if you are out of work you get £65 ish pounds a week - food, heating bills and everything else. if you qualify for housing benefit your landlord will receive the bulk of it from the state. it is not a lot. we have 3 kids with degrees and they work hard -retail, child care, bar work -on very low wages- they have no realistic prospect of ever being able to afford to buy a house, have large debts and are destined to paying wicked landlords stupid amounts of money for the foreseeable. i have worked most of my life with some periods out of work. i now work long hours in a care job for just over the minimum wage. we have betrayed a generation of young people and carelessly thrown away the security of a properly functioning welfare state that, with a less aggressive capitalism, provided (nearly) everyone with a home and a health service-a job and some degree of security. those of you 'hard working' types who sneer at those less fortunate than yourselves and blame them for existing are beneath contempt. i would like to be able to ignore you -obviously you crave attention-and would want to feel compassion to everyone but here i am again, buttons pressed and wasting my time stating the bleedin' obvious for people not interested in even trying to think how life may be for others. far more benefits go unclaimed than are paid out as a result of fraudulent claims.