David Cameron welfare reforms-no family will receive more than £25,000 a year.

[Hammy02]

Good idea? I think so. I can't believe a single family receives this much already in benefits. It is about the same as the average income so it would be ridiculous for any one family to have more in benefits than someone that works?

I agree with the cap, welfare spending is totally out of control and this measure alongside others will bring it down which is desperately needed in order to make Government spending sustainable for the long term.

If it's so out of control, why aren't they touching by far the largest slice of the pie - pensions? Those are going to get even steeper.

And housing benefit. How many private landlords feathering their nest of a property portfolio off the backs of the nation's taxpayers in the form of housing benefit?

Oh, that's right! Can't touch pensions or property/BTL landlords. That's one serious house of cards!

Best to stick the boot into the disabled and working poor, who are often on benefits.

With a deficit of more than £150 billion, you dispute that there is a fiscal problem?

They aren't touching the state pension because the Government is legally obliged to pay it.

What would you do about private landlords, if they own and control the house they can charge whatever price they want.

David Cameron welfare reforms-no family will receive more than £25,000 a year.

If you are able to work and aren't working.

NOT if you are a carer, disabled, a pensioner etc.

Does it mean - no able bodied parents on benefits should not receive more than 25,000 in benefits? The public purse is not a bottomless pit and there are many workshy adults happy to languish on benefits for years on end - these are the people who need pushed into work or penalised. NOT the disabled/carers/pensioners. Which is what I believe the OP was discussing? So why the numerous pages of those disabled/children disabled is what I'm 'flummoxed' at - it doesn't apply to you.

I am sure the number of people without extra disability benefits claiming in excess of 25K is minimal. This is not going to save the country a fortune. So you have to ask why is Cameron and the Daily Mail endlessly going on about it. I suggest it is to make us turn against benefits claimants

I am sure the number of people without extra disability benefits claiming in excess of 25K is minimal.

Well not according to this thread - apparently housing costs in the SE could eat up at least half of that figure?

I'm not benefit bashing - but I do recognise that a vast amount of people who CAN work DONT work due to the benefit culture.

Yes there's lots of other other discrepanices like the tax avoidance, bankers etc but that doesn't mean you turn a blind eye to families who CAN work being ok to not work as they'll receive benefits - they should be forced to work if able.

pebbles: I suspect people are anxious about DLA exemption, etc., because they rightly perceive that DC is spouting rhetoric, that is, he is grooming his audience for more and harsher cuts. The number of people claiming the headline figure of £25k is probably relatively small, and as other have suggested, is no doubt largely influenced by geographical factors. Capping benefits like this will probably only save peanuts for the Treasury.

If this government can whip people into a mad enough frenzy about the "feckless" and the "scroungers", particularly in a poor financial climate in which most people are worse off than before, then no-one will protest when even more stringent cuts to previously "untouchable" benefits are made.

Before the election, the Conservatives swore they would not privatise the NHS, yet that is what is happening by the back door.

They also swore that they would keep Child Benefit as a universal benefit. They did not. And, incidentally, is it surprising that the cut to CB to HRT payers was one of the first controversial cuts announced? No. Because they knew that if the HRT payers, who probably form a more vocal core of voters, were effectively disenfranchised from the welfare state, they would be less likely to resist cuts to other benefits, etc. The savings from this cut will be reasonably minimal, in government finance terms; by far the more important effect, from the government's point of view, is the divide-and-conquer attitude it fosters: people's simmering fury that someone else might still get something while their income has been cut.

People are worried, then, because the tone of this rhetoric, and what it reveals about this government, are what matters; not the paltry savings it will actually make for the government.

That took me so long to type on my phone that twinklypearls said it sooner and more succinctly.

Can I come in with a different view?

I don't believe the problem in the UK is with the benefits per se. After living and working in 5 different countries (UK included), my opinion is that there is something fundamentally, and deeply wrong in the UK. I have never lived in a place so amazingly expensive, in which even middle-class families need handouts from the government just in order to make ends meet.

In every other country, even those with lower salaries, a couple can afford the basics without any help from the government... they don't need Child Benefit, or Housing Benefit, or any other benefit, because an average salary guarantees enough for housing, food, power and basics.

When I was living in the UK, I was single, no kids, living on my own and making quite a good salary. Still, I was paying a huge rent for a shit flat, which was tiny, dirty, and with a landlord who owned half the city but wouldn't maintain his buildings, and demanded the rent in cash. I couldn't afford to go out for lunch more than once a month, because restaurants' prices were extortionate. I couldn't afford going to the hairdresser, let alone leave a tip, as was expected. I couldn't afford to pay someone to have my legs waxed. I couldn't even afford to travel by train, for goodness sake! The ticket prices from Cambridge to London were more expensive than flying to Spain to see my family!!!

Most of you live with these restrictions on life thinking this is normal. Well it is NOT. In much "poorer" countries, where people make less than half the salary that you consider "average" in the UK, we can afford all those things. I live in New Zealand now, and when I moved here I took a drop of almost 40% in salary, in relative terms. But know what? I had enough to rent a decent house. I can eat out several times a week, because eating out is affordable. I don't have to buy the cheapest meat and veggies in the supermarket alll the time. I can afford going to the hairdresser's and to the beauty salon (I am even having IPL done!). And my job is equivalent to the one I had in the UK.

These things I talked about are not luxuries "for the rich". They are nice things that people on average salaries can afford in almost any other country that is not the UK. In the UK I felt poor, even getting a good salary. In Spain, Italy, New Zealand... I feel "normal". I don't get any benefits, nor do I need them. Nor do most people around me. In Spain and Italy, there is nothing like "child benefit" or "housing benefit". They are going through one of their worst crises, and still people can afford to have a drink, go to the hairdresser and eat out. Disabled children are not given away in adoption, and unemployed people have a limited jobseekers allowance that just lasts for some months, and they manage to go by like that.

You are being deceived in the UK. You are being told that on a good salary you still have to live like the poor. And then you are being thrown against one another about benefits... Benefits is not what you should be worried about, people. It is your lives, your quality of life, the things you can not enjoy in your country, and you assume no one else can, but they do! Fruit and milk which are half the price anywhere else in the EU are sold in the UK at extortionate prices. Petrol is twice as expensive. Transport is sometimes 3 times as expensive in the Uk than in any other EU country. Staying in a hotel or B&B in the Uk is just affordable for the rich, or for the middle-class once a year. For the price you pay for a night on a crappy B&B in UK, I stay 4 nights in a clean, nice hotel in New Zealand. With a fantastic service and smiling receptionists who ask you about your day and are actually interested in listening to what you have to say.

PLEASE WAKE UP!

Okay so you cap benefits, which includes HB (no family gets 25k cash in hand, the vast majority will go on HB and CTB). It will be a few larger families, probably in the south, who will be getting more than 25k

Are they including the working poor in this i.e will WTC and CTC get cut?

Where do they move to? Where are all these affordable, rented properties coming from?

Now before you say they ought to get a job - where are all the jobs coming from?

Well said Aurynne!!! The rich in this country are soooo much richer than the rest of us . It's sick..the frontbenchers are worth a mint and yet they allow the minimum wage to be below a living wage then rail against the need for benefits! We need housing costs to come down.. rent in some area is more than you can earn on a minimum wage....how can you get off benefits when this is the case?? We are being screwed from all sides..the poor are the scapegoats but we are ALL being mistreated. Cost of living = living wage...just not here!!!!!!!

Ok I'll go back to basics and ask a simple question.

If you are able to work, ie not disabled, aren't a carer, not a pensioner. Should you be able to live on benefits for years without anyone questioning it? Handed money at the post office every say Monday for 20+ years, no questions asked?

Well according to one of my relatives its not 'worth' her working as she'd only be 'a tenner' better off.

She has one school aged child and receives JSA, tax credits, HB and CTB. By EARNING that money she doesn't see it as being independant, providing for her child - she sees it as 'only being a tenner better off'. And that is the problem with the vast majority of the workshy benefit culture we have today.

pebbles don't you see the problem is not the benefits? It's the cost of living in comparison to wages. The working poor recieve far more in benefits than the unemployed because the minimum wage is too low/cost of living too high.

The reason benefits are so high is because there is no affordable housing, there are no jobs that pay the unskilled enough to live on without needing support from tax credits etc.

Hi dooin - sorry but I disagree. The working poor are at least giving back to society in taxes. The price of a bag of potatoes is the same for someone on the minimum wage as is for those able to work but 'happy' on benefits - please can we get this straight? nobody would begrudge a family who has fallen on hard times and thank God we live in a country whereby they'll get benefits - what SHOULDN'T happen is generation upon generation not working who are ABLE.

Hmm, well, my DH's family live in NW Italy, and, though some foods, etc., are cheaper, I am not struck by a massive difference in the cost of things, frankly. Plus the job market, even in the industrialised North, is utterly stagnant (and has been long before 2007/8), with few opportunities for young people. Parts of southern Italy and of Greece (another country I know reasonably well) are also shockingly poor, with rural economies bordering on the medieval. Comparing the cost of living between countries is not always as transparent as it seems.

I agree, though, aurynne, with much of your criticism of costs of living, which is largely dictated by housing costs, poor transport infrastructure, being an island, the collapse of native industries (and no government protection of working class interests), and the fact that, at least in contrast to many of our European neighbours, our economy is more aggressively capitalistic, so that the spoils tend to go to many fewer victors, hence the catastrophic divide between rich and poor here which is reaching Victorian levels.

Seems that (was it Marx himself, or Lenin?) someone was right, and that in advanced capitalist economies, the middle classes would cease to exist and would become part of the proletariat, while

Oops, pressed post too soon... Anyway, it was Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto:

"The lower strata of the middle class--the small tradespeople,
shopkeepers, retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and
peasants--all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly
because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale
on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the
competition with the large capitalists, partly because their
specialized skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of
production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes
of the population."

100000 of people on benefits have 4 kids or more. Of that, almost 10% have 8 kids or more. Why should people be having so many kids when on benefits.... If you can't afford them, don't have so many.

Actually, my DH used to process housing benefit claims so was aware of the other benefits people claimed.

There are a fair number of people who receive more than £25k in benefits - I think my DH worked out that if you calculate it on the ave. rent, CTB, + allowances for a married couple, + 4 children, throw in free school meals and you exceed £25k.

And yes, this does include HB, and free school meals etc, but then people who work pay their rent/mortgage/school dinners out of the money they earn - they don't get extra for it.

"I don't believe the problem in the UK is with the benefits per se. After living and working in 5 different countries (UK included), my opinion is that there is something fundamentally, and deeply wrong in the UK. I have never lived in a place so amazingly expensive"

Good God, I have. Easily. Including housing costs.

Heating is going up but then it's still cheaper than most European countries. Never mind feed a family for 50 - I think you can do it for less with all home cooking and not crappily unhealthily either. Fuel is going up but then it is everywhere. Clothes have been exploitatively cheap so it's not a bad thing that people realise - ok maybe I don't need 25 tops and 15 pairs of trousers.

Cripes, we are saving money living back in the UK.

pebbles

It is becuase disablitys do get lumped in with it all we are seen as scroungers and a lot will lose their dla so will then be capped even though the disablity is still there.

There is a chance that i will not under new rules be entitled to Hrm or any mobility as i use a wheelchair so in their eyes i am mobile .
Not taken into account that i want to catch a train I have to give 24hr notice and infact some stations are still not suitable for wheelchair users .bus if I am lucky there may be wheelchair accessible ones but there is 1 space if i am fortunate it may not be full of buggies and the driver may put the ramp down ,Realstically its either full of buggies or driver sails past witha shrug to say he is full or refuses ramp to go down ( they are often broken ) .I am hoping to get adapted car but without dla I will not be able to .

Often we need specialised housing but take dla away see above that means the cap comes into play yet the need is still the same .

and becuase if we do not speak now where does it end .Oh and i do not get heating allowance it is not paid to dc or adults.

its nearly summer

has your dh looked and seen how many had their dc before needing to claim benefits ? becuase i had mine when we were both working ,following birth of ds3 (dc4) marriage broke down and i was left with 4dc claiming benefits(ds3 is disabled) so i have probbaly been lumped in with the large familys

We have 4 kid

we never had one on benefits ever

It doesn;t work like that; benfits happens to people, it's not a case of everyone there never worked and is feckless and nobody made decisions that were shat upon by fate and random genetics
Plus I reiterate a large number of people on benefits (80% on housing benefit ) are not unemployed

mila mae, just wanted to say i completely agree with you re snorbs who makes me rather cross.

We could no longer afford to live in St Albans, despite having lived their all my life, having family who lived there etc etc. We moved out somewhere further away where we could afford. That is just life I am afraid and i think it is wrong that people can chose otherwise, to stay in an unaffordable place when working tax payers cannot.

And to be honest i think it is just rubbish that you cannot get a job in St albans at the min. I have been looking for 10 days in a job which doesn't have any specific qualifications for entry. I have had 2 interviews, one solid job offer and a further two interviews next week. There are jobs if you are proactive about getting them.