Picking up where I left off…
… many others weren't in need at all. Well they still sort of were, in the sense that they couldn't figure out in any way that their monster TV set, Chevrolet pick-up and multiple cell phones (30 years ago) weren't items of basic necessity. Those people were definitely in trouble, yet they still left a mixed impression on me. Finally there were also those who perfectly knew that they were just taking advantage of the system, it made them save money after all. Bear in mind that I invested a lot of saturdays 9 to 5 without earning a penny and being not paid for my expenses, not even the fuel. After a while I got tired of it.
I’ve personally worked in the voluntary, union, charity and local authority settings over four decades. Apologies for using the word simplistic again but I think it applies here. Two things:
1 - the large screen TV trope was started by the Tories in the late 80s as a fightback against the Townsend idea of relative poverty. I abhor it. It’s lazy and ignorant. A number of well-meaning people who worked in the charity and voluntary sectors adopted it because the ethos of their organisations saw poverty as suggestive of a need for lifestyle change rather than a conscious, structural political choice of government. If you were in debt then it was your fault. Sacrifice something. Change your lifestyle. Accept blame. Accept your weakness and our help. A mindset which allowed creditors to challenge financial statements on the basis that the claimant should give up smoking rather than considering that maybe it was the being in debt which maintained the need to smoke. It’s an attitude which persists today with stuff like Christians Against Poverty.
If you wanted a TV in your household, any TV, then you were looking at rentals rather than purchase. A household which can only afford to rent a product considered a staple of modern life is instantly telling you a story of being poor and lacking in capital. If you rented then you would know that the sector abandoned CRT screens long before the rest of the population did and job lots of large flat screens used in shops etc. and moved on at massive discounts made their way into the rental sector. The difference between renting a 30” screen and a 60” screen in rental terms was pretty much pence. When self-respect has so much come to be about ownership of things why would you not go for the bigger option? The TV may have cost £10k but the claimant would be “renting” it for around £5 in 1992.
Car situation not dissimilar. Healthy trade in stolen vehicles and you might want to look at he car threads on hi-fi forums before deciding on what is “appropriate”.
Mobile phones? By 1992 we had GSM and phone prices falling rapidly from four to three figures. Bricks lost value very quickly and again there was a healthy trade in both stolen and second hand.
The other thing here, which still doesn’t get talked about, is that these are the families with kids who struggle in education; have poor housing; poor health etc.The arrogance of front line workers from all sectors was to assume that people were spending frivolously when actually they were spending weekly because they had no lump sum or credit facility beyond renting, and, often the TVs were used by kids with LDs who had hidden visual impairments and ditto their parents. Generally speaking front line workers formed opinions on stuff like this without ever having conversations about the why. Doing that painted a very different picture and I can honestly say that in the various organisations I’ve worked in we despise anyone who tries to pull the “… if only they didn’t spend on x…” rubbish. It’s an attitude from a different age and reflects nothing as to how things look at present.
2 - people “taking advantage” of the system? Similar really. The only advantage with regard to the benefits system would be in trying to have an income which would enable you to live. Generally individual fraud is negligible but almost always derived from poverty and little else. DWP accounts have been qualified for decades now. Their assertions around overpayments and fraud have never stood up to analysis but the media loves a good individual fraud case even though most are simply poorly represented cases which ought not to have gone anywhere near a courtroom. Out in the real world the only advantage being gained has always been via organised crime. In the case of UC they have brilliantly designed fraud into the claim process.