If you're British then there are going to be some questions asked if you're not between 18 - 24. (There are circumstances a 16 year old can claim.) like what have you been doing, been in prison, how have you supported yourself, etc? but there aren't many that haven't claimed since they were 18/19 having left FT education or been on a training course, like the new kick start scheme.
Are they from the EU/EEA?
Can they pass the HRT - - habitual residency test? (pre-settled status or settled status)
Do they have indefinite leave to remain (ilr) or right to abode?
Do they have biometric immigration card/doc?
A letter from the Home Office with a NINO & employment letter
Think there's probably a couple more circumstances for getting benefits if you're not a Brit (incl Manx, Chan. Islanders, F. I.er, St Helena, etc) or Irish but basically if you do come under the above then no benefits. Income Support is no more, it's UC.
Been in prison? You cost £30K a year on average to incarcerate and have been nothing but a drain on society and a cost up until capture - workfare. Get on the chain gang and earn your way back to housing etc
ILTR, EU Citizen, stand on your own 2 feet (if I move permanently to Spain that's what I have to do in effect as while I was, pre-Brexit, entitled to the Spanish equivalents of various benefits you effectively get 12 weeks of their version of UC then it stops. Did I mention they have a "socialist" Govt, so if they can see the benefit in not providing a life on benefits option, why can't we?) . Run out of money? Go home. It's what you have to do if you are a Brit living abroad.
I get where you're coming from, and there are small groups of people who have never worked, like the severely physically disabled (mental disability is a whole different thread as it's v. complicated and involves competency), and a large but still small group of lazy and feckless so I guess and concede in their cases it should be called welfare and not benefits.
The genuinely in need, no drama. BUT, have you any idea how easy it is to get signed off by your GP, or the depth of the fukc GPs could not give to signing off the obvious scroungers who "know their rights innit n dat" to get them out of the surgery so they can treat actual tax-paying patients? I bet if GPs had liquidated and ascertained damages taken out of their income for every scrounger they knowingly signed off, the problem would half overnight, but again, it's other people's money (not theirs) so who gives a shit?
But that's what the Benefit Cap is for to reduce benefits to incentivise (love the double speak) claimants to seek work. I don't like calling people who are on UC claimants but it's much better than the dehumanising "Benefit Units" that some very senior managers and their acolytes (like fast steamers) use. They're all human beings, all with a story of how they've ended up claiming and if they're legit I don't judge. I'm not a religious person but there for the grace of God go I.
In a way it should "dehumanise". There was a time in my parents generation that being on the dole wasn't something to be proud of. Now, the constant hammering of the left has made it socially acceptable. It should be like drink driving.
You also need to know that most people come off UC quite quickly but they'll owe the govt for the advance they'll have had because of the stupidity of paying UC a full calendar month to 6 weeks in arrears, it's not done to teach the ex weekly paid how to budget as is claimed but because it saves the govt money on paying out monthly instead of 2 weekly.
If you get a job you get paid a month in arrears (very few, except if you are working through agency (or like me caught in the IR35 trap) get paid weekly (granted I could submit my invoices monthly) so why should UC claimants be any different?
I don't like the Kevin's and Kevinas, Wayne and Waynettas any more that any one else on Arrse but the system we have at the moment is contracting and it's causing decent people harm, for instance a homeless Brit person finds a bedsit that will take UC and needs help with the deposit before they can move in, sorry, please fcek off. A refugee/immigrant, no probs (but that's not UC that's govt funded agencies and charidees).
Granted, we should be discouraging "economic migrants" as there are very few places in the world you should genuinely bee seeking refuge from where the UK is the first safe haven you can reach.
There's a certain demographic I have to deal with who I have come to loathe so I'm a hypocrite too as I'm prejudging anyone of that ilk automatically. I'm moving back to general service soon and I'll be glad to do so. But as I have said before the biggest defrauding toerags aren't the bog standard 1157 issue working class bloke, they're landlords - - mainly if a certain demographic but not confined to it by any means - - and the self employed who don't seem to have cottoned on that everything that HMRC know about them we do, in real time too.
Slumlolrds have always been with us. That doesn't mean everyone who owns investment property is a crook. In fact, owning an investment property now is hardly worth it seeing as all of the tax benefits of investment have been snatched away.
True dit. A few years ago I did a piece of work for a large housing assoc sorting out their commercial property strategy. I was sat on a desk in the office where they dealt with rent queries and arrears. I overheard a conversation where a "tenant" was being chased for 6 months unpaid rent. It turned out (from eavesdropping on this very long conversation) that the tenant, of Pakistani origin, had suddenly found himself in receipt of his housing benefit that would usually be paid directly to the Assoc. Rather than pay his rent he used the money to fukc off to Pakistan, taking his family with him for 3 months. DWP got wind and stopped his payments. Now owing 6 months rent his argument was that it wasn't his problem, it was the Government's because they had given him this money and he had decided to spend it "going home" so the Govt should just pay his rent because that's what they had always done. I doubt very much he was stupid enough to believe that HMG had decided in their benevolence to give him a bonus and were continuing to pay his housing costs as well as the new found cash injection from his housing benefit so it was obvious he was taking the pi55, more so when he offered tp pay his arrears back at £5 a month.
The benefits system and the NHS are 2 of the most monumental wastes of public money imaginable.
Oh, have we talked about fraud, health tourism, and theft in the NHS and how little it actually does to recover any of it?
