Priceless Plastic: 59% support Shelbrooke’s Welfare Card
Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke’s 10 Minute Rule Bill to introduce a welfare cash card for benefit claimants, especially those on JSA (but excluding disability payments and the basic state pension,) has gone down like a cup of cold sick with the left this afternoon. The food stamp 2.0 would see restrictions placed on booze, fags and Sky TV et cetera, and ensure the safety net was just that. Shelbrooke told the House earlier:
“This is about benefit distribution and spending, not benefit allocation. It encourages responsible spending by welfare claimants; ensuring taxpayers’ money is spent wisely and for the purpose it is intended. Delivering Beveridge’s vision of a temporary security net by using benefits to create a society of strivers”.
A poll commissioned by Demos found that 59% of the country support the move…
Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaack that!
Oi!!! wot abart our bennys!!! we is havin babas like stink an can’t do wivart bennys! ‘n fags ‘n booze n’ stuff – nowotwemeen?
Anyone with the balls to put this in a manifesto would walk the next election.
“A poll commissioned by Demos found that 59% of the country support the move…”
The other 41% are welfare addicts.
Brilliant. But probably not far off the truth.
+100
I will go a step further and say; stop child benefits and use that money to give free breakfast, lunch and dinner in the schools through out the year. A lot of kids in poor households go hungry, this way we can feed they and make sure they get hot food as well.
If giving dinner is a problem give them packeted dinner to take home.
Stop increasing benefits for more fecklessness.
Once you’re on benefits you agree not to have kids, get more fat, drink etc..
You have kids and go on benefits. You have more. You don’t get any more OPM.
You go on benefits and you’re obese, you lose weight, or you lose NHS.
You go on benefits and you have a drinking problem, you stop or you dont get NHS or bennies.
Time for Dave to get tough on those addicted to OPM. People who get OPM have to agree to limit their own liberty.
.
what benefits are royalty on.
what benefits are those for whom the tax loopholes exist.
Failure to extort is not a benefit.
You are a complete idiot, but you already know that don’t you.
We are the only species on this Earth with inverse Darwinism.
Fuck. the. feckless.
inverse darwinson.
we are regressing as we dumb down.
that kills awareness.
systematically.
By the look of your posts, you’ve dumbed down the most.
La Toynbee will be having an attack of the vapours over this one.
However, 10 minute rule bill = zero chance of it ever happening.
Does that mean Kebab Time will be having his ADSL taken away
Surely you mean AIDSL?
2.223
Oh noes, if our client base can’t spend the money we give them on fags and booze, they might have to get a job and stop voting for us.
Then we’ll just be left with a load of angry unemployed immigrants
The Projecting* left as seen above.
Showing us how they really think about their OPM bribed voters.
You ever read the comments here?
The socialist creed was founded on the well documented racism and anti-semitic self loathing, of both Marx and Engels.
The anti-semitism continues to this day, though overt racism is carefully hidden from the surface, the self loathing is still there also, for all to see.
Agree it is almost in the socialist DNA to be ant-semetic, yet most of the so called great socialist thinkers were members of the tribe of Abraham and includes Marx and Engels
During the war we had one egg a week each plus two ounces of butter and no Vimto .
Give them all porridge for breakfast .
Correct. I remember using some of my coupons to buy my first bottle of Vimto. So exotic.
Mandelson the Millibands and Hodge .
Liebore are hiding it well then with their Jewish leader and prominent MP’s from ethnic minorities.
May the left be with you.
Worth a try, and if it hacks off The Guardian, The BBC, Channel 4, the fake charidees, and the Labour Party, then it must be a good thing.
That will do nicely, sir.
Do you want to feel my tits? Well sorry, you’ll have to get a job first.
Hope you can’t pay the TV-Tax with that card.
+ 1000
Is it fuck.
Ever heard of the black market? They’ll just barter, or the local Pakkee shop will sell them beer & fags and ring it up as sprouts or someshit.
It’s a fucking bollocks idea sold to a fucking gullible arsewipe of a civil servant by some fucking venal IT slimeball. It’ll cost a fortune and it won’t fucking work.
In that case pay them their weekly benefits entirely in sprouts.
SIMPLES !
Do you realise how much of an impact on global warming a statement like that can have?
will it mean I get more dosh?
Hope sprouts eternal?
It will probably be cheaper to pay the money, than build all the new prisons+all the infrastructure you’ll need to run them, to deal with the effects of a half baked scheme like this, of course the likes of Google, Vodaphone etc could pay some fucking tax like the rest of us.
You can’t ring it up as sprouts. It’ll get flagged up when the stocktaking is done.
… and do you suppose that anybody actually does stocktaking in those places?
Don’t worry about the stock taking, Ali down at the carry out will show you how it’s done. The expertese in ‘laundering’ can deal with a few ‘sprouts’.
Yous is just anti business. We entrepreneurs need the chance to earn a living too. The dole isn’t enough to live to the style we want.
Exactly.
Nice idea. We all know what will happen in practice. The corner shop will take the plastic, sell the booze, but put it down as vegan roast chicken.
It’s all down to some crony saying we have a great idea to cut the benefits bill. Chuck us 200 million and all your problems will be solved, along with syphilis and the Queen’s itch.
Exactly the same as Choose and Book, the NHS Spine, …
+1
Another work around, which was discussed in my local pub a few years ago, is: benefit claimant goes with pub landlord to buy £70 of petrol for pub landlord’s car, pays with benefit card, landlord gives benefit claimant £70.
And thus this stunning idea, dreamed-up by some Oxbridge smart-arse with no knowledge of the real world, lies in ruins.
+1
Another work around, which was discussed in my local pub a few years ago, is: benefit claimant goes with pub landlord to buy £70 of petrol for pub landlord’s car, pays with benefit card, landlord gives benefit claimant £70.
And thus this stunning idea, dreamed-up by some Oxbridge smart-ar*e with no knowledge of the real world, lies in ruins.
If you are so clever to dismiss the idea, why don’t we look at the ratio of pub landlords to benefit claimants? Probably something like 10k landloards vs 10million benefits claimants. How does that work then? What sort of car does Mr Landlord own to get through 70million litres of fuel!
Of course I know you are just giving an example, and there will be ways for benefits cheats to get round the card, but if it makes getting access to fags and booze on the taxpayer more difficult then great, I’m all for it.
I hope they find a way to make this work!
Even if the corner shops are tightly controlled, there would be all sorts of bartering and black market rubbish going on.
People still need cash for some things. what about market stalls?
Market stalls are a good example. People on benefits usually have to find cheap sources of food, etc. A card system will limit the choice of those who are trying to be frugal. It will punish those who keep to the rules of the system, and the fiddlers will get round it.
Also, it’s more state intervention on how people live their lives. Hardly libertarian.
Daft idea.
hardly liberterian.
i would rather those on benefits did not watch the tele.
it would wake them up.
…so what about underage fags / drinking? Most offies don’t do it cos they know Trading Standards mystery shop them.
And how many corner shops of the ethnic type do you know that accept cards?
Bloody ‘ell… it’s cash or nothing with them.
Even pubs would be loath to accept these cards…knowing that they’d get done if caught.
Now if all bloggers were. As impressively direct and succinct as you. Sheikh……..
Ther d be no room for. Misunderstandings .
Congrats on the best plain english contribution todate.
You are absolutely right Sheikh.
It’s a scheme dreamed up by someone with absolutely no idea of how people actually libe their lives.
Of course the corner shop will make ‘accommodations’.
Just like those ‘pharmacists’ who will dispense prescription drugs for cash.
It will never work, but then it would never be passed as law. It’s ridiculous.
And how soon before somebody worked out how to clone them – by the thousand ?
And the plain English award goes to…… Sheik-ey baby
of course if it was a type of debit card that required an itemised bill those that abuse it could be caught. better still only make it usable in supermarkets
The supermarkets thing is really anti competitive and unworkable… but I can see where you’re coming from.
This would be simply the best ideai have ever heard , I will totally support the party that introduces this initiative.
I’d prefer it if they could just pick up a selection of healthy food from the cheapest nearby supermarket, and some bus tickets for job interviews.
I shall be giving a speech in the House in due course.
I can give you directions any time, I love telling people where to go.
Where is
DUE COURSE
Gordon??
Is north or south of the mull of kyntyre ??
the Shit House perhaps?
I presume when you say “the House” you mean where you live
Alternatively if it’s a mild evening he could give a speach in the garden shed.
Plenty of room.
You are a complete idiot, but you already know that don’t you.
“A poll commissioned by Demos found that 59% of the country support the move…”
The other 41% being benefit claimaints. Naturellement.
And right on, fashionista, metrosexual people like me.
And people went after me for that 47% speech at a fundraiser. Now that I’m not running for President, listen to me say this– fuck you all very much, the whole lot of you!
Not hard to get around though is it. You buy some one’s food or whatever, they buy your fags and booze.
You need a brain to do that. We are talking about the Chavez underclass.
Underestimate them at your peril.
They may not be intellectuals but I’ll wager they are shrewder and have more common sense than the idiots who dream up these schemes.
where is the shrewdness in watching junk tele.
I am sure there will be a certain percentage of people who will abuse the system as there always will be. That does not mean though that it will not work for 90% of cases, especially if there is some method of monitoring and inspection and severe penalties for abusing the system. And that 90% can save the taxpayer a lot of dosh. They have food stamps in the US, so it is hardly a novel, untested idea.
Stop the BBC jizzing our money on the Guardian jobs section as well please.
This lunch time BBC Midlands Today asked viewers to e mail or telephone them to advise if they were receiving a christmas bonus this year from their employer….now ask yourself why the fuck they would want to know that ?
They also had a piece on young mothers being forced to steal food, nappies for their children etc because that is the only way they can make ends meet and feed their babies due to the harsh benefits cuts that the Scrooge-like Tory party is pushing through. The BBC is now getting beyond a joke
Why does Midlands today need two people to present the news, one to present the sport, and one to present the weather. How can the cost be justified?
The BBC should look closer to home first, and lead by example.
Now look here,we have to invest our money somewhere, where better than keeping our empire alive by employing more and more and more. Who really cares if they don’t have a job to actually do, they work for the BBC, the public sector by another name… isn’t that good enough for everyone.
Two people sounds good value when it takes 150+ to cover a single football match on Sky according to many reports.
Same as bbc northwest.
Beyond a joke the BBC most certainly are and have been for decades. However, one David Cameron thinks they are ‘special’ and as such deserve a free ride.
Anyone know whats happened to the ‘biased bbc’ website – i used to like it
Black op’s at it again.
It would be nice for BBC to ask mothers how much they get each week and on what the money is spent. As for food handouts etc.,is there anywhere near me that gives out food parcels? I won’t look a gifthorse in the mouth.Anything I save on my foodbill will go towards the cost of my new car.
One can get an app’. I’ phone or android apparently.
All the benefitz people I know drink most of the day, smoke, have iPads and cars.
Poverty seems to mean poverty of character.
Very nicely put.
The BBC has been beyond a joke for years!
This is one to watch…. Common sense. Populist. Fair.
JFDI!
Q: Has Wet fart Cam got the nuts?
No chance. I’m too busy organising Julian and Tarquin’s wedding ceremony.
Not new news, but EU funding this outfit explains a lot:
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/279097/Why-is-BBC-funding-Somali-radio-station-
Great man make me proud to be British.
Our only hope
Sadiq Khan – what a pile of shit
he is my MP never seen him canvessing even the local muslim community not keen on him, next election of the tories bother he could be having a difficault election night.
Even got my decent labour mp deselected
“restrictions placed on booze, fags and Sky TV”
Et tu Guido?
coño
So why can’t cast iron Dave support moves with broad support rather than splitting his party of the meaning of a word?
Buggery ?
I really do have to take into account what the centre left and right-on meterosexual shampain literati caring BBC and associated pampered idle cnuts think.
Demos cannot be trusted for patently obvious reasons. Oddly though, Bliar may stand to make money on this.
Max Keiser has mentioned at length how JP Morgan rake it in over in the US with similar scheme.
http://dailybail.com/home/jp-morgans-food-stamp-monopoly-the-more-americans-that-fall.html
Other than being anti-libertarian, this is a cheap con which should be shot down early.
(Disclosure: I am not a lefty)
we are regressing…. junk tv, junk food, junk footie…. dumb stuff…though at,least the footie get ppl moving. but there is junk around the football players.
we are regressing…into dumbhood.
the world of junk. ratner told the truth but …
perhaps the divide is now between quality and no quality. our lives are framed in rubbish and on top we let rubbish enter our bodies. All this dumbhood is unsettling.
no wonder our souls need the RIP thought at departure time.
..
ppl like agent cameron and agent blair do what they want. not for the general good,
I see Tom Watson is demanding that the PM look into the corruption of the Tory council in Queen Eliazabeths Land.
I see Tom Watson is demanding that someone checks his 12 piece KFC bucket to make sure there is not too many leg portions
Any legs he don’t want, he can pass ‘em on over to me, I’m not fussy that way…and please Tom me lad, no questions from you about investigating KFC!
So instead of Jobseekers Allowance paid into your bank every week, they’ll give you a card that’s topped up weekly and all transactions monitored?
What happens when you need to top up the electric meter? Can you go to a cashpoint with it? And if so, why not take out all your money in cash and not leave any paper trail at all?
Never mind electric meters. what about cups of tea, or a tin of beans from the corner chop.
What about ethnic meters?
Most meters like this are now pre-pay card(stops the old crime of jemmying it open to extract the cash etc) which you go to Post Office to top up and then stick in meter..Its easy enough to allow the benefits card to be debited to top up card so you can place in meter
Don’t worry, we are heading for the cashless society anyway. The government will then be able to trace every penny you earn and spend.
why this obsession with knowing everything. it,s like someone wants to be inside someone else,s underpants, all very horrid,
Over our dead bodies.
Your proposition is accepted
Cremation or Burial?
On a practical level, “who pays”.
Banks absorb the costs of such systems for employed people and students who might be employed. but seem unlikely to do the same thing for free for this plan.
Brown came up with similar sorts of bollocks to close post offices, ie that they could all cash their giro’s at natwest for free.
I shall tender for the IT contract that goes with this plan.
What about one for the 650 benefit scroungers that are at the HoC, do they get one as well?
Good idea….they can debit expenses to them…that’ll stop the old “John Lewis List” and claiming for second homers for parents to live in
I can see more than 59% approval for that
and the million NHS scroungers who get paid there.
Can I use it to pay to have a shit in Blackpool pubic toilets
Only things folks do in those in Blackpool is shoot up
Wossa pubic toilet? I don’t like the sound of that.
Plane floor, monsieur.
A place where Ozzie “slashes” his benefits budget.
Contact Mark Oaten he likes shit
Start delivering Beveridge’s vision, to people who only have visions of beverages like “the Buckfast of Champions.” Good luck on that one.
Did someone say beverage?
Westminster Arms, tomorrow evening 4:30 pm; it’s in the Guido Gram. Do keep up.
Unfortunately I will be washing my hair, otherwise I would have loved to have been there.
Such a pity. Just when there’s a length of piano wire all ready.
Vaz will be suggesting that this scheme should be run through his bank account so he can keep an eye on goverment spending.
Dunno what the left are whingeing about in Victorian times the poor had to steal or bend over for a rich gentleman to get food to eat. If you accept charity you can’t comlpain about the conditions it comes with
“using benefits to create a society of strivers”.”
It will make a change from a society of skivers
This ideas should be extended to MPs expenses, and local councillors.
At last, great idea, don’t make it a Gold card though, Amex may get upset.
It’ll never work. Murdoch, Big Tobacco, the supermarkets and beer companies would be bust were it not for idle spongers frittering away my money.
I suggest all welfare recipients who don’t get a job after three months should write 50 thank-you letters a day which are then posted to random taxpayers so that we can for once hear these people say thank-you for paying in so much money to keep them fed, watered, clothed and Sky Plussed.
Now lets have the same thing for education and health care and denationalise the schools the hospitals and the doctors…
I vote Labour so I won’t have to work and live off other peoples money.
Its disgusting, deport all non-white british dole scum, so there will be enough money for us white British dole scum.
I am incapable of working its me backround etc
Sums it up nicely.
Don’t give them money .
Give them food parcels and clothes from Oxfam .
It will upset the ‘Shameless Culture’ who spend the lot on drugs, booze, fags, scratch cards and cable tv. Shame for the ones who don’t belong to the shameless culture.
Strivers v Skivers and the Strivers ain’t got a chance.
Well now, I’ve been bellowing for this for years.
I have actually seen benefits claimants spend money on scratch cards and cigarettes. I can’t afford that luxury and I worked and paid taxes for 50 years.
Food stamps, that’s the answer.
Im all for getting tough with the shirkers but we also have to appl the same rules to members of the HOC and HOL the biggest benefit scroungers of them all start with taken away the subsidy for food and drink for a kick off,also implement 2nd class rail travel as recommended after the 2009 scandal and ban them form employing their own relatives which is a rip off .
Yeah that should do wonders for local businesses that don’t have the privilege of using uncharged card machines.
We suggested this for the Ashton-under-Lyne policy forum. What the government needs to do is procure with suppliers to get a discount like insurers and employee benefits schemes do.
I recently got a voucher from my insurer from Argos to replace a stolen iPod. The conditions excluded phones and computers. I have an employee voucher scheme where I can prepay Asda vouchers at a 5% discount which allows you to buy anything. If you remove low margin products such as cigs, booze, petrol and other consumer electronics which a supermarket sells, then you could probably get a greater discount than 5%.
Say the government preloads £100 worth of Asda vouchers onto the benefit card, they could get say 20% off. Apply this to the millions of benefit claimants and you will be saving billions a year. For clothes, let them spend it in local charity shops and places like Matalan and Primark. Not the standard issue trackies and Nike Air Max from JD Sports.
You would also ensure that feckless families spend their benefit where it’s needed. Not on cigs and booze, then running off crying to the foodbank blaming the nasty Tories for not having enough money.
Forgive me is this was already mentioned. I was unemployed for a while earlier this year. I got my £71.50p paid into my account. Then by direct debit I paid gas, electric, water rates, home contents insurance, an endowment policy….get the picture?
If JSA was only paid via a card then how would folk in a similar position pay for these services? Instead of know-all politician (who know fuck all) trying to sound clever, they should first try living on unemployment benefit for a few months.
Pay your standing orders using the card too…
I don’t need to because I am now employed. Seems a lot of hassle to have to re-arrange bank payments.
Perhaps our esteemed MEP’s and MP’s can lead the way with their expenses (read benefits) with a similar card scheme?
No flying to Europe on economy and claiming expenses for business class anymore! Yes, they should set the ball rolling with a card scheme for expenses. Or will that fall on deaf ears in the halls of Westminster?
farmers country wide will delight in joining the same hand out queue as those who can’t afford to pay their subsidies
It seems it is bigot’s corner today. ‘Fecklessness’ no less.
Maybe the right-wing imbeciles who post this crap might just ask themselves why unemployment has gone up to 2.5 million. Anything to do with an economic crisis or capitalism? No of course not, it’s just ‘inverse Darwinism’ i.e. the idiot who said this subscribes to the idea of Hitler and the American eugenicists that poverty is a product of the individual not the system.
Strange how we have one welfare system for bankers (i.e. pay their gambling debts) and another for the working class. So much for the ‘free’ market.
Meanwhile there are plenty of idiots williing to absorb the crap from the Sun, Express & Mail
Tony isn’t it time we “forgot” about benefit claimants “indirections” and “moved on”? What you say, old chap? :-0
A good idea in principle but of course we will need to ensure it is not abused so there will need to be information held on the card. That would be a photo, fingerprints, an iris scan maybe and then address information of course. Does that sound just a teeny bit like the ID card project that Dave et al cancelled after millions had been spent on it?
I have some sympathy with the idea, but, if I ever end up unemployed, then I expect a modicum of temporary support in return for the taxes I have paid as well as acknowledgement that I am intelligent enough to spend the bounty wisely until restored to employment.
Why not make MPs claim expenses on a card with similarly stringent restrictions. Stop them claiming booze and porn, for a start!
Yeah, ration books is the answer! Go for it.
With the economy in ruins after three decades of Thatcherite bollocks; the electoral support of all three Establishment parties in freefall; and hatred of the mis-ruling class rapidly approaching homicidal levels, I have concluded there is only one thing to do.
Blame the victims and smash the poor.
Benefit Scroungers: I say, Hang the lot of ‘em.
Benefit Claimant: We say: “Hang the lot of ‘em!”
Just think if we all woke up tomorrow and benefit claimants had all been exterminated, just think how much better off we would all be, just think
The BBC can spend handouts of public money on sh*te like Eastenders and Casualty.
The local council can spend tax cash on ultra-generous pensions for its employees and on hiring lots of diversity and equality managers.
The government spends tax cash on useless windmills and opera companies.
Let’s give these organisations cash cards so they can only spend our money wisely, and not waste it as they wish.
That’d save lots more than stopping those on benefits buying a few fags or cans of lager.
If Fabian group DEMOS supports this move, look for what the real motive is. A control agenda – Don’t be fooled.
What Florence replied I am amazed that some people able to make $5375 in 1 month on the internet.Did you look at this web page http://wow42.com
what a load of poo poo sorry its degrading enough as it is on benifits with what they think you can live on …..makes my blood boil there are people out there that are on benifits because they have a long term illness or for other ligitamat reasons they probably feel it bad enough they cant support thier familys without going to a supermarket and giving a welfare card over to pay for thier shopping how bloody embarrasing you might as well put people all in orange boiler suits and put on benifits on the back of it !