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?

oh what is the point with contributing to these threads? I despair really. Just not worth even trying to explain . DC is no longer a dependent. That is the simple fact for most benefits. Father does not have to contribute anything. Right leaving you all to it, clearly me surviving on £40 pw is too much for some people to deal with- sponger and scrounger that I am. No wonder people on low incomes feel complete despair at their situations faced with such helpful comments. BTW Father did not contribute anything for years after being made redundant.

A lot of 'children' have to move back with their parents after Uni if they can't find a job. Especially in these hard times. I know quite a few who have done. Or can only find a few hours work in a low paid job.

bluebird, don't despair. I learned a lot from your post - for instance, I didn't know that you have to give back so much of what you earn. That seems quite crazy, and I bet most people aren't aware of it.

If your dc son is your only child, is there any chance you could retrain for something? When he leaves, could you move to somewhere with more work?

Just a reminder for Prarieflower - sex is actually designed for reproduction and the only 'scrupulously careful ' method of avoiding pregnancy is abstention.
Perhaps if nobody had kids we'd all be richer, able to work longer and eventually - extinct
Meantime debating about the meagre sum of child benefit that all parents are entitled to regardless of income is failing to see the bigger picture.
Which is why we are constantly fed diversive rubbish designed to set us against each other whilst those in power get on with fiddling their expenses and negotiating their bonuses

bluebird - I understand exactly where you're coming from. So your DCs hit an age where they are suddenly deemed to be 'independent', so you don't receive any kind of child benefit or tax credits for them and are considered to be 'over-occupying' your housing, and yet there is talk of them 'having' to live with their parents rather than be helped with HB. How are low income parents meant to find the means to support adult children until the age of 25? And how are we preparing them to be fully-functioning independent adults? I'm very concerned about these ill-thought-out proposals.

I cannot see how, say, a single parent earning £18K a year could manage to support a second non-earning adult.

Salvo why should the state make up the shortfall? In an ideal world, they shouldn't have to. Employers would be paying a decent living wage, and landlords, utilities companies etc., would not be making massive profits for their shareholders while people are struggling to even buy food.

Totally agree with you, Nuceguy2.
For you who are strucking because of these policies, instead of shouting and agrying why not starting to make yourself qualifies and look for job. It always jobs if you seriously looking for it because all Polish, Romanians, etc always get job while the British says No jobs (that good enough? or pay enough? what about your qualifications?). Payment is not good enough, yes compare with staying and doing nothing at home while state has to respons for everyghing in your life this might not be good enough. Look at your neighbour such as Greece, Spain, do you want GB to be the same?
And if anyone think this economic crisis is nothing to do with Labour, I'm disagree. No need to explain why because you will never understand. But tax-payer do. I do understand the one who never work and nerver pay any tax, you must be on Labour's, Lib Dem's side but the community Labour created is not realistic and will be collapse oneday. You can say if it's not enough money, tax the rich more (like Labour and Lib Dem always says that) while Top 10% pays already 55% of income tax and creates many jobs.
Yes it's easier but don't forget the rich has more choices, if you tax them more they will just move out of the country. Then who will pay for you? Where you can go?
Finally, I want to thank you Conservative party for thier responsible and brave policies. It is very hard to announce unpopular cutting policies, much harder than giving away policies but this is the right thing to do. I hope they win the votes next election. For Labour and Lib Dem, please do more for the contry not only generates the popular policies to get the votes. Parties like your should be in the Third world not in GB.

Cutting welfare sounds great until you stop and realise huge amounts of 'welfare' money goes on things like working tax credits and housing benefit (a large % of claimants are in work). So easy to paint welfare as a bad thing; all those on it are feckless scum living on council estates getting by on tax payers money..... reality is a lot of money is spent on supporting those in shit paying jobs.

Not many jobs out there provide a proper living wage anymore, not for unskilled/semi-skilled workers anyway.

And lets not even get started on pensions; the government spends as much on pensioners as it does on all welfare. Many pensioners are well off, why should things like the winter fuel allowance NOT be means tested?

I agree people should not be able to breed for a tax-payer subsidised lifestyle, but many of those in receipt of 'hand outs' do not fall into that category at all.

The latest guff from Osbourne / Cameron is designed to appeal to the daily mail brigade.

hehehe Astranger international finance and the debt spiral caused the crisis. The state intervened to bail out those who effed the country up and sent the rest to hell.

Strangely Labour did raise the tax rate to 50% over 150k and I didnt notice any hordes leaving the country. And frankly I think I can do without another bunch of Russian oligarchs coming to buy up property and then leave it empty (entire zone 1 of london now unaffordable to anyone but millionaires).

comparing a woman with children to a single Polish person who can work for below minimum wage and be totally flexible is utter rubbish.

And by the way I am a taxpayer and have never claimed a benefit in my life. That doesn't make me a better person- but keep your silly generalisations to yourself please.

I think actually that Astranger's post should be copied and pasted onto various boards as an example of the utterly muddled, kneejerk thinking of the Right on these issues.

so to be clear as well Astranger... are you saying that the financial crisis in Greece and Spain was caused by people refusing to go to work?

I don't know about Greece but there is next to no welfare provision in Spain. Sure helped them out didn't it when international finance decided to send them all to the wall.

I agree that pensioners on a good income should not be gettng winter fuel allowance. Quite often it is given to households where the other person could be earning £100,000 a year or even more. Insanity!! I also have misgivings about low wages being subsidised by tax credits. If the company is making a profit then it will go to shareholders. And I am also not happy about the huge inner London rent subsidies which have pushed rents higher and higher and lined the pockets of greedy landlords.

The financial crisis in Greece was caused by jsut a more extreme example of what happened here under Labour - ie goverment borrowing like there was no tomorrow.

Vivienne, pensioners and greedy landlords comprise about 80% of Tory voters I should think. They know whose pockets to line.

To be fair Mrs Salvo, there was a large amount of err.. creative accounting on the part of the Greek Government as well.

Mrs Salvo - so the collapse of the banks had nothing to do with it? Trading complex financial instruments the bankers didn't understand? And Labour and the Greek government were responsible for the crisis hitting the US, Germany, France, Italy, Finland and everywhere else, were they?

Utter tosh.

Italy will be the next economy to topple after Spain and there is no welfare provision there at all.

The only help you have if you are destitute is the church or begging. Go to Rome and you will see a lot of disabled people and their carers begging on the metro.

So for sure MrsSalvo, their money didn't go on the feckless. Their young people aren't having children, either. Nowhere for them to live, as they're all still living with their parents at 35.

The UK is going the exact same way - only without the Church and the good weather and food etc.

they do take off too much. I can make more money doing 1 hour 15 minutes of cash in hand cleaning than i can by doing an extra 10 hours at work (if i get extra work as a temp which i've applied to do). I don't do cash in hand work but it is v. tempting and i can see why many do. Basically it works like this : for every £1 you earn after £71 (the amount to government says an adult aged over 25 needs to live off) they take away 65% for housing benefit, then they take an additional 20% off for council tax benefit. Obviously i am deeply grateful that benefits exist and i don't mind that the greater proportion of extra income goes straight away as its fair , but 85% is quite extreme and most policy makers involved in poverty agree, it is also counter productive as it encourages people to do cash in hand work. I'll be working for around £1 ph. I am actually well qualified, just can't cope with stressful work. Maybe i could retrain as a bookkeeper or something. I hope that by working more hours in more locations i will get more experience and be noticed more and ultimately that will be helpful, i'm very good at my job.

To repeat my earlier point though- what happens to those children aged under 25 who have family who do not want them back- who will not support them or who have been abusive towards them?

the biggest problem i face, and one common for many low income earners is the very high cost of housing. Tackle that and the welfare bill will start coming down.

bluebird- you wouldn't exactly be working for £1 per hour though would you, rather you have £1 left after you've make your contributions towards rent and council tax? Presumably the £71 cutoff is the rate at which it is deemed that people are in a financial position to be able to start contributing their own c tax and rent. These are obviously things that people in adequately paid work have to pay from their own pocket (rather than having to pay by the roundabout way of through HB and council tax benefit). So you are still getting the same amount of money, it's just that a large proportion of it goes to paying rent and council tax. What proportion of anyone's money goes on those two things obviously depends on how much they earn in the first place. It seems that at a lower level of earnings, it's very tempting not to take on any further work as it means beginning to contribute towards one's own expenses directly- maybe that's an aspect of the benefits system that needs addressing, so that there aren't built-in disincentives to fully rejoining the world of work.

Haven't read the whole thread but wanted to say: 'Yes, just yes' before the thread and the country closes.

duchesse - it is a very high marginal rate of tax, far higher than the levels that billionaires whine about.

domesticgodless I think you need to look beyond the popular rhetoric and myths. The structural deficit (ie. the one excluding banking interventions) is still an eye watering figure. Given Labour were given a balanced budget and left power with a big deficit and a small note saying there was no money left, I think it's fair to say it is Labour's fault we have a big deficit.

Greece was always going to go broke. They spent money like some petulant teenager. They borrowed money left, right and centre. Their public sector was pretty much their economy and tax avoidance was a national sport. Now they're demonising Germany for refusing to write them a blank cheque and allow them to continue to borrow ad infinitum.

Spain's problem is entirely different. And they have arguably been screwed by their banks. Their government have been good Europeans who stuck to the Euro's fiscal rules better than Germany. Always running a balanced budget. But their property bubble was unsustainable. And when that burst, it's threatened to take their banks with them.

It's a bit trickier than that though because it's not a universal benefit. I can see the argument re unfair taxes if they come out disproportionately from the incomes of poorer people and richer people, but very few billionaires will be claiming HB or CTC, so it's a bit difficult to compare. Recouping from earnings as bluebird described is not a tax, it's a phased withdrawal of benefits presumably pursuant on increased income, which is what we would all hope for for people unfortunately having to claim benefits.

What the authorities need to ensure is that there are not disincentives to full-time work built in to the safety net in this way.

thanks duchesse. I do also get taxed on that extra money, so I am actually left with even less than 85%. I'm not complaining about having to contribute at all, just seems excessively high.

Looks like we are going to need a new thread soon. I suggest we call it George Osborne is a fucking knobhead part 2.