I’m surprised anybody’s surprised, but it does represent the final nail in Britain’s coffin. It’s official, and no longer just an educated guess, at how it is your neighbour can afford a car and holidays without ever doing a stroke of work.
Yes, you are better off claiming benefits than doing a full week’s work.
How shocking that the state will pay you more to lie on your sofa watching Escape to the Country than working all week on minimum pay of £12.21 per hour. Any wonder that our productivity is beyond dreadful?
How is this possible? According to the think tank which did the numbers, if you claim Universal Credit and housing benefit (Gregg Wallace’s agent is signing on as I write) plus PIP, you will receive £25,000 a year.
If however, you get up at the crack of dawn, work for a major supermarket chain or a nursery or a call centre (I picked those jobs at random), you will, after income tax and NI, only receive £22,500. How incredible and how wrong.
The madness doesn’t end there either. A jobless single parent – and there are tens and thousands of them-claiming for anxiety and a child with ADHD will collect nearly £37,000 a year tax-free - £14,000 more than a worker on minimum pay will take home.
Since 2019, the number of ‘’disabled’’ has risen from 2.1million to 3.2million, which includes people claiming mental health issues, constipation, tennis elbow and acne.
In that same period, the number claiming unemployment benefits has gone from 2.6million to 3.5million.
The whole thing is a racket. And has to be blown apart. If I were running the government (and to be fair, I couldn’t make a worse job), I would close one glaring loophole; You shouldn’t be able to claim PIP while working.
You have been scammed by the British state and we finally have the data to prove it - Kelvin MacKenzie
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At the moment, the PIP posse can go to work normally and still pick up another £4,000+ (in many cases £8,000+) for the year tax-free. The PIP was meant to deal with the extra cost of living while being ‘’disabled’’.
That is clearly not true if you have anxiety or depression, the area of claim which has exploded since Covid. If I remember right, there are 1.7million people claiming mental health issues. I should claim. Everybody says I’m mad.
You must not continue to receive the benefit and go to work. If there are signs that the cunning out there are giving up work, warn them they will lose their right to PIP. Time to be strong. It’s our money. They are sponging.
All this explosion in sickness nonsense and payment can be traced back to Covid when the charlatans out there discovered they could be paid for staying at home. A dreadful policy decision by Johnson, which we pay dearly for today.
The idea that Boris would increase Tory chances of being elected must be a bigger joke than Gregg Wallace discovering he has autism at 60.
The benefits of the next General Election will be £100billion. That £100,000,000,000. It’s a big political issue today, but will be even larger in 29.
I think Badenoch is making the right noises about cutting welfare, but on BBC’s Today programme, the lady the Tories wheeled out to explain what they would be doing about it made chocolate teapots look useful.
It won’t be easy to tell people the gravy train has pulled into a siding. Never easy to take easy money away from people, but unless we do, the whole country will collapse.
I am fearful that Reform will not be tough on welfare. This is a vote winner, especially among the working classes who get up on cold winter mornings to do a job and are sick of seeing their idle neighbour or relative doing bugger all.