I hate the Tories!!(general annoyances about close minded people)

I really do mean that, I come from a poor but hard working family in the sense my dad was in intensive care 30 years ago and has been unable to work ever since and there was times after that where my whole family would eat out of a tin of beans and we had no carpets and me and my brother slept on a mattress on the floor and my parents on bare floor.

My dad tried hard to find basic work and my mum could not find work to support whole family so did volunteer work to put something back but constantly even before ATOS the benefit people tried stopping his benefits at many times saying they thought he was fit for work despite being in so much pain he cannot walk that far, even sitting down is painful

Anyway during the last big elections I saw the Tories blame the state of the country on immigrants and benefit claimants, their attitude is that jobs are everywhere and easy to come by, this is only true in certain parts of the UK and in other parts high unemployment exists.

I remember a few years ago just before my dad retired, having an argument with someone who said my parents were by default lazy as they were on benefits and when I mentioned they did charity work I was told if they can do charity work why not paid work and when I said would you say they were lazy despite doing hard charity work compared to a paid employee who would stand about and do not work I was told at least the paid person pays tax!!

A few years ago I was living in a £50 a week bedsit and on benefits they paid that and I was left with £40 to buy food and pay council tax and bills each week then got a job when I was left with £20 a week after paying rent before food and had higher council tax to pay!

Typical Tories twist things so that if you are better off on benefits it means benefits are too high and not that wages are bad.

Also I just watched a party political broadcast on BBC SCOTLAND!! that had no Scottish members of public and talked about how they lowered crime in London, Birmingham and Manchester, wow that really affects Scotland.

And now they want to cut benefits for under 25s! If they had their own way the entire lower class population would live in caves and fend for themselves just so they did not spend a penny of their own money.

What does other people think?

I really do mean that, I come from a poor but hard working family in the sense my dad was in intensive care 30 years ago and has been unable to work ever since and there was times after that where my whole family would eat out of a tin of beans and we had no carpets and me and my brother slept on a mattress on the floor and my parents on bare floor.

My dad tried hard to find basic work and my mum could not find work to support whole family so did volunteer work to put something back but constantly even before ATOS the benefit people tried stopping his benefits at many times saying they thought he was fit for work despite being in so much pain he cannot walk that far, even sitting down is painful

Anyway during the last big elections I saw the Tories blame the state of the country on immigrants and benefit claimants, their attitude is that jobs are everywhere and easy to come by, this is only true in certain parts of the UK and in other parts high unemployment exists.

I remember a few years ago just before my dad retired, having an argument with someone who said my parents were by default lazy as they were on benefits and when I mentioned they did charity work I was told if they can do charity work why not paid work and when I said would you say they were lazy despite doing hard charity work compared to a paid employee who would stand about and do not work I was told at least the paid person pays tax!!

A few years ago I was living in a £50 a week bedsit and on benefits they paid that and I was left with £40 to buy food and pay council tax and bills each week then got a job when I was left with £20 a week after paying rent before food and had higher council tax to pay!

Typical Tories twist things so that if you are better off on benefits it means benefits are too high and not that wages are bad.

Also I just watched a party political broadcast on BBC SCOTLAND!! that had no Scottish members of public and talked about how they lowered crime in London, Birmingham and Manchester, wow that really affects Scotland.

And now they want to cut benefits for under 25s! If they had their own way the entire lower class population would live in caves and fend for themselves just so they did not spend a penny of their own money.

What does other people think?

I share these particular views you describe as belonging to the tories in regards to social welfare and those on benefits. My honest retort is that I don't believe your story to be completely true. Even if it is true, then I believe it to be a rare exception. Who actually needs help, if they deserve it, and how much they require is a subjective question. Statistics don't provide the subjective analysis required. So I depend more on my personal anecdotal experience to base much of this opinion on.

I have not lived a sheltered life by any means. In the developed world I have never met someone who was truly hungry without some means of obtaining a meal being available to them. I have never experienced a case of homelessness that was not due to deliberate behavior to reject assistance. I have met very few who were truly so ill or handicapped that they were unable to work. The ones who were that disabled were taken care of. I have encountered many of whom habitually behave in a destructive manner. I have met many of whom I assess to be lazy or unmotivated. I am judgmental towards those people and I resent them.

The only one's I feel sorry for are the children who truly are faultless for any hardships their lives must endure. I don't know how to help them. In most cases enabling their addicted, destructive, incompetent parents will do little if anything to alleviate the children's suffering. I completely support improving their educational opportunities by every reasonable means available.

I share my views without shame because that is how I truly see the world.

Maybe those people could work. But where are the jobs? It is not laziness, it is structural unemployment. It is an inevitable consequence of the knowledge/service economy that has driven the boom of the last three decades. The structurally unemployed should be provided for, because the only other option is genocide. And giving money is better than giving aid because it allows the person to take personal responsibility (or lack thereof). That is human dignity which all of us deserve.

The only area where I might support benefit cuts is child benefit. An irresponsible spender is one thing, an irresponsible spender who multiplies himself is quite another.

In all other areas, benefits - as well as wages - need to be raised by about 50%.

Something in your post just doesn't ring true. I think it's an act if fiction.

Coming from a background of poverty I firmly believe that throwing money at the problem is not the answer, infact this one of the reasons I don't vote Labour as it completely misses the point.

You say there are no jobs (there may not be in your area) but even taking out workfare there are 400,000 jobs created each year, there may well be competition for them but I've had no problem finding part time jobs which still offer me more than welfare (you simply have to adjust your standard of living).

The way to get people out of poverty is for them to develop a career and be aspirational, the biggest problem we have however was exemplified in your response as it is indicative of the many people who have given up and no longer hold aspirations to better themselves. I have first hand experience of this myself as my parents and sister have no ambition and have consigned themselves to their fate while I (the beaken of Tory Blue in a sea of communist green) am extremely ambitious and have no doubt at all that not only will escape poverty but that I can better the average. Why, because for all my faults I am aspirational and driven but that is sadly something which many people in poverty have lost.

I really do mean that, I come from a poor but hard working family in the sense my dad was in intensive care 30 years ago and has been unable to work ever since and there was times after that where my whole family would eat out of a tin of beans and we had no carpets and me and my brother slept on a mattress on the floor and my parents on bare floor.

My dad tried hard to find basic work and my mum could not find work to support whole family so did volunteer work to put something back but constantly even before ATOS the benefit people tried stopping his benefits at many times saying they thought he was fit for work despite being in so much pain he cannot walk that far, even sitting down is painful

Anyway during the last big elections I saw the Tories blame the state of the country on immigrants and benefit claimants, their attitude is that jobs are everywhere and easy to come by, this is only true in certain parts of the UK and in other parts high unemployment exists.

I remember a few years ago just before my dad retired, having an argument with someone who said my parents were by default lazy as they were on benefits and when I mentioned they did charity work I was told if they can do charity work why not paid work and when I said would you say they were lazy despite doing hard charity work compared to a paid employee who would stand about and do not work I was told at least the paid person pays tax!!

A few years ago I was living in a £50 a week bedsit and on benefits they paid that and I was left with £40 to buy food and pay council tax and bills each week then got a job when I was left with £20 a week after paying rent before food and had higher council tax to pay!

Typical Tories twist things so that if you are better off on benefits it means benefits are too high and not that wages are bad.

Also I just watched a party political broadcast on BBC SCOTLAND!! that had no Scottish members of public and talked about how they lowered crime in London, Birmingham and Manchester, wow that really affects Scotland.

And now they want to cut benefits for under 25s! If they had their own way the entire lower class population would live in caves and fend for themselves just so they did not spend a penny of their own money.

What does other people think?

If you read the details of the plan, they want people under 25 to either be in work or education, rather than getting jobseeker's. That would mean they'd still get money, but if they couldn't find a job they'd have to go into some form of training.

Thanks for telling your story, I couldn't agree more. It's because of the situation that you've described that I'm a member of the Labour Party.

Personally, I can't imagine how tough it is for someone whose parents have had the misfortune to have had bad health or some kind of accident; the idea that they should be punished even more simply for being on benefits is both bizarre and exceptionally cruel.

I thank my lucky stars long and often that I happened to be born into an upper-middle class family, to have gone to private schools and know that I'll never have to worry about money, to have the social capital and connections that goes along with that.

From my perspective, I believe that society has a debt of honour to the unemployed, the disabled, the unwell, single parents etc to ensure that they don't ever have to worry about if they will have a roof over their head, or where their next meal will come from. I'm not talking about anything lavish, but simply being able to live in frugal comfort, with adequate clothing, heating, food, education and support.

It's a scandal and a mystery that some people are comfortable with the status quo, and seem to want to be all stick and no carrot to society's most vulnerable individuals. I hate the Tory Party for appealing to the basest emotions and prejudices of society; there are indvidual Tory voters who I like, but I cannot see the party and its policies as anything other than totally and utterly immoral.

I really do mean that, I come from a poor but hard working family in the sense my dad was in intensive care 30 years ago and has been unable to work ever since and there was times after that where my whole family would eat out of a tin of beans and we had no carpets and me and my brother slept on a mattress on the floor and my parents on bare floor.

My dad tried hard to find basic work and my mum could not find work to support whole family so did volunteer work to put something back but constantly even before ATOS the benefit people tried stopping his benefits at many times saying they thought he was fit for work despite being in so much pain he cannot walk that far, even sitting down is painful

Anyway during the last big elections I saw the Tories blame the state of the country on immigrants and benefit claimants, their attitude is that jobs are everywhere and easy to come by, this is only true in certain parts of the UK and in other parts high unemployment exists.

I remember a few years ago just before my dad retired, having an argument with someone who said my parents were by default lazy as they were on benefits and when I mentioned they did charity work I was told if they can do charity work why not paid work and when I said would you say they were lazy despite doing hard charity work compared to a paid employee who would stand about and do not work I was told at least the paid person pays tax!!

A few years ago I was living in a £50 a week bedsit and on benefits they paid that and I was left with £40 to buy food and pay council tax and bills each week then got a job when I was left with £20 a week after paying rent before food and had higher council tax to pay!

Typical Tories twist things so that if you are better off on benefits it means benefits are too high and not that wages are bad.

Also I just watched a party political broadcast on BBC SCOTLAND!! that had no Scottish members of public and talked about how they lowered crime in London, Birmingham and Manchester, wow that really affects Scotland.

And now they want to cut benefits for under 25s! If they had their own way the entire lower class population would live in caves and fend for themselves just so they did not spend a penny of their own money.

What does other people think?

Where does it say they will start giving under 25s money to be in education?

Yes you have summarized it all - this is pretty much the case when voting for any free-marketier party in a Capitalist society. Conservative Party of the UK is a striking example.

I'm definitely voting for Ed Miliband in 2015 hopefully he'll be the 3rd Jewish PM of UK.

This makes me feel so sad and even more angry with the tories. I agree with you whole heartedly. People can be so ignorant, they do not think situations like this exist. They live in a bubble. And I'm Welsh, the Tories do not care about is in the slightest. They only care about London and the South East.

I really do mean that, I come from a poor but hard working family in the sense my dad was in intensive care 30 years ago and has been unable to work ever since....

My problem is that they seem to ignore hard-working but people with huge responsibility (e.g. young carers), like they don't appreciate their efforts, and only suck up to more independent hard working people. I am definitely all for enterprise and individualism, however it would be nice if they could have something to say on people who haven't been as lucky and just want to get on.

Also I just watched a party political broadcast on BBC SCOTLAND!! that had no Scottish members of public and talked about how they lowered crime in London, Birmingham and Manchester, wow that really affects Scotland.

Oh wow, I didn't know Westminster was still responsible for crime in Scotland.

They're not, but what I think drbluebox meant was Scottish issues are ignored, whilst taking about something that is irrelevant to them (lower rates of crimes in English cities) as it's in another country.

Time for the break up of the United Kingdom.