With six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a huge kitchen and the very latest in energy-saving eco-friendly design, it is a house that a great many of us would be very happy to buy and move into.
We’d probably be even happier – and perhaps a little humbled – if it was being specifically built for us and paid for by the taxpayer.
But not Heather Frost.
Far from simply being grateful for her good fortune, the jobless mother of 11 says that if she doesn’t like the house she’ll just tell the council to build her another one.
She is due to move into the property – valued at £400,000 – in July after ‘struggling’ to survive in two adjacent houses in Churchdown, Gloucestershire, which have been joined together by the council.
Her new home will slash water and energy bills with its modern design using natural, locally-sourced materials. Extra large windows will fill it with natural light.
But Miss Frost, 37, who is also a grandmother, said the move is still subject to her approving the two-storey accommodation with its 355sq ft kitchen and dining area.
Neighbours say Frost currently lives with 14 people: all her eleven children, two grandchildren and her partner Jake, who they claim is also unemployed.
I think this sums it up fairly nicely, and it was right at the top of the page too XD
Furious neighbour: 'It's a disgrace. She treats her womb like a clown car'
What of it dakka? Is this a massive abuse of the system? Or is she justified in her lifestyle and her benefits?
This quote sums it up nicely as well... This woman is about a decade older than me, and 3 decades younger than my parents, and can already "claim" a title they can't... wtf... Also I love that this is the third house her clown car has gotten her...
UK members, I feel very sorry for you, with your taxes going to pay for a *word that dakka probably doesn't censor, but looks an awful lot like twit* (literally). And I'm serious-I do feel really bad. People like her should have been sterilized about 7 kids ago, and she should have been on a limited supply of welfare. Seriously. I'm suggesting that somebody goes inside this woman and rips out her ovaries so she can't continue this gross abuse of the system. Pain killers are optional. In fact, it's highly suggested they're avoided altogether.
We really do fall prey to the super rich's bait and switch when we fixate on 'benefit mum scrounging' outrages whilst certain muthalovers sit in glass and steel castles, swimming in billions in our cash when they should be languishing in prisons.
As a hard working citizen, as a tax payer... You are right to be angry, your angry has just been diverted in the wrong direction.
People should be rioting in the bloody streets these sons of bitches are still sitting at the heads of their banks, or slipped away in platinum parachutes instead of standing trial for bringing the Western World into a crippling economic freefall.
The greatest smoke and mirrors the right wing has ever pulled on the working class was turning on the recreated underclass, allowing it to recreate a new fiscal aristocracy, above the law.
Oh she has a job, dumping out sprogs doubtless nets her considerably more income than my 50 hour a week joe-job. And I'm sure her female offspring will follow her into the family business.
Miss Frost first became pregnant at the age of 14, to a man of 23 who ended up in jail. She is now sterile after having cervical cancer in 2011.
According to official records her children are: Sophie, 21, Toby, 19, Megan, 18, Angel, 16, Jay, 14, Chloe, 13, Paige, 12, Emily, ten, Bethany, nine, and Ruby, seven and Tilly, two.
She is grandmother to Sophie’s son Ashley, two.
After years of complaining, the council arranged for the 1,850sq ft two-storey eco-home to be custom built for her as part of a housing development.
so it's being built as part of a housing development then ?
Deal: Tewkesbury Borough Council bosses have sold a plot of land in Northway Lane, Tewkesbury, for around £210,000. In return, the housing provider is building the six-bed super-house along with 12 other homes
The council told the housing association to build the home for Frost as part of the development and the decision to allocate it to her family drew omplaints from the TaxPayers' Alliance pressure group that it was a waste of money.
A spokeswoman for the housing association said the Frost family's new home could be divided into two again and there were no bespoke features beyond it being knocked together.
"It is bending the truth to say it is a mansion," she said. "We have simply adapted it to need. It is exactly the same specification as the rest of the development."
"This is an excellent example of the council working in partnership with registered providers, using public land to develop more affordable housing in line with government policy," said Derek Davies, lead member for built environment at Tewkesbury borough council.
"We were able to sell land owned by the borough council to Severn Vale for them to develop 13 affordable homes, including this unit to meet the particular needs of Ms Frost and her family. This is a human problem and we have to deal with it in a humane way."
so the council still owns the house(s) then and, given Govt. legislation, once her kids have up and left she'll have to move to another property..?
.. so.. annoying and irritating, but it's not forever.
Things like that, while being an extreme example, show that there are people who are quite content to abuse a system that is supposed to be a safety net to help those in need.
It is unfortunate that a system that is supposed to help those seeking employment or unable to work because of a physical or mental impairment is seen by certain people as preferable to working. The sad fact is that successive governments in the UK have done little to change this either. Just last year the UK government said that those on state benefits should not have their income from benefits capped at £40,000 - that is more than many people make per year in gainful employment. Add to this housing benefits, family tax credits etc. and it becomes easy for those who work to think that the situation is farcical.
Many families I know would love to have more children, but because of financial commitments (mortgage, car, bills etc.) they can't. I'm sure it must be galling for those in that position to see their tax money being used by the government to pay people who have as many children as they want with little or no consequence for how they can afford their upbringing.
I am not saying that everyone who is unemployed is lazy and feckless and sponging off the system. What I am saying though is that there are elements who abuse the system, and because of them they give those in genuine need a bad name.
(I will say though that anything that the Guardian & Mail say I take with a pinch of salt at they are the mirror image of each other and both are not shy about distorting or omitting facts that do not suit their agenda)
reds8n wrote: so the council still owns the house(s) then and, given Govt. legislation, once her kids have up and left she'll have to move to another property..?
.. so.. annoying and irritating, but it's not forever.
It may not be forever, but I believe that statistically those who grow up on government benefits within the UK generally are recipients of them later in life. So those 11 children may go from living with their mother in government housing to each having a government house when they are eligible to leave home.
It's not housing her and her family that's bad, guys. Let's distinguish between sheltering the poor on the one hand, which is good, and certain of the poor seeming to be rather ungrateful on the other hand.
With any social welfare system or program you will get people fiddling it or playing the system; it's just the nature of the beast. The important thing is to weed out the genuine from the not so genuine and ensure that no-one is denied the care that they are entitled to. Raging about the cost to the taxpayer is somewhat pointless given that it is a drop in the ocean compared to say, Starbucks tax bill avoidance.
3 of her kids are "adults" and could probably qualify for some level of government assistance, and taking her kids and kicking her out would still keep her on government support. Unless they intended to make her homeless...
I am not saying that everyone who is unemployed is lazy and feckless and sponging off the system. What I am saying though is that there are elements who abuse the system, and because of them they give those in genuine need a bad name.
(I will say though that anything that the Guardian & Mail say I take with a pinch of salt at they are the mirror image of each other and both are not shy about distorting or omitting facts that do not suit their agenda)
.
I have to agree.
The scrounging jobless
TV's for prisoners.
Graduates not working in poundland.
And - heaven forbid - immigrants stealing jobs.
And fat cat bankers getting huge amounts of cash for bankrupting the economy.,
Everyone but the target of the Mail, Guardian et al are living the life of riley.
MeanGreenStompa wrote:People should be rioting in the bloody streets these sons of bitches are still sitting at the heads of their banks, or slipped away in platinum parachutes instead of standing trial for bringing the Western World into a crippling economic freefall.
The greatest smoke and mirrors the right wing has ever pulled on the working class was turning on the recreated underclass, allowing it to recreate a new fiscal aristocracy, above the law.
I think if the executives were actually made to jump out of a plane with a platinum parachute there'd be a lot less complaining.
MeanGreenStompa wrote:People should be rioting in the bloody streets these sons of bitches are still sitting at the heads of their banks, or slipped away in platinum parachutes instead of standing trial for bringing the Western World into a crippling economic freefall.
The greatest smoke and mirrors the right wing has ever pulled on the working class was turning on the recreated underclass, allowing it to recreate a new fiscal aristocracy, above the law.
I think if the executives were actually made to jump out of a plane with a platinum parachute there'd be a lot less complaining.
Could we then salvage said platinum? Providing of course we scrub off the tattered bits of banker... Could be a hell of a windfall for someone.
blood reaper wrote: Such a waste of money on someone who doesn't deserve it.
Its not for her, its for the children. What always gets missed in these kinds of situations is that even though the mother is clearly playing the system or is ignorant and/or stupid there are 11 children here who need at least a semi decent upbringing. The mother is clearly not a role model given that she is now a grandmother but if they are all jammed into a house not big enough for them the situation will only be made worse.
There are basically 3 options here, none of them good. Either forced steralisation (not going to happen even if it is temporary), take the children into care (probably do more harm than good) or to try to educate the next generation so that this sort of situation doesn't arise in the future.
blood reaper wrote: Such a waste of money on someone who doesn't deserve it.
Its not for her, its for the children. What always gets missed in these kinds of situations is that even though the mother is clearly playing the system or is ignorant and/or stupid there are 11 children here who need at least a semi decent upbringing. The mother is clearly not a role model given that she is now a grandmother but if they are all jammed into a house not big enough for them the situation will only be made worse.
There are basically 3 options here, none of them good. Either forced steralisation (not going to happen even if it is temporary), take the children into care (probably do more harm than good) or to try to educate the next generation so that this sort of situation doesn't arise in the future.
3 of her children are of legal adult age, and could live on their own, it's curious as to why they aren't. Though they could all be Uni students that live at home, so the government would only have to take care of 8 of the children which is also still going to harm the kids. You did also miss the part that no one has to force her to be sterile, cervical cancer in 2011 took care of that. We're left with educating her kids on how this probably isn't the way to conduct one's self.
blood reaper wrote: Such a waste of money on someone who doesn't deserve it.
Its not for her, its for the children. What always gets missed in these kinds of situations is that even though the mother is clearly playing the system or is ignorant and/or stupid there are 11 children here who need at least a semi decent upbringing. The mother is clearly not a role model given that she is now a grandmother but if they are all jammed into a house not big enough for them the situation will only be made worse.
There are basically 3 options here, none of them good. Either forced steralisation (not going to happen even if it is temporary), take the children into care (probably do more harm than good) or to try to educate the next generation so that this sort of situation doesn't arise in the future.
When not discussing absolute gakheads (like her), absolutely. I am. Perhaps I should have added an addendum: it sucks that she has cancer. It does not, however, suck that she is sterile. Better? It's hard to accept that people bust their asses, work hard, make decent/good/great pay, and then when taxes are taken out, they go to people like this: people who are popping out children as often as possible to milk the monetary system, then demand a house, then demand a new one because the old one isn't good enough. If she worked, and at least attempted to contribute, that would be different. Here she is taking directly from you, Albatross, and anyone you know who works. Family? Yup, she's taking from them. Your friends? Them too. I feel bad for her children-they're victims in this. The state should take them and put them up for adoption-there's no way they have a rewarding life with bare minimum food, hardly any toys, and having a family that has no intention of improving. And you say I'm not charming.
3 of her children are of legal adult age, and could live on their own, it's curious as to why they aren't. Though they could all be Uni students that live at home, so the government would only have to take care of 8 of the children which is also still going to harm the kids. You did also miss the part that no one has to force her to be sterile, cervical cancer in 2011 took care of that. We're left with educating her kids on how this probably isn't the way to conduct one's self.
I didn't miss that actually. Stories like this crop up all the time in the tabloid press, this is just an extreme example but the fundamental problem of the children's well being is something that routinely gets ignored. Its also possible that the older children won't be living there/weren't counted when the size of the house was agreed.
The single biggest thing that would help with this is effective basic sex education, I work with a lot of people in their early 20s and their level of ignorance about contraception can be shocking, as are the risks that they apparently take.
But if the 3 oldest children aren't living there, then why mention them and their ages? It's quite obvious that they want to provide sensationalism to this story, because 11 kids and 1 grand kid is more of a story than 8 kids...
Oh england, your abilities to handle welfare leeches is laughably...oh wait nevermind we have the same problem if not worse due to sheer volume of leeches here in the states.
Except for the research to show this to be bs, of course. This is another example of taking an outlier and using it to perpetuate the Myth of the Wellfare Queen to play on some peoples misguided notions of welfare and rile them up. The great majority of people that use assistance do not abuse it, which isn't to say that we shouldn't always be vigilant of graft and abuse.
So, let me get this straight. I work my ass of cutting onion, carrying boxes of heavy produce, and sitting infront of a hot onion. only to get the money taken out for people who dont work who live more comfortable then me?
y'know, I have a cousin with 4 kids, and somehow she has more money then me, a nicer place, and better food, and she is on welfare.
And all because they do something my two dogs do everyday?
Mr. Burning wrote: The Mail and Guardians slanted reporting has an audience which likes to believe that they are being besieged by malcontents on all sides.
hotsauceman1 wrote: And all because they do something my two dogs do everyday?
Well because that and because they're opportunistic.
Why work when you can sit around and leech all day? Some people just don't see the merit in an honest days work.
Why should they see any merit in it? She gets to live in a house that many of us will never be able to afford, busting our asses all our life. There is no negative for her to continually be popping children out of her womb. As long as she does it, the state lets her live on easy street.
At the same time, this is reinforcing in those children that same lack of values that she has. Why bother working when you'll get rewarded more then those who do? There are times when a parents conduct should give the state no choice but to remove the children for their own good, and I feel this is one of them.
There has to be relatives that the children can live with, who aren't bags of wasted flesh. Give them the mansion, make the child popping machine live in a shack with her equally worthless "partner".
As for the community getting the house back when the children are grown up and gone? IF that happens, I'd be willing to bet a paycheck that the value of the place will be absolutely decimated and it will still pretty much be a total loss anyways.
djones520 wrote: There are times when a parents conduct should give the state no choice but to remove the children for their own good, and I feel this is one of them.
Agreed, if we're working towards what best for the kids, I think it's safe to say that someone besides their train wreck of a mother would be better for them. I don't know why after complaining for two years they didn't just take them from her anyways.
Yeah, that then with will spread exponentially. Govt assistance isnt a bad thing, Im on it right now for school, because i would be able to pay for school at all without it. Some people need it. But there is a bloody limit.
I agree, some government assistance is good. I'm on WIC myself. Given my daughters allergies, there is no way we could afford to feed her if we weren't.
There has to be a limit though. There has to be a point where you realize that the person is no longer standing on their two feet, and instead they've fully planted their ass on the back of the tax payer.
While I don't particularly feel happy about people like this playing the system, as has been mentioned it is not even a drop in the ocean compared to the companies avoiding taxes (and indeed taking money in hand outs) and the CEO's/managers/etc of these companies getting huge payments rather than jail time.
Just to put things in perspective, this £400,000 house is about the same size as my house in Japan. My house was very confortable for three of us, and we could easily have fitted in a fourth. It would have been effing cramped with 12.
It is not being given to the woman, and she will be moved out when her children start to leave home.
In the mean time, whatever we think of the mother, the children deserve a roof over their heads and it would be more expensive and socially harmfull to split them out among a number of care homes or foster parents.
Agreed, if we're working towards what best for the kids, I think it's safe to say that someone besides their train wreck of a mother would be better for them. I don't know why after complaining for two years they didn't just take them from her anyways.
Because taking children into care is, and always should be, a last resort. It is not something that should be done lightly. Reducing welfare levels or simply removing the children can't help but cause more social problems than it solves.
The numbers don't really add up here. If she has 11 children and is a grandmother where is the grandchild(ren)?
When not discussing absolute gakheads (like her), absolutely. I am.
Really?
You wrote:Seriously. I'm suggesting that somebody goes inside this woman and rips out her ovaries so she can't continue this gross abuse of the system. Pain killers are optional. In fact, it's highly suggested they're avoided altogether.
Somehow, I doubt it. I'm more inclined to believe that you're a sexless mouthbreather that only ever speaks to fast-food delivery men. Or your mother, with whom you live.
Perhaps I should have added an addendum: it sucks that she has cancer. It does not, however, suck that she is sterile. Better? It's hard to accept that people bust their asses, work hard, make decent/good/great pay, and then when taxes are taken out, they go to people like this: people who are popping out children as often as possible to milk the monetary system, then demand a house, then demand a new one because the old one isn't good enough. If she worked, and at least attempted to contribute, that would be different. Here she is taking directly from you, Albatross, and anyone you know who works. Family? Yup, she's taking from them. Your friends? Them too.
No gak, Sherlock. She takes fractions of a penny from me - the state provides her with food, accommodation and money. I know full well how our welfare state works, I was brought up within it. The question is, why do you give enough of a gak to make yourself look like a jackass over it with all your idiotic talk of ripping out a woman's ovaries? Do you have any idea what you sound like?
The state should take them and put them up for adoption-there's no way they have a rewarding life with bare minimum food, hardly any toys, and having a family that has no intention of improving.
And yet still, those kids probably have a better life, higher life expectancy, better healthcare, greater educational prospects and a better diet than those from a welfare dependent American family a third the size. That's what happens when you actually look after the poorest in society. Yes, sometimes people game the system, but I'd rather have the system we have over yours any day of the week. Seriously, if it's a choice between welfare loafers having ten kids on the government quid or kids eating ketchup soup under a bridge in the world's richest nation, I know which side I'm on.
Okay, I'll grant a large amount of the post, especially the removal of reproductive organs was a bit excessive. I overdid it, and it doesn't do me justice-you're correct that I came off as a jerk here. ITGS (internet tough guy syndrome) and all that: I'm nice IRL and occasionally act as a prick online, when I let my filter go. That said, I still feel her actions and her attitude are terrible, and she does not deserve what she has taken from you and your countrymen. Her kids deserve a good home, with loving parents that can provide for them.
If you'd like to PM me, and want to discuss a topic other than this one, I'd be more than happy to show I'm actually not a complete jackass.
Occasionally I do need a good reminder when I go too far. Thanks for reining me in.
Props to the "sexless mouthbreather"-it was an interesting title. (not sarcasm)
This is absurd. Some of those kids are probably going to have to share a room, maybe even, God between us and evil, share a Playstation. I also saw no mention of either live-in or on-call servants, so I guess the British government assumes the house is just going to clean itself? Get it together, guys.
I'm of the mind that this kind of thing will happen anywhere on the economic scale, one way or the other. Whether it be a welfare queen, ultra rich banker or whatever playing the system, and whatever turd lays in between the two, they are going to end up contributing to the collapse of everything one day.
The best thing a person can do is get out of debt and put in food storage along with anything else their family may need against the day the big reset button gets pushed.
Okay, I'll grant a large amount of the post, especially the removal of reproductive organs was a bit excessive. I overdid it, and it doesn't do me justice-you're correct that I came off as a jerk here. ITGS (internet tough guy syndrome) and all that: I'm nice IRL and occasionally act as a prick online, when I let my filter go.
Dude, it's me you're talking to! I will concede that there was an element of the old 'people in glass houses throwing stones' to what I posted. When I log on, my filter logs off!
That said, I still feel her actions and her attitude are terrible, and she does not deserve what she has taken from you and your countrymen. Her kids deserve a good home, with loving parents that can provide for them.
I agree. I'm a Conservative after all, which is why I support the measures our government is bringing in to cap benefits, as opposed to forcible removal of reproductive organs... It's also the reason I wanted a source on the news story, because it sounds suspiciously like a news story from a couple of years ago, before the coalition got in.
If you'd like to PM me, and want to discuss a topic other than this one, I'd be more than happy to show I'm actually not a complete jackass.
Occasionally I do need a good reminder when I go too far. Thanks for reining me in.
Props to the "sexless mouthbreather"-it was an interesting title. (not sarcasm)
To be fair, I said I would be inclined to believe that you were one based on what you posted, not that you were one. An important distinction!
All's well that ends well, to quote the immortal bard.
The quality of life for this woman and her kids must be phenominally low. Child benefit is £20 a week for the first child, £15 for the rest. So most of those kids will be living on £15 a week, and that will have to cover electricity, gas, water, household appliances, food, drink, transport, school uniform, etc.
She can have all those kids if she wants. Their chances in life are pretty much nil though.
That's the issue with capping benefits and the like. It hurts the children who had no choice about being born to this idiot woman and are now going to suffer. There's no way she can look after them all properly, which means some of the older children are raising the younger. These kinds of families are linked to poor attainment in schools, low prospects and are likely to become parents in the same trap, as the older children in her family already are. I don't think cutting benefits will prevent people having children so much as put huge pressure on those already with children.
Articles about this family don't seem to suggest the children are actually being neglected or abused, so at what point would you remove children from a parent? If you take them away they end up in the care system which isn't a nice place to be either, and frankly the state can't just take on children because a family has had too many, there has to be better reasons to take children into an already overburdened child care system. Much as people are disgusted by her treating her womb 'like a clown car' what do we suggest of people similar to her? Forced sterilisation? We're not nazi germany, it's barbaric and won't go down well with the public like similar talk of population control.
If you cut money to these families you simply damage the welfare of the children, punishing them for being born to the wrong people and harming their development even further, any prospects that they'll escape they life they were born into dwindle further. Kids like these, in my experience, are the ones going to schools hungry, with broken shoes that don't fit and uniforms that only get washed once a week if they're lucky. So we cap benefits to their parents for having too many children and give them even less. There has to be a more constructive way of handling these people than simply writing them off and just finding a way to make it cheaper to do so, which is all child benefits caps achieves.
Howard A Treesong wrote: That's the issue with capping benefits and the like. It hurts the children who had no choice about being born to this idiot woman and are now going to suffer. There's no way she can look after them all properly, which means some of the older children are raising the younger. These kinds of families are linked to poor attainment in schools, low prospects and are likely to become parents in the same trap, as the older children in her family already are. I don't think cutting benefits will prevent people having children so much as put huge pressure on those already with children.
Articles about this family don't seem to suggest the children are actually being neglected or abused, so at what point would you remove children from a parent? If you take them away they end up in the care system which isn't a nice place to be either, and frankly the state can't just take on children because a family has had too many, there has to be better reasons to take children into an already overburdened child care system. Much as people are disgusted by her treating her womb 'like a clown car' what do we suggest of people similar to her? Forced sterilisation? We're not nazi germany, it's barbaric and won't go down well with the public like similar talk of population control.
If you cut money to these families you simply damage the welfare of the children, punishing them for being born to the wrong people and harming their development even further, any prospects that they'll escape they life they were born into dwindle further. Kids like these, in my experience, are the ones going to schools hungry, with broken shoes that don't fit and uniforms that only get washed once a week if they're lucky. So we cap benefits to their parents for having too many children and give them even less. There has to be a more constructive way of handling these people than simply writing them off and just finding a way to make it cheaper to do so, which is all child benefits caps achieves.
I agree with you to a certain extent, but in my opinion there has to be a price for failure, be it failure to find work, or failure to practice responsible birth-control. No-one forced her to have so many children, after all. This is not a situation that was forced upon this family, they brought it upon themselves. Welfare should not be a lifestyle choice, and it absolutely should be a difficult existence. Speaking from experience, it WAS a difficult experience for my family, growing up as I did in the 80s. What that meant was that I was motivated to try and better myself, because the alternative was a life of poverty and want. We need to accept that, beyond a certain point, people should be forced to live with the consequences of their behaviour. If a message was sent out that we as a nation would not support workless families that have more children than they can support, and that such familes will struggle to feed themselves, people wouldn't do things like having 11 kids, safe in the knowledge that the state will pick up the tab. They might think about their actions more.
I don't get it - my dad has 10 siblings, his dad was a carpenter and his mum a housewife, my mum has 7 siblings and her mum didn't work. They didn't have massive houses. How did people cope back then?
Agreed, if we're working towards what best for the kids, I think it's safe to say that someone besides their train wreck of a mother would be better for them. I don't know why after complaining for two years they didn't just take them from her anyways.
Because taking children into care is, and always should be, a last resort. It is not something that should be done lightly. Reducing welfare levels or simply removing the children can't help but cause more social problems than it solves.
The numbers don't really add up here. If she has 11 children and is a grandmother where is the grandchild(ren)?
You gotta work on your reading comprehension her 21 yr old daughter has a son named Ashley that is 2 years old.
I need to reevaluate things in my life... this woman wasn't at all how I pictured her...
Edit: I enjoy how the story linked Pilau Rice's post keeps calling the gaggle of children, a "large brood"
She may not have held a gun to anyone's head but I dare say that had she not gotten a house she wanted the housing authority and their lawyers would have heard all about it.
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Spyral wrote: I don't get it - my dad has 10 siblings, his dad was a carpenter and his mum a housewife, my mum has 7 siblings and her mum didn't work. They didn't have massive houses. How did people cope back then?
My family was the same. The simple answer was that they had to live within their means and often had to go without if the money wasn't there - something that is completely alien to many people today sadly.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Howard A Treesong wrote: That's the issue with capping benefits and the like. It hurts the children who had no choice about being born to this idiot woman and are now going to suffer.
So people who can't afford to have more children because they can't afford it on the money they earn have to subsidise those who have as many kids as they want on welfare? That seems to give the impression that hard work isn't rewarded, but playing the system is.
Howard A Treesong wrote: There's no way she can look after them all properly, which means some of the older children are raising the younger. These kinds of families are linked to poor attainment in schools, low prospects and are likely to become parents in the same trap, as the older children in her family already are. I don't think cutting benefits will prevent people having children so much as put huge pressure on those already with children.
So does that make her an unfit mother if she is giving birth to more children than she can manage? Should social services become involved if she is not taking care of the children adequately? My parents came from large families, as did my wife's. Both their families managed to cope pretty well with what they earned, with many of the children going to college.
Howard A Treesong wrote: If you cut money to these families you simply damage the welfare of the children, punishing them for being born to the wrong people and harming their development even further, any prospects that they'll escape they life they were born into dwindle further. Kids like these, in my experience, are the ones going to schools hungry, with broken shoes that don't fit and uniforms that only get washed once a week if they're lucky. So we cap benefits to their parents for having too many children and give them even less. There has to be a more constructive way of handling these people than simply writing them off and just finding a way to make it cheaper to do so, which is all child benefits caps achieves
Going to school hungry, with broken shoes and ill fitting uniforms while they spend 200GBP a week on a horse? I'm finding a hard time mustering any sympathy for this family. Other families who struggle with a low paying job and raising children I have the utmost sympathy for. But this is not one of those families.
At first, I wasn't sure that a 16 year old claiming that she pays for the horse (200 quid a month, remember) is really any better than her mother paying for it. But after thinking about it ...
I suppose the expectation goes like this: whatever resources you derive from the state should be invested into the project of no longer receiving resources from the state, at least regarding welfare recipients of able mind and body and of working age.
Put it another (more familiar) way, the goal of welfare is said to be that the poor should be rescued from poverty rather than merely maintained as poor. "A hand up rather than a hand out."
If this is all true then the logical conclusion is that social welfare programs are designed to eliminate poverty under the assumptions that (1) those who receive benefits share that goal as regarding themselves and (2) the combination of the welfare benefits and the willpower/hard work of the recipient actually can end their poverty.
Critics of welfare focus their criticism on the first assumption. They say the poor are often lazy. The poor like being poor and welfare supposedly takes away a basic incentive, i.e., the depths of suffering in squalor, such that the poor are enabled to stay poor. This goes back to the Randian notion that welfare is actually a means of oppression.
Regardless of whether impoverished people are lazy (or rather without hope for that matter), I think the bigger problem lies in the second assumption, that X amount from the state per month and a can-do attitude is a sure recipe for success. It seems to me that the focus in this assumption is not on the amount of the benefit but rather on the can-do attitude. Therefore, even if the state only gives pittance, the burden is still on the recipient.
From a rightist perspective, that makes sense: as Albatross said, there must be a price for failure. Again, the assumption being that success should be negatively incentivized. But do the actual conditions of our society support the theory that hard work pays off?
I think so -- to a point. Hard work pays off in different proportions. The more you start with, the more your hard work pays off -- and vice versa. This is most true of the middle class because those who start off with the most and the least theoretically have little incentive to work hard; they have respectively little to gain and lose.
I said above that the goal of welfare was to eliminate poverty. Looking at that through the lens of hard work paying off to the greatest proportion in the middle class, the question of eliminating poverty finds its answer in moving the poor up into the middle class. And how does one do that?
Most simply, one allows the poor to possess some of the characteristics of the middle class. For example, a girl from the council estate owning a horse -- if, as she claims, she herself really does pay for the horse's upkeep. That's very middle class: paying for your own luxuries. Being poor means that you cannot pay for your own necessities much less your own luxuries.
And that brings us back to the house. Whether it's a bare necessity or something more (an eco-mansion or whatever), the fact remains that Heather Frost and Jake cannot afford to put any roof over their own and their children's heads. So should the 200 pounds/month that 16 year old Angel Frost somehow finds to keep a horse be confiscated by Heather and put toward the wider family's expenses related to, for example, housing?
From a conservative perspective, consider what lesson that teaches Angel. "If you have money of your own, it can be taken away from you and redistributed according to the larger needs of your social unit."
I see people complaining about bad sex education here. Well, I used to teach "lifeskills" in the UK.
In lessons, kids were told (more than once, in fact I'd say between age 11 and 17 this was all repeated AT LEAST 3 times):
- The mechanics of sex and how pregnancy happens.
- The different forms of contraception, advantages and disadvantages, how they work, and even how to put a condom onto a prostetic penis.
- The symptoms and routes of infection of STIs.
- Risk factors for teen pregnancy (drunkeness, pressure in relationships, etc etc)
- The laws and procedures around abortion in the UK (this wasn't covered until much later on).
All of this, and I and other teachers dealing with this topic had a policy of an anonymous question box so if a kid was too shy to ask a question, they would all put one in the box (putting one in was mandatory to prevent kids from being singled out) and then I'd answer them frankly the next week.
What more do you want out of the education system? The kids mostly didn't give a crap because teenagers are arrogant know it alls, and they knew there was "no exam" in sex ed. But as far as it goes, I thought the system was pretty damn comprehensive, and better than my biology teacher in good old catholic ireland telling us that condoms don't work because rubber is porous.
After delivering a course like that, the onus is on the student.
Da Boss wrote: I see people complaining about bad sex education here. Well, I used to teach "lifeskills" in the UK.
In lessons, kids were told (more than once, in fact I'd say between age 11 and 17 this was all repeated AT LEAST 3 times):
- The mechanics of sex and how pregnancy happens.
- The different forms of contraception, advantages and disadvantages, how they work, and even how to put a condom onto a prostetic penis.
- The symptoms and routes of infection of STIs.
- Risk factors for teen pregnancy (drunkeness, pressure in relationships, etc etc)
- The laws and procedures around abortion in the UK (this wasn't covered until much later on).
All of this, and I and other teachers dealing with this topic had a policy of an anonymous question box so if a kid was too shy to ask a question, they would all put one in the box (putting one in was mandatory to prevent kids from being singled out) and then I'd answer them frankly the next week.
What more do you want out of the education system? The kids mostly didn't give a crap because teenagers are arrogant know it alls, and they knew there was "no exam" in sex ed. But as far as it goes, I thought the system was pretty damn comprehensive, and better than my biology teacher in good old catholic ireland telling us that condoms don't work because rubber is porous.
After delivering a course like that, the onus is on the student.
Education isn't the issue in this case. I think after the first 3-7 kids she would have figured it out...
I'm Cornish, we stand closest to the Gods. Also, we have pasties.
In the US "pasties" is a term used for little bits "dancers" used to put on to avoid local nudity restrictions. I don't know if Cornwall having that is a good or bad thing.
Howard A Treesong wrote: That's the issue with capping benefits and the like. It hurts the children who had no choice about being born to this idiot woman and are now going to suffer.
So people who can't afford to have more children because they can't afford it on the money they earn have to subsidise those who have as many kids as they want on welfare? That seems to give the impression that hard work isn't rewarded, but playing the system is.
I agree that the system is back to front in that regard. But as indignant as you want to be about it, I'm a British taxpayer, without children, subsidising this woman and you're not. But I'm still going to argue that there has to be a way found to tackle such people that doesn't damage the welfare of the children, and taking their kids into social care as they're popping them out also isn't an option. Where possible, the failures of the parents shouldn't be borne by the children IMO, but that is what will happen when you cut people's benefits unless it's done in a constructive manner, but I can't see our current government being particularly careful about how they go about it.
A lot of attacks upon those on benefits are very negative, they're scroungers and workshy trying to exploit the system. Forget this woman with her 11 kids, most families are not like that, but families like her are being used to tar everyone. Masses of unemployed people want to work, that's why you get single jobs with 500 applicants. But wait, that doesn't fit the narrative of the right wing press that the unemployed are scroungers who could actually get a job if they go out and tried. Our fundamental problem is that we have poor job creation and a lot of areas of long term unemployment where it's become normalised. That's because our heavy industries have dried up and there's little replacement. The last government tried to push as many people as possible through university because it would supposedly guarantee a a good job, not everyone is suited for university education and there aren't nice middle class jobs for everyone at the end.
A full time minimum wage job is not good money, it's not a huge amount more than someone claiming full benefits. There's a carrot and stick approach, but there aren't enough jobs for the carrot to work and they don't want to address things like low wages. The government instead of trying to create industry in this country, improve working pay and conditions, instead choose to attack the unemployed. They want to make work more 'favourable' not by making work better, but making unemployment a lot worse, even though minimum wage work is still pretty poor. The other benefit is that even if none of these people can get out of the unemployment they are trapped in, the government have saved money anyway. And that's their goal, they don't care so about the number of unemployed so much as making the unemployed a cheaper burden on the state because they know that the jobs aren't there and it's easier than creating them.
Da Boss wrote: After delivering a course like that, the onus is on the student.
I think its is more on the parent.
How do parents come into it at that point?
Sex education is not just about cause and effect. The program also entails values: disease is bad, unplanned pregnancy is bad, contraception is good, etc. The point of teaching these values in school is that the people who ordered it be done don't believe that these values are being taught by parents.
The purpose of this education, whether undertaken by schools or parents, is to exert control. Neither schools nor parents can control what kids do at any given moment. The idea is that the education will impart these values to them so that, in any given moment, they will make decisions based on said values.
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Howard A Treesong wrote: And that's their goal, they don't care so about the number of unemployed so much as making the unemployed a cheaper burden on the state because they know that the jobs aren't there and it's easier than creating them.
Such are the horrors of pretending that governments should be run like businesses.
Howard A Treesong wrote: I agree that the system is back to front in that regard. But as indignant as you want to be about it, I'm a British taxpayer, without children, subsidising this woman and you're not.
Until 8 months ago I was also a UK taxpayer, in the same position as you with my tax money being spent in the same way as yours. My family are still in the UK and are also taxpayers. Does the fact that I no longer pay taxes in the place that I was born render my opinion void? The OP is American, was he wrong to start this thread? What about the others in this thread who are not from the UK, are they not allowed to have an opinion? Are you entitled to your opinions on developments in other countries or should you only concern yourself with the UK and the UK alone?
Howard A Treesong wrote: But I'm still going to argue that there has to be a way found to tackle such people that doesn't damage the welfare of the children, and taking their kids into social care as they're popping them out also isn't an option. Where possible, the failures of the parents shouldn't be borne by the children IMO, but that is what will happen when you cut people's benefits unless it's done in a constructive manner, but I can't see our current government being particularly careful about how they go about it.
A lot of attacks upon those on benefits are very negative, they're scroungers and workshy trying to exploit the system. Forget this woman with her 11 kids, most families are not like that, but families like her are being used to tar everyone. Masses of unemployed people want to work, that's why you get single jobs with 500 applicants. But wait, that doesn't fit the narrative of the right wing press that the unemployed are scroungers who could actually get a job if they go out and tried. Our fundamental problem is that we have poor job creation and a lot of areas of long term unemployment where it's become normalised. That's because our heavy industries have dried up and there's little replacement. The last government tried to push as many people as possible through university because it would supposedly guarantee a a good job, not everyone is suited for university education and there aren't nice middle class jobs for everyone at the end.
I agree that the vast majority of benefit recipients are not abusing the system. It was not my intention to give this impression, as I thought was clear from my opening post;
"Things like that, while being an extreme example, show that there are people who are quite content to abuse a system that is supposed to be a safety net to help those in need.
It is unfortunate that a system that is supposed to help those seeking employment or unable to work because of a physical or mental impairment is seen by certain people as preferable to working. . .
. . .
I am not saying that everyone who is unemployed is lazy and feckless and sponging off the system. What I am saying though is that there are elements who abuse the system, and because of them they give those in genuine need a bad name."
Howard A Treesong wrote: That's the issue with capping benefits and the like. It hurts the children who had no choice about being born to this idiot woman and are now going to suffer.
So people who can't afford to have more children because they can't afford it on the money they earn have to subsidise those who have as many kids as they want on welfare? That seems to give the impression that hard work isn't rewarded, but playing the system is.
I agree that the system is back to front in that regard. But as indignant as you want to be about it, I'm a British taxpayer, without children, subsidising this woman and you're not. But I'm still going to argue that there has to be a way found to tackle such people that doesn't damage the welfare of the children, and taking their kids into social care as they're popping them out also isn't an option. Where possible, the failures of the parents shouldn't be borne by the children IMO, but that is what will happen when you cut people's benefits unless it's done in a constructive manner, but I can't see our current government being particularly careful about how they go about it.
A lot of attacks upon those on benefits are very negative, they're scroungers and workshy trying to exploit the system. Forget this woman with her 11 kids, most families are not like that, but families like her are being used to tar everyone. Masses of unemployed people want to work, that's why you get single jobs with 500 applicants. But wait, that doesn't fit the narrative of the right wing press that the unemployed are scroungers who could actually get a job if they go out and tried. Our fundamental problem is that we have poor job creation and a lot of areas of long term unemployment where it's become normalised. That's because our heavy industries have dried up and there's little replacement. The last government tried to push as many people as possible through university because it would supposedly guarantee a a good job, not everyone is suited for university education and there aren't nice middle class jobs for everyone at the end.
A full time minimum wage job is not good money, it's not a huge amount more than someone claiming full benefits. There's a carrot and stick approach, but there aren't enough jobs for the carrot to work and they don't want to address things like low wages. The government instead of trying to create industry in this country, improve working pay and conditions, instead choose to attack the unemployed. They want to make work more 'favourable' not by making work better, but making unemployment a lot worse, even though minimum wage work is still pretty poor. The other benefit is that even if none of these people can get out of the unemployment they are trapped in, the government have saved money anyway. And that's their goal, they don't care so about the number of unemployed so much as making the unemployed a cheaper burden on the state because they know that the jobs aren't there and it's easier than creating them.
Very true. The media tends to paint the poor in broad strokes not at all representative of average situations. I'm not certain about how the system works in the U.K., but I can tell you that unemployment here in the states often leads to a vicious cycle that can't easily be broken. Here's a personal example: My friend's father is a chemical engineer, or rather he was. He worked hard and made a lot of money in the 90's and early 00's but got laid off and lost his savings when the economy tanked. Due to his age, he has pretty much no chance of getting rehired by a new company (not when there are 100's of fresh faced and desperate college graduates for them to milk every semester). He's diabetic. Now, he's been able to get jobs as a dishwasher at casinos and things like that, but the problem is this: if he works (and gets a paycheck), he receives no state benefits for his medicine. If he doesn't work, he gets state benefits, but can barely afford cost of living. Unless he gets some miraculous break, he's completely fethed.
All this to the point that I would much rather have the U.K.'s system than ours. I'll gladly shave some money from my paycheck if it means keeping some people from needless suffering. Some of those people will take advantage, but I don't really care about that; all systems will be abused--that's the nature of the beast. But, those are few and far between. America is certainly rich enough that we could provide for the people that need it.
By the by, if Angel Frost can afford to keep her horse, good for her. I'm certain both she and the horse are much happier as a result.
Also Manchu, your post on page 3 is one of the more level headed I've read here.
deathholydeath wrote: By the by, if Angel Frost can afford to keep her horse, good for her. I'm certain both she and the horse are much happier as a result.
Also Manchu, your post on page 3 is one of the more level headed I've read here.
Thanks. I just wanted to show that, even from the perspective of the political right, it might be a good thing that a girl from a family receiving welfare benefits owns a horse. Of course, my initial assumption is that rightists sincerely want to "lift" the poor into the middle class.
I will say that the whole perspective is shot through with condescension ("the burden of the bourgeoisie") but that's hardly unique to the right.
I'm Cornish, we stand closest to the Gods. Also, we have pasties.
In the US "pasties" is a term used for little bits "dancers" used to put on to avoid local nudity restrictions. I don't know if Cornwall having that is a good or bad thing.
According to legend the Devil never entered Cornwall because he was afraid of being made into a pasty.
Also possibly my favourite lunch time appropriate food item in existence...
Manchu wrote: How do parents come into it at that point?
The parents come into it at all points The education that they receive in school should be reinforcing what they receive at home, certainly when it comes to basic social and life skills.
In the US "pasties" is a term used for little bits "dancers" used to put on to avoid local nudity restrictions. I don't know if Cornwall having that is a good or bad thing.
According to legend the Devil never entered Cornwall because he was afraid of being made into a pasty.
Also possibly my favourite lunch time appropriate food item in existence...
Actual Cornish pasties (as in made in those made in Cornwall by real bakers) are very nice. The ones found everywhere else are not.
Manchu wrote: How do parents come into it at that point?
The parents come into it at all points The education that they receive in school should be reinforcing what they receive at home, certainly when it comes to basic social and life skills.
Obviously you don't watch the debates around education, everyone expects teachers to be everything to a kid, including their parents, but heaven forbid you actually try to discipline them...
I don't think it depends on the parents once the kid is over the age of 12. Not entirely. Kids are coddled and divested of any responsibility in our society, it's not good for them. Once they've been given that information, they should be able to act on it. Their parents are still responsible to an extent, but it's the kid's own life they're ruining (or at least, altering beyond recognition), so I should think taking it seriously is in their best interest.
I think saying that it's all on the parents does the kids a disservice. I've dealt with many young people who were well capable of making sensible choices.
I thought I already addressed this? Since neither the parents nor the schools can physically control children around the clock (or at least since doing so would be worse than anything doing so would prevent), some parents and most schools attempt to ideologically control children through education. The goal of this education, as far as the school is concerned, is that the children will accept these values (among others) as their own values:
- Disease is bad; I should avoid it. - Unplanned pregnancy is bad; I should avoid it. - Contraception is good; I should obtain and use it.
To be fair that last one is sometimes:
- Pre-marital sex is bad; I should avoid it.
Whether this education comes from parents or schools is immaterial for the purpose of what comes next: whether the kid will follow through on these values in practice is ultimately up to her or him.
That's not to say that parents and schools are thereby relieved of all further responsiblity in the matter.
Howard A Treesong wrote: That's the issue with capping benefits and the like. It hurts the children who had no choice about being born to this idiot woman and are now going to suffer.
So people who can't afford to have more children because they can't afford it on the money they earn have to subsidise those who have as many kids as they want on welfare? That seems to give the impression that hard work isn't rewarded, but playing the system is.
I agree that the system is back to front in that regard. But as indignant as you want to be about it, I'm a British taxpayer, without children, subsidising this woman and you're not. But I'm still going to argue that there has to be a way found to tackle such people that doesn't damage the welfare of the children, and taking their kids into social care as they're popping them out also isn't an option. Where possible, the failures of the parents shouldn't be borne by the children IMO, but that is what will happen when you cut people's benefits unless it's done in a constructive manner, but I can't see our current government being particularly careful about how they go about it.
But you see, that's just prejudice on your part. The fact is, Labour threw money at the unemployed and the so-called 'underemployed'. The news was filled, almost every day, with stories of spongers and people complaining about them. They dished out billions in what basically amounted to bribes to their core constituencies. There were some truly ludicrous and wasteful ideas - paying kids to go to college (or EMA, as it was known), giving benefits to people in full-time work... If you want to see the legacy left by Labour, just have a look at this page from on the governments website: https://www.gov.uk/browse/benefits Click on each of the headings on the page - there must be around 50 individual benefits you can claim. It's atrocious. What exactly is wrong with one universal, means-tested benefit?
A lot of attacks upon those on benefits are very negative, they're scroungers and workshy trying to exploit the system. Forget this woman with her 11 kids, most families are not like that, but families like her are being used to tar everyone.
That's simply untrue. The line is about separating those people with get-up-and-go, who are trying to find work, from those who are happy to stay on benefits - and we absolutely should be calling those people scroungers, because that's what they are. It should be a source of shame to be on out-of-work benefits. They are intended to be a safety net, not a hammock.
Masses of unemployed people want to work, that's why you get single jobs with 500 applicants. But wait, that doesn't fit the narrative of the right wing press that the unemployed are scroungers who could actually get a job if they go out and tried. Our fundamental problem is that we have poor job creation and a lot of areas of long term unemployment where it's become normalised.
Right, now that's just a lie. There have been over 1 million new jobs created since the coalition took over, and the employment figures are out today showing YET ANOTHER decrease in the number of people out of work, indeed, record numbers of people are currently in work.
That's because our heavy industries have dried up and there's little replacement.
Again, no. Manufacturing is still a big industry in the UK, except the jobs have become more specialised - there just aren't any entry-level jobs in high-end manufacturing in anywhere like the numbers there used to be in mining etc. As for replacements? Well, it's the 21st century! The IT industry is burgeoning in the UK. If you wanna know where the jobs are, it's in that sector. There are hundreds of IT jobs just in Manchester. And I should know, I've been job-hunting myself.
A full time minimum wage job is not good money, it's not a huge amount more than someone claiming full benefits. There's a carrot and stick approach, but there aren't enough jobs for the carrot to work and they don't want to address things like low wages. The government instead of trying to create industry in this country, improve working pay and conditions, instead choose to attack the unemployed. They want to make work more 'favourable' not by making work better, but making unemployment a lot worse, even though minimum wage work is still pretty poor. The other benefit is that even if none of these people can get out of the unemployment they are trapped in, the government have saved money anyway. And that's their goal, they don't care so about the number of unemployed so much as making the unemployed a cheaper burden on the state because they know that the jobs aren't there and it's easier than creating them.
How are they making unemployment worse, exactly? By capping benefits at £32K a year?! My heart bleeds.
Let's put it this way if you were to convert 32k GBP a year into US dollars, I would gain 18,000 USD a year (as I currently make 32k USD a year)... That extra 18,000 a year would allow me to live on my own, since all my money goes to gas, student loans, car loan, and cell phone...
You can live very well indeed on £32k a year here. Well, outside of London, in which case you'd be generally living in a very *ahem* 'vibrant' part of town, but generally doing well.
For example, our household has been running on less than that for the last 4 years while I've been at university, and we live in a decent sized house that we own, in a nice suburb, and have a brand new car.
Yeah 32k is pretty comfortable. That's what my mum earned through most of my childhood. She had two kids and was single through all my childhood as well.
Wages in the UK seem lower on face value than the US, but then you get free healthcare that is a much better standard than your media let on. The NHS rocks.
It seems like many things are cheaper, too, outside of london. The south east generally is quite expensive but the North is really a lot cheaper.
The amount is piddling when you consider what you're getting for your money - a comprehensive healthcare and dental plan, with ridiculously low (or zero, depending on the part of the UK you live in) prescription costs, which won't turn you away if you have a pre-existing condition, plus a pension, care allowance for your old-age, and it also acts as insurance for if you lose your job. National insurance is great. Don't knock it. It saves money and lives.
MeanGreenStompa wrote: People should be rioting in the bloody streets these sons of bitches are still sitting at the heads of their banks, or slipped away in platinum parachutes instead of standing trial for bringing the Western World into a crippling economic freefall.
The greatest smoke and mirrors the right wing has ever pulled on the working class was turning on the recreated underclass, allowing it to recreate a new fiscal aristocracy, above the law.
We tried. It's about as effective here as it is in the rest of the world...
This kind of thing should probably outrage me, but all I can summon up is a "Meh". I think she's kind of reprehensible, but I don't find it surprising at all.
I've lived in DuPage County Illinois (very wealthy) and west side "Inner City" Chicago (extremely poor). So I can very honestly say I know how the rich and poor live. My unfortunate observation in 31 short years of life is that there's a huge swath of the population that will game the system any way they can.
-Poor folks using their LINK card for others in exchange for $.
-Rich folks who can afford more lawyers than the IRS can bend the taxcode to keep their millions overseas or in "corporations" or other tax shelters to make them virtually untaxable.
-Poor folks having more babies to stay on welfare and increase their "benefits"
-Rich folks who can severely damage a company yet still walk away with huge compensation packages.
-Poor folks getting "friends" at CEDA and other organizations to sign them up for beneifts they don't qualify for.
-Rich Folks Pony up big campaign contributions to politicians who promise to lower corporate tax rates while gutting education, welfare, and any scraps of "rehabilitation" left in the penal system.
Etc, etc, back and forth. There are some on both sides grabbing what they can whenever they can.
So you're mad that this lady get's bigger housing and doesn
t have to work? Fine. Get out there and push for legislation with work requirements and better job training programs.
I think it's kind of shady that she get's a nice new place also, but homelessness isn't exactly a solution either, especially when there are children involved. I've seen that and brother it ain't pretty.
Sorry if that got a bit wordy, but there's alot of knee-jerking that goes on in these kind of stories and it seems to be rather one-sided.
This thread has put me back where I usually am on the thought of how to fix this country.
Arbitrarily execute people.
I'm not saying this to be particularly mean, but take, for example, Stevenage. Take out about 80% of them. Bulldoze a large part of the city and start again.
I'm going to get a lot of flak for this, but some people really are better of not living...
oh dear !
(not sarcasm)
her 21 yr old daughter has a son named Ashley that is 2 years old.
