Benefit Scroungers

I have taken this from an artcle printed in the Daily Express by John Chapman.

Peter and Sam Smith with their 10 children: They rake in almost £95,000 a year in benefits
Monday September 6,2010
By John Chapman A FAMILY of scroungers raking in almost £95,000 a year in benefits caused outrage last night after trashing one home and then getting a new four-bedroom house at taxpayers’ expense.


Peter and Sam Smith have been given the £960 a week property in Bristol to house their 10 children

The family were kicked out of their previous home in Bath after a wrecking spree caused £20,000 damage and left it unfit for habitation.

Children’s mattresses and walls were stained with human and animal excrement and the floors were littered with rat droppings and mould. Instead of being punished, the jobless couple have been given the four-bedroom house.

The case highlights a shambolic welfare system that pays the Smiths £44,506 a year in benefits and £960 a week rent. The housing payment, incredibly, includes ­having breakfast delivered to their door each day.

Yet far from being grateful, Mrs Smith, 36, who has not worked in a decade, complains her home is not large enough and her family is not given enough financial help. The family’s total annual handout from taxpayers is £94,426 including the rent and £140 a week child benefits, £120 a week disability living allowance, £53.90 a week carer’s allowance for 40-year-old Mr Smith, £527 a week in tax credits, and £30 every fortnight for income support.


Mrs Smith also whinged that while the family has food for breakfast delivered to the door, they still have to prepare the morning meal.


She said: “It’s very cramped in the new house. We have four bedrooms with bunk beds for the kids and that’s it. We’ve tried housing associations and they turn their noses up at us because we have so many kids, which isn’t fair.

“We are sitting here waiting while they find somewhere else for us. The benefits aren’t much. By the time we have to pay for food and clothes and electricity we don’t have much left. It’s tough because we don’t even have a TV here. We have no aerial and the kids only have one Nintendo Wii between them.”

A spokesman for the TaxPayers’ Alliance said yesterday: “This family of scroungers doesn’t deserve to get taxpayers’ money. It’s disgraceful they they’re being given a new home after they left their last one unfit to live in. This case is another example of how urgently the benefit system needs to be reformed.

“It cannot be right that there are so many cases where couples are getting absurd amounts in benefits – a lot more than the average salary. We need to overhaul the welfare system so that we improve incentives to work and help the poorest, not encourage families like this to waste taxpayers’ money.”

The family has lived in up to nine houses since Mr Smith quit the Army in 2001 to care for his wife after she was registered disabled with a bad back.

Since then, neither have had jobs and Mrs Smith has given birth to seven of their 10 children, pocketing tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ cash. They were moved into the new home in Kingswood, Bristol, three weeks ago.

Social services visited their Bath home in December 2009 and January and March this year after receiving reports that they were living in filth and squalor. When officers investigated, they were stunned to be confronted by filthy mattresses and human and animal excrement covering the floor and walls.

The landlord of the property, Abdullah Khateeb, who admitted he had not visited the house in years, was ordered to clean up. He immediately evicted the ­family, dubbing them “parasites”, and has since had to spend about £25,000 on renovating the house to make it fit to live in.

Mr Khateeb, 60, from Bath, said: “When they moved in they had five children. By the time they left four years later it had doubled to 10 – and they wanted more. The place was disgusting.

“It’s a miracle the youngsters aren’t ill, the house was so dirty. It’s not fair on the children, they don’t deserve to live like this. I’ve never seen anything like it. It made me want to be sick. The council later told me the family were known to them.”

“The benefits system is to blame. This family are on huge benefits and move from one place to the next.” The family’s current Bristol home is less than a mile from another ­infamous family – the 12-strong Batemans who hit the headlines last month after complaining they needed a bigger house.

Mr Smith believes his situation mirrors that of the Batemans and even argues that families like his are victims. He said: “Just because we have a big family we are not offered housing big enough for our children. It’s not fair. The amount we are given isn’t that much and I’m constantly having to rob Peter to pay Paul.”

Bath and North East Somerset Council said it had a legal duty to rehouse the homeless children.

It said the £960-a-week bed-and-breakfast deal was a “temporary” arrangement. A spokesman said: “Due to the size of this family there are very limited options.”

Yet they say because "I can manage" I am less disabled. How does that work. I have been told I am greedy or I am lazy because I am complaining about my benefits being cut. Yet the same people are more accepting of families like this.

I wont have a family because I am not able to work and its not fair for the govenment and funementally the tax payer to have to pay.

Acceptance

Children seem to be more accepting of disabled people than adults. I go to visit my friends and their daughter Shannon runs up to me and gives me a hug. She doesn’t care about anything I have wrong with me. She just wants me to play with her.

With my condition Neurofibromatosis, it causes me to have tumours all over my body. She asked me why are you so spotty. She’s only 5 years old. I explained to her in simple terms and that was that.

It’s the adult population who change the kid’s minds. Children don’t see the wheelchair they seem to see the person that is in it. If people teach their kids to accept others more then they will grow up understanding everybody is different.

Just because a person looks different on the outside or has different abilities they still have feelings. I remember a quote from somewhere I forget where, “if you cut me do I not bleed”. A disabled person still has feelings. Disabled people are not second class citizens if you got to know them you may find that you have things in common with them.

It’s the same with people of different races and sexuality. In this day and age most countries are multicultural and have people with different sexual preferences. If a child is brought up to accept this as normal then they will grow up to treat all people the same.

I don’t see a person for their colour or sexuality I just see them for the person they are. Why should a person be judged for being different to his neighbour or friend?

Headway

Headway is a fantastic organization.  When I first had my brain haemorrhage they came to see me in hospital.  They offered great support to me and my family.    I was visited in hospital by one of their staff Sue Hannam.  She helped me to get Disability Allowance forms filled and gave me the opportunity to do different things.

After I left the hospital I attended Headway House 1 day a week.  They encouraged me to try new things and teach me basic skills like cooking and craft.  They also help people build up their confidence.  There is different types of brain injury and some people are worse than others. 

I met many different people during my time there.  Each one of them has something to give to society.  It helped me to learn to accept people for who they are.  Headway provides a range of staff and volunteers who all have different skills. 

They encourage people to try new things and to try to do things for themselves.  This is good as it helps people to regain their independence. 

Headway send some of the clients to college courses in partnership with local colleges.  This is very successful and again gets people to meet others.  I did courses myself on cooking how independent living and one where we went out to different places each week.  This was a help to me and stopped me becoming isolated. 

When my time came for me to leave Headway House.  I was appointed an outreach worker Padma Ram.  Again she helped me to fill in forms and help me find some volunteer work which I still continue to do.  They also offer support in taking you to appointments and explaining things to you that you are having difficulties in understanding. 

Headway signed me off their books as I was managing on my own.  Recently they have got back in touch and they will be coming to see me again with a new worker Nicola Rowe.  They said that even though I am coping I could do with a little more support. 

I am really thankfull for the support they have given me an will do so in the future.  Headway see their clients with brain injuries as human and treat them with dignity. 

New Blog

I'm going to start this blog of with a poem from Rudyard Kipling

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

What I think Kipling is trying to say is that if you try your hardest then you should be proud of your self.

I was thinking the other day about all these servicemen and women who go to war for us and come back injured. They do not complain, yet they do not get treated with the respect they deserve.

A lot of these people will never be able to work again but they still keep smiling. I read in a newspaper about one serviceman. This man had lost both legs in a mortar attack. He now has prosthetic legs. The gentleman wants to go back to the front line. This we all should be proud of.

I feel guilty because of the fact that I cannot work. I complain about not getting enough help from the government when ex servicemen hardly get any help at all.

There should be equallity for all. Everyone has the right to be treated with a bit of dignity.

New blog time.  Ive not written one for a while so I thought that I would do one. I want to talk about the was disabled people are portrayed on TV.

Firstly I want to talk about the show on Channel 4 called Cast offs.  This show is excellent. It is a drama based on a reality show of disabed people on a desert island.  All of the actors on this show have genuine disabilities and are  showed in a sympathetic light.  They have a wide range of people in the show with different difficulties.  It shows that people with a disability can learn to cope in extreme situations.  Like I have said before though  learning to cope an adapt doesnt make you less disabled.

In Eastenders they have a character who is in a wheel chair the actor is genuinely in a wheel chair and is not an actor in one.  They also have a little boy who is deaf in the show and deaf in real life.  In Emerdale there is a blind lady which is played by a genuine blind actress. 

The show Tracy Beaker has a character in it with Cerebral Palsy.  She has the condition in real life.

There still needs to be more disabled people on TV.   There was uproar in the UK because they had a childrens presenter with one arm.  I don't see the problem with it.  If your child asks questions then they are only curious and its better for them to learn to accept people.   It would stop a lot of bullying in schools because a person seems different to them. 

Being disabled doesnt make you any less normal it just means you have different challenges in life to other people.