In then light of all the benefit changes etc at present, IDS has claimed that he can live on £53 per week.
Whether you agree with his policies or not, it would be fun to watch him try…
sign the petition if you want him to suffer for a day or two 
The way I understand it is , it is £53 a week after all your housing costs ate covered , that’s after your rent, council tax , gas , electric etc has been paid for if your on benefits , you then have the £53 a week to live on , that can be done if your frugal, I dont earn a huge wage & after I’ve paid my full rent , council tax , bills etc I’m probably left with as little as that & I have to manage , I can’t cryy to anybody about it because I work & therefore its seen as a lifestyle 'choice… i think ids would manage it & prove people wrong …correct me if I’ve misunderstood …
^^^this^^^^^^
No its only after your rent and council tax paid. Has to cover all utilities - gas/elec etc, food, clothing and travel. Good luck having some left for a social life.
If he has the guts to do it which i suspect he wont i,ll bet before the weeks out he is ponceing off joe public,saw this years ago on a documentary with another ■■■■■■■■ tory who reckoned he could live off a certain amount of money and could not do it,he ended up cadging drinks in the pub !
not really bothered if he can or not, just thought it would be fun to put him on the spot!
Social life? Drinks in the pb?
Thats what comes as part of the reward for going out and grafting, its not someones right.
IDS and all his mates in the Tory party, and the other two cheeks of the same arse parties are all the same.
They are juggling numbers and finger pointing and re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic whilst we steam at full speed at the waiting iceberg.
Bedroom taxes, changes in benefits, mansion taxes etc, non of these will make the slightest difference.
We have a still growing national debt, we still borrow as a nation far more than we can possibly make or afford (though still have money to bung at foreign dictators), poncing about with headline grabbing garbage by any of them won’t fix it.
I reckon he should do it for a month or two. A week is pointless as he stock up cupboards etc.
daleman:
No its only after your rent and council tax paid. Has to cover all utilities - gas/elec etc, food, clothing and travel.
This is correct and also note that you may now need to pay part of the council tax.
So, anyone bothered to give him the chance to prove it?
Maybe it would be better for the working classes to sort out how they’ve managed to get themselves into the current situation than to waste their time on pointless petitions.Which seem to be a bit like complaining about the nature of a shark when everyone knows that a shark is a nasty zb that will bite you if allow it to.That includes those same politicians in the so called Labour Party.
The unions have allowed themselves to be pushed into a situation of accepting the idea of so called cradle to grave ‘social security’ to compensate for a rigged labour market which is all about cheap labour and resulting low wage employment and the resulting implications of that.All of which provides IDS and all his cronies past and present in the CBI with,what is effectively,a type of commie system in which workers are reliant on government and CBI controlled living standards.The ideas of the NHS and so called ‘social housing’ and obviously insufficient state run income protection and retirement provision being prime examples.
The way to answer that isn’t with bs petitions,which just tell everyone what they already know about the bs state ( and big business ) controlled wages and social security provisions.When the idea should be all about an economy in which wage levels are high enough to pay for all that on a privately funded basis.But it’s impossible to get those types of wage levels in an economy which is all about keeping wage levels down using numerous mechanisms like importing cheap labour in the form of immigration and exporting jobs in the form of the global free market economy and having unions which are too weak to the point of now calling for bs petitions such as this example to deal with the symptoms.
Whereas the idea should be all about using democracy and industrial action to sort out the cause in relation to decent living standards which don’t make wokers reliant on the present system of government controlled income rationing which we’ve got at present.
As it stands the British working classes,together with the trade union movement that should be on their side,are mugs who’ve allowed themselves to be branded as racist if they dare to say anything about the use of imported cheap labour.Militant in the case of calling for continuous industrial action as and whenever required to keep wage levels up.Isolationist if they dare to say that the global free market economy isn’t in the nation’s interests,and last but not least they allowed a load of sharks,both so called ‘Labour’ and Tory,to introduce a bs ‘social security’ and health care system which is all about a system of rationing to keep wage levels down for the employers and was never anything to do with increasing living standards in the form of providing workers with sufficient income to support themselves. 
Yes, all well and good, but it would still be fun to pressure him into doing it 
del949:
Yes, all well and good, but it would still be fun to pressure him into doing it
It’s time that the working classes got away from all the tired old bs about bringing the rich down to their level and started thinking along the lines of asking ( and fighting ) for similar living standards to the so called ‘rich’.In other words the relevant petition should be even if it was possible for anyone to live on a disposable income of £53 per week,( which it isn’t and I’m sure the state benefit system doesn’t even provide for anyway ),why would anyone want that in ( what should be ) a developed,industrialised,rich country,assuming they want the economy to grow,or at least provide sustainable,decent,living standards for it’s population. 
It think the topic goes to the heart of the big mistakes made by all of the so called Labour governments and trade unions over the years.
Lighten up CF, I’m not looking for a political lecture, merely savouring the opportunity to put a bit of pressure on a politician to put his money where his mouth is.
Just for the fun of it
I wonder how much army pension he gets ?
Upon leaving the Scots Guards, Duncan Smith spent a period applying for jobs and claiming unemployment benefit, during which he joined the Conservative Party.
no one could live or even get by on £53.00 per week for a sustained period.There is little point in grandstanding,the likes of I.D.S. has never had to do without things like the rest of us.
Juddian:
Social life? Drinks in the pub?Thats what comes as part of the reward for going out and grafting, its not someones right.
+1
If you want to sit around doing nothing all day (while taxpayers go out and contribute to society)…
…then expect to sit around doing nothing all night (while taxpayers go out and enjoy themselves).
Carryfast, I’ve got a tip for you. If your posts weren’t eight feet long, people might actually bother to read them. 
Contraflow:
Juddian:
Social life? Drinks in the pub?Thats what comes as part of the reward for going out and grafting, its not someones right.
+1
If you want to sit around doing nothing all day (while taxpayers go out and contribute to society)…
…then expect to sit around doing nothing all night (while taxpayers go out and enjoy themselves).
Carryfast, I’ve got a tip for you. If your posts weren’t eight feet long, people might actually bother to read them.
The way I see it is that the working classes and their unions are just mugs who’ve allowed numerous governments to impose a zb rationed social security system on them to save the employers a few quid instead of getting rid of the whole bs system and factoring decent private income protection policies ( which cover their own job ) not a rip off policy that just covers any imaginable type of work,which is a reasonable description of the Jobseekers allowance and so called Incapacity Benefit and private health cover into wage demands.Hope that was short enough.
Get rid of the Usury monetary system and give back to the government it’s rightful authority to print money on our behalf and we’ll all be much better off. Simples.
As for Iain and Duncan Smiff the two-faced ■■■■ has tried to pull a “Stunt” that has seriously backfired. People are no longer taken in by his and his party’s attack on working people, and they are showing it.
Carryfast:
The way I see it is that the working classes and their unions are just mugs who’ve allowed numerous governments to impose a zb rationed social security system on them to save the employers a few quid instead of getting rid of the whole bs system and factoring decent private income protection policies ( which cover their own job ) not a rip off policy that just covers any imaginable type of work,which is a reasonable description of the Jobseekers allowance and so called Incapacity Benefit and private health cover into wage demands.Hope that was short enough.
tl;dr