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?

Edam - Those statistics are skewed by the fact that children in poverty are also given less opportunities. I could have been a candidate for Oxford/Cambridge, the school made a big deal about the top students about to go to A-Level working toward those universities. But I was told I couldn't go because "your parents wouldn't be able to afford it anyway, so there's no point trying". Sure, I could have done it anyway, but at 16 it undermined my confidence so badly that I didn't even do my A-Levels, I left school and went straight to work.

anyway I have work tomorrow

Night all :)

Please note non of the above was sneery and/or gloaty ;)

Right. So you areunable to point to the provisions you say would have this effect. you are actually passing on some unsubstantiated bit of hearsay- as gospel, causing worry, no doubt, to many people reading. I'm sorry but that's disgraceful.

Since it was the very rich rather than the very poor that caused the financial crisis maybe we should sterilise the rich instead of the poor. The poor generally don't cause much of anything.

Oh please don't start on that one. The banking crisis definitely triggered our current economic problems. But the root cause of the problem has been three decades of rampant overspending from successive governments all around the western world. Not bankers but politician's around the globe who have borrowed money to fund spending we can't afford and hide the fact we're having our economic arses kicked by asian economies.

And it is, by the way, precisely the sort of conduct i have come to expect from people who work for LEAs, which i infer you do.
An absolute disgrace

hetty is so right, what strikes me is that many of these hard working two income people are pointing the finger shouting scrounger when in fact their real problem isn't that some people don't work, it's that those people who are unemployed actually threaten their own job security and their own ability to pay down their own debts. People with mortgages feeling squeezed and begrudging their tax because that money could pay off some of their debt. Never realising that we, the worker and the working class are all in this together. Never mind Georgie, he will rise above it all.

Night Karlos :)

oh and no I don't

You don't? you really should. you're ideally suited. you have all the right personal qualities, from what I'm seeing here.
That's not a compliment, by the way.

ThreeEdgedSword, one of my brothers did make it to Oxford (Brasenose) but he had the advantage of going to public school behind him (now extinct assisted place scheme) where everyone was encouraged and supported through the application process if they wanted it.

NiceGuy, why have governments been over spending in the last 30 years? is it something to do with the increasing profits of business and the increasing inequality in that time? I think you;ll find that the inequality leads to the need for welfare.

SadPanda congrats to your brother that's the main thing, isn't it? Support and encouragement, not dismissal.

Two things occur to me.

One is that yes people do need to take responsibility in not producing large families they can't afford, but it is almost impossible to legislate effectively to discriminate between the feckless and those in unfortunate changed circumstances, and even if you could only the children would suffer.

The second is the creeping spread of childhood and infantilisation of young adults, the extension of education to disguise there are no jobs, the restriction of their ability to become independent - and that applies to those on HB and those looking for mortgages. I think that one is a whole new thread on its own though.

Exactly. We also got bags of support and encouragement from our parents who wanted us to have an education and opportunities they never had. My dad had to leave school at 12 to help support his younger siblings following the death of his mother. He wanted better for his kids.

I grew up the eldest of 5 in what was frankly a barely habitable hovel in France as it was the only property that the bailiffs didn't seize when my father went bankrupt (no running water for the first year, only well water, then no hot water for the first 3, no telephone for 5 years, no television for 5 years, etc...). Through a combination of ingenuity and low cunning my parents managed to keep feeding us for the following 10 years until things picked up again. In that time we were wearing 7th hand cast offs, not really eating especially good food (apart from what we grew), but we all went on to university, two at Oxbridge, 2 at Russell group universities and my brother to a university where he was Man of the Year in his final year. We all have decent jobs and situations now. Most people I know now have no idea what sort of childhood I had. I don't actually believe that we are as determined by our economic circumstances as is widely thought.

omg i havent the time to read all

but i do have to laugh as MN seem to have a large proportion of MC that probably have no idea what "income these benefits" provide to familys

do you know how much a basic amount a single parent with 2 kids would get,because if you dont i really dont think you should assume things are fine and dandy for them

far more people on benefits live in substandard housing,poor diet,lack of after school activities etc

not everybody on benefits has a desire to have 10 kids,those figures are very small and as of next year that will be capped so thats one "problem "dealt with

until you know the figures etc i really think you should think before you post such hate and mis understanding

usualsuspect- Mitchell and Webb are actually genii. Their evil vicar sketch is rather amusing as well.

"Right and you think it's right that your relative should lose resources and funding, yes? "

No, I think people who cannot afford to have children shouldn't depend on somebody else to pay for them to have children.

They are different issues. People like to conflate them because then it's easier to go on the attack.

The real problem of being on longterm welfare is people get use to a life where they are disempowered to do things for themselves or try to aim for a better life for themselves and their families. People never value things which are given compared to things which they have earmed. I think growing up on welfare is actually awful for kids in terms of their expectations of life and self esteem.

Dawndonna - that is a figure for fraud, not people legally taking the mickey. It's the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion.
(I didn't see your withdrawal of your horrible insult or your suggestions by the way, did you come forward with either?)

"No, I think people who cannot afford to have children shouldn't depend on somebody else to pay for them to have children"

capitalism and indeed your job and mine requires and relies upon consumers, children are the consumers of today, the workers and tax payers of tomorrow. How very short sighted to just only care for you and yours because you and yours depends upon them.

When people talk about the lack of social mobility and the increase in social inequality, is their any realisation that this was matured, compounded and fertilized by 13 years of Labour government? Not least the abject failure to provide a decent basic education system for ANYONE who doesn't have educated parents at home to help them.

Duchesse - having highly intelligent, driven parents, preferable with some sort of education (self-educated or otherwise) is the biggest predictor of success.

Many children don't have this; though they may well have nice parents who try their best.

Brucite - we all agree that people who can't afford children shouldn't have them.

The question is whether legislating to stop people doing the things we don't approve of will lead to unacceptable suffering among children, who are not responsible for their parents poor choices.

Well educated children with parents who care about their upbringing are tomorrow's contributors.

Actually that IS a generalisation, for which I do apologise. Though I would say there is some truth in it - and I think many children are let down by their parents and by their schools. Ending up with nothing, no hope, no prospects, no money, no independence, no maturity, no sense of belonging to society.