About the Benefits program on BBC1

[bimbabirba]

It has made my blood boil! Especially that judgmental bitch, Debbie, who was telling the single parent that she shouldn't buy a whole chicken on tax payers' money to feed her children! Then she went all judgy and bitchy because the kids eat two cooked meals a day and she asked if that was really necessary!
I think the world has gone mad!

MYSOGYNY KLAXON.

Saw this blog today which i agree with.

goddessdeeva.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/on-misogyny-towards-young-mothers.html?m=1

Lets start with your assertion that being on benefits is not supposed to be easy or comfortable or easy, Handcream:

Why? Is it your intention that people with disabilities and pensioners, or those caring for children under 5, the homeless, et al should live such an impoverished life that existing is the best that they should hope for?

Or does the thought of people who are forced to live a different life from the norm lead you to the conclusion they must be punished?

I think the benefits as a lifestyle choice is an interesting one because I basically think that we all make the best choices we can for ourselves and our families given the opportunities we have and perceive in our environment.

Like bears human beings are naturally opportunists - related to naturally being omnivores

The cap sounds like loads to me, but that's because I get about 10k less than that (on benefits) and the only people I know who are affected have more disposable income than most people I know who work, which doesn't seem right.
But then, most people I know who work have a mortgage etc and won't suddenly lose all their money when the dc move out. So are probably better off in the long term.

I don't think Debbie actually thought the children should eat cold food in the evening because they were poor. The point that she was making was did the children need two hot meals a day? To which I think most people would actually say no. My dcs certainly only have one. It's perfectly possible to 'manage' nutrition-wise with that. The whole issue with the chicken is how many meals would she get out of it. If she was only eating the breast meat then fillets would be a better option. I think this appeared more confrontational as a scene than it maybe actually was. I could se why she was frustrated with Kelly tbh - applying for 25 jobs in 4 months is not too great.

There is a limit to how many people we can afford to support. You can't have fewer and fewer taxpayers paying for more and more tax recievers without at some point reaching tipping point at which the whole system collapses.

Also carers should get all the help they can!

Good spot Darkeyes, but I have to say that the new "hostels" for the teen mothers, could well be sat next to the new "homes" built to house 20 -30 disabled people, as it is already started to be spoken about in Glasgow that it would be cheaper to "house" people together, than pay for independent living facilities in the community.

It's funny in a tragic way that the further right wing things go the more they end up looking like communism, and vice a versa.

Tabitha, do you have a number in mind? What should we do if someone turns up the moment after the quota is complete, I would suggest shooting them would be the swiftest and most human thing, your thoughts?

Why are you making a generalisation that Pensioners are ALL struggling? If you have paid into a pension and worked during the working years then you will have not only a state pension but a private pension.

A close relative claims he has no money but is sitting on a house worth nearly £1 m. He has lived there for years, the house is cluttered with junk and rubbish) but he wont move.

Around here in South Bucks there are elderly people sitting on houses worth a considerable sum. However for one reason or another they refuse to downsize. Are we also to support them?

I agree though, if you have made bad choices in life again and again and again and messed around at school and consequently gained no qualifications then perhaps I do understand that you make the choice of not working as working would give you less money overall..

I wonder if hostels were the option for teenage mums whether the birth rate for their particular age would drop? I have just been on holiday and met a teacher who has recently given up work teaching excluded young girls. Their ambition was to have a baby with anyone and then get a place allocated to them. She gave up because it was just too depressing.

No, I do not have a number in mind. But there has to be a move towards expecting people to provide for themselves and their own family instead of expecting the state to provide for them. It needs a change in culture rather than quotas.

I agree tabitha. A change in culture rather than making crap decision after decision and expecting someone to support and pay for you. If the consequences were that if you were say 16 and found yourself pregnant (however that happens!) you had the option of a hostel where you would be taught a trade and how to support YOURSELF (as opposed to expecting others to) or staying with your current family you might be more careful who you sleep with without protection....

If you are not working and CHOOSE to have another child then the cap is that the council will give you a 2 bed house paid for by others and no more....

So your essential saying Tabs that your idea of a quota is unworkable and ill thought out. Talking about a cultural shift is only dressing up the fact that you do not like what other people do or think. I would suggest to you that starts to sound like you want to "reducate" people. See it's a bit like Osborne idea to limit the total benefit bill paid out by the government from 2016, he has absolutely no way of keeping to it. Whats worse once he misses the target the markets will collapse as confidence all and what confidence is there in a chancellor who is so stupid as to make a promise he was never in a position to keep.

Leith - we cannot keep supporting people who make bad decisions. When you sleep with a man without protection is it any wonder you somehow 'find yourself pregnant'. In this country there is no reason to have a baby without efectively choosing to.

For all these people who are saying 'support these people' what with? I think you mean with other people's money....

I see you have a sex fixation Handcream, you are aware that the number of teenage pregnancies for the uk is the lowest it has been for a while?

Will the fathers also be put in a home to learn a trade?

Why not enforce moral discipline by making the parents of the pregnant teen responsible? Perhaps they should be forced either to work till they pay off the additional costs of the child, or have their wages dif they have them docked to achieve the same thing, that would surely force parents to take much greater care of their children.

So what is the answer Leith? Maybe the parents need to take responsibility? But just chucking money at it it not the answer.

The fact is that women are the ones who have the babies. Even more reason to make sure they take adaquate protection. But some women have such bad judgement. A man - any man is what they want. The chidlren come second. Hence the high profile cases about women putting their needs first.

I think your right Handcream it is other peoples money, it has always been other peoples money. Other people paid for your education, the police who protect you, the maternity pay you may have had, the insurance on your house and possesions. All other peoples money, and all paid to you with out any ideas on who or what you are like.

You live in society that has had social security payments and a integrated welfare system for just shy of 100 years. Many millions have paid in the whole society we live in has been built by this mutual paying in. We are only in danger of being unable to afford this society in the fevered minds of those who wish us to be an entirely different much more self centred society.

1945 we built what we call the welfare state, less money higher debts, fewer people to pay taxes. Oh and we had an Olympics which were a huge success as well, if things are so dire now, how did we do so much with far less back then.

the problem with left wingers is eventually they always run out of other people's money to spend.

Hmmm running out of money to spend, that seems to be the least of our problems. Plenty money being given to banks so that they can....err sit on it. Plenty money being given to first time buyers in terms of promising to cover their debts, and funny enough huge amounts, I mean absolutely massive amounts being given to private landlords in order to bolster a housing market that is unsustainable.

Then there is HST, the wars, the long lost war on drugs, the many millions to A4E and ATOS to run an incompatent and is some cases fraudulent scheme on our behalf.

Last but not least the several billion spent on an IT system, thousands of It consultants, a handful of industry leading IT project managers, all of which have taken other peoples money by the wheelbarrow load whilst telling the government that their beloved universal credit IT system will never, ever, work.

So if your going to be partisan Faster Stronger do so with out leaving the door open for people like me to point out that the right are just as good at spending other peoples money as the left. Oh and by the way it was lefties who spent other peoples money from 1945 on creating the welfare state all of which I assume you would rather not have benefited from.

Around here in South Bucks there are elderly people sitting on houses worth a considerable sum. However for one reason or another they refuse to downsize. Are we also to support them?
This applies to one of my relatives in Bucks and another in Surrey, both of whom have considerable private pensions paid for by their late husbands. Why the assumption that people should move if they don't want to, and the assumption that we are paying for them? I'm confused.

Do you realise how many people who are married end up being ditched or fleeing due to abuse during a pregnancy or just after?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23324635

I suppose that it was "those wicked pregnant teens wot done it"!

Will the fathers also be put in a home to learn a trade?

If they're entitled to live on benefits as a result of looking after their young baby, then yes, I suppose they would be. I suspect that the fact that this is a rare scenario is why the proposed rules only talk about girls, I doubt the small print of any measure will actually be discriminatory.

I live in a area that started using mother and baby units for under 20's wanting housing years ago off the top of my head it was about 9 years ago it effectively removed the likelyhood of a pregnant teen or young mum getting anything other than the unit accommodation until they had waited for at least 5 years,everyone older bypassed the unit requirement.

Its also an area that has a very very low teenage pregnancy rate and has done for as long as I can remember none this has either increased or decreased but now the units have mostly been closed due to how shocking they were.

And for as long as I have been involved in housing pregnant teens and young mums have not effectively jumped the housing list and that's in the 5 county's I've worked in granted they go on the list with either ok banding or points but it was much easier to get a higher banding or points if you have other reasons not just having a child.