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?

ALso GP tried to sign me off last week after hurting my back in accident. I refused and have kept on job hunting. Hardly completely giving in.

Ron what do you suggest that those who already have the dc do ? becuase they are here not like cna just get rid of one or two ?

I asked rob that last night human. What do you do when you already have children and your life goes tits up? Still waiting for an answer.

lyingwitch, way to be a human being eh. I've found it always does depressed people who've suffered a hell of a lot (if you'd actually read xstitch's posts you'd know a bit of what she's gone through and respect her for still being here) so much good to be verbally attacked by people who can't manage their own tempers...nice one.

RobF is not likely to answer that question, because it doesn't fit neatly into his blame game. The whole point for someone like him is to find someone to blame and therefore to salve your conscience of the damage done to children by cutting them off from financial support.

I really do wonder what people like him will do when we start seeing far, far more whole families and particularly the disabled and their carers begging in the streets as they do in other countries where there is no social support or housing for those who slip through the net. No doubt he and his like will consider the parent to 'deserve' it...for being 'feckless'. But how a child can be blamed and thus basically starved for being born is beyond me.

I suspect they would treat beggars like dirt sadly. When the real problem comes would be if one of these people where hit by some disaster plummeting them into poverty. I doubt very much they could cope psychologically tbh. However unlike them I wouldn't wish such hardship on others even those who have wished it on me.

I do keep picking myself back up lyingwitch sadly I usually get battered back down again. It gets harder to climb out each time yet I haven't stopped scrabbling. It is heart breaking when your dd says something like 'Daddy said if you loved me you'd take me to Disney land.' It is very difficult to explain to a child why you can't.

When I was married and working full time. I had a plan B, Plan C and Plan D to cope with hiccoughs but every one of those plans were rendered usless by circumstance.

zukiecat - can't imagine anyone would want your children adopted - but i do think that the benefit system should make it worth your while to go out to work and help support your family or force your ex to do that.

rather than assuming its all going to come from the tax payer.

Are you offering us jobs dreaming? Many of us are trying very hard to go out to work. There is a little thing called a recession unfortunately.

obviously people like you, who are trying to get work are different - its the people who don't want to work and expect taxpayers to fund them that are the problem and encouraging the bad press ... people like my SIL who just won't take a job despite being offered ones

blaming the unemployed for their own joblessness is another way of pretending everything is happy in the garden that is England. La la la la la....

The thing is xstitch, more and more 'safe' middle Englanders are going to find themselves going down the long slide into poverty in the coming years. no doubt at that point they will find someone else to blame for their own poverty.

I have found it really dispiriting to read the facebook boards for Poor Kids, for instance- people who claim that they have lived on benefits for years attacking those who do not 'keep their children clean' or 'budget right'. I think we have created a culture where even poorer people attack eachother to distinguish themselves from the 'scum' at the bottom- the 'undeserving' poor....

I have only ever met one 'benefit cheat' in my entire life, and she's a pretty ghastly person- a lapdancer earning £50,000 per year (so I hear...it's all through anecdote, although having met her I find it believable) who has been claiming incapacity benefit for anxiety for 15 years.

however, I don't think that someone like her provides a precedent to deprive others of their right to a safety net and quite frankly, the public money spent on this unpleasant and dishonest woman in 15 years has been a mere fraction of what Philip Green and his ilk get away with every day. I know what the greater social evil is.

The thing is dreaming those who have no intention of working are in the minority. Society tends to tar everyone with this brush. It actually makes job hunting more difficult as employers think 'oh they are unemployed, they must be lazy we won't employ them'

I went on the entitled to site and as a single mother I would get almost 30k in benefits per year and that would not include child support payments and yes, I was shocked tbh and I am not a daily mail type. I think the problem is though the media are confusing 'welfare reforms' with allsortsof other issues. Of course a single mother with a severely disabled child, or parent would find it difficult to work. Same as a carer of her partner who was chronically ill. These people DO need government support and it costs the government alot less to pay someone as a a carer and to support that care in their own home than it does to pay for residential/paliative care. As a carer myself I laugh when i read i am some sort of benefit cheat when i get paid 55 quid a week carers alowance for doing a 'job' that a professional would get 17 quid an hour doing. I didn't chhose to be a carer and neither did the vast majority of carers that i know.

Allegra - good point. I'm 'deserving'; tragically crippled and vulnerable, educated, white, dp is ft carer works pt. I'm everyone's favourite crip, genuine, not faking, with wheelchair. My family's poverty is not caused by scrounging fakers. My poverty, like that of all who depend on public spending, is caused by the political worship of the free market. If you got rid of all the feckless single parents and all the fraudulent disability claimants by making the rest of us perform tricks for you to weed out the cheats, I would still be poor. Because we must make work pay. It's the principle of less eligibility again.

xstitch... I'm sorry that I posted what looks harsh, it was intended kindly, I really do feel sorry for your circumstances. I expect that you when you're feeling despairing, you post for a rant rather than a real out of control outburst and I should have realised that. I have issues with parents talking of suicide, I really do, but I shouldn't project. I apologise for upsetting you and hope that your circumstances will change for the better very soon.

I hadn't realised lap dancing paid so well

I think what many people object to about the current welfare system is that nowadays some of those on benefit get much better life choices and opportunities than those who work. While this may sound barmy, for example:

1. 99 per cent of working people in this country can't afford to live in Ken & Chelsea. Or, increasingly, London as a whole. Why should any other group, workless or otherwise, suddenly get that privilege?

1. Working couples, from 10k pa to 1m pa, generally only have kids when they can support them. What makes any other couple entitled to have as many children as they choose? Why should some people's children be financed by other people?

1. Working families who rent don't get security, let alone lifetime tenancy, for a commercial rent. Why should an HB or council tenant get a better deal?

Why does a HB tenant get lifelong rent? Every fucking November waiting for the news of renewal or not I end up close to breakdown. no extra security for HB claimants.

And as for te thing about working cpiples FFS! Our kids were born when we were working. Now we're not. the world is not divided into benefit claimant and working, amny people's ives overlap at different times. the fact that i never conceived a child i could nto afford has no bearing ono how many chidlren I have now the world ahs gone tits up.

Housing benefit does not give you a lifelong tenancy. If you are in a private landlords property you are generally on a 6 month contract. HB is just a benefit that pays your rent. Its not a house.

The majority of council house tenants actually work.

At no point in my life have I not been doing anything, just sitting and receiving benefits.

indeed we are not classed as a workless family as dh does, but as it's still growing and he ahs to complete college it's not as much as benefits would be alone- for example we can't get FSM.

Do ir esent that? god no. Being classed as working is a sanity and pride saver!

I;ve always been studying, either with a career aim or the boy's condition. Not as some on ehre think funded, we always ahd to go without to pay fees, except when a family member paid some for me unasked. Obviously I have racked up a load ofs tudent debt, although only the student finance bit- i don;t touch cards or anything like that.

We don;t fit these bloody charicatures of laziness, unemployment and no motivation. We ahve teh insecurity of home doubly- buth HB and the fact DH is self employed somewhat ironically.

And yet people tell us we are better than them as working couples.

FFS.

Dh works.

caring is shit but needs doing.

Stop thinking you are better than I am, you're only a diagnosis / accident or in my case 4 away too.

I don't see the problem with a cap being in line with the mean wage which I think is about 25k. The median income is around 18k so if you are receiving 25k you have a bigger income than most in the country and that is before they've had to pay tax on their wages.