Jobless mum on £20k-a-year benefits says she has been ‘ridiculed’ since appearing on Channel 5 dole documentary
Benefits scrounger has slammed her critics for judging her 'hard' life
A BENEFITS scrounging single mum has hit out at "nasty" critics after appearing on a TV show about life on the dole.
Feckless Caroline McCracken, who rakes in around £20,000 a year in handouts, claims the show has cost her friends and exposed her to ridicule and abuse.
She has read hundreds of "nasty" comments about her lifestyle following her appearance on the Channel 5 programme Costa Del Dole last week.
But she insists that she hasn't got it easy and is furious with people judging her.
The show followed Caroline for six days while she and her three children were living temporarily with a friend after being made homeless seven months earlier.
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She said: "It's all the backlash that I've had. I've had to delete people on Facebook that I thought were once my friends and they're not.
"They said some really cruel and bad things about me."
On the show, Caroline, from Bridlington, East Yorks., explained that she had started claiming benefits ten years ago but it didn't "make her happy".
The programme claimed Caroline received £1,700 in benefits per month which included payments from income support, child benefits, child tax credits and carer's allowance.
But the qualified sewing machinist insists her two son's Disability Living Allowance forms a significant portion of the figure which was spent on clothes, entertainment and special food.
She fumed: "I wish I'd not done it now. If I'd known this is how it was going to make me look - with half the people in Bridlington saying nasty things about me - I really wouldn't have done it.
"The money side of it is totally not right at all. £416 of that was my son's money and he's no longer with me, so I no longer get his money.
"People in Bridlington are now saying, 'oh, we work and we don't get that amount and how can she not afford an ice cream?'
"Next week, I lose a further £150 per week, so that's going to be a further £600 a month that I'll be losing, so I'll only be on £1,000 per month."
And jobless Caroline insists she has worked in the past, adding: "They said I've never worked, that I've always been on benefits.
"That's not true, I was actually a sewing machinist for 11 years, I've done cleaning at Hilderthorpe School, cleaning caravans.
"People may look at me on telly and think 'she has got it easy', but little do they know, I haven't got it easy.
"I just find it awful – what people are saying about me. People who don't know me don't know how hard I've had it."
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