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?

Most benefits are paid to people in working poverty. The minimum wage and part time jobs which are increasingly all that is available to large sections of the population combine with spiralling costs to produce a truly nightmarish situation for the country as a whole. Turning 'hardworking households' against 'feckless claimants' is just Tory divide and rule. Save your moral judgements for the employers who hoard 13 trillion in untaxable offshore assets while deliberately employing workers on zero hour contracts at minimum wage.

blaming 'feckless breeders who should not have had kids int he first place' is a. pointless and does nothing to solve the country's problems b. a misdirection from the true evils of ludicrous urban housing cost, job shortages and underemployment. It'll only get worse and shouting about a few families who had too many kids (only 3% of families in the whole country have more than 3 children, ffs) is a total misdirection of your energies.

Orwellian I suspect you earn a bit more than the minimum wage which is what most 'benefit' (eg Child Tax Credit) claimants are earning.

oh and btw you do get Child Benefit for each extra child you have don't you?

Tbh it's a straw man anyway. Hacking away benefits for additional children will save about 1% of vodafone's written-off tax bill per annum. But I guess that's OK?

Flatpack okay I see where you're going with the benefits trap yes I agree lots of people would look for work when the alternative is being destitute (assuming they are able to) but where are the jobs for them to go to? If we tried your experiment of taking away the life raft yes some would swim but lots would sink. Er this is peoples lives we are talking about. Take away the benefits if the opportunitoes are ther for education and work not at a time when opportunity is diminished. We cannot just cut people addrift. If you are suggesting that girls will stop making choices to have more babies if benefits are cut, is there any evidence for this? Really I'm genuinely interested in this as a theory, what happens in countries with no welfare provision. Do the poor have less babies? Perhaps their reproductive systems close down when there aren't enough pennies coming in, no contraception, they're too incapcitated to care, they are being abused etc etc

I know many families living on benefits. There's been a surge in new babies since the youngest child's age when you're supposed to look for work has come down. If you've got 3 or 4 kids you might as well have another and put off work for a few more years.Your benefits rise accordingly.
It's true that working people limit their families because they can't afford another.

So you deal with the 'problem' of people having more children than the state would like by tring to dissuade future breeders. And you do this by withholding money from current families. So you decide that this 5 year old is going to be hungry, that 12 year old is going to be cold, those kids over there are going to live in substandard housing and feel their families every worry each time they grow out of their shoes. So that the world can see what a BAD WOMAN mummy was for having them, and others can make better choices. Why so complicated? Lets just put women with extra children in the stocks every so often. Then we can all despise them and they can act as a warning to others. And that is less morally repugnant than inflicting a life of poverty and want on their children, who are innocent even of this made up crime.

Good post night lark.

I find it astounding that someone can begrudge OAPs who have worked and paid into the system a winter fuel payment, but think others who have never worked a day in their lives should be given more than enough to live on.

Freddos, If we found that a good chunk of OAPs had never worked in their lives (women who stayed at home to look after kids for e.g), would it be ok to yank their winter fuel allowance? If not, why not?

I really think this is classic sound bites, how many people have more than 3 children, they should be getting to grips with the get pregnant at 16 so i can have a house/flat culture, then pop out a few more to keep me till im 40. What happend to us mums when we wanted more for our girls, uni, careers, just plain working ,we meet the man of our dreams, they work hard, and not impregnate girls willy nilly. old fashioned I know.

Night plenty of working families have to ration heating,live in substandard housing and worry about shoes-plenty.

If a mother lets her child go hungry because she chose to have 6 kids and spends her benefits on Sky and mobile tariffs,nights out at the pub etc then really there isn't much anybody can do.

At some point people have to learn that the children they have are their responsibility,I fail to see why the nation as a whole is supposed to have more of a responsibility than a child's own mother.

As for "stocks" "despise"-hysterical over dramatic language that isn't needed.

The feeling I'm getting from this thread is that people are fundamentally decent. Everyone wants to contribute towards the "deserving". That sounds patronising - sorry but I think deep down that's how we feel.

We can't agree on what "deserving" is. Pity the poor politicians who try (as they must).

On the one hand we have people who are prepared to be tough and make some lives miserable by mistake. On the other hand we have people happy to sanction the government to "waste" money in case we make a mistake.

Tricky.

I work and have to rely on some benefits, when kids are at school get a job.

This isn't so far from the right-wing responses over the years. If there is an economic problem, blame the immigrants for taking all our jobs..or blame the Jews for being too astute...now it's blame the poor for causing all of these problems.

I do agree largely with niceguy re not expecting the state to fund the costs of children ad infinitum. But...the children didn't cause this mess. There was/is a crisis in capitalism worldwide, combined with a set of casino-players who lost our money but are being v well protected by the political elite. Just even moreso now.

Omg now it's the Jews-hysteria,much!!!

Aliona there have also been successive governments who have spent more than they should have done.

Sadly the days of just shaking the magic money tree are over,the money just isn't there and personally I think this problem re families on benefits being rewarded for having several children should have been sorted long before the banking crisis.

no Prarie, I am only pointing out that govts prefer to blame everyone and anyone who they thing are viewed as vulnerable. Hitler blamed the Jewish people in the 1930s, Brits often blamed immigrants for 'coming over here and taking our jobs.

No hysteria, just facts.

It's the generation game,Grandmother, Grandfather, never worked, Daughter, son, never worked, same again, and sadly same again, 35 year old grandparents who didn't know how to parent in this first place.