SOME 140,000 families rake in more in benefits than the average take-home salary.

The households are pocketing more than £20,000 in handouts every year, say official estimates.

The average salary before tax is around £25,000, but after deductions that shrinks to just over £19,000.

In contrast, benefits are tax-free.

Employment minister Tony McNulty insisted the majority of claimants were receiving disability-related handouts.

But shadow work and pensions secretary Chris Grayling, who obtained the information using parliamentary questions, said the number was still "an awful lot".

Many families would also get tens of thousands of pounds in housing benefit, Tory MP Mr Grayling added.

Around 2.7million people are on incapacity benefit — but ministers accept that many of those should be working.

The Department for Work and Pensions said: "These families are a tiny minority and in almost all cases the money includes extra support for the most severely disabled."

In Australia the previous Government pushed enormous numbers of unemployed people over 50 years of age onto the Disability Allowance. Most of these would have been capable of doing paid work, had it been available.

Then they triumphantly pointed out how they had reduced the unemployment figures in the country.

Last time I checked the stats there was 1.2 million people in Australia, a country of 20 million, receiving the Disability Allowance.

Last time I checked the stats there was 1.2 million people in Australia, a country of 20 million, receiving the Disability Allowance.

But how many recieve money for sewing mail bags

But shadow work and pensions secretary Chris Grayling,

Shadow work? Sounds like something over on the dark side.

Last time I checked the stats there was 1.2 million people in Australia, a country of 20 million, receiving the Disability Allowance.

But how many recieve money for sewing mail bags

They don't sew mail bags any more. It's an infringement of their human rights by keeping them away from their 42" plasma screen TV's besides which nobody sends mail any more.

Not true, I got four Christmas cards this year.

That's six more than i got

Last time I checked the stats there was 1.2 million people in Australia, a country of 20 million, receiving the Disability Allowance.

But how many recieve money for sewing mail bags

Not in OZ, that would be such a demeaning work for the inmates.

(Inmates are to be renamed as that is considered too demeaning as well, poor people.)

Being as most of them are NZers they don't understand long words like inmates so it doesn't really matter.

^ Snap!

Don't knock the Kiwis, mate.

Bet ya didn't know, but 20% of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, were KIWIS.

At least NZers are not as parochial as Ockors.

Suppose summun in here will demean the memory of those brave guys.

Agrred. It would be safer for Kiwis to stick to sewing mailbags...

Employment minister Tony McNulty insisted the majority of claimants were receiving disability-related handouts.

Work minister Mr McNulty has claimed £60,000 since 2002 for the house in his Harrow constituency - 11 miles from the Commons - where his parents live.

Who needs disability hand outs when you can scam the system legally?

Link

Moss

I am sick and tired of these MPs taking the p1ss! It's a gravy train.

Oddly, the comment about the gravy train cast my mind back to the gravy they used to put on the thin slice of roast beef in the dining car of the Melbourne-Bendigo train. P!ss weak (a bit like the contents of most gravy boats in Thailand).

GRAVY TRAIN - "In the 1920s, railroad men invented the express to 'ride the gravy train' to describe a run on which there was good pay and little work. The words were quickly adopted into general speech, meaning to have an easy job that pays well, or, more commonly, to be prosperous. 'Gravy,' however, had been slang for easy money since the early 1900s." From "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997).

E:T

It's a good expression...

MPs are the main passengers on the gravy train.

That should be TLW.

The latest is an MP who claimed a TV package which turned out that she downloaded porn movies. Jacqui Smith is her name. On being sussed out she immediately apologised for her 'mistake'.

Speaking of which, have you noticed the explosion in porn availability on the 'net in the past couple of years? Unless you have filtering enabled, you get hit with it from every direction - some even leak through the filters.

When I first got onto the 'net in its early days, the porn sites started to filter in and gradually replaced the old dial-up bulletin board services. If you wanted porn in the early days, you had to hunt for it (so I am told!). Nowadays, it's just about impossible to avoid it.

There's nothing wrong with a lot of the porn on the 'net (although there's some sick rubbish amongst it), but is seems by the amount of it that every second person must have some sort of involvement in the porn industry. I've never known of anyone involved, or even known someone who knows someone... Hmmm. Perhaps people in the porn industry live in enclaves, like some of our immigrant brethren? I can imagine the advice: 'Do be careful not to go through Randywick after dark - too many stories of people being accosted by a bloke with a cheap cigar, a video camera and his floozie.'

My initiation to web porn was of dozens of pop ups and machine crashing.

And I did not go looking, I could not stop them.

PopUpStopper did an excellent job then.

Now a days, Windows Defender never lets a thing thru'.

Windows Live Mail, aka Hotmail stops most in junk, maybe half a doz a day of junk, ads and porn.

Hardly ever seen, wanted to see any.

Specially using this blotty drug for me cancer which has turned me into a 'eunuch,,,,,,,,

Edit for spelling