Food stamps coming to the UK

OK Maybe not food stamps but SMar t Cards

So Ian Duncan Smith...or IBS as he is known, believes introducing Smart cards for benefit claimants will stop people buying Alcohol, Smokes and end Gambling....

People will be barred from blowing benefits cash on booze and gambling under a controversial scheme to hand out welfare money on “smart cards” announced today.

Welcome to the 51st state of the US of A People.

No doubt a few here will rejoice at the prospect of the state controlling what people spend money on, but i can assure you, a Alcoholic, a Smoker, a Gambler will find a way of getting their fix. Supposing they have to steal it.

What i foresee happening is people will be swapping groceries for cigarettes and Alcohol taking a heavy loss in the process causing more misery for the "Children" IBS is so keen on protecting.??
This is not about protecting anyone no matter how they butter it up...It's typical Tories on another control/power trip. They are not happy freezing benefits for millions..£72 a week, now they want to humiliate people by having them stand at the checkout with these lovely new Shiny DWP cards/Food stamps....Maybe benefit claimants will have their very own checkout soon.?

Utter Scumbag of a...I nearly said Man there...He prefers to call benefit claimants "Stock", meanwhile the man has never done anything of note in his life and lived off the taxpayer for the best part of 30 years...This particular Parasite needs ended.

Just one more politician who has no ideas how 'the other half' lives, when was the last time he went to a grocery store? paid rent? filled his gas tank? bought cloths 'of the peg'? ate beans and fish fingers? I think they all need to smell Zyklon B.

originally posted by: pikestaff
Just one more politician who has no ideas how 'the other half' lives, when was the last time he went to a grocery store? paid rent? filled his gas tank? bought cloths 'of the peg'? ate beans and fish fingers? I think they all need to smell Zyklon B.

Yeah, A final solution to the "Tory Question" would be a great idea.

I think they are going about this the wrong way, the cards should be issued to certain individuals and not force it onto everyone.

I am ashamed to say im on job seekers benefits myself and I hate being unemployed, I feel like im begging for scraps from the tax payer.

I was made redundant, and I will not lie jobs do come up every week but there are so many people applying for these jobs the chances of getting one are slim, I was at a recruitment day at a hotel last week where 3 house keeper jobs where avalible, there must have been over 100 people there, the que for an interview was out the door and up the street.

I don't drink, smoke or gamble myself exept from the occasional lottery ticket once in a while.
When im the the dole office I can see some people are clearly drug addicts and alcoholics, these are the people who should be issued a card, it's degrading treating everone like a child.

I would be embarrassed handing over one of those cards at the supermarket.

I wonder if IBS has looked into the fact that sudden withdrawal of Alcohol from a Alcoholic can and does Kill. He probably sits stroking his cat at the prospect of another bit of "Stock" in the ground and off the books.

originally posted by: NeoSpace
I would be embarrassed handing over one of those cards at the supermarket.

Who Wouldn't..And what does one do about kids lunch money, are people expected to go to the school, swipe the card so their kids can have a meal...Utterly appalling thing to do....As if kids dont find it hard enough at School trying to fit in, may as well have them wear Yellow stars on the sleeves of their jackets and be done with it.

I see people here using welfare checks all the time. Actually they are using a coupon that is traded for food. Believe me when I say that the ones I see have no shame about using them.
We also have ebt cards. Electronic benefit transfer. Those are welfare cards. It's basically a debit card. Those are more discrete.
Unemployment benefits are direct deposited to checking accounts. You are free to use that any way you wish.

I agree that this might be a solution for particularly irresponsible benefit claimants, but certainly not for all.

That said, I don't think there's anything embarrassing about the cards themselves - you don't even physically hand over your card in shops anymore, so for everyone else it'd simply look like a debit card. It's not like America where they still use swipe and sign instead of chip and pin where the cashier needs to see the card.

If you know your card won't allow you to purchase certain items, the only way you'd flag yourself as using a benefit card was if you tried to buy something you know can't be bought with it.

a reply to: Soloprotocol

Thats funny...people in massachusetts often would use their cards on lottery tickets and booze. What they do in the inner city is go to the little corner stores and sell their cards for half of its value for cash. Thses stores usually have nothing stocked on the shelves and yet they stay in business. Virtually impossible to manage and the liberals know it but it buys more votes.

a reply to: Soloprotocol

All this ends up doing is getting slummy stores to get an extra cut of people's benefits. In most cities, you can walk into a store and cash out your benefits for $0.50 - $0.90 on the dollar depending on the neighborhood. It stops some people, but probably not those chronic addicts that the law is intended to meddle with.

People stand at the entrance to the grocery store offering "2 for 1'" deals all the time.

I can half my food bill, and they get some cash...

The top of the pyramid looked down below himself and ordered, 'Get rid of those stones at the bottom. They are no use to me or anyone else. Infact, they are parasites and I am sick of supporting them!'

So the stones at the bottom of the pyramid were removed....................

What happened next?

Rome found out..........the hard way!

originally posted by: acacko
People stand at the entrance to the grocery store offering "2 for 1'" deals all the time.

I can half my food bill, and they get some cash...

If i saw anyone at my corner store pulling this stunt i would...well lets just say it would be the last time they would be taking advantage of the Poor. at the very least they would be under citizens arrest. Just as bad as a Loan shark in my opinion.

Yeah.... Its great for the economy....

When I need to score bad... Instead of swiping things to sell from walmart I can just go sell my Ebt to some old lady and my girl and I can get some opana for the weekend... Very convenient way to solve one of the many social problems addressed
a reply to: acacko

a reply to: Elliot

Well, that's a pleasant thought, but really Rome subsidized the proletarian masses until they had more of them than they had the infrastructure to support. Rome created too many enemies. By the time their defenses were compromised they had long ago decayed unto death from within.

This is one reason you can't have a single Imperial world, the people look to their own government and truly believe that it should support them at least for some of their life. If you have one global government, it will be ripped apart rapidly, but if you have hundreds of squabbling isolated territories, you can reduce the expectations of the people by keeping them living in fear so that they will be grateful for the few things they do receive from their much more compartmentalized government.

Personally, I think we should return to a city-state system. I think this would optimize freedom by creating a very diverse world wherein the masses can vote with their feet. The age of massive states has proven itself to be a failure. No matter how many times we reinvent them, the people are still disabused of their liberty and no one utilizes the government to the best of their ability in a responsible way.

Just look at what Hong Kong did for China and it had a terribly managed government. A single city could lift up all of humanity if it was responsibly governed and created optimal amounts of liberty.

I thought the embarrassment and labelling that this kind of thing brings, is the reason they got rid of school dinner tickets years ago.

Tell you how these will work, those who love to blow their benefits on cigs and booze will just buy their working mates their weekly food and in return their working mates will by them an equal amount of cigs and booze.

CX.

a reply to: pikestaff

Im not a poli, Im not rich, I go shopping everyday (I like fresh food and never know what Ill want for dinner that day)
I pay rent, dont drive and regularly eat half a kilo of potato in the form of chips for dinner to save money and I am all for this idea.

In Oz I knew dozens of people on various benefits and not 1 of them genuinely deserved them or spent the money on what I would call essentials.
The cliche of drugs, booze and gambling was pretty much 100% correct.
If you have worked and have been made redundant I have sympathy and if you are genuinely looking to get back into the work force there should be a safety net provided for you.
Anyone who thinks the majority of welfare recipients fit into this category is delusional.

Im currently in Asia and not 1 country in these parts provides welfare, you know what people do when given the choice of no money/food or get a job? THEY GO OUT AND GET JOBS!!!!!

Ive participated in threads like this many times and am sick of hearing BS about there being no work. Maybe theres no work in your chosen field but there are plenty of options available.
The best excuse I came across was "why should I go out and get a job at McDon when I have a degree?" my response is "why should tax payers have to support you when you have a degree?"

If anyone reading this thread who is unemployed GENUINELY wants to find work PM me and I will help either in the form of some advice and CV massaging or if your in OZ or Asia I will know people.

I made this offer in a similar thread awhile back, of the 40 or so people defending their "right" to welfare guess how many took me up on my offer to help find work? 0!!!!

a reply to: Soloprotocol

He, he, I have to laugh at that, see here in the US we got the underground black market of EBT cards, once the government start issuing the cards they will be lost in the system.

One of the biggest scam going on in the US is the darn EBT cards.

originally posted by: marg6043
a reply to: Soloprotocol

He, he, I have to laugh at that, see here in the US we got the underground black market of EBT cards, once the government start issuing the cards they will be lost in the system.

One of the biggest scam going on in the US is the darn EBT cards.

A scam for who, as in Who benefits from it...The Guy with the Card or someone like Acaco 9 posts^^^^..?

originally posted by: IkNOwSTuff
a reply to: pikestaff

Im not a poli, Im not rich, I go shopping everyday (I like fresh food and never know what Ill want for dinner that day)
I pay rent, dont drive and regularly eat half a kilo of potato in the form of chips for dinner to save money and I am all for this idea.

Nice healthy lifestyle you have there...at the rate you are going you wont need to worry about picking up a pension or maybe you'll have a stroke soon and need to rely on benefits.... but as you say, you'll just go out and GET A JOB.

If you are out working and all you can afford to eat is chips maybe you should consider packing it in, jumping on the benefits wagon. Spend your days fishing to supplement your diet by having a nice bit of fish with your chips. you know you want to.