Suella Braverman - comments on cutting welfare benefits.

[stayingpositiveifpossible]

I have just heard the interview where Suella bemoaned the alleged 'culture of dependency' - and the way in which she referred to 'people on benefits'.

It was pointed out that she failed to mention the vast numbers of people who are in paid work and claiming U.C because they can't manage.

I personally was appalled at her comments and feel they risk stereotyping a great many people. I feel the facts should be presented much more clearly. Can we have some transparence about the numbers of people who are in work and going to food banks, for example?

Plus the rhetoric has been ramped up at every opportunity & the myth that disability benefit awards are given because you have a boil on your bum, to get PIP you have to fill out a form that is designed to be confusing & very difficult to fill out you also have to have a great deal of medical evidence from GP’s/Consultants & any other professional agency’s involved in your care/support yet the so called assessment team can & do dismiss all this evidence & refuse the claim you then wait months for a tribunal which usually reverses the decision, the stress & humiliation is truly horrible.
When I took my dd for an assessment i practically carried her into the room she had flip flops on in December as her feet were so swollen she couldn’t get shoes on yet they stated in the report she walked into the room unaided & had appropriate footwear for the weather.
her benefit was stopped & she waited nearly a year before it was reinstated.
Yet these candidates have pissed up the wall billions of pounds of taxpayers money, but that’s ok because they will cut tax.

This is true, you keep the pupil premium if you've qualified in the previous 6 years. This is because evidence shows that, on average, children who have ever suffered deprivation will struggle throughout school and need the extra support pupil premium brings.

Obviously deprivation looks different to different people, but having ever qualified for free school meals is the measure we use.

Not only that. The lie that we have a vast number of feckless people living off the dole is nonsense. We have record low numbers of unemployed. Quite a few of these are mothers of 3 and 4 yo children yet to go to school.

A lot of people are going to regret the ousting of Boris

I imagine Labour will be sitting tight on their policies until we're actually campaigning for a GE, given that the Tories have form for stealing copying their policies when it's expedient for them.

I do wonder if she's read too many inflammatory stories about couples , who live in council homes with 12 children who want more help.

We've all heard those stories and, yes, the system needs to stop shirkers ( let's not deny that they exist) however, we cannot continue to have hard working parents needing extra benefits just to exist while these families are also doing the rounds of food banks.

The housing/rental market needs sorting first.
Why is my daughter paying more for a room in a flat share with less than basic living accommodation than we were paying on a mortgage for a 4 bedroomed detached?

Crazy.

Sort the housing crisis first, deal with absurd rents then maybe families might stand a better chance.

( sorry... I got a bit ranty there 🙄)

Exactly, I'm so sorry to hear about your DD :( But I wholeheartedly agree this insidious lie is so blatantly pushed to justify their own ideological, draconian stance on "the poor" that I genuinely fail to see how it has been so effective.

The parents are saved the cost of paying for free school meals though surely which could be £20+ extra pounds a week to them?

It’s not easy to avoid tax beyond approved schemes (such as pensions or isas which are limited).

Self employed people doing their own tax return:

a) Cash in hand to hide income?
b) Putting through expenses, which really are personal, as business? (and reclaiming input VAT on them)?
c) claiming holidays abroad are business trips?
d) claiming purchases of fixed assets, which really are for personal use?
e) trying to claim entertaining, fixed penalty notices, etc, which are not allowable for tax - as business expenses?

Just a few thoughts?

There could be an early election. I’ve heard nothing from labour about a coherent plan for recovery.

I remember the Conservatives saying before the 2010 election, that the job of the opposition party was to criticise the government - they didn’t have to have a plan!

The parents are saved the cost of paying for free school meals though surely which could be £20+ extra pounds a week to them

pp and free school dinners aren’t the same thing, the school gets the pp to spend on whatever and the pupil gets free school meals

pp follows the free dinner…not the other way around

Or are you not saying that

Exactly.

Pupil Premium and FSM are different. To get PPG a child needs to have once qualified for FSM, but getting PPG doesn't mean they are currently in receipt of FSM.

It's people on low incomes who don't have kids that I wonder about? They're not entitled to anything and it's all very well to tell people to 'better' themselves but a. that takes money and time, both of which are scarce if you're in a minimum wage full time job and b. there is no guarantee of a 'good' job at the end of it.

Also, as pp points out, those crappy low paid jobs need doing so that society continues to function.

But hey, at least she's gender critical.

PIP is one seriously screwed up system.

Has any candidate even mentioned it?

Not all children on PP will be getting free school meals though.

I agree. People should be more outraged about all the freebies MPs get. Instead they look towards poor, and disabled people to pick apart.

And in recent time the poor cheerfully vote for the Tories.

I remember during the 2019 campaign the BBC doing box pox in a food bank where the users all said they'd be voting for Boris.

Actually I don't mind freebies (like subsidies restaurants) for MPs.
I do mind vanity projects and worst of all fat contracts for friends and donors followed by jobs on boards or as 'advisers' for MPs. That's just out and out corruption.
The worst offenders of all though are billionaire tax avoidance.

I don't know why voters put up with it but some how we do and vote for more of the same. Maybe its something to do with the way we're manipulated by our newspapers.

could the school be liable for incorrectly claiming?

Someone upthread said she is trying to win over Brexit voters… surely she is too Brown and too female for them??? Brexit voters tend to be of a certain ilk..,

How would the school be incorrectly claiming anything?

if they don’t update their pupil premium claims?

The PP lasts for the duration of their school life, up to 6th form, if I recall correctly. The schools know what they are doing regarding this, I would have thought.