to be fed up of George sodding Osbourne and his Knobbish Ideas

[avivabeaver]

The economy is proving harder to fix than he first thought

Solution- suggest cutting £10bn from the benefits budget and "limit the number of children people can claim for". So- are you supposed to choose your 2 favourite and just feed them then? Or what?

I think all he was saying was that people that don't claim benefits have to work out how many children they can afford to have & this should also apply to those on benefits. Eg, if you can't afford more than 2 kids, don't have more. Bonkers system where people that can't afford to feed themselves then think its a good idea to have kid after kid.

Although something needs to be done, how can they impose it without sacrificing genuine claimants?

Should people on benefits become celibate to prevent accidental pregnancies? Should they not go out to avoid being raped? And god fobid they ended up giving birth to triplets, and had to choose which two to claim for.

i've been hearing lots of 'solutions' from my well-off friends this morning. "Force people to get a contraception injection before they get any benefits", "make them do drug tests each week".

Because apparantly benefit claimants aren't entitled to the same human rights as well-off folk.

I've long advocated putting a limit on the number of children the state pays out for.

But personally I prefer the limit to be fixed at however many children you have at the time you start claiming. So if you have 3 kids at the time you claim JSA then you get the appropriate benefits for 3 kids. If later you have a fourth then it's fine. Your choice. But the state doesn't have to pay for it.

We really have to move away from the bizarre notion that the state should support our lifestyle choices no matter how unaffordable they may be.

My OH & I work and pay our taxes. If we have another child our employers don't give us more money because of it. Why should the government?

I can totally understand why people want to limit the number of children people can have whilst claiming benefits. However, I don't think this limit should apply to current, born, children. I don't think that pushing currently unemployed families with a large number of children further into poverty will solve anything in the long run.

What niceguy2 said.

I don't see what human rights have to do with anything here. Have as many kids as you want, just don't expect someone else to have to pay for them.

I understand why so many people support this (and they do) because, on the face of it, it does seem to be simply about getting people to take responsibility for their choices.

However, my big concern is that it will be women and children who suffer. If a woman gets pregnant the father can abscond with no further penalty while she will be left facing the prospect of having another child with no help. No form of contraception is 100% safe and a woman whose benefits will be less than what she needs for her increased family will not be in a position to cough up for the CSA's services that now have to be paid for. In the meantime, that's a family sinking lower into a financial abyss. A child who will be prevented from ever realising its true potential because of lack of money and the opportunities it buys. It will simply perpetuate the downward cycle of deprivation and it will affect far more children than adults, and far more women than men.

That's actually a good point Dahlen

So are the children of parents who don't comply left to starve then?

While theoretically it might make sense, in reality it's madness. Reminds me of the abstinence stance some American politicians take towards dealing with teenage pregnancy. Utterly disconnected from real life.

But pregnancies aren't always the result of lifestyle choices.

I understand 100% something has to be done to stop women who fall pregnant just for extra money, but the only way to do this would be by sacrificing genuine claimants.

More children will be going hungry, more families will be torn apart, and yes, it will be mostly women and children who suffer.

YANBU.....The man is a tosser....pure and simple.

Lets not forget that people lose jobs so.....you mint well have your fourth child quite able to afford that......until you lose your job. Then you become a scrounger...God forbid! The man is an arsehole....as are the rest of this fecking Givt. Hate them.

Totally agree with what niceguy2 says.

I predicted these threads today. I am quite smug now.

I know no contraception is 100% safe but it is still pretty blooming good.

Over 99% for the pill (or injection) and condoms is 98%. The fact is that pregnancy is easily preventable.

What Niceguy said.

It simply can't go on,we can't afford it and that is the bottom line.It's a ridiculous state of affairs when hard working families have to stick to 2 dc or even just 1 due to lack of finances but those on benefits can have as many as they like..How unfair is that!

The maj of people needing benefits and likely to need them in the future will already be claiming.You have to start somewhere.

Sorry contraception is pretty safe by and large,women have to take responsibility for themselves for the children they already have and those they may have in the future.If you're scrupulously careful you don't get pregnant.

I do think there should be exceptions for children born from rape though and unplanned (non IVF)multiple births.

You know claimants could also plan ahead to get off benefits if they really want more dc or money (get training whilst looking for work),having a baby doesn't have to be now,now,now.It's what many working families have to do.

YABU. People who work don't get paid extra the more kids they have. When the UC comes in with a maximum cap, that just puts everyone on the same footing.

avivabeaver

The economy is proving harder to fix than he first thought

Well, he is an idjit who had no comprehension of just how bad things were. But I don't think that any of the political class really know how bad things were after 13 years of Labour.

Solution- suggest cutting £10bn from the benefits budget and "limit the number of children people can claim for". So- are you supposed to choose your 2 favourite and just feed them then? Or what?

Bloody good idea, but here's how I would institute it:

On budget day in April, I'd announce in February of the next year, no family who has a 3rd child or more will receive child benefit for that child.

This would mean that people who currently had large families would not be affected but that there would be no financial incentive to have more children for families in the future.

I'd imagine there would be a place for caveats for people who ended up with multiple births.

Twitter is better Rather, Gideon is taking a right kicking on there.

totally agree with niceguy2

It's nowt to do with "13 years of Labour", there is a worldwide recession.....or have you missed that?

PrairieFlower - r.e.the rape exepction rule - I think this would result in a lot of false rape allegations. If a woman knows the only way she can claim benefits for her unborn child is by claiming to have been raped, she'll go for it if desperate enough.

As far as I was aware, there's already a cap in place for benefit claimants (I think you can't claim more than £25,000 a year - a vast amount of this is housing benefit-), so why deduct more?

It's all too much too soon.

I think its a great idea - as long as it is phased in. SO on December 1st they announce it will come into effect on September 1st, and that any additional children born after this point wont be included in benefts, but existing kids will continue to be covered.

I would not like them to make families with 6 kids live on 2 kids worth of money But equally, the statistic being bandied about is that 53% of households now cost more than the tax revenue they bring in...this is madness and is not sustainable.

but that is it- its great IN THEORY. It makes a lovely headline in the Daily Mail. How is is actually possible to enforce it? All is actually means is that an enormous number of people are worried out of their minds to try to get a "feckless few". The people I know that have found themselves on benefits do not see it as a lifestyle choice. They have made plans to support themselves and their dc- but big life events- illness, redundancy have happened. Surely the whole point is to provide a safety net for these people. If you agree, how the jeff do you differentiate between them and the feckless few? How do you have a system that makes sure that every kid eats if you happen to have 4 ?