She seemed to be enjoying her 15 minutes of fame. I am not judging, just found it interesting.

Apparently she's got her own agent now.

A friend came round yesterday, we were talking about her nephew, I had forgotten what a super scrounger he is!

Is now in his early thirties, hasn't had a job since he was 18, claims to have a bad back, but can sit on the floor playing play station or whatever, also goes fishing regularly.

Was called in for an assessment, but he's suddenly got agoraphobia

Now for the best bit, he and his partner have SEVEN children ! One of them has been assessed as special needs, so they get an extra £400 per month for that one alone. (Until Mr P started his job this week, we had £71.70 per week, and no other benefits, i.e free prescriptions etc)

It does make me think that if you have x number of children when you make your first claim, then perhaps there shouldn't be additional payments for subsequent ones, but perhaps I'm wrong in thinking that?

My DD, who has worked ever since she left school (apart from a year or so off when she had her daughter) is always telling me about people she knows who have never worked and have better homes and cars than her and SIL. After she had her daughter, she got an evening job so that SIL could look after DGD in the evenings while she worked and he worked in the daytime. When her daughter started school, she was asked to help a friend with a catering business. The friend agreed that she could just work term time so she was able to look after her child herself in the holidays. In her spare time she took a course to train as a teaching assistant (although she could barely afford the costs). She is now working full time in a school and has never had to have anyone else look after her child. No one helped her, she did it all herself. She has asthma, suffers with severe migraines and could well have sat back and claimed benefits but she didn't.

Have you noticed that they may be living on benefits but can afford to smoke and drink alcohol ?
Makes me angry to see people that could work not even try, I had an aunt that was crippled by polio, was a widow at 42 and worked hard to support her family.

I know someone who is tetraplegic, crippled from the neck, down due to a diving accident aged 17. He holds down a full time job.

Sorry, comma in wrong place.

Look at the lives of some of the children we have a snapshot of whose parents took part in the programme.
Would you expect that child to think that drinking, swearing, smoking etc. was normal?
Would you expect that child to think that (what we might consider) chaos was normal?
Would you expect that child to think that eating ready meals/junk food was normal?
Would you expect that child to think that robbing Peter to pay Paul was normal?
Would you expect the child to fail in the current educational system?
Would you expect the child to see 'casual criminality' as normal? (e.g.shoplifting, receipt of stolen goods, benefit fraud, drug use/dealing, driving without insurance etc.)
If you answered yes to these questions then why on earth would we expect these children to grow up to parent their own children any differently? And whose 'fault' is that? The child's? (Who then goes on to perpetuate the cycle.)
We are all socialised into a culture that we regard as 'normal'; some of us escape because we are lucky enough to have educational chances and a questioning mind, or because someone takes the trouble to mentor rather than condemn, or because we just get lucky.
And if you've never been in that situation perhaps you should thank God (or think yourself lucky) for the accident of birth that placed you elsewhere and maybe contribute to interrupting that cycle. www.xlm.org.uk/
www.csv.org.uk/volunteering/mentoring-befriending.

Well said GrannyActivist!

My father was a chain smoking, violent alcoholic who worked sporadically but still expected a cooked meal on the table every night. He used to beat my mother in front of us children, our lives were terrible, we were badly neglected and some of us beaten/abused. There were six of us kids at home. With the exception of one who didn't survive it all, each and every one of us has grown up to have a work ethic - we have all worked from the day we left school until we retired (some are still working not having retired yet). We have never become alcoholics, beaten each other or our children, never claimed benefits. At no point during my upbringing did I think it was normal - just horrible and frightening. I couldn't wait to get away and have done my best to avoid that sort of life for my own child and so have my brothers and sisters.

Well said KatyK.

Your story echoes mine, KatyK, but that isn't what's happening here. The key is that at no time did you think what happened was 'normal'. Here we have a whole culture for whom the lifestyle of the parents and neighbours is the norm and is what the children are socialised into.

Granny activist - Yes I agree. It is just a pity that some of them can't break the cycle. Maybe our strict Catholic school instilled something into us - I don't know really.

Maybe some of them will break the cycle, KatyK. You cannot know yet that they will not.
I noticed the family where the father did not work and did not want to go and find out about work. At no time did his partner say she would go and look for a job and he could stay at home and look after the children.
However, when he did get a job it was with no pay, 100% commission, going and asking people to sign up to charity payments. It was so obvious he would not make anything out of that job in that area, I felt sorry for him.

durhamjen I have worked with very many people in similar situations to those we've seen on Benefits Street (remembering that all we've seen are selectively edited snapshots) and some of them do break the cycle - most often when they believe that working at something will benefit their children (not necessarily paid employment, it might be taking classes in parenting or getting into further education) or if there is targeted intervention; either with the community, the parents, the schools or the children.
If we believe that 'it takes a village to raise a child', we should perhaps look at ways of befriending or mentoring people who need a leg up out of difficult circumstances. In my case the family of a schoolfriend took pity on me and included me in their Monday family nights. We went swimming with friend's dad after school and then I went home with them to play games and eat a hearty, healthy, home-cooked tea (with cake for afters). They bought their own house and left the area when I was only ten years old, but that picture of what a 'proper family' was has stayed with me throughout my life. And fifty years later I still remember Mr. and Mrs. Cronshaw with a deep sense of gratitude.

Jen - I have to be honest I didn't see this week's episode. DH finds it depressing. I felt very sorry for the Romanians in the previous episode. I too, grannyactivist, was taken pity on by a school friend in senior school. We never had holidays or days out. When I was 15 she asked her mother if I could go with them on a short holiday to Bournemouth. I thought I was in heaven. Bless them for that. Your description of a 'proper family' also rang a bell. I can remember going to another girl's house on a Saturday evening. Her parents were going out for the night (my parents never did). Her mother had had her hair done and was wearing a pretty dress. I can remember thinking 'I can't imagine living like this'.

I don't think anyone could have come from a poorer - financially - background than I did. Our tiny rented house was falling down around us - had already been condemned as 'unfit for human habitation', and I remember a time when my mum could find nothing in her purse but a little gold safety pin. But all I remember is the feeling of being loved, and of being happy.

Nothing really mattered so long as Mummy and Granny were there for me. Must have been hard for them though.

Kids eh!

Being loved is of course the most important thing. Never felt that in my childhood. Enough of the sob story now!

KatyK, you didn't tell a sob story imo, you told something of your own story, without any self pity. Whilst I agree with granny activist about the influences on the children we see on Benefits Street, I increasingly believe that we each have some responsibility for how we live our lives. My mum was determined we wouldn't grow up with instability, frightening rows between our parents and feeling abandoned. Her own mother had periods of depression, during which her behaviour was pretty dreadful. Mum was in a parental role from being about 5, to her 3 younger siblings. Luckily, her father worked hard, and had a calmer temperament than his wife. My father's father was handy with a 'clout', something my father was determined not to repeat with us. My parents lived up to their desire not to inflict the difficult stuff from their own childhoods on the next generation.
I found this week's episode particularly depressing. That little lad out on his bike in the dark, having earlier been shown talking to the two alcoholic/drug users. The 2 men were shown explaining to the lad how to inhale drugs. Alongside that, a clip back to his mum (white d) pondering whether he'd end up like the others on the street. The way she screamed and shouted at him when he came home without his bike was emotionally abusive.