Woooosh...

Sal, please be careful when differentiating all those on benefits from those who are not. When Universal Credit comes in, Housing benefit and Working Tax will be subsumed into Universal Credit and many people who would consider themselves workers will be on " benefit".
It may include you.

You clearly missed the sarcasm.

Any word yet on what those who don't own any smart clothes should wear for interviews, Sal?

The incentive to work or not has sod all to do with benefits since the vast majority of benefits are paid regardless of whether you work or not. The only (off the top of my head) benefit that requires you not to be working is JSA which adds up to 11 hours of work a week on the minimum wage.
People are not deliberately deciding not to work because they're living so well off the £71 per week JSA. There are far bigger barriers to entering the job market than benefits. Issues, which you derided, such as no access to car (2/3rds of people on JSA don't have access to a car), poor education, poor skills, high childcare costs, high housing and living costs in certain areas, and lack of job vacancies are far more important issues than whether JSA has risen by a couple of pounds a week.

Even if the country were at full employment, having no unemployed would only reduce the benefits bill by £4.9bn. Which is roughly the same as the increase in State Pension payments from 2010/11 to 2011/12.
Unemployment benefit is 3.1% of benefit spending.

So, which benefits are these 9 of your family receiving?

Disability - so disabled they were able run a thriving drug production and distribution business, child benefit, JSA, housing benefit, council tax relief, what amazes me is none of them are married but they have children and live together but consider their status single? No doubt there will be some extra monies to be derived from this.

Housing Benefit is a good example of the above: you get this if you are on a low income. Being on JSA (IB) or ESA (IR) would class you as receiving a low income. So would many jobs in the South-East.
Therefore you get someone complaining that their neighbour gets (say) £400 a week on JSA whilst they work for £320 a week. They have not factored in Housing Benefit. In London, the Housing Benefit might be £330 just so the person can live in the property and that person often has to use some of the £71 JSA to top up the rent.

Mr Cameron's Benefit Cap changes included two to cut this cost: Housing Benefit Cap and Benefit Cap (confused?: so are many). The latter is now been brought in by stages as the advisors are telling the cabinet that reducing the Housing Benefit paid to claimants is not going to force landlords to reduce rents but will force people out of London.

To answer Sal's comments on his relatives: the only way such sums could be amassed by these people is through the black economy. So why have they not been reported?
Also Sal, and I accept this may not apply to you, saying to someone on £500 a week that they will not have a wage increase has a less impact on basic living quality than saying it to someone on £71 a week.

So when they did have a job how did they get it in the first place if they didn't have any appropriate clothing for the interview? I am still wearing suits that are >10 years old no problem - looked after clothes will last many years.

Do you honestly think they get their benefits and go OK I will put some of this aside for suitable clothing for when I get a job interview?

I am not talking about me I am talking about guys/girls earning 15k with a family to support

They might have been in their previous job a long time. They might have gained or lost weight since their last interview. Clothes don't last forever, particularly cheap ones, and the last suit they bought just might not be any good. To say that every person (or even most people) who unexpectedly find themselves having to seek work will automatically have suitable clothing in which to attend an interview is bonkers.

How are they receiving disability and JSA? How much of their income is from benefits and how much is from the drug dealing?
Discounting the disability side (that's either an abuse or not), they would only lose JSA by starting to work (over 16 hours per week. The rest of the benefits would stay regardless. So do you think an increase of around £4 per week (the JSA increase) would make someone earning £235 a week (full time job on minimum wage) say sod that I'd rather not bother with a job because now I can get £71 a week instead of £67?

You also still haven't answered how many people in the country have chosen not to work, and why a cut for millions of people in and out of work is justified.

You can claim DLA and JSA if the disability allows you to work: most DLA claimants claim ESA.
You state that they were assessed as single but lived together: normal for DLA as it pays for the extra help you need as care or mobility, not as a benefit for food etc.
However JSA/ESA would be affected by LTAHAW regulations and so could easily be assessed by the compliance teams in each JCP.
The earnings you state would nil any JSA/ESA on earnings rules.

Interesting you have not reported them but know they deal in drugs: such knowledge may mean your innocent status is besmirched by such knowledge: I am not a lawyer.

As a person on ESA, I have just gone through my paperwork which I receive every year. In the 9 years I have been claiming my IB/ESA (basic rate) has gone up by a grand total £15, increasing in small amounts ie £2 or so every year. My ESA amount has stayed the same for the last 3 years (2010/11/12), I got the 5% rise which was introduced in 2012 but because ESA is made up of differing components I received a 5% raise in one component only to have the next component reduced to exactly the same monetry amount so I received exactly the same amount whilst being shouted down by right wingers how disgraceful it was I had such a huge rise!!

My benefit hasn't changed amounts in 3 years and I will get 1% of £96 this April, in effect only changing by pennies in 4 years, and yet STILL benefit claimants are the scroungers, spongers and lazy workshy that can afford 50" plasmas, 4 holidays abroad, smoke, drink and buy drugs, eh Sal?

You do all know that it is perfectly allowable to claim DLA and work full time don't you?

And when PIP comes in and this government sneakily changed the criteria for claiming the high rate mobility component from not being able to walk 50 metres to 20 metres, a lot of disabled workers will lose their only means of transport (mobility car) of getting to work. Therefore that disabled, tax paying worker will have to go on benefits. Yeah very well thought through coalition, well done.

Not sure that it's as simple as distance someone can walk is it?

Sadly yes that is one strict criteria.

Yes its that simple as to whether I will lose my independence and become housebound or not. All the way through the consultations with disability groups and charities the government had set the criteria for getting high rate mobility the same as DLA, 50 metres. But what they didn't do with DLA was to ascertain as to whether you could walk 50 metres reliably, repeatedly, safely and in a timely fashion. If you could walk 50 metres in say, 10 hours, drugged up to the eyeballs on morphine, then you ticked the box "yes, I can walk 50 metres" and move on to the next question. No room to explain the pain, or why it took you 10 hours or the dosage of morphine, just a "yes I can" and get 0 points. (You need 12 points to get high rate mobility component). Then at the end of January they moved the goal posts even further (to the moon if you ask me) and dropped the 50 metres to 20 metres. They have no shame on what they are going to do to most disabled people, no shame at all.

Someone I know recently underwent surgery in which his abdomen was opened from the sternum to the pubis.
Four days later he walked 100 metres to the car to be taken home.
Was he fit for work?
Of course he wasn't.
But he'd have got the tick in the box for walking 20 (or 50) metres.

It's cruel and simplistic bollox to allow the rich to keep more of "their" money.

I am sure Mrs D has been advised to apply for the higher rate mobility component for Miss D (who can walk miles alot of the time).

Yes, the forms for all these things are rubbish and do not fit with many people's needs and difficulties. They need to write down the facts backed up with evidence / medical opinion / etc and explain the form is wholly inappropriate. Make the idiots who process them do some work and read them.

But can she [inot[/i walk miles for some of the time? The old DLA forms and decisions were based on fluctating conditions and accounted for that, the new PIP forms (which come in this April) do not, so Miss D will be applying for DLA now but will be [iinvited [/i to apply for PIP when her DLA runs out. If its an indefinate award, she will be [iinvited[/i to apply after 2015. Note the word "invited".

You are lucky to only fill in the form annually. Miss D was awarded ESA for a week or so pre 5 April 2012. By September she had received nothing for 2012/13. Upon enquiry by Mrs D they had unilaterally closed the claim because Miss D's "circumstances had changed". There had been no change. It transpired that she had not submitted a new medical certificate. Mrs D pointed out that she had submitted a 12 month one with the original application. They said they only accepted 3 month ones. When it was pointed out that no one had advised on that, they had just closed the case uniltaterally the idiot said "do you still want to claim?" and was not impressed by the answer "have you taken your salary these last 6 months? Why did you want it?" They then decided a 12 month certificate was fine - that was early October.

Come January - 9 + months without income for a person with no prospect of working or able to self-medicate - nothing, despite their previous assurances. That's when I drafted a letter. Had we not been supporting her the consequences are unthinkable. Just got a reply saying the arrears have been credited to the bank. They have thus far ignored the "formal complaint" aspect of my letter, presumably thinking they'd just pay and we'd forget about it. I am afraid that will not happen. There are disabled people who would love to work but cannot, whereas there are people employed to supposedly help them you turn up to a place of work, take money from the state but do not do their work. It is a scandal and they must be held accountable.

I can totally sympathyse. It is not acceptable to be without an income for 9 months and while you do get the money backdated, if Miss D didn't have you and Mrs D and lived independently she would be royally Donald Ducked.

I would love to work. I am a sociable person, who loves company and loves being busy, but I had a scan on my "good" foot last week to be told I need another foot fusion requiring 12 weeks in pot, 6 weeks non weigh bearing, what employer would employ me on that basis? Not to mention the pain I am in at the moment.

I am lucky I got into the Support Group for 2 years so don't have to see a dreaded ESA50 form for at least another 18 months. But then the cycle will start again, repeating everything that they already have in front of them.

then you answer 'no'.