benefits - can anyone advise?

[namechangerrr]

hi i am a regulare but have name changed for this. i was wondering if anyone would e able to help me here. i have seen on the news about benfits being cut/capped but cant seem to find any exact figures.

was wondering if anyone could be able to help me and see if my benefit will be capped or cut, so that i can be prepared for this.

i recieve weekly:
£135 child tax credit
£48 cb
£65 incone support
£145 hb
£12 ctb

i no this seems like a huge amount when written like this but in reality it isnt. once i have paid gas, elec, water rates (£28 per week!), tv licence etc there is not much left for food/nappies.

i would be very grateful if anyone could help. i am not intending to be on benefit forever and i do want to better myself for myself and my children.

i was one of those mums gideon......ended up 150 miles from my family

knew nobody here,had to put down roots from scratch

not easy

but it was easier than the alternative,staying with him....army welfare removed me and my children to a secret location. ripped away from everything they knew overnight.

i think you will find their are MANY feckless fathers out there.....many

and the ones who comit DV arent likely to say 'help yourself' are they??

Raising children is not a job, for centuries women raised families and worked hard jobs, it's only recently that speaking French and being able to do ballet before the age of 5 became compulsory activities to fill the days of mummy, the kids would be just as happy digging up worms in the garden/park.

I never use a teabag less than 10 times for purposes of frugality...

But people, don't you realise that the reason why people on benefits (sometimes) are getting as much/more as people who work is that British employers take advantage of high unemployment and pay people scraps?

The minimum wage in the UK is about 5 pounds, right?

Nobody can live on that if they have children, which is why you have the whole tax credit system. Tax credits to people working full time are not benefits, they are subsidies for employers. I am not an economist and possibly it does make sense for the government to pay out those subsidies to the individual employees, instead of to the business and at the same time double the minimum wage.

I can understand that people are pissed off that they work, yet have to live on so little, but surely you should be pissed off at your employers paying you such incredibly low salaries? And at the government to not change this situation?

Maje - You've hit the nail on the head.

you'd be surprised how many people will cut off their nose to spite their face, mama.

My (idiot) father, had a successful business with lots of contracts to see it through years to come when my my finally decided enough was enough and chucked him out. He decided that he didn't want to have to pay my mum anything in child support or for her to get anything 'from him' in the divorce, so he 'let' the business go under (making multiple people jobless in doing so) and went on the dole. He did all sorts of thingsincluding getting his lawyer to file papers saying I should not be supported any more or allowed to live in the family home the day I turned 16just so that he could try to get a bigger share of the house and avoid child support. Nasty piece of work. I hope he's as lonely and miserable as he deserves to be.

so you do 'fuck all' all day too TSC.....

The ones I knew would take a shite job and hand over their dues from that then a much better paid cash in hand- one bloke who thought he was on a winner with me showed me a stash of probably thousands hidden from teh CSA in a cupboard. I am not sure anything could ahve been less sexy tbh- don't think I ever spoke to him again, why would I?

And there are of course those who pay every penny they can and do everything tehy can; those are real men.

Great post, marje.

mamato many: I think you might have somewhat skewed ideas about what SAHM mothers do.

In any case, surely its progress (i.e. A Very Good Thing) that (working class) women aren't forced out to work leaving their babies with older siblings, or taking their children to dangerous occupations (and then sending those kids out to work in dangerous conditions as soon as they were able to) as they were in the Victorian times? Surely you don't want a return to that?

'But people, don't you realise that the reason why people on benefits (sometimes) are getting as much/more as people who work is that British employers take advantage of high unemployment and pay people scraps?

Minimum wage is a bit higher that a fiver but also does not extend to everyone of working age, plenty too young for full amount.

Absolutely with the rest: capitalsim demands that there is a pool of unemployed people who can be tapped into in order to raise the threat of unemployment if workers try to assert their rights through strikes etc.

There are no value differences on SAH or WOH mums- or every oehr bugger who does some PT / student / working from home hybrid.

It's very simple: as adults have a responsibility to do what you can to support yourself and your family- that may be through one staying at home to work around the other, or any hybrid thereof including using chidlcare so both can earn.

When there is a situation where one or other (if there is an other) cannot work, including a job shortage (I do think some of the anti unemployed posters are a bit silly in an age of high unemployment tbh), ill health / carer duty, ecaping DV or whatever the not able to work label applies. And there is no criticism applciable.

I wonder what good people think they do to the self esteem of people at the bottom of ehir coping abilities when they character assasinate for fun, seriously.

Ah, yes, looked it up now.
£5.93 per hour (aged 21 and older), £4.92 per hour (aged 18?20) or £3.64 per hour (under 18 and finished compulsory education)

Still though, i'd say it should be at least 10 pounds for everyone over 18, and that child care should be tax deductible. If you then add the child benefit you might be close to a living wage? At least outside the most expensive towns.

before 2013 could mean next week.

I plan to be mortgage free by 2013 doesn't mean it'll necessarily happen though does it ?

"i don't want people in grinding poverty but please do fucking forgive me for having minimal sympathy for someone with a bigger income for doing fuck all than we do,i know the 'system' is to blame and not the op... it doesn't make 'the working poor' bad people for wondering why they fucking bother when you can sit,hands out... nobody is saying it's a multimillionaires lifestyle,but you have more money than we do-and that is not fair."

There really should be a "I agree with everything this poster has said" icon on here. I'm not angry, really, at this thread - more sad that our welfare state, which I support 100% for its founding ideas, and having grown up in an area of grinding poverty, to see what a wonderful thing, to hear my mother's stories of people avoiding seeing a Dr when she was a girl becuase they could't afford bills... i'm sad that what a wonderful idea has become in REALITY, that a lot of the people on this thread can't see how wrong things have become

I wouldn't be so flippant it may well be the reality by then.