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A man who says losing £20 a week in Universal Credit shouldn’t be too much of a problem for benefit claimants who have flat-screen televisions, has been tasked with finding a shop that will sell him any other kind.
Derek Williams, 62, insisted that too much was being made of people losing the £20 a week Universal Credit uplift, and that if people cut back on luxuries like flat-screen TVs, they could easily make ends meet.
He told us, “I am a sixty-two-year-old middle-class man, so obviously I think of flat-screen TVs that have been commonplace for almost twenty years as being ‘high tech’. And high-tech products are not something people on benefits should be enjoying.
“Why can’t they just get a nice old-fashioned TV, in a wooden cabinet, like I had in the early 80s. That would do them absolutely fine. No, I don’t care that the analogue broadcasts stopped in 2012, digital TV sounds like an unnecessary luxury to me.
“And don’t get me started on phones. Just because someone claiming benefits has to be contactable for job interviews, and needs to use the web to apply for jobs and to access most government services and the like doesn’t mean they need a high-tech mobile phone. And again, by high-tech, I mean anything produced after the Nokia 3310.
“I just think that if you’re claiming benefits then you should clothe yourself in a hessian sack and live in a barn until such time as you become useful to society. Is that really so controversial?
“It’s the MPs I feel sorry for, imagine having to get by in London an £80k salary and barely £50k in living expenses. That’s the real crime here.”
