Should us the workers have the right to withold our tax to benefit scroungers that smoke and drink?

Question

I am sick to death with paying benefits to benefit scrounger that spend money on smoking and drinking to excess when us the tax payers cannot afford it, especially when they complain they cannot afford to pay for their children!!!

I am 60yrs of age and have never been on benefits, neither has my 3 son's or any of our family.
My father always said 'you cannot have what you cannot afford' that includes children

Answer 1

I agree why should we have to pay for other peoples brats

Answer 2

No doubt many a smoker will jump onto this question saying all the tax they pay keeps the health service going but i don't agree with that argument.
So much tobacco comes via the black market now so none is paid there.

I think you have a point in that maybe we should be able to have a say on what our tax is spent on, only this week there was yet another lad with 15 children to 3 mothers,not one had a job and all on benefits.

The government just isn't tough enough on lots of people, shouldn't there be a limit to how much one family can claim for? How can the government justify it when some families are claiming £30,000 a year?
It just shouldn't be possible.

The most annoying one for me is where someone has been found guilty of claiming benefit fraud, and they are let off with a small fine, sometimes thousands less than they claim each year.

For me, guilty should mean a spell in prison and no future claims allowed, period.

Answer 3

Nice thought mate - maybe the scroungers should be paid in vouchers so that they can't get fags (evidently more than one is OK!) and booze.

On the other hand, some people are forced (NHS workers made redundant becuse the govt keep screwiing up) onto benefits and a cig (I wrote *** but it was *** out! - come on Yahoo a *** in the UK is not what you are ***ing it for) and a drink is the only pleasure they get.

You are a fortunate one if you have never had to resort to support

Answer 4

No.

I can see why it pi**es you off but that's the price of living in our modern society. We have a benefits system to support people who would otherwise suffer financial hardship. I believe that the majority of impoverished people spend their money sensibly on food, housing and their children.

Yes, some spend their money on things that you or I may not approve of. That is their choice. It may be the wrong choice according to you to spend money on drink or cigarettes. Unfortunately if you deny this (relatively small) percentage of people the right to spend their money as they please, you set a precedent which undermines the rights of the rest of the population.

Should we reduce the benefits of overweight people since they clearly buy more food than they need? If cigarettes are an 'unnecessary' expenditure, how about CDs, holidays, a TV license?

Consequently I am happy to allow a few people to get away with spending stupidly or 'scrounging' to protect the larger number of vulnerable people (and perhaps more importantly, their children) who depend upon such benefits and are working bloody hard to get themselves out of the poverty trap.

Answer 5

this just isn't how things work. are you seriously saying that people on benefits should be told what to spend their money on? i work in the benefit system, and while it isn't perfect, it is just an amount of money paid to a person to live on. what they do with it is up to them. i'm not sure how anybody can smoke and drink to excess on £57.00 a week. where do you draw the line with the nanny state? do we stand over people in shops and make them wear badges like the nazis made the jews wear, to id them as benefit claimants? don't think i'd like to live in a facist state. could i also point out that the people you are speaking of are also paying tax through smoking and drinking. withholding tax for something you don't agree with is also pretty hairbrained, where do you stop with that. i don't agree with the war in iraq particularly but i can't tell them i'm stopping one penny of my tax for that and still pay for everything else, thats not how your tax is spent. you would also take money away from the nhs, roads etc. i'm assuming you use them?

Answer 6

you do have a say, it called politics

unfortunately, a society is only as healthy as the poorest member of that society.

if social care, and all the other things we need to pay for, was an easy task, then there would be no need for politics... but its a bad job, robbing peter to pay Paul, with no good answer, just a compromise, and a poor one at that.

you have the chance to vote in politicians, who unfortunately like to jump around the media like sycophantic fools, but, they are your idiots, they choose what the money they rob from you in tax's is spent on.

don't moan about the odd scrounger, because the majority of the poor are OK, and need what they get. but the minority seem to stand out more. if you want to choose the way your money is spent, then read the policies of the parties more closely and when they u-turn on their policies, revolt, peacefully.... but when the majority of folks can't be bothered to vote, then we really do get just what we deserve.

Answer 7

In actual fact you don't pay that much to scroungers BUT I completely agree in sentiment.
My husband and I have 4 kids, he's in the forces and works bloody hard to support us(I do the old fashioned at home Mum stuff). We support our family ourselves and it grieves me that there are families of 15 who don't do a stroke and yet appear to have a better standard of living than those of us who do it 'right'.
Unfortunately living in an enlightened society where we undertake to look after the weaker members who can't look after themselves means that we are open to being de-frauded by the dishonest. It's a sad reflection on society but there it is, and it's not going to stop in a hurry I'm afraid-not until the government stop sitting on their laurels and change the system instead of sweeping it's problems under the carpet.
This probably isn't going to help your temperament but we lose far more to completely fraudulent claims than fags and booze and the government have actually reduced the number of fraud departments and officers that investigate and tied their hands with so much red tape that they've made them largely ineffective.

Answer 8

Although at the present i am on benefits as a carer looking after my wife i had always worked and paid my taxes up until a couple of years ago.28 years of paying taxes on wages and i smoke and drink and fuel my car so i have probably paid more taxes than you.
I can see your point as it used to annoy me as well and you can also add sky tv to the list as they all seem to have that as well...
if you don't pay your taxes it is an offence isn't it

Answer 9

What they don't get is that a lot of nasty habits(except Sunday drives) are addictions, and it's not as simple as prohibiting them. Why do people still do drugs, even though they're illegal? A lot of people have either physical or psychological addictions to them. Liberals know about addictions, and yet a lot of them don't take them into account in things like this....or maybe they do, and that's why they raise the taxes, they want to shamelessly take advantage of someone's bad situation. they do tend to do that at times.

Answer 10

ok...well, I see your point, but as one person pointed out...cigarettes and alchol are already taxed to hell, more so in comparison to other countries

(I'm not on benefits, just to clarify)

my second point is that, alcohol and nicotine are addictive as you know, alcohol addiction is actually an illness, people need help to break these addictions...

and not all smokers or alcoholics may have started out on benefits, they may have fell on hard times and well, the addiction continues

sure, don't get me wrong, there ARE people out there that don't give a damn about wanting to quit and may not care that their kids are suffering....but not everyone is like that

Answer 11

The majority of people who live well below the poverty line are single mothers with children. The fact that these women must choose between staying home with children or going to work and making a minimal wage is a moot question. The fact remains that they make so very little money that drinking and smoking are not really an option. Calculate out what a person can afford that works 40 hours a week for min wage and spends 500 a month for rent. Now please give your head a shake and quit blaming the victim.