no doubt you've all heard a version of my story but this is what happened to me. I am 64, married and worked all my life, been self employed now for about 10 years. 4 years ago I suffered a heart attack and had 2 stents fitted, I was off work for about 3 months - I filled in all the forms, had a visit from DHSS and In the first 6 weeks of my illness they sent me a cheque for £1.27p - I live in rented accomodation, my wife at that time didn't work, i had less than £1000 savings and they expected me to survive on £1.27, after many phone calls, home visits, journeys to the DHSS i started to receive about £60 per week, bearing in mind my rent was £100 a week, plus heating, electric, council tax, food etc i just couldn't manage, the following year i had to go bankrupt. So my point is, how can these outsiders come here and claim all sorts of benefits when I cannot get anywhere near what they claim? When I raised this at the DHSS office they said I was being racist when all i asked was that if I were Polish or Latvian would i be treated better. The government only have to ask themselves one question, here it is - Why do all of these people travel thousands of miles, cross many borders just to get to the UK when they could, if they wanted, stay in Germany, France, Spain etc etc .... it doesn't take a genius to know the answer - we are a soft touch and other countries will not put up with it. stop all benefits for non British people tomorrow and they will leave these islands quicker that you can say boo!!!!!