To think every SAHM, low hour PT worker and carer should read this?

[Peachy]

Well i am not but it matters to you so you must

here

Changes to system WRT worker hours

have a thread in chat and don;t want a debate, or at least won't participate iun one as petrified as we will now certianly lose our home and not up to taking flak. But if it affects you, you need to know.

Lookattheears is doing just that

The people on the lowest rung pay the highest proportion of their earnings in tax.

Tommyrot.

Those earning over £150 K pay the most tax per se and the highest percentage. Not only do they lose their personal tax allowance so are taxed on every single penny but they pay 40 and 50% on almost all their salary.

Lookattheears is doing just that

Double Tommyrot.

I'm just offering an alternative less sentimenal point of view.

I really don't think that Lookattheears is trolling - she just has a different perspective.

In the most inflammatory way you can

Again, the largest slice of the welfare pie is pensions, and this will grow as more people live longer. The second slice is housing benefit. So how are we addressing so many people living so long and drawing state pensions now and high housing costs?

Lookattheears What would you do if you had a DC who was diSabled and needed lots of extra care?

Could you afford everything they needed? Are you saying you wouldnt take a penny?

Voidka

Why don't you go back and re read at least two of my posts where I say, quite clearly, that the ill, disabled and old should be supported 100%?

The reason there is a lack of jobs stacking shelves is because they are being done by Jobseekers Allowance claimants on the Work Programme working for their benefits. Some of the companies taking advantage of this scheme are Tesco, Poundland and Matalan.

This is indeed true, care.

This thing about depression made me think of something:

A friend's granny in the thirties/forties was left by her husband.
She had 3 kids, and struggled to cope. In the end she had what would now be described as a nervous breakdown.What she needed was some help, both financial and emotional, and she would have probably been OK.

What happened was that she was carted off by the authorities, lobotomised, and her three kids separated among two different foster carers.
She lived to be quite old, but was instituionalised for ever and only basically functional.

The "good old days" were not so good, and as someone who also lived for many years in the U.S, where there is no real safety net, that is not a road we really want to go down because once you go down it there is no going back.

I don't care if 2 out of ten people use the current sickness benefit rules to skive work. I couldn't give a monkeys,(after all there are few enough jobs for those that want them) as long as the other 8 get the help and support they need.

The other reason for the lack of jobs is that many are taken by hardworking immigrants who don't share so many Brits sense of entitlement.

There are and were already programmes, New Deal under Labour and Work Programme now, under which JSA claimants were working for their benefits, that is nothing new.

Nor is the idea of houseswapping. Council and HA tenants have had the ability to swap their homes with other tenants for yonks. But of course, when you live in a poor area with little employment opportunity, there likelihood of finding someone in an area of high employment is very slim.

Duh.

I want my friend to go back to work as I feel it will help her mental health no end but she needs to be at a certain point and on an even keel to achieve this.

Why is my friend depressed? Take your pick, it could be life as a child in and out of refuges, it could be that she was systematically raped between the ages of 9-13 by her step-father, perhaps it's the stillbirth she had at 16, lastly her partner dropping dead in July has not improved matters.
All I do know though is that she is not idly sitting at home courtesy of the tax payer and twiddling her thumbs. Instead she is having counselling, going on torturous (for her) bus journeys with a psychiatric nurse and talking about the panic attacks she has AND she is getting there slowly.

In fact given what she has been through I am amazed she can function at all and yet she is just the type of claimant being targeted by IDS and the Govt. you could say "shit happens" but I hope as a society we are a little more humane than this and able to recognise the effort required to overcome trauma.

'The other reason for the lack of jobs is that many are taken by hardworking immigrants who don't share so many Brits sense of entitlement.'

PMSL! You do realise these 'hardworking' immigrants claim Child Benefit, Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit on their EU children who have never set foot in the UK and whom they had the ability to leave behind in their home nation with a relative, thus enabling them to live 10+ to a small flat (they don't care that this is illegal).

You are really fooling yourself if you believe a large percentage are not claiming the max amount of benefits they are entitled to as EU nationals.

So is depression caused by circumstance or is it a chemical imbalance? If it is circumstance then it isn't really an illness is it.

northernwreck
I love the US but could never live there because of their lack of welfare. I am a huge supporter of the welfare state but not the current abuse and misuse of it.
It does healthy adults no favours whatsoever to be consigned to the benefits trap, that's an obscenity. We need to do everything possible to help, encourage and support them into work.
I would also never want a return to the bad old days before the welfare state and I know no one who would. But neither do I want what we now have. A situation where people are better off choosing not to work. a situation where people feel they have a ^right6 to be home at 3 pm for their children while others are denied that right in order to pay for it.
It's a safety net. a brilliant, beautiful safety net but not a lifestyle choice.

I work with many of them, being an EU national myself, most are well aware of the benefits system here before they arrive and if not, they soon learn!

They spent very little money here, too, usually, sending what they can out of the economy entirely.

According to the website Corporate Watch there are 3000 (YES THREE THOUSAND) unpaid wage work placements in tesco for people on Jobseekers on the mandatory Work Programme.
Thats 3000 jobs that could/should be paying a wage that wont be.

I don't actually get what you are moaning about op. Why should other tax payers support your family in setting up a business? As for predicting your Dh will be employing people in the future and not retiring is pie in the sky.

Of course it shouldnt be a lifestyle choice Lookattheears to just not be arsed to take care of yourself and your family..
BUT , as others have pointed out, wages are really really low, childcare is high, when you are a single parent you are responsible for every single thing, including children being off sick/school holidays/training days/ etc etc etc.

It's not always as simple as : get a job, pay for everything. I wish it were.

I wish wages were livable on.
I would rather earn a decent wage and be entirely independent from the state. The dirty little secret that the Tories don't want you to know is that it rather suits the state to have the electorate beholden to them, living in fear of essentials being taken away.
We have been kneecapped by years old falling wages, contract and agency work and rising public transport costs (£4.10 per day for me to get into work and back) and just a general chipping away at the sense that we, as a people, have any worth to this country.

And that post, northernwreck I agree entirely with.

We are in a bloody mess, aren't we? And I genuinely cannot see a way out.

Yes, the contract and agency work is a major problem because then there is no stable income. This is why so many immigrants do this sort of work. Some employers, what they do is provide accommodation (usually on site) to these workers and then use that as part of their wage, so they are not even paying minimum wage. This is a major problem.

It is putting the cart before the horse to start cutting before you address these problems.

No you are absolutely correct Alouiseg - my friend is not really ill is she (apart from the fact a psychiatrist says she IS unwell£. Dreadful that taxpayers should have to support her

Well...for starters raise the minimum wage, make big companies pay tax, stop foreign mega billionares living and working here tax free, invest in public infastructure which would actually grow the economy a la Roosevelt instead of shrinking it to nothing a la Cameron.
Bring back apprenticeships for kids, re-instate proper state run nurseries, have proper public transport in area that are not London.
When we are all making a decent living, we can all spend a bit, thus putting back into the economy. See, if I could afford both bread and milk, Tesco benefits, and so does everybody else.