The latest case of a benefit claimant living in a mansion at the taxpayers' expense once again goes to show how broken the system is.
Essma Marjan was born and lives in London. After the birth of her sixth child, by council rules she was automatically entitled to a five bed-roomed house. So, using the regulations as written and before waiting for the council to find her a place she went out, located a house, rented it through a private agent and presented the council with the bill.
The house though is a rather nice five bed-roomed villa in a desirable part of London where Sir Paul McCartney lives. It is a four storey residency with two bathrooms a very generous living room, fitted kitchen diner and a landscaped garden.
Then she has the cheek to moan that she doesn't have enough furniture!
Overall Essma claims £1,600 a week in housing benefit plus £15,000 in other handouts. That's nearly £100,000 a year.
Her six children were fathered by two men, both of whom are no longer on the scene. What are they paying toward their children's upkeep I wonder.
Some may not blame Ms Marjan and say it is the government's fault. But I put the blame squarely on her, the government and the council.
The government have set up a system that now favours anyone but the hard working. The council just roll over and Ms Marjan thinks she deserves to live in a house like this with no effort.
Average people who fend for themselves have to rent and buy shoeboxes to cram their families into. This same standard should be applied to benefit claimants too.
Otherwise what is the aspirant's dream for the future? "One day I want to be on benefits and have a large house too."
This story has nothing to do with the benefits system and everything to do with the tories selling off council houses. If you'd actually done the research, you would have seen that the council didn't have any housing for her, so they had to pay for the private sector to house her.
This makes me sick, my daughter and son in law work their buts off as many people do & get no help at all with housing or any sort of benefits & yes they privately rent a rabbit hutch and pay a huge amount of rent.
Maybe they should have lots of babies, become unemployed scrounge off the state & get a huge house!
You can throw the whole system out because of a few abuses. This story is very slanted, designed to enrage. Anger is not the answer, not helping those less well fortunate isn't the right thing to do. Stop the abuses by all means, accurately assign blame if you must and live and let live. If you want to be realistic, you might want to investigate the ruthless international banking cartel the US just gave trillions of dollars to in "bailouts." They own the UK too and they deserve welfare less than this woman.
Hi Frankie D. I thought the council had given her a house and she was living in it but it had 3 bedrooms. People who work and can't afford bigger houses generally plan their families around it. Some of those on benefits know they can 'qualify' for a bigger house so guess what, they plan their families accordingly. This is madness.
Hi Hipmonkey, I wrote the story because it does anger me. It is as telling an indicator as there can be that the welfare system in the UK bust. But no politician has the real stomach for reforming it.
As to the banking cartels, I wuld love to get something on them.
Why are the council prepared to pay this much rent when there are cheaper properties available in the Borough?
Jeff,thankyou for showing what tossers the goverment really are.I know of women who are doing this to the goverment.They claim there partner has long gone of which they have many children with.They rent a very large house from someone they know from there local mosque.The house owners charge over the odd's for the accomodation and the goverment(local coucil)pay it.So in a nut shell they are pay off a morgage for someone else..Nice scam hey!Get the goverment to buy you a house!
DT soo true!
It seems that the tax payer is always the one who suffers and i think that people who are down and out should get help.
No wonder UK is never going to come out of recession. The other countries must be laughing at us and our pandering to to the bone idle.
I wonder how this country'd fare if we ALL decided to do the same . (I could do with a nice, fully furnished 5 bed house – for NOTHING!!!)
That is one of the most ridiculously stupid things I've ever heard. With every additional child she SHOULD receive $1,000 less and a house with one less bedroom. Maybe then she'd learn to stay off her back… or at least wrap it up. There should be mandatory birth control shots and mandatory drug tests as often as necessary and a passing result needed to get your check.
They say that humans are intelligent, but we pay bigheads £100-000 per a week for kicking a bag of wind around on a football pitch, we let imigrants take all our jobs, and no one seems to mind that, and to top it all of we pay our nurses and police and firemen peanuts, whilst bank managers and so called business men get paid millions, and really stupid people turn round and blame it all on the benefit system, i know there are people that should not be on it, we have the problem in our town, they need to be forced back in to work, single mothers are the worst offenders who deliberately get pregnant to get a two bedroomed home or bigger, and to top it all off our small town is over run by polish, send them back and give our people jobs, put british people first for a change.
Got to agree totally with Jeff.Only in the UK could this happen.It is ridiculous.worked the last 7 years to live in a hovel can barely afford while someone I know lines in a 250 k flat provided by council who has never worked .The system makes me puke