Re: Shannon's family

Into the dole scrounging culture. :)

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Usually government insurance whilst working against being unemployed or too sick to work.

I'll do the latter; you might try and sue someone one day and the evidence may be useful.

co.uk

Always?

You do not have to buy something to be a customer, if you are provided a service or goods then you can be a customer.

co.uk

e:

Yes you do.

There are certainly deserving cases. But an even larger number of people taking the piss.

As subseqent events have proven...

A meal ticket for life.

"Claimant" would be better use of the English language, however distressing it might be to the beneficiary.

yes but many people are simply unemployable, or have the wrong attitude and work ethic. I certainly wouldn't employ them.

Indeed. Which is why East Europeans find it so easy to find work here.

Plus Eastern Europeans don't have to think in advance if they will be better or worse off by taking a low paid job. A person on benefits will often think that he or she has to earn a massive amount to be better off, once cash benefits, housing and council tax benefits plus free prescriptions, dental treatment etc are all factored in.

having so many benefits available from different sources is problematic and provides a barrier to work - cash benefits from the DWP, housing and council tax benefits from the council, health benefits from the NHS.

How would they find it distressing?

LOL!

Well, someone obviously does otherwise we wouldn't have to put up with this bollocks of describing them as "customers"!

Perhaps it's the old Socialist trick of feeling everyone else's pain, despite never having suffered yourself, and to mitigate that pain you are loath to actually use the word that describes the condition or situation, so you dress it up verbally so that it appears to be something other than it is.

I don't think it's intended to avoid hurting the claimant's feelings. IMO it's there to remind the *staff* that they are being paid to provide a service, and that the users of this service have the right to expect the staff to supply it to the best of their ability.

Calling the service users "customers" doesn't guarantee that, of course, but it can be one factor in combatting the we-don't-give-a-shit-for-the-people-who-pay-our-salaries attitude that government employees with safe jobs and protected pensions can so easily adopt.

Doubtless someone will reply that many claimants have never paid a penny towards civil servants' salary, and that may be true, but it doesn't alter the principle.

But if you are obtaining something from an organisation be you paying for it or they are giving something to you ,you ARE a customer or a client of their's. Yes I can see the reason for the word "customer" claimant makes it sound like people who avail themselves of any benefit which they are rightly entitled to are scroungers which they are NOT . People that I class as scroungers are the disabled in this country who can quite legally go out to work every day and earn maybe 400/500 pounds a week and also claim and receive DLA payments which can and often do amount to over 400 pounds a month with free car tax on top .

Is it working?

Ah, so now we introduce the word "client" so as to show that this is a bit of an up-market operation.

HMRC have had the audacity to claim that I'm their "customer" - I am not. They give me nothing that I need and they merely treat me as a milch cow useful for one thing only. I don't have the option of declining and going elsewhere, which is a normal customer/business relationship.

Well, take that up with your MP, but to use your words, aren't they: "...people who avail themselves of any benefit which they are rightly entitled to..."?