The words are the regular BBC, soft soap, tear-jerking, sob story:
The family receive a total of £30,284.80 a year in benefits - well over the £26,000 cap proposed by the government. But, says Raymond, "If these proposals go through we will take a massive hit to our finances - and it's not as if we could move into a smaller or cheaper premises.
"I see eight people here having to choose between eating or heating."
Oh dear, this is terrible - how can the wicked coalition government inflict such suffering on this poor family!
Look again - the BBC provide a handy guide to the families expenditure - which includes:
Sky TV subscription - £15 per week
Mobile phones (plural) - £32 per week
...and a weekly shopping bill including 24 cans of lager, 200 cigarettes and a large pouch of tobacco. That's nearly £100 a week on booze and fags alone! And I'm guessing these aren't essentials to life?
After the cap is introduced this family will lose £82.40 per week. Seems to me that just cutting down on booze and fags plus moving to freeview telly would go most of the way to closing that gap - no need to turn the heating off or starve the kids, is there!
Bring on the welfare reform - if this is typical (and the BBC suggests that it is) there's plenty of room for savings without kids going without food or grandma dying of cold.
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1 comment:
Not only does their expenditure include such luxuries, but they had their last child while jobless and the other children have absent parents that aren't contributing to their upkeep. I suspect the BBC chose to report on this family in particular precisely because they knew it would cause a storm. BBC journalists are no different from any other journalists, after all - nothing like a bit of sensation to up the readership.
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