AIBU that the benefit cap is actually a cut on child benefit?

1. Neither of them have worked for over 10 years yet they have a 5 year old child - who did they think was going to support that child?
2. As others have said - if their is no work in your field, get work outside your field/
3. Five of those children also have another parent where is their contribution to raising their own kids?
4. Learn to budget.

Wow, they have a higher disposable income than most working people. I certainly can't afford Sky, a 200per week cigarette habit or 24 cans of lager. Perhaps they will just need to tighten their belts a bit and consider whether the above mentioned is more important than paying for "eating and heating". After all, we are apparently "all in it together".

Yes op you are probably the most unreasonable poster I have seen on here in a long time.

Agree with the majority on thread, it really is robbing Peter to pay Paul

MrPants you & I are in the majority, maybe not on Mumsnet but in the country as a whole. Even the Labour party have recognised which way the wind is blowing. I think Ed Miliband said the proposed benefits cap should be lower than £26K outside London.

Thank god I found this post - I started a similar one up about this couple a few days ago and to hear the bleatings of some of the wooly-minded fruit-loops on the left, one could be forgiven for thinking this family wasn't getting enough in benefits!

Ooooh Politics.

Don't think there's much politics involved tbh, all the main parties agree that there should be a benefits cap.

Tories are in their element, it's like shooting fish in a barrel for them, they can blame Labour for the mess.

Labour are struggling to defend the fact that they allowed the numbers trapped by benefits (like this family, for whom it is simply not worth getting a job) to grow so fast.

Well said callmemrs

Going to work has lots of associated unavoidable costs - childcare usually being the biggest, but travel, clothes, etc. as well. I wonder what you'd have to earn to end up with the disposable income that this family has? Plenty more than £40K.

Strawbezza - and the irony is that if you post on MN saying you're earning 40k, you'll be told you're a lucky bitch and have no right to ever feel hard up (even though you might be paying £1000 a month or more on childcare). Yet if you get given the equivalent of a 40k salary for doing fuck all, you get sympathy from some sections of MN and outrage on your behalf that the govt could even dream of cutting back !!

Child tax credits are a benefit paid for each child. How much you get depends on how much you earn. Parents out of work get the most. High earning parents get nothing. There are lots of websites explaining the full details.

sorry to hi jack slightly but what are child tax credits? iv heard of working tax credits obviously and child benefit...

Really don't know how anyone can defend this.

This family is being given money which is the equivalent of a £40K+ salary per year. No wonder the dad's never bothered to get a job.

There are plenty of working families who are much worse off than this. How can that be right?

The dad's a workshy scrounger.

It doesn't really matter what's cut. As long as something is. Currently this family are spending a good slice of their child benefit and child tax credits on fags, booze, pub, mobiles & sky. And despite the fact that these benefits are labelled as "child" benefits, the adults are spending most of them on themselves.

Hopefully so

I work for a big software company and they do whispers in house training for tech support staff. I think he is lazy and full of shit

and when did software writing dry up - surely software is pretty big these days and something that is not restricted by geography as he could do it from home?

11 years on job seekers

Sorry but I would be asking 'what the actual fuck are you doing? Deliberately sabotaging your chances of getting employed?!'

He certainly doesn't give enough of a fuck to retrain because he has it bloody easy with unnecessary luxuries.

I don't believe for 1 second he can't get a job in 11 years

Thefeministswife - great post.

Oops posted too soon, your average working person in this country has finally had enough of this sort of piss take. I know dozens of working families who have to live on less than this. People who don't have the luxury of nights out, sky tv and half a dozen mobile phones.

Hang on a minute, he spends £80 a month on going out! DH works full time and can't afford to go out even once a month (it's actually more like once every 6 months) let alone four times a month! £60 a month on Sky! Our Sky package was £60 a month I've had to reduce because we can't afford it! We had the movies, HD and multi-room, got rid of the multi-room and HD it's now £35 a month. 24 cans of fucking lager and 200 cigarettes plus tobacco a week! Fucking hell! I can barely afford to buy a bottle of wine at the weekend and I buy the cheap stuff that tastes like shit!

I'm usually totally on the side of the person claiming benefits but this family is taking the total piss. We're literally robbing Peter to Paul every single fucking month, I have to borrow off my mum every week to make it through to the next Tuesday when I get my tax credits, then pay her back when DH gets paid and we're short again so it's a viscous circle. And this guy hasn't worked for 11 years because there's no jobs in his field? Work in a fucking supermarket then! DH has gone from minimum wage job to minimum wage job over the years (as did I before having kids) and we've spent a fair share of our time on the dole. DH always took the 1st job that came up.

People like him are what gives ordinary struggling families on benefits a bad name.

I dare say there are people out there who the benefit cap is going to cause real hard ship, but this family is not one of them. They have Sky movies because "they don't go out", yet he spends £20 a week in the pub! They spend loads more on alcohol and tabbacco as well. Mobile phones can be done for a lot less than £32 a week, as can the £91 "other expenses".

IMVHO he should be getting a job and perhaps they should be looking at their outgoings now before they do implement the cap.

Poor lambs.

How about giving up smoking, the lager, the sky and getting off his arse and getting a job.

I don't believe for second he's applied for three jobs a week for the past nine years. And if he has and been turned down for all of them, then perhaps we need to start questioning why. Oh that's right, he hasn't been able to find a job in his "expertees"

Sorry, I have no sympathy for them at all.

Haven't you lot raged enough about the feckless lazy benefit scroungers already?

Can't you give it a bloody rest for one night

And if you take away the "24 cans of lager, 200 cigarettes and pouch of tobacco" (which we'll say is costing £100 per week), the Sky TV, Mobile Phones and Entertainment, they would have an extra £167 per week.

That's £8684 per year.

That's double what the proposed "loss" in benefits is!

These people need to snap out of it. And fast.

Yes I know the mobiles is for 8 people, but FFS I didn't have a mobile when I was a teenager. Making calls is a luxury. These people are living of the state.