If today’s crop of post budget threads are anything to go by…

[CurlewKate]

we should just go straight back to work houses. I’m sure we could boost the economy by having children working in factories or making mass market clothes.

No one should get more for not working than someone working. There is no justification for it and I want a politician to stand up, look me in the eye and explain why they think it is.

You realise there are lots of vulnerable people who are higher rate tax payers being squeezed from every direction?
I am disabled and I know plenty of fellow disabled people who get zero benefits, work full time in complex jobs and yet have nothing to show for it at the end of the month.

This idea that it's neatly divided into the vulnerable get looked after and the strong and healthy work is a fiction!

Yep. I have diagnosed Adhd. Never claimed for it. I have other health issues. Never claimed for it. I keep working. I can't do much but I have a small business and work everyday. I have to, otherwise we'd be fucked.

It's because they live in London and most of it will go to the landlord and childcare provider.

It would be less if they didn't work full time and get assistance with childcare
It will also go down when they don't need as much childcare

But when people on 100k salaries in London try and explain it all goes on rent and childcare they are mocked and told they should be grateful...

At least we know this can't go on beyond 2029.

Labour are done for after the next general election

The benefits system was designed by the conservative government and implemented by the conservative governments. Ian Duncan Smith

Common theme through all these discussions is cost of housing, especially rents.

Thatcher’s policies selling off public stocks and not replacing them, with subsequent governments not fixing it - Chickens came home to roost scuse the pun on that.

Proper rent controls and build decent public housing for people. It’s mad that private landlords incomes are effectively being paid for by the taxpayer via benefits. Sure there will always need to be private rentals but as part of a better balanced, Fairly priced, mix.

I grew up in the 80s in poverty. Even then, I realised that the benefits my dad got (as he literally stopped both working and looking for a new job) weren’t spent on looking after me. His money got spent on booze and fags. If he’d have been given vouchers for food or clothing for me, I’d have been better off. He smoked and drank every single day - sometimes at the pub twice a day. Giving him more benefits didn’t benefit me.

Handing out cash to people who don’t work or won’t work is not going to incentivise them to get work.

I believe we all need a helping hand from time to time and the state should support us but this shouldn’t be a lifestyle choice.

I think the whole benefits system needs an overhaul.

"If today’s crop of post budget threads are anything to go by…" then mn is overrun by bots

^^That explanation makes more sense.

I’m on Universal Credit, reading these threads and wondering how on earth people get so much! We don’t receive anything like this.

Until very recently, we only got the standard allowance which is roughly £600 for us both, plus a further £600 roughly as we have two DC. That’s £1200 total. That’s all we got for years (until I applied for DLA for the DC this year).

DP had a well-paid job in IT until he collapsed four years ago. He’s been told he’ll never be able to work again - but he doesn’t qualify for PIP.

I am self-employed. I had a senior position in a FTSE 100 company until DC were born prematurely and with disabilities (twins). I had to stop working in my very well-paid job and set up my business to keep a roof over our heads (I wasn’t with DP at this point - he’s not the bio father). I also had to care for my dearly departed dad single-handedly (who had Huntington’s disease and had deteriorated) at the same time as setting up a business and being a single mum to premature twin babies, both with disabilities.

I now care for my DM who has cerebral palsy, dementia, and cancer, who lives with me, plus I still obviously care for my two disabled DC. At age 16, one is still in nappies and both need assistance with showering, eating, and are unable to even cross a road alone. This probably won’t ever change and I doubt they’ll ever live independently. Oh, and I also have to help my DP with daily life as his condition is never getting better.

I work between everything else, as much as I can. I’m still up working now at 4am, and taking a break while I eat biscuits 😂 I’m taking mum to the hospital in the morning.

I have been providing care around the clock, literally 24/7, for 16 years now. I haven’t had a holiday in 12 years. I work - in my business - really bloody hard alongside providing constant care.

People seem to think I’m raking it in on benefits. £1200 was all we received in benefits. Not a penny more. And if I earned over £600 in a month from my self-employment, that £1200 was reduced.

I have no clue how some people get so much in Universal Credit!

For everyone that’s raging about those on Universal Credit, please understand that a) many of us are in really difficult circumstances that aren’t linked to a poor lifestyle or decisions and b) that many of us get a much smaller sum than you have been led to believe.

Oh, and to the PP that suggested we all spend our benefits on alcohol and cigarettes - I don’t drink or smoke. And neither does DP. Sorry.

But are all these benefits new? Did this labour government create them?

Agree with other PP that the lion’s share goes into landlords’ pockets, often for a crap service. Control rent prices and the benefits bill could be massively reduced. And fewer people would be spending two thirds of their income to live in a glorified bedsit or shed as well

I don’t know where the myth that landlords are the problem comes from, if you speak to any of them you’ll find out the extent of the myth

The only way you can make any money in the rental market is if you have no mortgage, but then you are tying up a lot of money to be at the whim of the government who can change the law at any point on earnings.

Most people I know, including my DP, are getting any capital they have out of rental properties as they can get the same return on literally a high street savings account, it’s just not worth the headache or huge unpredictability

What will be left is not small, mainly ok, landlords, it’ll be big corporations with small % profits, high volumes and increasing influence on governments.

Oh I totally agree with that.

I just think we need to be fair about what is /is not a high salary in the SE/London

100k cannot simultaneously be untold riches and at the same time the bare minimum needed to survive. This isn't a Schrödinger car situation.

I'm on UC too and it is also nowhere near anything like what I get and I also get DLA for my son too.

They are always going to use extreme versions like that when it doesn't apply to the majority to create all of the rage.

Nail on the head. The billions should have been spent on improving schools, increasing pre/post school activities/clubs, school holiday clubs, etc., to target the kids who have poor homelives, not just poor in terms of money, but poor in terms of supporting and encouraging their kids. Just throwing money at crap parents won't achieve anything at all.

Labour/Brown introduced a massive giveaway with tax credits in the early noughties that fuelled inflation and housing cost rises.

Maybe not the children-I'm happy to draw the line at that but absolutely agree with you when it comes to their parents!

Good idea, OP!

And then the tories did what to tackle that when they were in power... ?

The modern welfare system was introduced by the Labour Government between 1945 and 1951..

I rather think it was the tories who started the housing crisis with the sell of council houses and not letting councils build more

that turned a strongly controlled housing market into a Wild West of profiteering - from house builders to private landlords

the current crop of threads is beyond tedious though / the comprehension skills / or plain lying / of many of the OPs is worrying

Sorry the current uc rules were introduced by a conservative government and implemented by them

People are sick of spending their lives working all hours to pay for those who don’t. I have no problem with people who work in low paid jobs and need a top up (although I think this should come from employers, not the government), but I have no time for people who sit at home and claim.