A fucktard of twat accidentally killed 6 of his kids in an attempt to frame his mistress for arson. Osbourne (the tory money guy) has waded in, linking the murders and 'overly generous welfare'. It's like setting a turd on fire.
Mick Philpott has been jailed for life for being the "driving force" behind a plot to torch a Derby home that killed six children, with a judge describing him as a disturbingly dangerous man with no moral compass.
Mrs Justice Thirlwall said Philpott should serve a minimum of 15 years after a jury at Nottingham crown court convicted him on six counts of manslaughter for plotting the fire, which he and two others started in May 2012.
Philpott's wife, Mairead, and friend Paul Mosley were both sentenced to 17 years for helping the plot. They will not be eligible for release until they have served at least half their sentences.
The judge said the plot to set fire to the house and rescue the children was "a wicked and dangerous plan", adding it was "outside the comprehension of any right-thinking person".
The judge said Mick Philpott, a father of 17 children, aimed to frame a partner who had dared to leave him, and the court heard of his long history of violence and control of women, whom he regarded as his "chattels".
The judge said he used his conviction for attempting to murder a girlfriend in 1978 to terrify other women, adding: "You have repeatedly used that conviction as a means of controlling other women, terrifying them as to what you might do to them if they did not follow your will."
The case, which the judge said was unique, has angered the public. As the trio were sentenced their were shouts from the public gallery of: "Die, Mick, die."
The chancellor, George Osborne, has taken the calculated risk of wading into the debate over the child killer Mick Philpott by asking whether the welfare state may have contributed to his lifestyle by being too generous.
When asked on a visit to Derby whether the Philpotts were a product of Britain's benefit system, Osborne said: "It's right we ask questions as a government, a society and as taxpayers, why we are subsidising lifestyles like these. It does need to be handled."
He said Philpott "was responsible for horrendous crimes, crimes which have shocked the nation".
Philpott, who was jailed for life with a minimum term of 15 years at Nottingham crown court on Thursday for killing six of his children, lived in a council house, claimed thousands of pounds in benefits and refused to get a job.
The Daily Mail has directly linked the killings to the welfare state, and there have been calls for child benefit to be withdrawn after more than two children. Philpott received more than £8,000 a year in child benefit for his 11 children.
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It's been all over the news here, evening after the verdict they showed a documentary about him, he'd been on TV about his lifestyle before. Seems he was the classic controlling type, he'd already been in prison several times. I think his personal guilt over killing 6 of his kids (since the original plan was to rescue them after starting the fire) will be far worse than any prison sentence.
The Xeelee wrote:He was on a show about getting people on welfare back to work. They found 6 jobs for him and he gave one a call. Then he never turned up to it.
As for welfare being the problem, it isn't. Lazy people are the problem.
The question here is whether he is the exception or the norm? The people (not directed at you) claiming that there are many like him who have kids to claim the money never seem to back up this argument with facts. The Guardian's DataBlog has a good set of data on the sizes of families that collect benefits.
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There could be a variety of types of people who just don't work in the sense that the average person is used to. Not all of them need to be ones who have lots of children to collect welfare checks; some of them could just be socially dysfunctional, people who have too much mental issues and not enough talent to get by on a daily basis at a serious job.
The type I'm most alert to right now are the ones who got through high school on bluster and looking cool in front of their peers, and who became convinced that being able to think hard isn't that important, and that nothing really bad could happen to them from pissing off authority figures...
You're pretty much fucked if you come into the adult world that way.
When Harold Shipman murdered over a hundred people for their money while working as a GP, nobody worth paying any attention to suggested that the medical profession "may have contributed to his lifestyle by being too generous". Because it's utterly fucking stupid to suggest that the generous pay and great levels of trust placed upon doctors is by itself a cause for that kind of murderous behaviour, rather than say, being a greedy and supremely callous asshole.
So in this case, what's different? The difference is, the Tories don't want to demonise doctors, but they do want to demonise benefit claimants because doing so makes it easier for them to dismantle and sell off the welfare state. This is class warfare in action, as well as a transparent attempt to poison the well by focusing public discourse on an exceptional case.
"That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were."
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I wonder what he'd make of the antics of present-day Tories...
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Oh jeez, how about we maybe talk about the news story?
Got to say, you can paint Osbourne in a pretty bad light for saying that. But on the other hand, he didn't out and out say it and make an issue, he just got asked a question and answered it. Unless of course he planted someone to ask that question...
To be generous to him, he's right. You've got to have some method of testing and finding out whether people are abusing benefits and jsa but its also true I don't think its nearly as commin as the Torys would suggest.
Crazedwraith wrote:Oh jeez, how about we maybe talk about the news story?
Got to say, you can paint Osbourne in a pretty bad light for saying that. But on the other hand, he didn't out and out say it and make an issue, he just got asked a question and answered it. Unless of course he planted someone to ask that question...
To be generous to him, he's right. You've got to have some method of testing and finding out whether people are abusing benefits and jsa but its also true I don't think its nearly as commin as the Torys would suggest.
I don't see how he can logically draw that conclusion. He sounds a lot like someone that just doesn't like welfare or similar programs.
Crazedwraith wrote:Oh jeez, how about we maybe talk about the news story?
Got to say, you can paint Osbourne in a pretty bad light for saying that. But on the other hand, he didn't out and out say it and make an issue, he just got asked a question and answered it. Unless of course he planted someone to ask that question...
To be generous to him, he's right. You've got to have some method of testing and finding out whether people are abusing benefits and jsa but its also true I don't think its nearly as commin as the Torys would suggest.
I don't see how he can logically draw that conclusion. He sounds a lot like someone that just doesn't like welfare or similar programs.
Oh Osbourne is undoubtedly some who just doesn't like welfare. But I don't think his statement quoted is necessarily trying to draw a cause and effect that benefits leads to child murder which is what the news sory tries to imply.
But this:
Philpott, who was jailed for life with a minimum term of 15 years at Nottingham crown court on Thursday for killing six of his children, lived in a council house, claimed thousands of pounds in benefits and refused to get a job.
Even the Guardian, which not on the Chancellor's side here, is talking about the guy refusing to get a job. I think that's a pretty clear cut abuse of the system.
Like I said, it is possible to be abusing the system. And we do need to have something in place to deal with that. But its not a reason to ditch the whole thing like the torys might say.
BACK ON TOPIC. Knock off the bullshit. I'm not on a computer so would a passing mod PLEASE excise the irrelevant posts, starting with DieselJester's. All of you are annoying me equally.
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The gaurdia article on data (linked by UnderAGreySky) is a great read, and has an interesting comment as well.
It seems (although the guardian din't bring it up, since the stats are a little unreliable and it didn't fit the rest of their story), but there's a correlation between people having larger families and families being 'unemployed' - ie drawing some sort of out of work benefits.
Thanks for the data Guardian. I've done something with it which you failed to do which is to compare the data in relation to families who receive out of work benefits (which for shorthand I'll call unemployed families) against the general population. I did this by calculating the percentages in table 2 so that these could be compared against table 1 -something which you "inadvertantly" forgot to do. What it shows is this:
22.9% of unemployed families have 3 or more children compared to 14.14% of the general population, in other words unemployed familes are 50% more likely to have 3 or more children than the general population.
8.56% of unemployed families have 4 or more children compared with 3.42% of the population. In other words unemployed families are TWO AND A HALF TIMES more likely to have four or more children than the general population.
It also shows that unemployed families are 3.4 times more likely to have 5 or more children, 4.85 times more likely to have 6 or more children and 5.5 times more likely to have 7 or more children.
Hope that provides some more "context". (I can't believe you missed these simple stats).
---
Guardian contributor
MonaChalabi
05 April 2013 7:21am
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@Naynaynay - We didn't miss this. As I mentioned in my comment above yesterday, comparing table 2 and table 1 in this way isn't quite accurate because the data isn't from the same year. We tried to find comparable data for 2011 so that we could show these proportions but couldn't find it in time for the piece.
Looking at past data where it is possible to compare years does show that the likelihood of claiming some kind of support increases the more children that there are in the family. But it also shows:
- only 8% of those on out-of-work benefits have 3 or more children
- 12.8% of households containing dependent children are currently classed as workless households.
- Just 2.1% of children are classed as living in households where no one has ever worked (and this includes households where parents may have never worked for good reason – i.e. disability or longstanding illness)
(click the Save the Children link above)
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Naynaynay
05 April 2013 8:24am
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@MonaChalabi - Yes, but whilst I can see you would need to have data from the same year to compare the proportion of familes with 2 children who claim benefits as against the proportion of families with 3 children etc since the general unemployment rate from 1 year to the next would have a signficant effect - my comparison is slightly different, it looks at the general demographic of workless families against the working population. This is unlikely to change signficantly from 1 year to the next and certainly not to the extent to explain the large differences between the two populations, which is statistically signficant (this is evident from the comparison between the 1996 and 2012 figures). Whilst it might be the case that "only" 8% of those on out-of work benefits have 3 or more children, what the stats show is that of those families with children, out of work familes are 50% more likely to have 3 or more children than those in work. There is clearly an associative link between having more children and being out of work. What the stats can't show is why that is.
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Crazedwraith wrote:
Oh Osbourne is undoubtedly some who just doesn't like welfare. But I don't think his statement quoted is necessarily trying to draw a cause and effect that benefits leads to child murder which is what the news sory tries to imply.
Yeah, I think you are correct.
Even the Guardian, which not on the Chancellor's side here, is talking about the guy refusing to get a job. I think that's a pretty clear cut abuse of the system.
Like I said, it is possible to be abusing the system. And we do need to have something in place to deal with that. But its not a reason to ditch the whole thing like the torys might say.
Most welfare organizations make you list references to show that you are applying for work. Does anyone know what that's like in the UK and how it is checked? I have a hard time believing that they just allow you to use these benefits with no requirements.
With computers and automated phone systems it is probably possible to check up on that. Prior to those it just seems like it would be extremely difficult to verify that an individual
Crazedwraith wrote:
Oh Osbourne is undoubtedly some who just doesn't like welfare. But I don't think his statement quoted is necessarily trying to draw a cause and effect that benefits leads to child murder which is what the news sory tries to imply.
Yeah, I think you are correct.
Even the Guardian, which not on the Chancellor's side here, is talking about the guy refusing to get a job. I think that's a pretty clear cut abuse of the system.
Like I said, it is possible to be abusing the system. And we do need to have something in place to deal with that. But its not a reason to ditch the whole thing like the torys might say.
Most welfare organizations make you list references to show that you are applying for work. Does anyone know what that's like in the UK and how it is checked? I have a hard time believing that they just allow you to use these benefits with no requirements.
With computers and automated phone systems it is probably possible to check up on that. Prior to those it just seems like it would be extremely difficult to verify that an individual
If your on Job-Seekers Allowance you have to sign an agreement, created between you and an adviser, about what you will do to find work and how many jobs you will apply for each week. You sign on every fortnight and hove to present your work diary detailing what you did, where you searched, which jobs you applied for and when. However nothing they did made me believe they were checking or even capable of checking what was written and it would be trivial to make it all up. The advisers see a signer every 15mins, they pretty much have to accept the diary as they don't have time to do anything else.
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Kamakazie Sith wrote:Most welfare organizations make you list references to show that you are applying for work. Does anyone know what that's like in the UK and how it is checked? I have a hard time believing that they just allow you to use these benefits with no requirements.
With computers and automated phone systems it is probably possible to check up on that. Prior to those it just seems like it would be extremely difficult to verify that an individual
Until recently, it actually depended largely on the honour system. You're expected to keep a list of every job you apply for and bring it in for fortnightly meetings with an advisor, but towards the end of my time on the rather optimistically-titled Jobseeker's Allowance the frontline staff weren't even bothering to read them anymore; I took to writing pithy comments in the "What will you do next?" column on the form, like "Maintain positive mental attitude" or "Repeat ad nauseum", and nobody noticed. They do theoretically have the power to call up any company you list and check whether you actually sent it in or not, but they haven't the time or the resources to check up on every entry on the list and employers don't have any statutory obligation to keep records of who applies, and with an average of fifty applications for every vacancy I doubt they could keep track of it.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
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Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
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It still does largely depend on the honour system, simply because there are nowhere near enough staff in any jobcentre to actually check an applicant is looking for work - they're talking to a different person every 10-15 minutes all day every day. Not that most people abuse the system - most actually try to get work, but if you're licky there are 10 people applying for every job. In some areas it can be as high as 100 for every job
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It'd probably cost more money to investigate every single case than it'd save by kicking them off, anyway. Programs that are supposed to be safety nets need to be carefully designed so that they catch everyone, but have ways to either easily detect or reduce the impact of people who exploit them, since it's basically impossible to stop people actually exploiting them.
Although they have a tendency of constantly trying to cut my mothers benefits and send her to work, despite the fact she has been made to leave all of her jobs due to epilepsy.
Most welfare organizations make you list references to show that you are applying for work. Does anyone know what that's like in the UK and how it is checked? I have a hard time believing that they just allow you to use these benefits with no requirements.
As others have posted, yes, you just need to be able to convince your overworked Advisor that you are looking/applying for jobs.
They grilled me pretty heavily whilst I was on JSA, even though I was a fairly clean cut, personable young man with a degree. That said, after a while they lost interest, as long as I jumped throug the hoops, and they had no time to check up on me. After about a year of unemployment, the rejections finally wore me down and I stopped trying.
There was little difference to my meetings with my Advisor - even I, a rather indifferent liar, could make it look like I'd done far more than I had. I *wanted* to work, so I can only imagine how it would have been for someone who didn't.
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Stark wrote:It'd probably cost more money to investigate every single case than it'd save by kicking them off, anyway. Programs that are supposed to be safety nets need to be carefully designed so that they catch everyone, but have ways to either easily detect or reduce the impact of people who exploit them, since it's basically impossible to stop people actually exploiting them.
This simple fact is, of course, totally elusive to most people who read the tabloids and see only those that game the system for thirty grand a year, while living in council housing they now own and keep popping out kids while doing fuck all. The idea that a system for the greater good can be abused by a well advertised minority, is pretty alien to those who focus purely on the idea of welfare being just a system to enable the lazy to live in luxury.
As anyone who has actually lived off benefits will tell you, it's decidedly not the case and anyway, the people bitching could put their money where their mouth is, quit their job and then sign on and show us schmucks working just how awesome it is to let the state pay your way. Funny how they never do that, something about morals and honour or what have you.
The fact is in many cases it is far easier to stay on benefits than to get a job.
When I last lived in the UK, just over 3 years ago now, I was on 55 - 65 a week, I can't remember exactly. Not a amount of money. I was paying £375 a month for a 2 bedroom house in Belfast, however with Housing Benefit I only had to pay £25 of that, the remainder was lodged in to my account every month to be passed on to the landlord. Frankly I felt no great rush to find a job beyond my own built in work ethic. I would have been very easy to sit back and play x-box until the end of my days.
No. No, it wouldn't. Trust me on this, I've been doing it for over five years. Not because I didn't want a job, although I have to admit that some time around the five hundredth application form that disappeared into a black hole, I realised I was flogging a dead horse and started phoning it in.
I've written about this a few times before, but it bears repeating; having nothing productive to do all day will drive you insane very quickly indeed.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
I second Zaune. I wasn't doing it for anywhere near that length of time, but I could see myself going into severe depression if I didn't get something stat.
Admiral Valdemar wrote:I second Zaune. I wasn't doing it for anywhere near that length of time, but I could see myself going into severe depression if I didn't get something stat.
Hell, last summer was a three-month break from uni. I had no need to get a job, no uni work to do, my time was entirely my own with no ned to do anything. And I still went and got a job at the chip shop (Daves of Sheringham, strongly recommended).
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The Xeelee wrote:Although they have a tendency of constantly trying to cut my mothers benefits and send her to work, despite the fact she has been made to leave all of her jobs due to epilepsy.
Is there no disability benefit in Britain, or is there no database that when someone pulls up records or whatever flags them as being disabled and thus exempt from certain requirements?
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