Diluted Dante wrote:

As it is, it tends to be the people who need help don't get it because they are too honest and try to give an impression they are better off than they are, and the dickheads game it for all they are worth

This.  It happens way too much.  I genuinely have to sit there telling people NOT to write about the best day they've ever had when filling in the form.  Loads of people out there are terrified to claim anything because the papers have told them that it makes them scroungers, and they write about the best they've ever been because they don't want to be accused of cheating the system. (A system that's only too happy to abuse them back.) 

The issue with benefits is really simple.  There will always be people who cheat the system, because there will always be conditions that are impossible to prove.  The harder you try to weed out the cheats, the more you stop support going to people who genuinely need it.  (Many of whom can't get to the assessments in the first place, or can't cope with sitting in a waiting room full of strangers.  Though I've had at least one patient told that he wasn't eligible precisely because he did manage to attend his assessment, in what must be the finest example of a real life Catch 22 I've ever encountered.)

There are 3 potential solutions.  You either accept that some people will cheat the system as an inevitable consequence of caring for and supporting those that can't work.  Or you stop supporting such people at all, and confess to being a culture that doesn't care about the welfare of other human beings.  Or, finally, you offer financial support to everyone irrespective of physical health and eradicate the notion of "cheating" entirely.

The problem with the UK (or England at least) is that we claim to be doing the first option, whilst in reality practising the second by stealth.

Blairite red Tory stooge.

You were landed gentry once?

Working would always benefit you under UBI, and arguably, working doesn't benefit most people beyond financially now. The amount of volunteers would grow massively if people weren't forced into shitty jobs, and could choose how they wanted to work.

cockbeard wrote:

You were landed gentry once?

I wish, though I can imagine it might sound that way from some of my posts Benefits are an industry of their own, and that's a problem.

Would you be irrationally* jealous about those people born into inherited wealth, and would also receive UBI, and would likely not have to ever work either? *More likely you'd be rationally jealous I guess.

Slightly different: I used to be jealous of people at my school/college that were allowed that £30 a week or fortnight stipend from the government to cover "study costs". I didn't get it because of what my parent's earned, which was enough for me to not qualify, but not enough to give me any pocket money at all. 

It's the same with University grants and so on, certain parts of the system fail people - those whose parents are wealthy enough to mean they don't qualify for the maximum loan, but can't spare their kids the money, or the poorest who qualify for the maximum loan, which may not cover them given the hike in pricing over recent years slowly falling out of line with what you get from the government. The answer is of course simple: get a job, but that can be tough, especially for poorer students who might have to live at home and thus find getting a job difficult.

The Range-Roving arse who followed me with his lights on full just now.

Don't think I've ever tried it?

Haha.

You're thinking of the White House.

Not only has my deadass flatmate bought himself a new chair but still not a soundproofing kit yet, I think he's also drunk my bloody prosecco that was a Christmas gift I was saving for post dissertation celebrations.

Put his PC in the bath.

Not the point.
Start running the bath.

Tempy wrote:

Not only has my deadass flatmate bought himself a new chair but still not a soundproofing kit yet, I think he's also drunk my bloody prosecco that was a Christmas gift I was saving for post dissertation celebrations.

This the one that yells on a twitch stream all night? And that's his actual job?

Unlikely wrote:

Fill the bath with prosecco.

Hahaha, reminded me of Noel Gallagher on Sleaford Mods

“They’re like fucking Brown Bottle in Viz,” he said. “There’s no joy in that, is there? It’s just two guys, one clearly mentally ill, who’s just shouting like Brown Bottle about fucking cider and fucking shit chicken. Yeah, that would’ve been fun wouldn’t it, at Knebworth. ‘Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and while we’re all here’, while all the people at the back are on acid and E, ’round of applause for the miners, wahey’. Fuck off.”

He continued: “Oasis were raging, but we were raging joy and the sun was out in the songs, if you can’t see the rage and the yearning to better yourself in rock ‘n’ roll style you’re dead to me. And protest songs: fucking bollocks. ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’ is a protest song, and the message in that is ‘Fuck your recession and fuck you and your government, we’re gonna have a great time.'”

Moving onto Sleaford Mods’ comments that he had “blood on his hands” for making things too retro, Gallagher said: “Yeah. Well tell them from me that I’ve got blood on my hands and fucking champagne in the bath.”

Broadband installation services from Virgin Media get on my tits.

We had a massive pain in the arse getting cabling sorted out to locate things where we wanted to in the living room, a few months back. Had a Virgin tech out to do some of it, got him to leave us lots of official Virgin Media cable behind so that we could have it run under the floorboards, the whole shebang. Point was that we were having a fireplace removed, plumbing done, radiators fitted, and so on – all in advance of getting our antique floorboards restored … so that we’d never need to lift them again.

Guess what?

The fucker left us cheap cable, not the real thing.

Our broadband started cutting out intermittently. Everyone in the neighbourhood had the same problem. Then, when we got notification last week that Virgin had fixed the local issues … our broadband switched off completely.

Turns out that the cheap cable under our floor was responsible for ‘noise’ on the line. As local networks are all linked, the noise on our line was disrupting service for the whole street. When Virgin said they fixed the local issue, what they mean is that the cut our house off so that everyone else’s broadband would work properly.

Dammit.