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.

Alouisee - So are you saying that being depressed because you have been RAPED AS A CHILD is NOT an illness? Are people like me meant to just sweep it under the carpet and forget it ever happened?? FGS How little compassion can someone have that they don't think that being depressed because you have been RAPED AS A CHILD is acceptable? So if I was a stronger person, my Mum's boyfriend wouldn't have raped me when I was 4yo then? If I was a stronger person, it wouldn't have affected me then being shipped around various foster homes, some where I was treated as little more than a slave? If I was a stronger person, none of that would have happened - is that what you are saying? Are you ACTUALLY trying to say that a strong person wouldn't feel depressed by some of these things? OMFG.

Hahaha! Do you know how much I save the government each month by caring for my son full time? A hell of a lot more that they give me in Carers Allowance and Higher Rate DLA. For the last three years I have kept my son out of hospital by training myself up to do hospital treatment at home. I save them a fucking fortune and they want to pull what I receive away.

Go ahead - but they can fuck to the far side of fuck, if they think I'm going to continue treating him at home. They can pay for nurses (Paediatric nurses earn roughly £25,000) to treat him every couple of months for three weeks at a time. How is that saving money

Alouisee my sons medical condition is as a result of evolution - sometimes evolution creates disabilities rather than wipes out the weak. Your argument kind of falls down there really doesn't it.

I do like that model, morebeta. I seem to remember though someone proving that it wouldn't work because of the proportion of lower earners to higher earners. Something about higher earners ending up paying more than 50% in tax and that just encouraging them to hide abroad and avoid taxes by tying wages up in foreign based companies etc.

I think there should probably be a maximum that one person can earn in a year. And the rest of that is taxed. Or something. It's ridiculous what top bankers, for example, get when NMW earners are on £199 per week. The gap is astronomical.

If I go out to work FT for NMW (Not that I can work FT, but just an example), My wages after tax do NOT cover my rent and Council tax, never mind food, or childcare, or travel to work, or childcare for my dc, or my utility bills. Rent on a 2-bed terrace house is £800pcm privately in my town. That is £9,600 pa on rent alone. Council tax for a 2-bed house here is £1,650 pa. If I worked 37.5hrs a week (what is classed and offered as FT hours in most min wage jobs here) I would earn £11,876 pa BEFORE tax. Which after tax leaves about £10,996.

In fact - I couldn't cover my rent and council tax out of FT NMW earnings - I would have a shortfall of £254 a year. No food , no clothes, no childcare while I am earning NOT ENOUGH TO COVER SUCH A BASIC AS HOUSING, no utilities (NO CLEAN WATER), or anything bloody else.

And THAT is why we have WTC. Because even someone working FT CANNOT EVEN SURVIVE on their wage.

WHY can those of you here who say that something has got to give NOT SEE that the FIRST thing that has to change is the stupidly low level that NMW is set at - an income LESS THAN HALF THE NATIONAL 'AVERAGE' INCOME. And then housing costs MUST be tackled. Until these things are done, any cuts in benefits will result in homelessness and starvation. In what is supposed to be a first world country - not a third world country.

thanks for those links, moonlight

there is some amount of shite being talked on this thread

will some of you please remember each and every poster here is a real person, with difficult situations and experiences most of us can't begin to imagine

to be so insensitive, in the light of this, is unbelievable, and very sad that this dog eat dog mentality exists and thrives in the real world out there

there but for the grace of god, people, there but for the grace of god.

I don't think that many of our more brusque posters do think "there for the grace of God" I suspect they think that people who experience poor mental health, disability, domestic violence, abuse or poverty are just weak.

As an aside - benefits like Income support, and Child tax credits are paid at a level that the Government has deemed is the lowest amount NEEDED by that family to live off.

SO, THE GOVERNMENT STATES that in my town, for a lone parent with 2 dc, you need:

£206/wk LHA
£32/wk Council Tax Benefit
£67.50/wk Income Support
£99/wk Child Tax Credit

SO, THE GOVERNMENT STATES that the minimum a lone parent with 2 dc needs to live off is £404.50 a week. Yet Minimum wage is £211 a week after tax. . HOW is that do-able? And I can verify that benefits do NOT allow you to get a flat-screen TV or go on foreign holidays etc - in fact I only have the internet because, in all honesty, my UNCLE pays the bill for the dongle so my DD can do her online homework. I worry about my children's feet growing - I can't afford to replace their school shoes more than once a year (H width fitting feet, all my dc - they can't even get their feet into cheap, 'F' width fitting shoes). I have nightmares that wake me up about them losing their school jumpers and having to find the £14 to replace them. It REALLY IS the minimum you need to live off.

It is NOT NOT NOT that benefits are too high - it is that NMW is far far far too low. NMW NEEDS to be set at a level where 37.5hrs/40hrs (if employers would bloody OFFER 40 hrs - which they don't) equals the minimum the government states is needed to live off - which would give a figure of £11.73 an hour that NMW would NEED to be set at to get what the government classes as the MINIMUM amount needed to live off.

Well said Hunty!

what HuntyCat says cheers to that, all this sense of entitlement blah blah people WANT to work for an amount that they can live on. Lets face it, who wants some faceless civil servant flicking through bank statements, Its not as intrusive for TC's but cmon. Pay a fair wage people for a fair days work,
Throughout history the working poor have starved, this week an army veteran & his wife (disabilities) commited suicide after living in total poverty, walking 6 miles per day to a charity to pick up a bag of veg to make soup. Living without essentials, although some on this thread may view a fridge and hob to be luxuries. Is this the weeding out of the undeserved poor that you mean?

Credit cards have kept many propped up but now what???

The reasons benefits are changing is we have a huge debt. Every taxpayer pays £2000 in interest every year. We are still overspending by a large percentage of the country's income every year.

The cost of bailng out the banks is only responsible for a small part of this.

Successive governments have spent money we don't have because they are more interested in short term staying in power than the long term health of the country. Now we need to reduce the size of the debt before our credit rating gets worse and we have to pay even more just to service the existing debt.

We are all going to have to pay more for less. All public services are likely to get worse.

aside from the hysteria on this thread, there is a debate to be had about how best to get through the changes, because they are going to happen.

what a shame this thread has been hijacked by posters who obviously have no idea what they are talking about.
as usual for mn we have ill-informed slightly ignorant of the facts posters attacking vulnerable people.
I suggest that they try it for a week, walk in people like the op's shoes for a week then come back and spout their crap, at least then they will be speaking from an informed place. oh hang on then they would understand that it is as simple as the pretend.

I agree with tilly

I also think that saying we should walk in others shoes is nonsensical. For a start, you have no idea how other posters lives have been.
You can't help your background or your family but you can control, to a certain extent, your adult life.
Many people choose not to have children when they are young and ill qualified and in a fragile or impermanent relationship. But some do . That is their choice but you cannot then expect everyone else to bail you out and support your life choices if those choices have meant you cannot support yourself or your children adequately. And by that I don't mean a TC top up but benefits being your major source of income.

If you are with a chap who is a bastard and treats you badly and then you choose to have his child, then that is a choice you have made.

- you clearly have no idea of the dynamics of abusive relationships if you think of that as a choice.

Don't get involved in the first place.

Well said BertieBotts

Lookattheears 'If you are with a chap who is a bastard and treats you badly and then you choose to have his child, then that is a choice you have made.'

That is also a choice that 'bastard' made too. Yet your post comes across as being directed solely at the woman who was with a chap who is a bastard.

Walk a week in someone else's shoes: well when I had to leave work to pick my paralysed father up off the floor, I used to remain myself that I wasn't an orphan in Somalia nor was he.

Lookattheears 'Don't get involved in the first place.'

Would that comment be directed to the bastard or the woman who was his partner?

Credit cards have kept many propped up but now what???

No, credit cards have never kept people propped up, they have allowed people to over spend and get themselves into a worse situation.

Because abusive blokes come with neon signs now?

Yes good point LMS - he made a choice too. At least if you're a single parent you're living up to the responsibility by looking after the children. Whereas if the bloke was a twat he probably isn't bothering to support them.

but if I had a credit card now, I would look at paying it off asap before it gets more expensive

Or he only has to pay £5 per week and has more children elsewhere.

Well yeah as soon as they have more children that £5 per week gets carved up too. Ooh, £1.50!

Am still waiting for Lookattheears to come back to clarify her points in the last few posts??

Christ you only have to look at the relationships board to see that many abusive men do seem to come with flashing neon signs! However many people now seem to leave marriages/partners with whom they have children with relatively little thought. Sticking with a loveless marriage to bring up children is something people are no longer prepared to do and that has an economic cost for society. I think in the past people stuck with marriage much longer, perhaps living separate lives but remaining together.