In hoping the benefits cap may prove to be A Good Thing?

A better incentive would be to provide decent affordable childcare that caters for evenings/weekends/nights and actual jobs for people to go too.

But then I'm living in dreamland..

20 I'm telling you what I see in the playground on a daily basis and that is the reality of the lives of lots of families on long term benefits. Benefits trap you into accepting a life which is precarious because you are dependent on other people providing for your needs and strips you of ambition and aspiration for yourself and your dc. And no the DM is not my paper of choice I read The Times. Actually there is an interesting article by the Big Issue founder John Bird in The Times today saying essentially the same thing( unfortunately can't be linked). FWIW my parents are immigrants to this country and came with nothing except incredible stoicism and the ability to work very hard. In order for my father to bring his family over he had to prove to the immigration service he could provide for us and we would not be a burden to the state. Within 5 years of arriving he had a steady job( working in a restaurant) and had bought a house. My parents have never been out of work despite poor English and lack of recognised qualifications. My feeling is if they can do it why can't a lot of able bodied people who are claiming long term benefits and who have the advantages of being born and educated in the UK!

It shouldn't be a god-given 'right' to receive benefits, nor should individuals be allowed to become dependent on the state. I claimed benefits for several years & found that the motivation to work depleted as time went on. There has to be a cap or we are simply opting out of resolving the problem. People should be in work - any kind of employment - unless they are incapacitated or caring for another. Research shows that a working population is mentally, physically & economically healthier. Read the article in today's Times by John Bird ( the founder of The Big Issue) - he says 'you don't help the poor by making them dependent on handouts'.

Mother and sheepgomeep- well said. And the job and poverty issue is only going to increase as they force more people into substandard housing or into sharing with their families. Its almost Victorian an idea. We watch programmes like Call the Midwife and baulk at the conditions these people lived in, the diseases they caught- well, we'll be meeting these diseases in RL shortly if the Tories have their way. Its impossible to find decent, well paid work in this country, even harder to find work that goes around school timetables and holidays. Then you must find an employer who doesn't mind if you can't be at work due to your child being unwell. And any chance the next generation had of pulling themselves up in the world is being snatched by Uni fees too.
Mumzy- way to generalise there! D'you read the Daily Mail by any chance? I know a few families back in my home town in Kent who aren't working, it doesn't always equate that they are "skunk smokers" who are too lazy to read to their kids. In fact, the more two parent families who are forced to have both parent's in work, the more kids there will be missing out on education at home, on books at bedtime, as their parents will either be just home from work, or still at work. Do we really want to go back to having latch key kids?

"For those who are doing the right thing who have fallen out of work, we will support them and make sure they get back to work.
"Councils will be able to work with certain key families who may need a little bit more time to make some changes to their circumstances while they push them through the cap and into new housing."

What? So he's going to find some extra money to fund a carer for my violent autistic/adhd son then?

Where are all these jobs going to come from anyway? Who is going to provide childcare for those evening/weekend jobs such as those in retail/cleaning/shift workers.

Dont tell me there are 'school hours jobs' because they are few and far between

very reassuring!

"What will happen is that people will move into overcrowded rundown housing renting from 'slumlords', families in damp and dangerous conditons - this happens already"

And this will affect all of us: TB (and/or other diseases) - Coming soon to a town near you!

Sensationalist? No, not really.

I had to subject my son to a BCG as a baby to protect him from TB as there are high levels of TB in the London borough where we lived (Hackney). (It's a horrible jab by the way, much more of a nasty experience than the others, and a 1 in 200,000 chance of getting pretty ill from it).

A study into why TB is so high in Hackney found that the single most important factor was poverty, and the specifically mentioned overcrowding due to poverty.

The article in the BMJ actually suggested the best way to combat TB woud be to bring people out of poverty.

Drive more people into poverty and there will be more disease, simple. And that could affect you. (It'll certainly affect your taxes at any rate).

I think the cap is a good idea as we need an incentive for people to work rather than stay on benefits long term. At my dc school there are families where no adult has worked for 3 generations and they all turn up on masse to collect their kids from school. The teachers spend most of their time with these kids as their educational attainments are so poor. Their families never read with them or support them educationally despite not working I can only surmise they spend most of their time smoking skunk as they reek of it. The adults have no incentive to work as they get enough from the state to get by(and also by selling knock off at the parents coffee morning). They don't push their kids to do well at school because what's the point if they'll get housing and money from the state without working. I think the lords are being naive about people on long term benefits who are perfectly capable of working but just don't want to.

The woman on the news, who said why should she have to move, when she was having her rent paid, and receiving more than 26k, made my blood boil. Her sense of entitlement, when dh and I are out working hard, made me see red.

What will happen is that people will move into overcrowded rundown housing renting from 'slumlords', families in damp and dangerous conditons - this happens already, I don't know how often but I personally know of two families living this way.

The £26,000 cap includes income based benefit, contributions based benefit and LA/HB - I'm not sure about CTB and Child benefit. The only other people who will have child benefit considered as 'income' are those earning over £44,000. DLA is exempt just as it is for working people.

The homeless will be the worst effected as a family in a B&B (that the council has housed them in) will have almost no money left after the board has been paid - these people already have nowhere to cook so find it hard to eat and live in very stressful conditions.

People who do have homes even if they are overcrowded will cut back on heating and food to pay the rent. They will go to food banks and soup kitchens, the parents will miss meals and the children will rely on school meals - the landlords will be paid and will not loose their benefits, it's the claiments that will suffer.

They don't teach programming under 16 these days at most schools. IT is using Micro$oft programs in such a way as to be a basic "admin skills" course.

MrsHeffley have you seen Scratch? Its basic loops etc with a fun java) interface aimed at primary aged children.

Yes hence my looking into something aimed at younger kids.Some primary schools do teach it but need to find out what they use.Dtwin just wants to build and write stuff.

Oh primary age. I thought we were talking about secondary school.

I don't see many 8 years old being able to code in Java TBH. If your DCs are more advanced then maybe they'd handle it.

They don't seem to teach them to build anything only play with software.Our dc 8 are bored and say it's too easy.Don't get me wrong they do lovely stuff and produce nice bits of work but sadly they're not building or writing and my dc(and I suspect some of their friends) would be more than capable.

Dtwin 2 wants dp to teach him how to write Java but I know there is stuff out there aimed at kids so that's what I'm looking into.Dp can explain all this far better than me.

The problem is I suspect most primary teachers can't do this stuff and why should they be able to.I'd far rather they be good at teaching reading/writing than cutting code. Don't know what the answer is as unless schools get specialists in and offer decent amounts to compete with the industry I don't see how they can change things.

Sorry I won't hijack anymore. Would just add I'm sure others can explain all this better than me as I'm a complete ludite.

TotemPole - ours aren't of an age where i've seen all they do, but DH has looked into what the curriculum scope is later on at A Level (etc), and says he's not really very happy. Like MrsHeffley's DH, he has actively tried on a few occasions to gets ours more involved, using bits from his work as examples (DH dept has a strong R&D angle to it though, even though it's a commercial/private company, so he's able to talk about some really cool things that otherwise they might not know about). Without revealing where my DH works, one arm of his company did something to do with Apple software a couple of years ago - don't know much more than that but seemed to impress DS.

And then DS toddles along to his school IT lesson to cover more Word and Powerpoint! It's hardly surprising that our best and brightest sometimes struggle to engage... "Dp says schools teach the reading of it but not the writing." - I think I will pass this onto DH, he'll like that way of putting it, to be honest! Very spot on. Sorry for the derailed thread, OP!

We learnt BASIC at school if we took the computer science option. Do they no longer have that, is it all IT and ICT?

Yes it's like teaching reading and writing.Dp says schools teach the reading of it but not the writing.He thinks we're in danger of loosing out to the rest of the world who teach it far better.He's teaching our dc to write code as they don't do it in school.We're having to research the best way ourselves,it's madness!

MrsHeffley, that's what my DH says too - the problem isn't that there aren't job, there just aren't enough good, skilled people to fill them. He's a project manager whose remit extends to recruitment for the projects his teams run (basically works alongside the HR staff to recruit, and he vetos/pushes for recruits where needed) - he's constantly bashing his head against virtual desks about the lack of good candidates. I have to listen to his frustrations regularly

God IT isn't dying.It's on the list of safe jobs.Dp keeps seeing masses of jobs out there for what he does-software developer.

And saying, as someone here did, families do not get £26k in benefits because they have to use some to pay for rent is silly. Do you think people who work get their homes rent or mortgage free.

Straw man alert. I was one of the posters who said that most of that 26k was in HB, so wasn't actually a true reflection of what a family on benefits lives on. I don't remember saying that people who work shouldn't get help with their housing costs. In fact, I said one of the problems for EVERYONE is that housing costs are too high generally.

Some of these examples of rent and HB are shockingly high. The rent for my house is £395 a month and I don't get all of it paid with HB, I have to top up the rest. Very shocked at the rates in some areas.

Not sure on the whole capping of benefits, I am so sick of worrying about it all I've decided to bury my head in the sand so I'm on a self inflicted news blackout. The tories government are doing whatever they want to and to hell with the poor and disabled - which as the carer of a child with a disability is rather scary.

20something,
Suggesting that only girls learn to cook is sexist. And if there are no jobs or a limited amount of jobs in the trade then it is pointless to learn it. There are plenty of jobs in IT, but people do not appear to want to learn it to an appropiate level. How is IT a dying economy. Every company needs to be able to use high level IT. Scientists all use computer programmes that were designed by people with high level IT skills, so do hospitals, banks, car designers etc
besides most schools do home ec. boiling pasta is nto exactly hard, and it is not because people are incapable of cooking thta they get take outs.

And saying, as someone here did, families do not get £26k in benefits because they have to use some to pay for rent is silly. Do you think people who work get their homes rent or mortgage free.

dont we need plumbers and people in IT?

But school leavers can still learn a trade, and the new rules about staying in education to 18 allow vocational training as well as academic.

Cooking lessons are a good idea, are they really not offering them at your DC's school? They certainly still run at my old school (younger siblings left in the last 2 years).

Finally the changes to IT are not tinkering, they are saying that we need young people trained in how computers work, not how to use Microsoft software to produce a pretty newsletter. How is that not a trade?

Having a trade as an option, to complement the lovely variety of service sector jobs = fine.
Teaching children how to cook at school = fine too.

But saying that IT is worthless and dying = short sighted.
Saying that the country's ill health and poor diet is because girls aren't taught cookery skills any more = sexist, and short sighted.

Sorry £35K is way too low to stop CB.For many people on that bracket it's the difference between heating and not.I'm no expert but I would have thought £60 K would be better.Far more likely to not be a serious impact on all families and they wouldn't need to pay to means test it.

Or they could play fair and treat CB like WFA ie leave it universal.To be frank I don't think you can justify not touching one and meddling with the other.