given duration of unemployment and short duration of job

I'd not declare and pay the rent

I'd bite his hand off. No question about it.

There's always some spiteful **** ready to dob you in if they find out.

Having been in this situation myself in the past you never know who's watching you.

An employer once told me one of my neighbours had contacted him to say I was using his equipment for my own profit. I had obtained his prior permission, of course, but it made me very wary of people after that.

As the saying goes, just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Two and a half years unemployment? The hypothetical individual will have undergone much indignity at the hands of the DSS in that time. A tiny victory over them will have a lot of psychological good to impart...

What would Sir Philip Green do? Or Baron Ashcroft?

Pay the rent.

the friend would become a no good, dole cheating, tax dodging scrounger.

In the real world why would said friend say no?

I know I would happily take the money.

because if I'd been unemployed for two and a half years, I'd feel that I'd been sufficiently shat on by life and that a small change of fortune was long overdue. If he's been a taxpayer for 25 years he deserves better than losing his benefits because he's got a chance to make a few quid. Good for him.

but it is not right to not declare it. Whether your friend would get caught and the consequences are an issue, but not the only one.
I can only imagine what it is like to not have work for so long, and the temptation and desparate need. The fact that fat cats are stealin from the state (i.e. us) does not make it right for us to do the same.

How do you pick and choose which laws to obey and which not to? And where do you stop? What if 2 weeks becomes 4? Or 8? What if the "friend" blackmails you by only paying half of it and threatening to shop you? Awful situation to be in - you have my sympathy.
(in my case the main law I break is driving too fast - but it is still wrong).

I'd declare it, because I'd worry about it coming back to bite me on the backside. It certainly wouldn't be through any moral objection.

... pay the rent in a heartbeat without a twinge of guilt.

If, worst case scenario, some busybody shopped you to the DSS (or whoever they are these days) your friend can tell 'em that no money changed hands. You were simply helping out an old buddy for a couple of weeks as you're currently unemployed and have some time on your hands. If the money was "cash in hand" there's no paper trail. How can they prove you were paid? Apart from the caviar & champagne stains on your Prada t-shirt, I mean?

a period of unemployment for two-and-a-half years would have some serious implications

despite the availability of council tax benefit and means-tested jobseekers allowance (i'm self employed, pay class II & IV NI and wouldn't be entitled to non-means-tested jobseekers allowance), i would have had to sell my flat way before i passed the two-and-a-half year mark

if you're unemployed, you get nothing towards a mortgage for three months, thereafter help with interest only (and the interest percentage is capped) ... i can't see that the mortgage lender would have accepted more than two-years of interest-only payments? so i guess unemployment for that sort of period would mean selling my home

once the flat was sold - if it shifted in the current market - the mortgage would be gone, but i think the few tens of thousands that would have landed in my bank account from the sale (after mortgage and other debts were paid off) would have meant no means-tested benefits for quite some time ... so it's more than possible that i'd still be chewing through my own savings when 'the old pal offered me £1500-worth of work'

hence the answer would be an unequivocal "hell yeah" - but that doesn't answer the question in the OP

in an ideal world you tell the truth and shame the devil, and in pure arithmetical terms what you gain from the work (£1,500) more than compensates for what you lose in benefit - maybe £440 (for me as a single guy in a small flat, were i paying maybe £500 a month in rent, and was in receipt of jobseekers, housing and council tax benefit) ... these figures would be completely different if you were married with kids and had a higher rent/bigger house/more council tax to pay of course

the downside would be the interruption not so much to the means-tested jobseekers allowance claim (it's £67.50 a week and you've just pocketed £1,500) but more to the housing benefit and council tax benefit claims where you'd have to use a fair whack of your £1,500 to keep rent and council tax up to date while the claims were stopped (when you were working for two weeks), resubmitted and readjudicated ... the scope here for delay, error, overpayment or underpayment and subsequent clusterfuckery is legion

there's also the possibility that the mate offering you the work (cash in hand, no records, no employers' NI, no tax record etc) wouldn't thank you for being honest about it with the benefit bureaucracy since it might come back to bite him on the bum, so there would be a personal motivation to keep quiet about the whole thing (loyalty to your chum)

hmm, but, hmmmm ... on balance, since the income over the fortnight would outweigh any benefits i could possibly receive during that time by more than a factor of three - providing a bulwark against claim complications when signing back on - i'd declare it

now ask me whether i'd declare £30-worth of babysitting money

. what are you really doing? You are avoiding pouring a little money into an enormous pot. This enormous pot that I refer to is the what used to be called the Governments "coffers". But sadly these days, it seems that the likelihood is that the entire pot, which includes all your other contributions over the years, will likely be thrown down a massive hole. Maybe to subsidise a bank or two, achieving nothing more edifying than enabling them to continue to live their excessive lives. Or perhaps to fund another uncalled for war, jeapordising the lives of innocent people.

I would say... do it! In that context to say "don't it just because it's against the law" is surely only for the thoughtless these days. If you are genuinely hard up as a result of what has happened economically, it's nothing to do with "moral decay".

actually take your friend above the tax threshold?

Is the notional friend a hit man?
Wrong on all counts.
* dismounts high horse *

I have "upped" several of the posts that take the "pay the rent & dont tell anyone about it" point of view.

If I were in that position, I would almost certainly declare it, because I am such a worrier by nature, the feeling of guilt would give me massive anxiety problems, & I would be expecting a knock on the door from the inland revenue / boys in blue, convinced I was about to be publicly tarred & feathered.

I wish I was different, but it is the way it is.

Good tip, if any of the massive ever need money, play me at poker, I am the worst bluffer in the world.

but...lies on shrink's couch.....I always feel annoyed when I have paid for my train ticket and then there are no inspectors around to check my ticket

Similarly, having been to see a band and paid for an expensive cab ride home I'm annoyed to not see any breathalysers along my route home

There I've said it.

Is it wrong for a starving pauper to steal a loaf of bread?

Me, I say pay the rent. We live in a society where morality doesn't flow from the top, and where the gap between rich and poor is already beyond obscene.

It's a tiny moral lapse when set against the wholesale theft of our society/economy by a few reckless, greedy, selfish, corrupt, arrogant, incompetent, dishonest vermin at the top - people who've pretty much got away with it.

In those circumstances? Use the money.

Rant-ette over.

Your "holier than thou" neighbour who has made your life insufferable for the last twenty-odd years and has reported you to just about every going "authority" in that time, makes an error of judgement which means they are technically in breach of the law, do you jump at the chance of getting even, or do you rise above it?