Benefits capped

[Graham0127]

it's your choice to pay for their education. if you didn't want to then there is provision in a state school.

it is also your prerogative to claim the child support.

 

I wasn't having a go at you over the houses. there were many comments and that was just the one I chose for that topic. if everything was above board then why shouldn't they be allowed to sell? its their good fortune that they went up in price. the right-to-buy scheme was flawed in that the sold social housing wasn't replaced with new social housing.

 

some one commented on the 2up 2 down in Liverpool and that they should be renovated. Have they been here recently. vast swathes of them have gone and new housing is being put up.

 

people on "benefits" cover a vast amount of the populous not just the unemployed. the unemployed are not the huge drain the media makes out to be. yes there are people who make a living out of it and there are people who ought to be in work etc and the cheats ought to be chased out. but at what cost. I don't have the answer and I doubt anyone does.

 

"benefits" cover a lot of state hand-outs that are claimed by an awfully large sector of society

I think it`s about the way your parents bring you up. My parents never claimed a penny (family allowance excepted).

When I broke my back I obviously couldn`t work,but I didn`t claim.When I refused to employ my son,hoping he would make his own way,he couldn`t get a job he wanted.Even though I refused to help him out, he wouldn`t sign on. In his words `I don`t want to be a sponger (rightly or wrongly).Everybodies situation is different and please God we never have to claim.....

[Norman Verona]

the right-to-buy scheme was flawed in that the sold social housing wasn't replaced with new social housing.

 

 

 

 

Isn't that what some of us have been saying.

 

Also, the Lady who was buried today seemed to not have any idea of the hardship her policies were causing. If she did she may have set up regeneration schemes and put a lot of incentives into the affected areas.

 

And, by the way, pensions are NOT a benefit. Those of us who paid NI for 49 years have paid for our pensions.

 

And to some extent unemployment benefit is also in the same category. National Insurance was created so working people could pay for a pension and assistance if they were thrown out of work. They paid for it.

 

The problem, as I see it, is that we have tried to help as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It's called wealth distribution. But we have used the wrong methods. We should scrap a lot of the current benefits and use a very simplified tax system to redistribute wealth.

 

Now then, how about gay marriage?

[FILFAN]

your not my type norman sorry 

[User0083]

Dom,

Soldier's get "X-factor" for fact we move about, life's not ours, potentially pay ultimate sacrifice Etc. which puts our pay 20% (I think) above civilian equivilant. So admin where your guys earn 10-11k soldier be on 12-13k. Most privates in afghan will be on 15-17k, I think. Yes it's more than joe blogs civvy on 10-12, but nothing near Miss Can't Cross Her Legs with her house and high disposable income due to hand outs.

Norman,

I claim none of the list, Duncan refuses to except a hand out. If he excepts one it means he can't moan about it down the pub!

As for married couple tax reduction, not talking a massive one, but I feel it would encourage marriage and a move in the right direction. Compare to the "I'm a single mum with 4 kids and go on a £3500 holiday every 4 months... Look at my new 50inch 3D TV..."

Back to married couples. Army Nurse, I know more gay married couples than heterosexual married couples. Please tell me this is just army nurses and not the new trend across the country.

On Gay's still my youngest sister in law is 21 and at Uni, with her girlfriend. Her Dad does not know and hates homosexuals more than coon's and immigrants (his words). I take great pleasure in dropping the odd line "Toni, are you coming out tonight?" "Toni, what are the boys like in Uni?" "Toni, I bet you love fresh kippers for breakfast..." List goes on and Mrs C's face is awesome... If I could find a way to focus the energy I could sell it as a renewable power source! Last meal we had Toni wasn't there and he was going on about shooting all gay's! Her mother knows... First time in my life I've seen her silent for an entire meal!

[jeff oakley]

Some one said quite rightly that the unemployment benefit is a small section of the overall spending. This is the problem as I see it. I have no issue with someone who has been put out of work getting enough to live on, it is fair after all they have paid in the past but there are so many avenues for money which for some is their occupation.

Care allowance, my dad gets that as he has parkinson disease, but he does not spend it on care, my mother does the same job looking after him since they were married. My sister gets care allowance as her daughter is type 1 diabetic, she does nothing to earn this money it goes towards her horse, as does the family tax credits she also gets.

If you have a child with ADAH you can get care allowance, mobility allowance the list is endless.

 

The cap that is now in place is to stop the lunacy of people who can claim they need to live in the centre of london and get their housing benefit fully paid. These are where we find familes living in £2 - £3k a month homes when nurse and teachers have to live outside the area and commute in.

 

As Norm says no one seems to be against the capping but we differ on how much that should be and how it should be stopped. No one wants gettos but we need to offer an alternative by various means, carrot and stick.

Norm says why should people work to be worse off, it is called pride. Setting an example to your kids is priceless and sets them up for life. As i have said before we should stop wanting to make everyone equal, we need examples of sucess to emulate, unfortunately the ones we have at the moment are those who can kick a ball, or run a bit fast or warbel. The ill educated can never see themselves being rich through work but can through "celeb" or crime.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Bring back the workhouse. (Seriously). Surely there must be away of doing it without all the Victorian monstrosities that went with it in the past?

[User0083]

Well said Jeff!

I meet many young people, 10-16, often get "Why are you a nurse? Are you training to be a doctor?" Every shift I'll get it once. Then politely let them know how a nurse does all the patient centred work, what I wanted to do, a doctor treats a symptom and spends very little time with a patient.

I then ask what they want to be...

Pregnant, get government to give me money.

Footballer, like Beckham.

Glamour model, like Jordan

Etc, these dreams are great at 8-12... Maybe a bit older, but there's 20yr olds still waiting for their moment...

[Norman Verona]

Jeff, I said that if a chap working in a low paid job with a wife and 2 kids can get more on benefit than work how can he be blamed doing the best for his family.

 

The answer is to make work pay better.

 

As for getting disability benefit for the things you cite and a chap I know who claimed for his kid who had glue ear. Not only cash but got his phone bill paid in case they needed emergency assistance for this life threatening disease.

 

It's not easy but it can be done.  

 

As for pride, that seemed to disappear in the 70s.

[dombanks]

you didnt say he was a soldier. you just said your mate on 12K. if he is on 12K and a civilian then it would be his porogative to claim for low income. As a soldier he may/maynot be eligible for some state support. i dont know im not an advisor on that.

 

my argument had nothing to do with the way you were brought up or a moral compass. The stste system is there for all people who fit into the criteria. if they chose not to use it then that is their choice.

 

it was simple. the benefit system or to correctly term it the welfare state covers more than just the unemployed. It affects a large sector of society. Norm im not having a go but pensions are part of the welfare system. they account for 46% the winter fuel allowance is another 2%

 

bascially if there is an OAP caliming state pension and fuel allowance. They have 2 children one of which is on maternity leave and the other has a child so gets child support that family unit represents what ~50% of the state costs are paid out to.

 

as far as married alowance is concerned. it is an outdated and irrelevent tax designed for a patriarchal system where the woman was expected to not to work. It has no place in a modern working system. why should it apply to a two income houshold just becuase they are married? come on be more forward thinking than that.

 

norm your right making working pay better will help but unfortuantly that has its own problems in driving up costs.

 

like i said before this is a complicated and problem that i dont think has an answer.

[Norman Verona]

Dom, our pensions have been paid for. Benefits may not have been. Proof of this is that my state pension is more than the basic level because I paid in more. HM's is less because she paid in less.

 

Had we put all that money into a private pension we would have been better off up to 2005 and maybe worse off after.

 

The problem with pensions is that people who have paid zero in will get a state pension. This is wrong!

 

There is an answer. We pay a huge sum to employ people to work out fair ways to deal with the situation. If these people were employed in business and failed to solve the problem they would be sacked and others employed. Kindly remember that next time you vote.

[dombanks]

is it wrong that some one who didnt put in gets something? Is that not the the point of a socialist welfare state? those that are able help those that are not. what if that person is severly disabled and unable to work. i dont disagree that the people who scam the system need to be found and removed from the system but at what cost? yes poeple have paid into the pension pot (and technically unempolyemnt benefit etc) and as you say what you get out is linked to what you put in. But it is still a large component of the welfare cost. I doubt tabloid headlines of how much the welfare system costs per anum really take into account this fact.

 

 

"There is an answer. We pay a huge sum to employ people to work out fair ways to deal with the situation. If these people were employed in business and failed to solve the problem they would be sacked and others employed. Kindly remember that next time you vote."

 

who is this directed at. those who hated the conservatives and voted in new labour becasue the conservatives were bad and ruined the country (etc) effectively voted in someone who was intent on developing and extending the ideology of neo-liberalism (or in our countries case its called thatcherism). the change of govt had little effect on that tranch of policy.

 

 

 

[Norman Verona]

Dom, I still maintain that pensions are not a benefit. We may get back the money we paid into our government pension fund. We may not. 

 

The remark is made at all politicians. They all seem to think they can manage every part of our lives. They can't. Their job is to create an environment where others can manage whatever they're experts in. Businessmen manage business, teachers should manage education, doctors should manage hospitals. This is how it used to be.

 

My theory is that now that politicians are paid very well they feel they must show the public that they are earning all that money. 

 

As long as benefits pay more than wages people will choose to get benefits. Minimum wage needs raising, benefits need cutting  However, this is all cloud cuckoo land if there aren't enough jobs to go round.

[dombanks]

according to the DWP anual report they are.

 

i would post the table from the report but the browser wont let me.

 

this is a lint to the guardian where you can see it. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/jan/08/uk-benefit-welfare-spending#data

 

 

ive sorted the top number out roughly

 

AREA                                                        Type                          2010-11  £bn                    2011-12, £bn         % change inc inflation

DWP Total                                                Total                                      160.08                                  166.98                                        1.9

Benefit spending in Great Britain          Total                               153.6                                            159 1.1

State Pension                                         Benefit                              69.88                                           74.22                                      3.7

Housing Benefit                                      Benefit                              15.74                                               16.94                                    5.2

Disability Living Allowance Benefit 11.88 12.57 3.3

Pension Credit and Minimum Income Guarantee Benefit 8.32 8.11 -4.8

Income Support Benefit 7.79 6.92 -13.2

Rent Rebates Benefit 5.28 5.45 0.8

Attendance Allowance Benefit 5.23 5.34 -0.3

Incapacity Benefit Benefit 5.56 4.94 -13.3

Jobseekers Allowance Benefit 4.46 4.91 7.6

Council Tax Benefit Benefit 4.79 4.83 -1.7

Employment and Support Allowance Benefit 2.25 3.58 55.8

Statutory Sick Pay and Statutory Maternity Pay Benefit 2.46 2.55 1.2

Expenditure incurred by the Social Fund Benefit 3.81 2.37 -39.2

Carers Allowance Benefit 1.57 1.73 7.7

Financial Assistance Scheme Benefit -1.44 1.24 184.6

Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit Benefit 0.89 0.89 -2.3

Severe Disablement Allowance Benefit 0.89 0.88 -3.1

National Insurance Fund Benefit 1.09 0.82 -26.6

Bereavement Benefits Benefit 0.61 0.59 -5.5 TV

Licences for the over 75s Benefit 0.58 0.59 -0.8

Other Benefits Benefit 0.5 0.4 -22.7

Maternity Allowance Benefit 0.34 0.37 4.2

Other Programmes Benefit 0.2 0.18 -9.3

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jim_l]

There is absolutely nothing wrong that someone who didn't contribute being looked after if they need it. ASSUMING the society has the means in place to afford it, otherwise it breaks down and the people that suffer most are the poor,and those in need, a la Greece.

 

There are some great graphics on this link that lay out the problem, in terms of the deficit, how public sector spending has grown over time, where it goes.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/apr/25/uk-public-spending-1963

 

The answer to the problem, in my view, and it should be obvious, is that in the chart headed 'the gap between UK spending and tax income' the two lines have to converge. What should also be obvious is that there are limited approaches to that:

 

a) Raise tax Receipts

or

b) Cut Spending

or

Raise GDP

 

Now, we may have some options to raise more taxes: Certainly we could and should tax multinationals and big corporations more (and more effectively) but we need to be careful about the impact of this on jobs, if it raises unemployment it defeats the object.

 

We could and should tax disproportionate bonuses, this whole bonus culture is bringing with it unethical and often criminal behaviour and in its 'disproportionate' form should be banned, though I do believe reasonable incentives are a good thing.

 

Some would say tax the rich more, truth is there aren’t enough of them to solve the problem, and anyway the more you tax them the more they spend on experts to help them avoid it.

 

Generally speaking there are few opportunities to raise tax receipts enough to solve this problem without compensating people by giving them more in tax credits or benefits, or generally stifling the economy by leaving less money in people's pockets.

 

Raising GDP is challenging in the current global economic climate, nobody is growing much, but raising GDP by a few per cent doesn’t majorly impact the fact that the sums don’t add up, it just makes the gap look more affordable

 

Cutting spending has to be done, I don’t see an alternative, and the pretty picture on the above page, showing where the money is spent, shows that there isn’t a lot of choice in terms of where to start, what better place to start than precisely targeting welfare spending at those who really need it,

 

Note that public Spending is 50 times what it was 50 years ago,  If it had stayed in line with inflation that would account for on third of the increase

 

Note that public Spending is double what it was when Tony Blair took office, if it had stayed in line with inflation would be 1.5 times what it was.

 

Look at the amount we are spending just in interest on our debts, est. £2000 per annum per household in the UK, and that is at current low interest rates, god forbid they should go up! Borrow our way out of this? Don’t be daft.

[Norman Verona]

Only thing missing from Doms link is the revenue raised from NI for some of the benefits paid out.

 

The adult minimum wage will increase to £13,124.80 for a 40 hour week (I know it's less but I'm old fashioned). Therefore how can anyone justify benefits over this amount. 

 

If you can't live with all the essentials for the net amount after £13,124.80 then the minimum wage needs raising. 

 

In France companies pay a social tax based on turnover not profit. The tax system here seems to be much simpler than in he UK. People pay a percentage of their income. The percentage varies according to their circumstances. So if you have two kids below working age the percentage is lower than if only have yourself to look after. No tax breaks, nothing to claim against tax, no take-it-in-hand and give-it-back in another. 

 

So, maybe we need a complete overhaul of our tax system as well as the benefit system.

 

It may also be worth CUTTING the tax levels of corporation tax. This may stop loopholes to avoid UK tax (and pay it somewhere else where the rate is lower) and will attract business to the UK. Overall, the tax take may rise.