If you have read any of my previous posts, and I started by saying ‘today’s
generation,’ you would probably respond with ‘not again.’ But this one is slightly different. Although today’s modern generation of decision-makers are responsible, I have no idea how it was forty years ago, back in my less complicated times.
My wife and I were out last weekend, and speaking with friends, the subject got round to today’s generation and benefit claimants and systems. Before I go on, I don’t quite understand why the unemployment figure is the highest it has been for some time, and yet there are so many vacancies that can’t be filled even when the money on offer is quite good. I’m still wondering whether to believe the story that fruit and vegetable producers were offering £30 per hour to pick their crops down Pershore/Worcester way?
But I know of people who live their lives on benefits and do what they have to do to get them, yet work part-time for cash in hand. It’s all wrong, but something that will never change. My personal feelings are that it is too easy for SOME people to live on benefits, and especially if they do a bit of part-time work for cash in hand. What do we do about that? I’m not sure, but as always, we have some clever people out there who work in this sector who could or maybe should come up with the ideas to sort it out.
So when the conversation started last weekend, I was expecting to hear much the same being said, but I got it wrong. The story centred on a friend of theirs who is a live-in carer up North and who cares for a lady living in a private house owned by the care company and who needs care 24/7, and that in itself is a shame.
However, it came to light that the lady needing care is on benefits, and she gets close to £100,000 a year in payments, not quite but close. Admittedly everything she needs is taken from the money, so rent, bills, mobility car payments, food and anything else, but nearly six figures and, in my opinion, is ridiculous. It’s £8,000 per month, and as part of the rent money, she gets the care. Let’s do some quick sums and if her rent (and bills) was as much as £3,000, a car £500, (probably less) food £500 (possibly more) per month, she still has £4,000 to spend. Add another £2,000 in miscellaneous bits and pieces, she still has £2,000 spare money to spend, and that is more than a lot of working families have. Yes, she has a disability, and yes, that is sad and a life that no one wants, but why does she need so much money? And admittedly she has a lot of money in her savings account as it can’t all be spent, and it is allowed. But she has more money in her savings account than most, yes this time I will say ‘most’ working-class families have – and that can’t be right either?
Not only do these people have to give care, but they also have to look after her
financial affairs. They have to make sure that she doesn’t lose the benefits, so they have to go and buy things that she doesn’t need, the carers have to get things or replace items in the house that is not required, and they are told the money must be spent. It is all public money, and in that respect, no one seems to care too much, but there is more.
The lady doing the care work has two sons who are now grown up and working, but they both had medical issues when at school age, and she needed to be on call in case she was required to help them, and as the husband had a well-paid job, she never claimed any benefits, as they were able to cope okay. And now the sons are grown up and working; she decided to go back to work.
The frustrating thing is since going back to work, she has found out that because she had these years away from working to be there for her sons, and because she wasn’t paying any contributions from wages, she will not be entitled to a full state pension when she retires.
She started working after she left school and had approximately fifteen years off work for her sons, and remember she did this to look after them when she was needed, and she occasionally was. So because of that, because she didn’t rely on the Government systems, no care to help, no benefits to help financially, this is how she gets treated!
If I have understood this right when you live a life on benefits, credits go towards your state pension, so when it comes to retirement age, you will get your pension – and let’s be honest, if you have lived a life on benefits, I am sure you will be just fine at retirement age because the Government aren’t just going to give up on you and stop supporting you are they?
So you can claim from the Government all your life without lifting a finger to work, with whatever ability, however, if you have worked some of your years and taken time off to support your family, at no cost to our Government, and without getting any financial support from the benefits system, you will be punished when you are older and when you want to retire – now that is all wrong, and that is another aspect of today’s modern society.
But here is the part I can’t get my head around. The lady in care gets around £8,000
per month, which is probably a few thousand too much; imagine if that wasted money was put to better use and was put into the pension pot of one of the people who has been financially punished and who helps to look after her nearly every week of the year, stop wasting her benefits on stuff she and the house doesn’t need, and look after the genuine people in the country like her carer, and that is how my little logical mind works. Still, it never stops me from thinking that public money is a bottomless pit.
I am okay, there is no anxiety in my life at the moment, and a lot of this still relates to what I can and cannot control. If I can control it and I get it wrong, that is usually when I start to let it win, but as an example. I have been contacted by a debt recovery company chasing over £1,000 in unpaid council tax on my flat that I rent out, funnily enough to people on benefits. But it is not my problem. After speaking to the Letting Agency that looks after my flat, they tell me that the Council Tax Department haven’t been talking to the Universal Credit Department and vice versa, so there has been some confusion and the tax has not been paid. That is their fault, and their problem, but it will be sorted out on Monday by the Letting Agency that I pay to look after my flat, and I have done nothing wrong.
I won’t have to find £1,000, it is not my problem, and it will be rectified, so there is no worry. If there is no worry, there is no anxiety, and all is good. I certainly can’t do anything about it on a Saturday, as local councils are yet to get involved in the seven day a week world everyone else seems to live in! We had a good night out last night with old friends, a nice favourite curry and a few beers accompanied by laughs and fun, and at times you can’t ask for much more; being happy is a great way to keep anxiety away.
Whilst this is how my life is, I can understand why people could get very anxious over such a situation, especially if they didn’t have the £1,000 and thought it was their responsibility to pay it, but also on a Saturday when they will have a potentially anxious forty-eight-hour wait to get it sorted out. These large establishments should be getting these things right, and it is something that will have to happen every day and week many times over. Yes, we all make mistakes, me more than most, but surely it can’t be that difficult with the IT systems they must have in place.
And so if we were to feel bad, we need to divert our minds onto something we enjoy, admittedly we can’t be eating curry, drinking beer and laughing with friends all day, so we need to find other pastimes to help our train of thought, as you may know, one of my favourites is exactly what I am doing now and writing. Maybe we could take a leaf out of Olympic diver Tom Daley’s book and do some knitting?
I think it is great that he has happily admitted that he knits to help with his mindfulness and restlessness. These two situations can be associated with anxiety and other mental health issues. Mindfulness because it means living in the moment, and that a lot of the time, that is what we need to do to help our minds; it even includes using breathing techniques to help with our problems, and they can help. Restlessness because that can easily happen to people who struggle with anxiety. Not knowing how to cope or what to do can lead to restlessness. In fact, if you look at synonyms for restlessness, you will find that one of them is ‘anxiety.’ So many connections!
Knitting is an outlet, it is being creative and so fulfilling to those who do it, but then
the same can apply to anything we do, DIY, gardening, a jigsaw, cleaning or cooking. We don’t have to find something complicated and difficult, we need to do something that we can concentrate on and essentially something we also enjoy, and Tom Daley has basically told the male world, it’s okay to knit, and so I wonder how many men will take it up as a hobby. I won’t as it just doesn’t appeal to me, but if it helps, give it a go, as you have nothing to lose, and you don’t have to tell all your mates, they need never know!
Thanks for reading, and stay safe
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