if you voted for the Tories, you should feel personally responsible when you see homeless people on the streets ...

[aufaniae]

...once their policies start to bite.

They want to removing housing benefit for under 25s, many of whom have children. Just one of their policies which will drive people into homelessness.

I thought this was meant to be a civilised country. If the safety net is removed, many people including children will fall through it, some of them ending up on the streets.

How can anyone support that?

morethanpotatoprints sorry! And thanks

I don't, seems an illogical conclusion to me.

Aufanie - the thing is I KNOW people will continue to have children regardless therefore I would rather save the money, same reason I think maternity pay should be abolished.

I thought we lived in a civilised country.

Yes some people may be ignorant feckless breeders. That does not mean their children should be hungry and homeless.

Yes some people may be workshy. That does not mean you say work or be damned .

Not everyone has the ability to make their own luck, pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

In a civilised country the rich look after the poor, they don't despise them, abuse them, tell them to take responsibility.

In a civilised country people understand that in the long term it makes financial sense to give people a helping hand, and that it is immoral to have no safety net.
Yes welfare is expensive, but it is a non negotiable necessity. The Tories/labour are dismantling everything that was good about this country, the NHS, education, and now they are attacking those least able to defend themselves.

I am praying for independence. I want no part of this and it makes me ashamed to be British.

How do you feel about fostering and adoption?

In a civilised country people take responsibility for their own actions .

londonone so you accept your ideas are unrealistic and unworkable then?

Mini - what a random question! What is the subtext? At least ask the question you want to know the answer to

"Yes some people may be ignorant feckless breeders. That does not mean their children should be hungry and homeless. "

Exactly. Anyone who disagrees with this has had an empathy bypass IMO.

And also lacks the imagination to see how living in a society with destitute children makes us all poorer.

But some won't, then what. Their children, their responsibility, just forget about them?

I'm leaving this thread now, there are some very disturbing people on here with very disturbing ideas. You know who you are and you should be ashamed of your total lack of empathy for those less fortunate than yourselves.

Shame on you.

In what way unrealistic, it is eminently realistic to remove benefits from some people. I imagine you would struggle with the concept but many wouldn't. I consider the current status quo to be unrealistic and unworkable.

It is not unworkable to give out benefits for only one child, and to provide a safety net for workers, but not for those that conceive while on full benefits.

Won't happen, there will not be hordes of destitute children in this country.

We would end up living in a society with less children who couldn't be supported by their parents. That is a good thing.

I want to know what will happen to the children who's parents can no longer afford to keep them. I want to know what will happen to the children of teenagers too terrified to get help, or too ashamed to seek help when they get pregnant. I want to know who will look after the children of the poor when abortion rights are curtailed. Who will deal with the masses of children with rickets and preventable diseased caused my malnutrition. Who will take these children in when their parents can no longer cope and give them up as they are in Greece as they did in Romania.

WILL YOU adopt them? Foster them? What will you do?

Okay, last post.

londononeI apologie as I know on other threads you have consistently said the same regarding Carers.

I don't for one moment think everyone not on benefits is rolling in money....when I did have a mortgage many years ago it seems now......it was hard financially.

I also totally agree that people should not have baby after baby with no way of supporting them. It's not good for them either....the saddest thing I ever did as a HV was see a 21 yr old on her birthday while I was doing a new birth visit to her and her 4th baby. There was nobody in the house in work, training or education...these are the people we need to be supporting to make a step change in their lives. Fwiw, the 21 yr old was tearful about being 21 with 4 children.....it wasn't right for her either never mind the rest of society.

With regards to housing benefit for the U25s I think there will be safeguards in place and there needs to be.

I haven't read all of this thread because everytime I come across shit like 'but they aren't homeless, these kids live in B&B's and that's not homeless' I want to throw this netbook out of the window.

And that would be a bad thing because a) it's not mine - I'm borrowing it from BIL as I couldn't afford my own and b) This is an emergency house which we've just been placed in and I'd rather not piss off the council before they have housed me in yet another temporary place in a month.

Anyway, I wanted to say a couple of things.

Less then 1 in 8 housing benefit claimants are unemployed.
Last year 93% of new Housing benefit claimants were working.
Last year 10,000 young people were made homeless after their parents threw them out.
6 in 10 young people claiming HB in house shares are on it for less then 6 months.
£1.86bn goes to under 25s for HB. The total HB bill is £23.4bn
53% of young people using HB are parents
7% are disabled.

Yes cuts need to be made. But this governent aren't hitting under 25 HB claims for the right reasons. It's to appease the 'get the scum off the sofa' shouters.

The majority of HB goes to private landlords. Why aren't they taking steps to tackle that issue?

Nothing to do with the fact 25% of MPs are private landlords then....?

Some of you have truly vile opinions. Only makes me more sure of what I believe but horrified of what those around me think.

Why shouldn't we have private landlords? The disgrace is local councils fixing the rent. Landlords charge the maximum the council will pay for any given family.

Your second sentence has no relevance, there are hundreds of thousands of private landlords and the "fact" that 25% of 650 may also be is irrelevant.

HomelessMummy.

I hope you are ok. I can't claim to know how you must feel but experienced my sister being in the same position many years ago now (90's). I hope your situation improves, good luck to you.

Yes NewNames, some of them do have vile opinions but I'm sure they'll see sense later.

Some of you on this thread should watch the latest Red Cross advert.

It's a girl, with a dog. She's nasty. She says horrible things.

The tag line is, (I think) "I'm a crisis. And I don't care who you are".

Some of you on this thread must feel so empowered living up there in your glass houses. Just you wait till the plebs start throwing stones back.

Minitheminx - I am not sure you got enough wild hyperbole into your last post. Surely at least some children will end up being raised by wolves!

I was brought up in a family of seven in Kings Cross London circa 1950, no one can tell me that they live in poverty.

They won't be worried by then they will be joining the plebs.