Yay! Looks like Child Benefits are next on Dave's hitlist...

[cupcakesandbunting]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11009535

Speculation, my bum. We all know what's coming, Dave.

ryoko that's why the cb was so good as it went directly to the mother, i really did rely on it as maternity pay was so shit. i also went back to work when my child was one. it's was the only benefit i ever got and was invaluable.

Riven - because it was cupcakesandbunting that said those things and, unless she disagrees with DC, me, any Tory from the extreme Right, then she has to be a leftie

"Still shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, any money is better then no money and there are countries with higher taxation then us giving people less."

That doesn't make it right .... now where's that guillotine when you need one

Loved the stats, can we have the source please?

look at the pie charts for receipts and spending

It's an utter disgrace that social protection costs tens of billions more than we take in through income tax.

That budget obviously needs cutting.

Check out the unemployment rates, nothing is better at creating unemployment then a Tory government.

It's all the milk snatchers fault service industries my arse, a country with no manufacturing has no future in the global economy.

Perhaps if the Tories hadn't destroyed the car industry and electronics industry among others we wouldn't be the mess we are now.

this explains it better than I could

we should be more like the french -get off our arses and riot

The UK is losing manufacturing because the cost of living (and therefore wages) are so much higher than the competition. That is not the Tories doing. If you want to be con=mpetitive you need to think globally. We simply cannot compete with the likes of China and India.

Whilst the British are worrying about their entitlements, the people of those countries are working (for pittance). So there is no competition.

Well social protection is going to increase not decrease, my aunty is a home help type person employed through an agency rather than the council, but it a council job iyswim.
She's been trying to retire for the past 4 years and every time she tells them she wants to leave they increase her pay because there is nobody else with the experience or inclination to do the job, she's on around £40 an hour pro rata.
And that is what all the graduates with any health related degree are going to end up doing because the growing market is for arse wipers and not a lot else.

From ages ago.. yes it is a fucking assault on pensioners. They've earned their help, they've paid for it, they are still paying for it, a lot of them.

Fucking selfish to moan about single mothers who couldn't be arsed to use a condom and expect eighty year olds to pick up the slack for them.

A pittance is relative, getting £1 a day may be nothing by our standards but if your rent is £2 a week and your food costs £1 a week and travel to work is 50p it's perfectly fine.

Most of the European car industry is still in Europe, other countries support business, this country doesn't, this Government after promising money and tax breaks to the games industry turned round as soon as they got in power and told the games industry to sod off, and now look the last UK dev, Codemasters has been sold.

Fucking selfish to moan about single mothers who couldn't be arsed to use a condom and expect eighty year olds to pick up the slack for them

Didn't know that single mothers were able to put condoms on. You'd have thought someone would have told us of this weird batch of women who've started sprouting cocks!

Cupcakesandbunting I think they have them in Thailand.

'They've earned their help, they've paid for it, they are still paying for it, a lot of them.'

Newsflash: everyone who earns is paying for this! We, my generation (I'm 39) will never be able to 'retire' and draw a state pension. We'll have to work till we drop. We will get FA, in addition to having a significantly higher cost of living than they ever had. And that's just tough for us. Final salary pension, my arse!

So I fail to see why I should have to pay for people who are in their early 60s and take in more than most people make in a year via their final salary pension (usually mortgage-free, too) to pocket £260-odd extra pounds they don't need and travel around for free when they can well-afford to pay whilst I go without food to keep my own children in a minimum of warmth whilst my husband drives a mini-bus all the hours he's allowed and walk around in a gale because I can't afford bus fare. And Winter Fuel Allowance for people who live abroad. WTF?!

I fail to see why they are any more exempt from cuts than Britain's children, who are just as vulnerable. Or the disabled. Both of whom are being massively targeted for cuts and pilloried left and right for the sins of their parents or conditions they can't do anything about.

That's why I believe Winter Fuel Allowance and travel passes should be means-tested.

Means-test it all. Like it to Pension Tax Credits.

The thing I don't understand about the OAPs is this, they go on about working all there lives and deserving something in retirement but who are they kidding?, most OAPs aged 70+ are women, women who back in the days where housewives living off husbands cash as thats what things where like well into the 80's when woman/mothers in the work place became far more excepted.

So no a lot of them have not worked all there lives and they should stop pretending that they have and that society owes them something that will be denied to this generation (who pay more tax).

A hell of a lot of them did not earn anything at all, my DH's mother qualified as a teacher when it was what the kids who couldn't pass A levels did, went to teacher training college straight from school.
Got a full grant whilst studying then went into teaching for 5 years before getting pregnant with DH. She then got a job where I kid you not she was off sick for 9 years throughout his childhood, probably depression but on full sick pay. Worked part time, made some appalling decisions until retirement.
Fast forward she's 70 now, picks up over £1500 a month for just herself, has £50k in savings attracting no interest and boy do we here about that and of course is mortgage free. She cannot wait for the interest rates to rise to give her a few extra pounds a month, despite the fact that we've told her repeatedly that we would loose our house if they did.
This is just an average woman, god knows how well couples do, our local area is floor to ceiling retired teachers, GP's etc.

I know there are plenty of poor OAPs out there, so I think means-testing is the answer, same as it is with other benefits besides DLA and Child Benefit.

But even my working poor ILs were able to buy their own home under RTB.

We are facing an old-age, if we get it, in absolute penury.

So I'm a member of Exit and, if something else doesn't manage to kill me before I feel it's gone on too long, I plan to take matters into my own hands, not expect the state to pay for me to play golf and go on coach tours for 30-odd years whilst developing more and more expensive-to-treat health problems.

Everyone pays in all their lives if they've been working.

It's relative though isn't it, lets face it my MIL for example has taken a lot more than she's paid in and is she grateful, is she fuck, I hear the "i've worked all my life" crap all the time, am dying to one day turn around and say actually you haven't, but of course I won't.

My dad's in his late 70s now. He's fairly comfortably retired, but he did work a lot, in the US and abroad.

But even he says, 'Shit, I got lucky. Most people of your generation are screwed.'

And he's right.

My mother never worked outside the home since 1966 when she first got pregnant and she expresses nothing but wonder and gratitude at her luck.

I just don't see why pensioners should be any less exempt from other catergories of vulnerable people such as children and the disabled.

Totally turning this "singles parents with plasma screen tellys" theory on its head; my lovely MiL spent her WFA on ...drum roll... a plasma screen telly

As pointed out, disabled children and adults don't get Winter Fuel Allowance.

And they have to prove their disability to get a bus pass.

So what's the big deal about older people demonstrating need, too?

And at 60?! FFS. The retirement age is still 5 years away at the least.

And they get till 2020, when the government will be out, but everyone else gets the shaft up the tailpipe right now.

Well, sorry, but I call bullshit.

I never understand why the Daily Fail readers bitch about single mums with leather Sofas and 42 inch TVs, have they not had the memo about the amount of debt in this country, have they never heard of places like Brighthouse and Wonga.com, having something doesn't mean you have money to pay for it.