More on the benefits of benefits
Private companies should never be allowed to run the welfare benefits system. The whole idea is disturbing.
Here's another interview with someone on a sickness benefit
You can read earlier interviews with people on benefits here
It's about two in the afternoon and Paul Thomas, 40, is sitting just outside the front door of the petrol station on Shoreditch High Street, begging away. He does this for several hours most afternoons.
He gets about £40 a week by way of the sickness benefit that he's been on for about a year. Unfortunately, his bills at home come to about £80 a week (he's lived in the same council flat in Bethnal Green for 16 years): thus the daily efforts outside the petrol station. Thomas, who is very articulate , possibly black, and fully political, says that his present way of life just sort of evolved for him after he was made redundant from a maintenance job about 18 months ago.
He is interested to hear there are people who think that scrounging for coins on the pavement on Shoreditch High Street is a lucrative lifestyle choice.
'It's humiliating. I've got two children - one 22 and one 18. They are always asking for money. Money, money, money. I do this, because I can't live on £40 a week. I'm not going to go around robbing other people.'
Other people rob him, though. Thomas says two people came up to him last night when he was sitting on the High Street asking people for money, and they both started kicking him and telling him to hand over the change. The complaints process around here is also unhelpful: Thomas was going to tell the police about the assault and the robbery, etc, but gave it a miss in the end, in case the police decided to arrest him for begging. 'There's two of them who do that,' he says. 'They come up and down here all the time and they ask me what's going on.'
Like a lot of people on sickness benefits, Thomas arrived at panhandling via unemployment and mental illness. He talks about both non-stop. 'I suffer from depression. I really want to work. I used to have a job. I worked at the Trinity Church round the corner for ten years (he was a caretaker there), but then they changed it all and my job was made redundant. It can happen really easily that you're out here. I did not know that I would be out here. If you told me two years ago that I would be out here, I would never have thought that.
'I've got a social worker now in Bethnal Green and she is trying to help me sort things out. I want to go back to work. I still look for jobs and that. It's ridiculous, how it works at the moment. They give me £40 a week, and then they want to take £80 a week away from me for my bills. I have to make enough money to get up to that. I get about £40, but I need about £80 a week, so I have stay here until I get that. This is a good time of day, so I can't leave here. '
Thomas says the biggest problem faced by people who live the way he does is that the government spends 'too much time looking after foreigners. What about the older people in this country, and the disabled people? They've got it arse-upwards, the way that they are doing it. They ask for money from people who don't have it. Charity does begin at home. What about the old women who die of cold? They give me money, then they take the money off me. It's ridiculous. I haven't got money. What about those celebrities who do Red Nose Day? That's what I have been thinking today. They have the money. They money should come off them.
'They have no idea. They want to come and try this for now. If they looked after their own, they would perhaps have a lot less animosity and lots of kindness. It's totally wrong, the way that it is done. It's all about helping this country, or helping that country. It's irritating. People fight for this country, but when Poppy Day is over, it is finished. They just dump them. No money.'
