If I catch a plane to another EEC country can I sign on the dole there And get benefits and free housing?

You can actually apply to get your jobseekers allowance transferred abroad, or to claim from the country you are moving too. https://www.gov.uk/claim-benefits-abroad/overview The reason that many people are (or were) able to move to the UK, is because a lot of other countries (Iran, Iraq, Latvia, etc etc) are seen as "poorer" countries. I think it would therefore be difficult to claim from a country that is "poorer" than ours like Poland. Likewise, to claim UK benefits in Poland, you would have to prove that your chances of getting a job over there, are higher than over here.. for example your only skill is speaking polish, or that you have experience of working in Polish bars and not UK bars. That kinda thing. Talk to your benefits centre - enough people scrounge off the UK so go live abroad for a few months and enjoy it!

Maggie makes some good points, but is a little too keen on the rules as they should apply, rather than the way they do apply. If you accept what she has said, then there would not be 250,000 children living outside the UK, getting UK child allowance. The movement of people, if based on actually having jobs to come to would work a lot better than it currently does, it breaks down when people's home economy is vastly poorer than the Country that they travel to, and from which they can and do get benefits. If they work, then we say that they are paying tax and therefore are benefiting us, however they are generally in low wage jobs, and therefore pay little or any tax, and as they have to have somewhere to live, they get subsidised accommodations, their children still need school places and there is no way they can pay for private education so the state has to find these places. They need public transport and very often get assistance there. They need medical help from time to time, They will get child allowance even if the child is not in the UK. For vast amounts of those that come from the poorest EU Countries, what they get, outstrips what they are able to contribute many times over. I do not blame them for doing it, I know that in their shoes I would probably do the same, but the bottom line is that we have terrible inequalities in our own society, we have rapidly increasing numbers of British Nationals dependent on food banks, we have 80,000 Children living in part time B & B accommodations, we have 30,000 pensioners a year dying needlessly due to poor heating and lack of food, because they cannot afford the cost of living rises that have outstripped their incomes. We have 1.5 million youngsters unemployed, it is not rocket science, let's get it right at home, and if we can absorb some of these people, then great, but not until then.