Benefit bashers are likely to be shocked that the annual cost of the Queen dwarfs the amount spent on benefits for long term unemployed people – but the figures reveal it to be the truth.
In January 2011 just 4,200 people had been claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) for over 5 years, representing 0.3% of the total number of unemployed claimants and costing around £14 million a year. Astonishingly Britain’s biggest benefit scrounger, the Queen, costs over £38 million a year, almost three times the amount spent on long term claimants.
The total annual cost for long term claimants per person is staggeringly low, at just 28 pence – less than a penny a week. Whilst every penny does indeed count at the moment, is this really worth the endless hours spent deriding and denouncing benefit scroungers? You must be a right tight-arsed bastard if you think so.
Cunning Daily Mail readers will be quick to point out that this figure does not include Housing Benefit, the benefit which is used to subsidise the buy to let industry. But even if every claimant were claiming Housing Benefit, and not all are, they still wouldn’t cost as much as the Queen. And the Queen lives rent free in a fucking palace which occupies a huge chunk of some of the most valuable real estate in the world. And she’s got a castle and a train*.
Even those unemployed for over two years do not particularly cost tax payers much money. The latest figures reveal that 117,000 people have been claiming Jobseekers Allowance for over two years. This costs around £400 million a year, or £8 each. Add Housing Benefit to the mix and the long term unemployed probably cost everyone about a quid a month.
Clearly not everyone who has been unemployed over two years is a scrounger, but it’s probably fair to say that all scrounger have been claiming for over two years – after all if you can’t last two years on Jobseeker’s Allowance than your approach to being feckless and lazy is somewhat, well a bit feckless.
Even if half that figure are actively avoiding work then benefit scroungers cost less per month than a copy of the Daily Mail. The truth is that long term unemployed people represent a varied group of people, many of whom have lives that few would envy.
A surprising number of street homeless people are long term claimants of JSA. Many more long term unemployed people have mental health conditions. A few are indeed addicted to alcohol or drugs,others will have criminal records. By and large these people are not a group that employers are rushing to hire.
By far the largest group of long term unemployed people however are those living in areas of high unemployment where there simply aren’t any jobs. Visit any centre for unemployed people and you will find scores of people who are looking hard for a job, any job, but they just aren’t there.
As people become older and out of work for longer the difficulty becomes even more pronounced. Despite this government handing hundreds of millions to private welfare to work companies, there is barely any quality training available to long term unemployed people. Private sector parasites running the Work Programme hoover up the cash and fob people off with pointless motivation workshops or mock interviews. Try asking if you can train to be a plumber or gas fitter and they will barely contain their laughter as they hand you a three month old newspaper.
Jobseeker’s Allowance is just £70 a week. Most people only claim for short periods in between jobs. Some find it harder to find work and are on the benefit longer than others. Many people who are vulnerable, homeless, unwell, or whose lives have collapsed around them depend on JSA to survive.
All are human beings. All are someone’s son or daughter, quite possibly someone’s mother or father or even just someone’s friend. Many are unofficial carers or volunteers, some aspiring musicians or artists, some involved in local politics. Everybody has value and at a quid a month then the benefits system, which provides this protection for the long term unemployed, is good value for everybody.
*Campaign group Republic estimates that the true cost of the Queen, when security and other expenses are taken into account, is £200 million a year.
the void 
I already had the figures for out-of-work benefit claimants – in February 2011 there were 1,993,980 who had been claiming for more than 5 years.
So that means that roughly 1,989,780 of those aren’t on JSA (if we assume not much change between January and February 2011)
i.e. they’re on sickness-related benefits (Incapacity, ESA etc.) – they’re claiming to be long-term sick, or disabled.
Let’s round it up to 2 million people.
The Disabled Living Foundation states that there are roughly 2.1 million disabled people of working age who are unable to work due to their disability.
So that adds up then.
It just means that our government’s focus on “long term unemployed” is a transparent & callous attack on people who are too disabled to work. Awesome.
(For a more detailed analysis of these figures I did last year : http://soylentdave.com/2011/10/scrounging/ )
“For just a pound a month you can keep someone in this country from being forced to beg on the streets. For less than the cost of a middle-market newspaper you can make sure an unemployed person can sleep in a bed in their own house instead of being forced to sleep in a cardboard box in a doorway. Please, next time Outraged of Orpington writes in demanding welfare is slashed for ‘scroungers’ remember the human stories behind the headlines, and don’t forget the old saying ‘but for the grace of God go I'”
A pound a month? Seems like bloody good value to me…
We should all take a fig-leaf 🙂 out of this dude’s book 🙂
I was about to share this on FB & twitter when I realised what you’ve left out.What about Income Support? I imagine (unlike the 90s which I spent most of on UB) most people who manage to avoid being forced into the labour market who aren’t on the sick are on IS. And like the credible Hulk I want to back up my rage with facts and documented sources. http://weknowmemes.com/2012/06/the-credible-hulk/
IS is slowly being phased out, replaced with JSA for parents with kids over 5 – not many groups qualify now, more info at: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/BenefitsTaxCreditsAndOtherSupport/On_a_low_income/DG_10018708
Just looked up the figure for IS claimants with duration of claim 5 years & over for February 2011, it’s 858,380, so this does significantly change the numbers. Damn I wanted to use your figures in FB arguments with Daily Mail readers but I can already hear them going “what, you didn’t count all the single mums?”
God Enslave The Queen
#shirkfare for all Royals or send ’em back to Germany…good riddance
have known this for some time but not only her how much is it costing the country to allow our other so called Aristo’s (or is that Arseholes) to Avoid paying their way and avoiding Tax
Who cares how long someone claims benefits for? If they aren’t causing harm loss (and dopn’t bother arguing that includes benefits) or injury to another then so what? Everyone in society benefits from someone else: politicians, private businesses, aristocrats, almost anyone with an expense account. Capitalism is the problem, not how some people within it live. Even having to discuss this issue is getting tedious now, the constant having to almost apologise for people doing what they quite reasonably have to in order to survive. And what’s the alternative? Starve in the street like stray dogs?
A lot of ‘jobs’ employed people do can be harmful to society, the environment, etc. Why do people have to have a value placed on their lives, with the poor being ‘worth’ the least? Somebody with no ‘job’ could be doing more good in their own life and community, than somebody who takes home money for their ‘work’, let’s say a banker. If you are CEO of a major world bank you could have billions. That money could pay for hospitals, schools, public transport that doesn’t break down all the time. When a government has a few billion spare it prefers to spend it on weapons.
The long term benefit scroungers are the aristocracy/nobility/monarchy.
Their scrounging goes back generations.
(Note, I’m not going to say what some people on some sites have been saying. The French Revolution was pretty indiscriminate. Each time a new lot of leaders took over, they guillotined the previous leaders, and were later guillotined by the next bunch. Wives of aristocrats, as women, were property of their husbands, and were trapped in their own way. In the UK if a man burgles a house, is caught but then absconds, we do not jail his wife ‘to take his place’. The Revolutionaries ignored the contradictions in demanding liberty and equality, while continuing colonialism and imperialism and slavery. They said the brotherhood of man stuff was never meant to apply to BLACK men, only white men were rational and civilised and equal and free.
Priests got lynched, just for being priests. Even for praying for all of the people getting massacred. Wives and children were loaded into the tumbrils and guillotined in huge numbers. They guillotined even tiny kids and babies. Children’s heads could be sliced in half; because they were smaller and struggled more. Adults who disagreed with the council of rulers or argued for free speech and democracy, or had an independent voice or wanted to remain neutral on the council, could get executed. As in the Russian Revolution and other revolutions, one of the first factions to get executed within the revolutionaries, were the anarchists.
The men operating the guillotine had a quota to fill, and they started to run out of imprisoned aristocrats. So they grabbed random people off the street, common criminals, ‘suspected foreign spies’, doctors who tried to help the condemned, anyone ‘too intellectual’, and ‘insane people’ and those the Nazis later called ‘social undesirables’. They killed politicals whose political argument was not particularly related to anything too controversial. In particular the courts sentenced to death the SERVANTS AND SLAVES of condemned/executed people. This could be at any rank of ‘owner’, from the monarchy down to middle class people, even the servants of bakers. At Nantes, the government erected
a guillotine, but found it was too slow at getting through all the people they wanted to kill. So 30,000 men and women, including ordinary working class people and servants, elderly, and children, were tied up and tied together in groups. They were forced onto leaking old barges which were towed into the middle of the river and sunk. Some were thrown or pushed in the river when the executioners had run out of boats. At the end of all the period’s revolutions [the ones before the Paris Commune and the 1968 ‘revolution year’!], Napoleon decided to be an emperor and dictator. The poor were still poor. [In the novel ‘The Children Of Men’, by P.D. James, the elderly get the Nantes-style Final Solution] That’s not to say there was nothing good about the revolution or the principles behind it. But its founders would be horrified at the current Sarkozy-esque racist interpretation of secularism and freedom.)
If you are rich and own half a county, you can certainly pay more tax. If you are eating out of a bin, you cannot afford to pay ANY. This should be obvious to anyone who has scraped an F in GCSE Maths.
Minus numbers work in a maths class, but not in a real person’s life. If a person on benefits got say £5000 but was charged £900 or more in council tax, while having to use their dole to cover the shortfall between their HB and their rent. That leaves you in minus figures, and that is before factoring in bills, food, travel, clothes, and everything else. If the costs of living wipe out the pittance they give you, if you have your benefit reduced or stopped, or if you’re charged additional taxes, then you will go under – or go into debt, from borrowing from wherever.
If you get more and more debts, you’ll never be able to pay them off.
The big scroungers are the politicians. And plenty of figures in ‘big business’, who don’t have proper jobs. The Government get desperate. They create fake made-up jobs, to get the workshy and unemployable
(lacking in any social skills) into what might look like work if you tilt your head and squint. These non-jobs have silly titles, such as ‘Secretary of State for Works and Pensions’, ‘Home Secretary’, ‘Justice Secretary’ (A typo. Should read ‘Injustice’),and so on.
Parasites living off the taxes of ordinary people, the state-funded imported irrelevancy called Lizzie Windsor, and her dysfunctional family,
are maintaining a centuries-old tradition of people getting to be in charge simply because of who their parents were. They do no real work, and travel around the world doing, well, mostly smiling and waving.
Shop dummies can do the same, if fitted with a motor. And they don’t need a private jet, they could be broadcast via webcam. There are any number of housing estates this problem family could be relocated to, as their current accommodation is too large and expensive, and it is costing ordinary people money.
The army and Anglican Church are headed by Lizzie Windsor. If you believe in none of these, you may as well swear allegiance to a teapot.
We don’t need a monarchy or aristocracy, and we don’t need a ‘national church and faith’. Atheists and Hindus are part of the UK too. Loyalty is not some meaningless parroted oath. It is not what you say, it is what you do and how you live that counts. People like the EDL leadership can truthfully repeat the full oath to the Queen, God and country, but with very different meanings and intent from those of other people.
People can’t be citizens if they refuse to take the oath to the Queen and the Country (they are now allowed to affirm the same, leaving out the God part). Or they must take it, and if they do not believe in these things, their first act as new citizens is to be forced to perjure themselves. A truly positive and uplifting start to their life in Britain! Loyalty to the Queen, Christian God, and country is not required of British civilians who are existing citizens.
The image of ‘British’ is implied to be somebody white. I saw a form today, and once I had deciphered the small print, I found out that it is not allowed to be ‘Welsh’ and ‘Black’. It is not allowed to be ‘Afro-Caribbean and Scottish’. In the category of ‘British’, the only option was ‘White’. And there was no box for ‘Middle Eastern’, and no box for ‘Half Asian and half Black’. (Ooh no, printing that would encourage even more miscegenation!!!! shock horror!)
There was similarly no category for white American athletes who have moved to the UK and taken British citizenship. There was a box marked ‘white Eastern European’, but this would only work for groups like Polish-Americans and Russian-Americans. And only if they had no ‘other’ known ancestry. There are at least two people in this region whose ethnic group is ‘Native American’, both are from different tribes though. For Romany people, who are technically Indo-European and from northern India, they fit closest to the category of ‘Asian’ but not everyone would agree that they are in this group. And how would one categorise Barack Obama or Tiger Woods? Most people are very mixed anyway, unless they are in the royal family or similar.
One encouraging thing is that there is not a specific RULE against royals marrying a black person. But the monarch and heir must be Christian and Anglican. Given Harry’s choice of (party) attire, when not being naked, it is probably unlikely that he will choose to marry somebody who the EDL would not want in the country. On the other hand there is hope yet, maybe somebody royal will a) Date or marry
a non-white person, or b) Come out (!), or c) Deliberately leave the royal family. (As for option B, there have been loads of ‘secret’ gay monarchs in British and European history.) [Option c): When I only knew the basic facts, I thought the abdication and the ‘Wallis Simpson love story thing’ was inspiring. Then, the other year, I found out they were racists. And there was a postscript to the story: Wallis Simpson by the time she married the ex-King, was no longer really into him, and was in love with another man who she really wanted to be with: her ex-husband. They wanted to get back together but were not allowed to.]
On a recent documentary about the EDL, the EDL did ‘vox pops’. People were asked what they thought of as defining ‘British’. They said (or the EDL only wanted to interview pro-EDL people) it means a white person. A lot of the EDL said you can’t be black and British.
I have devised a fair test, that the EDL ought to support and should be the first to undertake. The EDL must stand against a normal domestic fridge (Yes! Fridges from Japan and Korea can compete too!). Whichever of the two is whiter, gets to stay in Britain.
I have always known they cost us dearly in more ways than one. I am afraid that photos being taken of Kate – being referred to as ‘grotesque’ is not nearly as grotesque as the way in which vulnerable people are treated day in and day out, and by ‘Royal Assent’. Roll on a Republic.
60 years on benefits! I doff me virtual cap to you, Ma’am. 🙂
Buckingham Palace is the largest council house in Britain!
Yeah, and as such, Her Majesty should have to pay a bedroom tax based on how many excess bedrooms she has in the palace to what she actually needs. Wonder if she gets the winter fuel allowance? dont think it would go far in heating the palace though.
I dont know how she had the devil to give royal assent to the “welfare reform bill” knowing she was signing many of her loyal serfs death warrant, and knowing how much she scrounges off the state!
“Wonder if she gets the winter fuel allowance?”
Her Majesty (doffs virtual cap 🙂 ) has already tried that one 🙂 :
Queen asked government for help with heating bills
Off With Her Head!!!
One is not amused!!
Do I give a fuck?
🇬🇧👸🎩🔫
👣
👣
👣
Well, maybe this will amuse you Ma’am (doffs virtual cap 🙂 ) :
Kate Middleton Topless 🙂
summary justice, sounds nazi like ,oops have i descended to invoking godwins law. ultra left nonsense.
It is a fucking disgrace that the poorest people in this shit-hole of a CUNTtry are having the bread stolen from the table and denied shelter from the elements by the “sanctions” imposed DfuckingWP and the parasitical third-party “provider” cunts whilst toff cunts go on living in luxury. The CUNTry is a fucking disgrace!
The WP has one massive problem and it is not the unemployed,it is this monster called the WP. Talk about feckless,what is the purpose of it,as a long term unemployed I look forward to being assigned to the WP,JCP promised training and support as all of there budget was suspended and re-routed to the WP,Bullshit there is no training or support just the constant mantra of “You need to find a job” great what help can you supply? We are not legally required to supply anything under this contract,we get a small attachment fee,you need to find a job! We need the outcome to get paid!
Once again what is the purpose of these feckless,box checking toads!
The WP – Im now into the second year on it and the third “provider”. All they do is insist I go in every 2 days to sit in a big room and look for jobs on their computers. They assign a target of the number of jobs I must apply for on each session and the number of employers I must phone to see if they have any vacancies. I am warned that if I dont apply for 6 jobs in one session and phone 10 employers, that I will be recommended to the JCP for sanctioning – for failure to engage with the program. There is no training, no carrot, just a very oppressive environment with high pressure advisors that do nothing but instill hatred for the whole system, as all they are bothered about is getting me into some shitty NMW “job” so that they get paid their obscene placement fees from IDS and his shower of cunts.
Now, if I dont get a job in the next 40 weeks, I will face the Community Action Programme, ie mandatory unlimited community service combined with mandatory jobsearch for 40 hours a week, with up to 3 years of sanctions for failure to comply.
Heil – Hitler!
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Reblogged this on Far be it from me –.
Yes they do cost a lot, but they do also do a lot for the country, and it isn’t as if they sit around doing nothing! People come this country, who in turn bring money into the country to pay for those who sit at home and do nothing by choice.
Dabbit,you Ignorant cunt!
Abuse too, well done jray – explains a lot
Pleb.
You can’t spell the word then, only the short version?
They don’t bring in anything for you,silly cunt,unless you’re one of the plebs that lick their arses so you can get an occasional doggy treat.
Erm, well well what can I say Chimes? Obviously shows why you are anti royal, have you thought about going back to school for an education?
A bachelor of arts degree from Reading is more than enough for me to call you a cunt. Feigning intelligence just because you know that “pleb” is the abbreviated form of the word “plebian” hardly constitutes a sound defence against being called an arse-licking pleb. I think the only applicable letters that could possibly follow your name are C U N T.
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william cobbett wrote 2 centuries back ,that is tells much about a country “that has a royal mint and a national debt” plus ca change. the more things change,the more they stay the same. shame that this site so often descends to godwins law and belittles those of differing opinions ,instead of good honest intellectual debate.
the queen more than earns her money. the amount she bring in to the uk more than covers her wages and your benenfits you lazy bastards.
Stephen Ketchell – provide evidence to support your statement
Dabbit and S Ketchell – Don’t print misinformation. What does this appalling profligate the Queen do that helps pay for her outrageous benefits. Have a look at the site of William Gladys for the truth. Just key in the name.As for Dabbit’s comment about education what impertinence. You will find that a lot of the anti-royalist comments.come from people who have degrees, myself included.
“Jobseeker’s Allowance is just £70 a week.”
Actually, for under 25’s it’s only £56 per week, because apparently that huge mass of young people, who can’t get into the job market because they’re well-educated but have little work experience, are worth less as human beings than old working-class people whose skills have been made redundant by automation / technological-unemployment.
Tourism revenue
Unemployed contribution £0
Queen contribution £500,000,000
No contest…….
unemployed nil? take another look. many unemployed have and do contribute through voluntary work, including myself who was in 1984, awarded lifetime de facto world champion status in recognition of my dance skills and without need of competition, (so bringing in thousands of visitors from abroad to see and meet me as, in their words, the worlds greatest ever athlete). i have contributed other things to society over the years, entirely voluntarily and often whilst out of work, but the aforementioned is the one which is most relevant here as tourism is mentioned.
Implying people come to see the Leech and not the buildings of heritage, when they will practically never get to see her.
Adding to what adeclose said: http://www.ivr.org.uk/ivr-volunteering-stats
Reblogged this on kickingthecat.
Akisme….. What nonsense! Let us see where you get that absurd Queen’s contribution from!!!??? Incidentally the sum of £38 millions for the Queen is in fact way under the actual cost which logs in at £200 millions plus. If we were democratically allowed to actually see and audit the TOTAL financial expenditure and income of these royal scroungers I am sure you would support the truth and stop adulating these appalling royal profligates.As for Tourism -If ALL the royals suddenly kicked the gold bucket, the tourists would still visit to see the buildings and so on. Lego Windsor by the way was a lot more popular that the castle.
I actually like the Queen,but you hear a lot about family’s with loads of kids taking the Piss out of the benefit system…Why do we pay for all the minor Royals protection? If they want to go on their Holidays let them pay for their own security.
jray – Well don’t! I hate her and ALL the royals. Please do not deflect the problem of major profligate royals on to the minor royals. They are all major scroungers.
p.s. all you royal supporters out there. the queen has done more to harm her subjects (you and i) than you realise. almost every bill passed in parliament must be put before her for her royal assent. if she withholds her consent and refuses to sign then the bill does not become law. it is the queen who has rubber stamped the policies which has seen her looked after whilst the very poorest of her subjects are hounded into prison without evidence, fair trial or any right of appeal, (wherein the defendant is guilty unless proven innocent, anything entered in the defendants favour is thrown out and the police must by law withhold anything in the defendants favour), or made to choose between being sectioned, or actually committing crime.. a country where people are driven to suicide, a country where even the dead can be labelled as criminals without any proof whatsoever.. a country whereby those lucky enough to own their own little homes thanks to a small inheritance, can lose their home because it is a mobile home on wheels, not a houseboat, a country where the dwp can withhold benefit, issue overpayment notices and civil penalties and shutdown housing and council tax benefit with an email, based on fictional earnings, without warning, and invite you to supply them your information after the fact whilst starving you of funds and providing no apology and no compensation when they have been proven wrong. a country where those struggling to help themselves and others at the bottom of the pile are sneered at denied support, even by those whose job it is, and a country wherein politicians can lie to each other and the public at large, even when making statements or in debate in westminster or the welsh assembly without fear of any sanction. your precious queen has presided over all this mess, and the changes to the law that has enabled all of it.
Dabbit -Why are you trying to defend the indefensible? You are talking through your derriere and need to get in the fresh air and get some actual facts about these appalling profligate royals. They have exempted themselves from the Freedom of Information Act, an act that YOU (if you live in Britain) has no choice but to comply with. Perhaps it is class divisiveness selected cover-ups and undemocratic royal privilege that you are supporting How odd if that is the case.
The monarchy has a net benefit to the country, over £1.1bn a year.
Welfare is one of the biggest spending demands for governments. Depending on your definition, it accounts for a quarter or over a half of government spending.
A billion pounds will buy 147,000 state pensions or 300,000 jobseeker’s allowances for a year, according to Department for Work and Pensions forecasts for 2015/16. Alternatively it could fund 2.3 million people’s disability living allowance per annum – three quarters of the total.
Health is a huge eater-up of funds. Think tank the King’s Fund says that £1bn will pay to run the NHS across the UK for nearly three days. Alternatively it would cover all diagnostic imaging – MRI scans, x-rays – for a year with a bit left over for other jobs. Or another way would be to fund 26,000 nurses or 12,000 hospital doctors for a year.
Your logic is unsound