To think that MP's should have their wages capped at £500 a week?

[ValarMorghulis]

No access to expenses as that is a perfectly acceptable amount to live on apparently.

They are of course usually managing a hand span big enough to house fingers in pies elsewhere so have additional income anyway.

I just find it infuriating that they are pushing through the £26k limit to benefits despite knowing that it will push thousands into poverty and homelessness, yet they recently voted to award themselves £20k payrises.

Irishchic Mon 23-Jan-12 23:22:55
How on earth could someone be in poverty and homeless on 26k per annum?

ValarMorghulis Mon 23-Jan-12 23:51:49
irishchic - if you have been reading the other threads you will have had i explained to you many times already

Well, for the benefit of those of us who have not been on the other threads, OP - could you answer that question here?

MPs are elected to run the country - if they were paid a pittance anybody decent wouldn't entertain becoming one!

How come it's only benefit claimants who can pick and choose where they live? The rest of the country are condemned to living only in houses that they can afford.

Having just seen David Cameron on the news, surrounded by Asda workers nodding along in agreement to his "£26K is plenty" speech, I think the general public are nodding along too.

If I could pick and choose where I lived, you can bet I would not be living where I do. As it happened my only choice was which very deprived area to live in.

single parent

earn 23k pa gross
child allowance
TCs

I pay mortgage £600 a month (I could rent in the area for the same amount, easily)
childcare
run a car
pay for school meals & prescriptions
activity clubs for the kids, music and swimming lessons
we have clothes on our backs and food in our bellies
go on a uk holiday

no debts other than the mortgage

26k is plenty!

Why should wages of anybody who works for them be capped, be it an MP or an Asda worker?

Capping benefits needs to be done, why should somebody get paid £26k (realistically it will be far more as they dont pay tax and may not include hiddern extras like not paying for school trips etc) for doing nothing? If you choose not to work, then no you shouldnt be able to chose where you live and have surplus cash. If a person truly cant work and needs welfare assistance then they will be grateful for a home and food wherever it is.

I live in a very high rent area (South Coast/New Forest), and £26k is definitely liveable. In fact, when dh was a teacher, he earned less than that before tax, as do many many others!

I am in complete disagreement with the DLA reforms, but to argue that a take home 'salary' of £26k is somehow unreasonable to live on when many professionally qualified people manage it is a joke. And that is without the associated expenses of working. I know the argument is that much of that goes on housing...well it does if you work as well!

DH works full time, Me SAHM. Have a DD and another on the way. And a dog.

Wages and benefits will add up to approx £24500 p/a if benefits calculators are accurate.

Mortgage to pay
Car to run
Playgroup paid for
(when not pregnant) pay for (several) prescriptions
Food in bellies, new clothes (albeit supermarket mostly)

We will still have plenty of money left over.

Yes but Poultry, you are entitled to still live in Belsize park doncha know.

And 26k there just isn't enough.

Strawbezza there does seem to be a lot of people 'nodding'.

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/23/david-cameron-soars-in-poll

www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2012/01/benefit-cap-children-support

A YouGov poll shows that 76 per cent of the public are in favour of the benefits cap, including 69 per cent of Labour voters.

I think people opposing the cap have quite a naive view of how the majority of working families are coping. £26k (untaxed!) is a very decent amount to live on, especially if you consider no expenses for childcare, commuting etc. Obviously you need to budget carefully but that's reality for most people. It's really not that miserable an amount. If rent gets you over budget, move house - it's not the drama people make it out to be. England is a big country, there are many options.

MPs have a very difficult job, they should earn more than the national average and have (reasonable) expenses paid for them.

Agree with those who say 26K is a decent amount to live on. You can't afford to be paying £2000 a month in rent, but who can? You move and commute like everyone else has to.

It would be tight with lots of children, but hey ho, that's life isn't it. You have to be rich to have a large family and be comfortably off.

I do think that they should try living on minimum wage, in a job that only has 16 hours a week available because as from April they won't get WTC as they need to do 24 hours. Only for many the hours aren't there. So I think they should be made to try and live on that before deciding policy. Ditto for other overly harsh policies that affect the working poor.

This idea that families will be tipped into poverty with a capped £26k in after tax income is.... well, I can't believe its not being tested harder.

Jesus OP, you are being so unbelievably unreasonable to say this that I think you are the most unreasonable poster to ever post in AIBU.

If someone can't manage on 26k then they are doing something wrong!

£26k on benefits is equivalent to over £30 salary.

YABU and rather ironically, the key word in the title of your post is wages - not benefits.

LMAO at all the 'just move to a cheaper area' posts

From what I can see the places with cheap rent have few jobs available

And it costs a lot of money to move (deposits, fees)

Even in London the money you save is often eaten up by transport costs

Now, we comfortably live on much less than 26K. So I don't have a huge problem with the benefit cap for healthy, able to work people.

But I agree with the OP that there's something a bit ancien regime about a bunch of rich people insisting they know what's possible for lower-income people.

And given how many people, including on MN, are upset about losing child benefit at more than 40K, I don't think everyone agrees that 26K is plenty.

I meant move out of central london, not move to the back of beyond. We spend less on rent and commuting combined than we did on renting in zone 2. So it's far far cheaper than zone 1.

Sigh. Its just not that easy though, is it as "just move"?

That could mean moving away from jobs/family/childrens schools etc...I guess it would also mean vast swathes of the country where the all the tennants/home owners were benefits claimants??

As with the CB cuts, yet another coaltion policy that is poorly thought out and reactionary

There is no amount of money that you could pay me to be an MP - ever! £26K after tax is equivalent to £35K before tax. we are self employed, do not earn this and work much more than a 40 hour week. Dreamingb not everyone thinks it but the vast majority do. how do working people who work in expensive rent areas manage then? They live in cheaper areas and they commute - usually as cheaply as possible. The benefit system should be there to give more money to those who are disabled and their carers. it should also give more to those people who work really hard in one or often more low paid jobs. it shouldnt be there for people who can work but won't because its not worth taking a drop in living standards by accepting a job on less than £35K pa.

...and I think the anger about the cuts to CB is due to fact that the tories and lib dems both stated in their manifestos (and in the press) prior to the election that they would not cut CB and how important it was to women and one income families.

Yeah. Right.

We moved from a nice area of London to a fairly crappy town outside of London - the extra commuting costs still mean we're paying half what we used to for our mortgage and travel costs.

We'd have loved to stay where we were, have more kids but we just couldn't afford it so we moved and aren't ttc - it's really not that hard!

26k in benefits is over 30k equivalent salary which would be more than adequate for us to live on, even with a central London worker