If you pay tax then you should not receive benefits.

Surely to do Ebay sales, you need to have something to sell? I mean, we only have internet access because DD has to submit a lot of her homework online, I am using a clapped out 6 year old laptop that the hinge is broken on (needs to be propped up against a wall to be used), the keyboard is very temperamental, etc. Because it was a 'hand-me-down' from one of my friends when she replaced her laptop. Without which, we wouldn't have one at all. We don't have anyhting to sell, I donate all my dc's outgrown clothes to the local women's refuge, so don't even have those to sell.

How would someone be a 'life coach? WTF is a 'life coach' anyway?? Can't use house for filming - LL would refuse permission. How would you buy things cheaper and sell them on? No transport to go to places that you can buy cheaper in bulk, I rely on public transort. It's hard enough to get my own shopping home by bus, I have to shop each day as I cannot carry more food than that?

And no-one round here would PAY someone else to arrange their dc's parties - they do it themselves? Do people actually do that? Pay someone else to arrange a party? Haven't met anyone yet who does! These things BTW ('life coaching' aside) are all things that I have thought about and discounted due to the constraints placed on me by the lack of money/lack of transport/ inability to fit in around DP's awkward shift patterns which causes childcare issues.

'Life coaching' has thrown me, that is obviously something that is well outside the sphere of my experiences, I have no idea what it is, or how you would do it. Would you be telling someone how to live? .

To tutor dc you need to pay for a CRB check. And have space in your house to do the tutoring. I don't. Or you have to have transport to get to others houses - not going to work if you have to rely on public transport.

Also you don't need trainig for lots of things if you just have confidence surely. I was paid to life coach someone. She found it really helpful. I'm not a trained life coach.

I've written 30 books. I've never had a lesson on writing a book.

I give loads of courses all the time - I never went on a course or had a day's training in how to speak. Our house has been used for filming. In other words I've just done stuff but not had training in it. It seems to flow from this luck, optimism, self confidence stuff.

None of these things are my main work

I'm interested in people and real lives.

So I suppose if I were in your position I'd think what can I market and what can I sell. buy things at price cheaper than you sell them on at. You will say I don't have money for a pound of potatoes so how can I buy and resell and that Xenia is very lucky she would be able to have the funds to buy and resell which is a fair point. ANy of my children could teach music privately as could I (8 grade 8s etc). So that's (a) naturally music (b) worked very very hard at it to pass the exams (c) lucky enough to live in a area where people are rich enough to pay for their children to have lessons when vast parts of the country parents can yhardly afford to feed them never mind pay for piano lessons or tutoring.

But could you not teach anything - even tutor 7 year olds in times tables? We get people putting leaflets through the door for all kinds of new small businesses from someone coming to your home to deal with your feet to I will do any task at your home including cleaning out animals etc.

Much more fun to organise children's parties for £200 an afternoon than work at a minimum wage job or do people to have to move to areas where others have the funds to spend on chidlren's parties? not sure. I'm going up to Northern Scotland next week and the week after for work things. People do travel for work although of course the poor may not want to do the hitch hiking which student age children might be comfortable doing or 24 hour bus journeys mine have dnoe at cheap prices in Central america

Anyway all food for thought and the law abiding benefits claimants have all those complications that if they earned £20 on ebay sales or £50 marketing a course or something I need people to market they woudl then mess up their benefits claims for months I suppose.

I suppose it's a little bit of frustration that due to my disability, I will not be able to get a job that uses anywhere near all of my abilities. Not that I am averse to hard work for low pay, I've done it before and I'll be doing it again, but I feel like the DWP and the government have basically written me off, and have decided that because I have certain barriers to employment, I should be thankful for anything I can get, rather than taking into account the fact that I am more than capable of getting a semi-decent job that pays much better, and would probably stop our family from needing any government support from TC's.

I feel it's a short-sighted view on the world to limit the options that someone unemployed / with a disability/ both has for free retraining to a select few things, instead of allowing a certain amount of funds for retraining, as not everyone that has been 'unlucky' only has the mental capacity for those select few things that will offer low pay.

The reason I feel that I would be able to do so much better if the state helped me to retrasin is because rather than writing, which you would only pay tax on if and when you were published, I could get a regular PT job, and be paying taxes regularly.

The problem being that the only things the state will pay for me to train in are not exactly compatible with my particular disability. They will pay for me to retrain as a hairdresser - Would you let someone wield a pair of scissors near you if you knew there was a chance they could have a seizure? They will pay for me to retrain as a mechanic - What good is a mechanic that is legally barred from holding a driving license? They will pay for me to retrain in catering - What good is a caterer that cannot use the equipment necessary to the job? As all catering ovens etc are classed as heavy machinery, and someone with uncontrolled epilepsy cannot use heavy machinery.

I will go back to work PT in the future, but I know that realistically I will only be able to get one that pays minimum wage - which will leave me working, but not paying tax. I would rather retrain and gain some useful qualifications, and go back to work, albeit PT - and be earning enough to pay taxes and be contributing to the economy.

It's not that I expect the state to do so, I know they wont. It's just that without that short-term help, I will never again earn anything above minimum wage, and will never again pay taxes due to not earning above the threshold. I find that very frustrating when I feel that I have enough skills to contribute, and earn enough even in a PT job to pay tax, but due to lack of relavent qualifications, it won't happen.

So, this is interesting - how people get to where they are. Why do you think if the state provided training for nothing you could do fine but without that state largesse and hand out you cannot? And why do I, little miss optimist, think that even if I were tetraplegic suddenly I could sit here and earn money by hook or by crook even simply because I can use words so by writing, marketing, selling or whatever?

Why couldn't ll write a book about living with disability or how her husband has won through on his disabilty and how people deal with difficult mothers in law? Why not just have a go adn write 2 chapters adn send it off. All my writing has started like that even as a teenager and of course most of the time yiou're rejected but we eternal optimists think well next time it will be fine because we know things always get better and better. That's non fiction so you wouldn't need fiction skills, just the good English your writing above seems to portray.

Is that the difference between socialists and others - that the socialists sit saying woe is me if only the state would provide all would be fine and those with my bent think right I'll get up at 5am and see what I can do to generate some work even though it's Saturday morning or whatever (not that I did today but I often have).

Disclaimer - was only 15 yrs old, and in FC when Tony Blair was elected in 1997, wasn't very interested in politics back then! Hence not knowing very much about what previous Tory governments were like. Lately I have been doing some reading on political history.

And I concur, Jareth, that Labour contributed to all these things, which is why I voted tory - I thought their pre-election pledges would fix these things. But they are going the wrong way about fixing them. Will a HB cap reduce rents? Not quickly enough for people to keep their private rented homes. And this goes for low income workers just as much as JSA claimants. Will there be any social housing for those homeless people to go to - no, because no more social housing is being built.

Tax Credits did not cause utility bills or housing costs to skyrocket - that was already happening. Tax credits were brought in to make up the shortfall between what you took home from minimum/low wage work, and the spiralling costs of living.

How exactly did Tax Credits in the UK cause Gas prices to rise? I had an inkling that is more to do with stand-offs between Russian suppliers, and Ukranian pipe-lines, and the policy of buying gas stocks well in advance?

Housing costs skyrocketed because BANKS started lending ever higher amounts of money on mortgages, people bought houses as an 'investment' rather than as a home - thus creating a shortage of available homes. Which is a little thing called 'supply and demand'. Which you can't avoid in a free economy. Rental prices increased as the house prices increased until you get to the point we are at now.

That all started (I would imagine, from the reading I have done in the past few weeks) when a certain (female) tory prime minister decided to give social housing tenants the 'right to buy', without replacing existing housing stocks as they were sold off. Had I known about this pre-election, I would have done some serious thinking about who got my vote.

Where were those low-paid people, that were previously in social housing, going to live if there was a major shortage of social housing stock? In private rented, of course! WWho profits from private renting? The LL, obviously - but also the government, indirectly.

Actually, we first got together nearly 12 years ago, while I was still training, we had a very on-off relationship for quite a few years partly due to the MIL not letting go and accepting he was an adult, partly due to his problems. He found it very difficult when my disability was diagnosed, as I had always been the 'carer', and suddenly I needed help from him, that at the time, he wasn't mature enough to give me. We have been back together now for over a year and a half, and our relationship is much better, he has matured, stood up to his mother, and become a much better partner and father.

How does it follow that someone who is reasonably literate could write a novel? Just because someone is literate, it does not mean they have the creative streak necessary to write fiction. I know I certainly haven't. It's just not in me, in fact for someone who did well at school, English literature was my weakest subject. If everyone was capable of being a best-selling author, ot wouldn't be so unusal to be one, would it? Which would then devalue that profession, leading to lower pay...vicious circle?

If I could find a well-paid, PT job in one of those areas, that I could get free training in, (my previous qualifications were very industry-specific), we would more than likely be in a very different situation. While I am not overtly pessimistic (although my posts on the subject of the cuts may give the impression that I am), I have come to accept after 7 years, the limitations that my disability has placed upon me. I call that realism.

In an ideal world, I would be retrained for free, in something that I could work PT in to supplement our income. I personally do not have learning difficulties, and class myself as fairly literate and able to retrain. The only constraint on my retraining is the lack of household income and the cost of training. But the country doesn't have money for people like me to retrain, the DWP/government doesn't care (labour or tory) what job we do, or for how little money, or how bad the conditions, so long as we are working. And that includes a lot of people like me that have a disability that is significant enough to impair their ability to work in a full time job, but not classed as significant enough to get any help from disability benefits.

But surely Labour contributed to salaries staying stagnant, housing costs increasing and utility bills skyrocketings as people on lower incomes were getting extra in tax credits?

I don't think I'll ever be able to vote Tory again (particularly after what's happening with University fees) but I'll never ever vote labour.

(sorry, I'm going off on a tangent...)

Public sector workers were still getting their 3% salary increase (most of the time) and offered the option of contributing to a final salary pension, while many private sector workers are still on the same money they were 3 years ago, career progression or not.

There is still HUGE wastage in the public sector. I could understand the cuts if they made sense, but just slaying whole departments/units/organisations in the name of saving money is bullshit when there are offices full of useless individuals filling their time with crosswords

I don't really know what causes either an optimistic happy attitude or the luck that makes some people's lives easier than others but I feel very lucky to have that and things always seem to get better and better too which is lovely. It was an interesting short programme.

If someone's learning difficulty is a low IQ I suppose then they could not even sit at home and write a best selling novel because they wouldn't have the vocabulary or ideas but I do think even if I were virtually paralysed I could earn a living just by sitting here at the screen although of course I would have to be able to afford an internet connection.

He seems to have done very well given his disability. Were you drawn to each other in part because you are both disabled?

Some people seem able to start businesses from home without any training and make a fortune working very short hours. Other people work very hard in minimum wage jobs for life. The question is it luck and what causes that luck or not so random. Clearly some very low paid people on here can write. I've made and still make quite a bit of money over the years from writing so how come I can and others can't? It's just an interesting issue. The Radio 4 thing said the happy lucky optimists (which is what I am) think great I could do that and they do it. The pessimists 0 think I am useless, I hve bad luck, if I submit that writing or if I do XYZ without a doubt I shall fail so they do not even try or notice their opportunities.

And I will add - DP has basically reached his 'earnings ceiling', as for what is essentially a reasonably unskilled job, he is earning more than quite a few retail managers in our town, and DP would not be capable of taking a management job.

With DP the reason he cannot earn much more than he does is because he has learning difficulties, to the point where he attended a 'special school' - Where he was told he would never hold down a job. We like to think that despite his difficulties, he has proved those people wrong.

With me, it boils down to nothing more than bad luck (and maybe dodgy genetics!). I was reasonably well trained, working in a well respected (and renumerated) field, when I was diagnosed with a disability that barred me from continuing in that job. As my disabiltiy will prevent me from working FT ever again (although in the future I do intend to go back to work PT), we would never be able to afford for me to retrain in something as I would never get a well-paid job with my physical limitations.

I haven't exlained that very eloquently, but it's not financially viable for me to retrain as DP would be unable to (on his income) be able to pay for me to retrain, as it would be a choice between course fees and rent/food for our family.

Good for him. Anyway something needs to be done as we cannot afford the system we currently have.

A universal benefit for all is cheaper to run and if you also cut taxes and allowances and reliefs we might save a lot of money on pointless jobs assessing people's eligibility for benefits and people could instead generate wealth not just be pointless state workers.

It certainly interests me why people endu pas they are and do what they do. There's nothing hugely special about me so how come I've ended up earning in an hour the weekly minmum wage (some hours anyway) and presumably you don't What led one of us on an individual level to that and the other to where they are? not that earnings necessarily correlate to personal contentment either although I do think my greatest luck is good health, mental and physical, certainly not earnings or the other perceived advantages I might have. (interesting radio 4 programme about luck www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vy37b
I see a lot of myself in the lukcy people and my own attitude whether born or made)

And the option of being on benefits is already a worse situation than working hard in a low-paid job, thanks to TC's. Why else would DP be slogging his guts out for the wage he gets? It works out that we as a family are about £40 a month better off with him in work, than being on benefits, after everything is taken into account. (the council tax we have to pay all of, the additional rent we have to pay, the school meals that we have to pay for).

To us, that £40 a month makes it worth our while to be in work. But for anyone on less than £16K pa, they WILL be worse off in work. That needs to change. BUT it's not that JSA needs to be lowered, it's that the wages need to rise. Why does everyone think that JSA should be lowered? It really should be that wages have to rise at the lowest end of the wage scale. JSA is set at the amount that has been worked out to the lowest possible amount that will cover food and utilities. Anything less is not realistic in this day and age.

Having said that, not everyone will work a full 40 hr week only to be £10 a week better off, and that's earning £16K. Would you slog your guts out for the equivalent of being £10 a week better off? DP does because we have something called pride. Not everyone has even heard of a work ethic, never mind actually possessing one!

So how would I persuade my verbally abusive MIL and FIL to move in with us into a house that is already too small? And would I be a responsible parent if I opened up my home to someone who would at best ignore my older 2 dc, at worst be verbally abusive to them too?

And as for the 'luxury' of being a single parent - NO single parent that I know actually chose to be a single parent. One left her H after his THIRD affair when he got the OW pregnant - should she have 'put up' with him impregnating other women? Another divorced her H after spending 2 yrs in various refuges after he tried to stab her while she was holding her 4 week old baby - should she have stayed with him? And the third LP that I know is an LP because his W died of cancer. Did any one of them 'choose' to be an LP?

I certainly have never and will never 'revere' Gordon Brown, in fact I think he was a bit of an oaf, and should never have been running the country, he was unelected, and not capable of doing the job he was meant to be doing. But now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can see what Labour were trying to do, but I feel that they did it in the wrong way, and went too far with it.

Doesn't change the fact that without TC's, there are a lot of people out there that will be plunged into insurmountable poverty due to the current costs of living. And in a developed country in the 21st century, that can only be seen as a devastating step backwards.

I must admit, given my previous views on the world, I am rather surprised at how I find myself agreeing with certain 'ideals' of the left (brought up in a staunchly conservative voting family). Yet I feel that Labour's policies over the last 15 years were executed in the wrong way, without enough knowledge of the long-term implications for our country.

Yes, labour cynically made more people state dependent and reliant on the state. Socialists always want that so you can revere your dear leader as in Korea, the state as benefactor and people not responsible for themselves.

the xtended family point is a minor one but if we cannot afford to pay people what we have done to date and even if we can but we think less state dependence is good then in the medium term people may be forced to live with family even if they don't get on too well if there is little alternative than a park bench. They might have to bite their tongue and live with mother in law or as you say live with their adult children so have a good few wages coming into the home of parent and 4 adult 20 somethings etc not such a bad way to live. The luxury of living alone - something I have never had in my adult life or ever - is not something most people can afford nor indeed of being a single parent.

ll, you may well not vote conservative again (even though labour planned 20% cuts and the tories have made 25% so there's nothing much between them) but in 5 years when we have an election I am pretty sure most people will see the benefits and there will be a conservative majority.

I suppose the aim is to make state dependence sufficiently unpleasant that people do go out there and take jobs or move where work is or live with family members or whatever it is. As things stand you can be idel at home and get rent paid up to £20k under the new rules, plus your other benefits or you can go out there and work very hard for low wage jobs. There is not enough disincentive to take the state dependence option. It is not nasty enough.

I voted Tory because I felt that Labour had made far too many mistakes during their time in power, like introducing minimum wage, and not raising minimum wage in tune with the rises in housing costs/ costs of living, Like Afghanistan, like the paying of TC's to people that are on double the national average wage. I'm kicking myself now!

I don't know about economically stupid - Cuts have got to be made somewhere, it's either that or end up like Greece, but politically stupid? DEFINATELY. I for one will probably never vote conservative again, and a lot of people I know in similar situations to me that also voted Tory will also never do so again!

I mean by that, they have hit people like you. Which is morally wrong and politically and economically stupid.