A friend on a radio station tells me these two topics are getting 80% of calls and comments. I notice they appear to be dominating here too. Can I ask posters (particularly regulars - you know how you are) to keep their comments on these to this thread only please, and to avoid going on about them on other threads.

My feelings are that benefits and looking after the troubled, hurting, needy and desperate in society is a vital and essential part of a decent world. Yes there are rip off types but I reckon they are few and far between. My views on immigration are known here - open our borders, let anyone in who wants to come, cope with it and develop budgets eyc accordingly.

So do I support or like any political party? No. I think they are all equally useless and full, generally, of slick, sly and incompetent politicians. The odd individual seems to buck the trend but most of them (and civil servants) are useless.

Over to you - but please keep Benefits and Immigration away from other threads.

there are very practical reasons for looking after the poorest : i went to a lecture about 15 years given by a prominent NZ economist who said the day will come when people will belt businessmen over the head with a brick for the contents off their briefcase...and at some stage we will have to gauge whether the cost of that crime (which can run into tens of thousands of pounds...let alone if the perp is caught and jailed- now costs running up to may be 100,000 quid)and so on....)

\we must decide as the Romans did- keep the poor alive so tehy don't riot.

Can posters please read this? ITK and Andrew are still banging on about that TV series (which I'm not watching).

JK2006 wrote:
Can posters please read this? ITK and Andrew are still banging on about that TV series (which I'm not watching).


Oh I'm sorry.So Am I. I thought you meant Immigrants CLAIMING benefits. Not both.
Would two seperate threads be better?

A number of people living in TV's Benefits Street have been charged with drug offences following a series of police raids.

Officers allegedly found class A and B drugs at properties in James Turner Street in Birmingham's Winson Green, where the documentary was filmed.

The Channel 4 show claims to reveal "the reality of life on benefits" on "one of Britain's most benefit-dependent streets".

Following enquiries, seven people have been charged and bailed to appear before magistrates in Birmingham on February 6.

Samora Roberts, 32, was charged with conspiracy to supply a class B drug, conspiracy to supply a class A drug (crack cocaine), possession of a class A drug (diamorphine) and possession of ammunition for a firearm without a certificate.

news.sky.com/story/1200945/benefits-stre...ents-on-drug-charges

No wonder they rely on food banks !

Easy arrest for the police.

Not everyone on the dole is stoned, if people do need food banks it can be by mistakes made by DWP or sanctions.

andrew wrote:
if people do need food banks it can be by mistakes made by DWP or sanctions.


... or it may be this ! -

The truth about Benefits Street 'scrounger' Mark Thomas, by his grandparents

Derek has nothing but contempt for what he sees as the ‘something for nothing’ culture propagated by aspects of the welfare state. ‘Kids today, they might say they want a job, but you never see them out and about actually looking for work.

‘Why should they, when the Government will give them money for doing nothing? At half past seven in the morning, they’re all in bed.’

Jean took a full-time job at an amusement arcade where she remained for the rest of her working life. In later years, it gave her a unique insight into what she sees as the endemic abuse of welfare.

‘Every day, you’d see these people. They’re not disabled, but they are collecting disabled benefits, and bring the money right in and pour it into the slot machines.

‘Others would come into the arcade: they’re unemployed, but they aren’t looking for a job, they’re spending four or five hours a day at machines.’

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2545571...as-grandparents.html