PH wrote: ↑23 Jan 2025, 9:36am
gbnz wrote: ↑23 Jan 2025, 12:27am
PH wrote: ↑22 Jan 2025, 10:53pm
A large proportion of people on benefits are in work, about 40% of Universal Benefit claimants, I don't know the figures for other benefits.
Of those unlucky enough to have lost their employment, the vast majority are back in work withing 12 months (78%) with over half of those back in work within six months.
Those on benefits are not some sort of under class, they're just people who mostly have the same lives to live as the rest of us. The idea that they might have removed their entitlement to drive I find absurd in the extreme.
"Their entitlement to drive" ?
If you need to question what entitlement to drive means, try Google. Entitlements are listed on the back of a driving license and referred to as entitlements on all the Government websites.
But why should someone with 24 Hr's free a day, be allowed to drive?
That may be your experience of being on benefits, I'll suggest it isn't most peoples. If car use was to be restricted, it would need to be in a way that wasn't discriminatory, targeting benefit claimants isn't that way. Most of the reasons people require a car, or don't, won't change if their circumstances lead them to claim a benefit.
Most people don't "NEED" car's they choose to have to them and pollute, main & injure, inflicting huge costs on society
Only have to look at my nearest neighbours
- Retired, only uses the car to take the dog for a walk. Drives to the beach to walk a dog. Could easily walk to the beach, a flat, level, well surfaced, country path, but drives. Routinely complains about the traffic on the road, the lack of parking near the beach. Of course I walk to the beach, other than normally using the same route to get to the station
- Works. Nurse. Approximately a 5-7 minute walk to work. Could easily walk to work, but drives (Nb. I know, because we routinely leave flats at the same time, heading to precisely the same junction on the road, though I normally turn right to a bakers, the hospital requires a turn to the left.
- OAP. Happily able to & walks up mountains, lives 3-4 minutes from the main bus stop, FOC bus pass the past 24yr's, the main bus goes to the precise location being travelled to, the bus station being immediately adjacent to the destination. Claims she loves buses, has a FOC bus pass, travelled on a bus once in 1981 and perhaps again in 2018. But drives, though loves buses
- Another OAP. Also happily able to & walks up mountains. Obviously he drives to buy a newspaper, we left at the same time last Friday, exchanged "morning" 4-5 minutes later as he was getting out of his car, to buy a newspaper. Checking on bike / hike, it's a 233 metre walk to buy a newspaper, but a 1.01 mile drive
Always found it amusing at County Hall several years back, all the green warriors (females) would drive to the bakers. They were always ecstatic, even shocked that I would walk. A 6-7 minute walk across an absolutely level, well surfaced, tarmac path, crossing open area of grass & tree's, hardly demanding. Don't think I ever met more than 1-2 others who'd walk. Why would anyone, never mind self declared eco warriors chose to spend 4-5 minutes walking to the car, in the car park, followed by the 2-3 minute drive to the bakers?
But just as using 5yr olds to clean chimneys used to be the norm, many seem unable to comprehend using their feet, to do that drive