To think these people are utter scum, and i am sick to the back teeth with them all

[CustardoPaidforIDSsYFronts]

Private Equity manager Adrian Beecroft has donated over half a million pounds to the Tories since 2005.

Beecroft is the head of the private equity group that administers Wonga. The typical interest rate on a Wonga loan is an incredible 5,853% APR!

the Tory party are resisting regulation of Payday lending sector. Does this resistance have anything to do with the fact that one of their biggest donors runs one of the biggest legal loan shark operations in the country?

Regulate it is certainly an option, have a look at Stella Creasy's proposals. Limit the charges so they are reasonable not extortionate - since the industry has shown they can't be trusted to operate fairly. Stop TV advertising pre-watershed when children will be amused by those Wonga puppets. Bring back crisis loans. That's just for starters, I'm sure there's more.

carol Decker - the social fund is a joke. Have you ever been in the position of having to apply? If you haven't then obviously you can't know.

cameron accused of cronyism
"two Tory donors and a public relations chief who has holidayed with Mr Cameron....Karren Brady, who is appointed CBE ...Is being wooed by the Tories to become a MP in 2015 or to stand as Mayor of London the following year.

Alan Parker, the founder of the public relations company Brunswick, which represents many of Britain’s largest companies, is knighted in recognition of his philanthropy. He is close to both Gordon Brown and David Cameron and has been on holiday with the Prime Minister, who was also a guest at his wedding.

An OBE is awarded to Peter Emerson Jones for services to business in the North-west of England. His property company has contributed £38,600 to Tory funds in the past five years, most of it to Chancellor George Osborne’s Tatton constituency in Cheshire. Lady Marina Hobson, who is appointed OBE for her philanthropy and support for ballet, has donated £34,000 to the Tories in the past five years."

"Alternatively, the government could ensure that folk are paid a living wage, not on zero hour contracts and that benefits are enough to cover heat, lighting and food."

NMW is in place and looked at regularly. Whether or not it is enough to live on depends on the area and the lifestyle the person chooses plus the number of hours they work.

Some people suit zero hour contracts, students can fit in around uni or college and those with a seond adult in the household may want to just do a few hours etc.

Benefits easily cover food, heating and lighting, the cap of £26k was recently introduced as benefit payouts were getting silly. They are low for a single person but for those with children they are high, usually higher than a full week working om NMW if you add up everything they get given. If benefits were truly that bad people would take on any job they could rather than be picky or say its not worth me working as the job only pays the same and i may as well sit at home for the same money.

alot of that £26K can go in housing benefit though - and that is going into the pockets of people profiting from the buy to let, to private landlords - its not as if it is any advantage to the person trying to scrape by.

You need to look at what they actually have to live on AFTER HB has been taken out of the equation - or after they have paid some of their benefits to top up their rent because they have either been stung by bedroom tax or housing cap, and there are no cheaper or alternative properties available

Benefits easily cover food, heating and lighting
Okay HappyMummy we all know from experience what your views are but 71.70 per week doesn't cover it all, particularly when you consider that there will, in all likelihood be a percentage of rent to cover as well as food, clothing, bus fares, gas and/or electric.
Oh, and the 26k cap wasn't because benefits were getting silly, it was put into place to appease those idiots who thought that all those on benefits were scroungers. IDS's figures have been constantly proved wrong, there are very, very few large families on benefits, and there is no evidence of 'generations' on benefits either. IDS has consistently lied to parliament, but nobody minds because it just states what all the narrow minded Daily Mail morons want to hear.

Benefits are higher than a full working week at NMW? Where are you getting your figures from, HappyMum?

A single parent with one child working full time on NMW will also still qualify for Tax credits and HB because £250 pounds a week is simply not enough to live on. Lifestyle choices barely come into it. You can just about get by on £250 a week with one child (which is approximately what a non-working single parent will get with one child in a privately rented property - obviously you have to allow for LA HB allowances)

The minimum wage is a joke - it's a joke that so many families have to rely on tax credits to top up their wages. It is a joke that there are people out there who are of the opinion that those having to rely on benefits to live are lazy - yes, people like that do exist, but there are also plenty of working people out there who work hard and still have to claim and there are plenty of people out there who would love to not be sitting on their arses.

Why would you need to look at the leftover once HB is taken out of the equation? Peope who work and self support still pay their own rent and dont declare their income to be x after rent but simply x.

There is a difference between being on full benefits and working the magic 16 hours, only one family would be counted in the stats despite the other likely to be taking just as much from the pot. The famoud rowntree survey only looked at one area and needed all three generations to be in the same household, how many families have three generations in the same household

I doubt its just daily mail readers, thats just a newspaper and people can form their own views. More likely people who work and self suppport are fed up of others taking no personal responsibility. Most are not high earners but simply limit their living area and number of children they have in line with their wages. Too many on benefits, full or top ups, state its their right to live in an expensive area, have children they dont intend to suppport and then bleat when the government start to crack down. Amazing how many mothers manage to work yet we have so many others claiming that having children renders them incapable of working.

The current party have flaws but so do the others but they do appear to be promoting that work pays. That can only benefit future generations for the better.

And the Disabled, HappyMummy?

As for others, they have to pay the remainder of their rent from their benefits, which cuts down their weekly income considerably. It's not always a case of living within their means either. My ds has just been made redundant. He is looking for jobs but there are not many. He needs to pay rent, he needs to be able to run a car to work, he needs bus fares to attend interviews. All of this is coming from his redundancy, but supposing he hadn't been there long enough to qualify? Would you force a family of four to move to a cheaper area? Force their children to change schools? Move them from a support network already in place to ensure childcare when they are working?

Work doesn't pay. I could not have afforded to work full time - if I could have gotten a full time job. If I'd have worked full time I'd still have been eligible for benefits and I would have had to claim them. Have you been in that position, HappyMum?

I'd have loved nothing more than to have had a full time job that paid enough that I didn't have to rely on handouts - it was demoralising and people with attitudes such as yours only made me feel even more like a useless lump of nothing.

And you may bleat about people having too many children - what do you say about the many, many families who have 2+ children who were fine until disaster struck (job losses) or the parents with 2+ children who suddenly find themselves dumped having to try to juggle it all on their own? Are they bleaters too? Have they been irresponsible? No - because no one has a crystal ball. You can save and have a buffer (which by the way is no good when your spouse walks off to another country with that buffer and you have no way of accessing it - and I'm sure I'm not the only person who that has happened to) but buffers can disappear quickly and families who were working hard suddenly become "scroungers" in the eyes of people who have little idea of how the benefits system actually works and apparently have little idea of the cost of living.

Who would pay for a living wage? There is not enough money to go round to give everyone the lifestyle they want at present because it was all borrowed - borrowing needs to be reduced and paid back.
Those of us who earn and pay tax also have to pay rent/mortgage, so ignoring HB is bollocks.
If v few families get over £26k, why an issue about the cap?
see what is happening in France with socialism

the 26K is a huge fucking misnoma its not what people on benefits get as a norm

To quote the Economist: "Though most of them seem to end up in newspapers, in 2011 there were just 130 families in the country with 10 children claiming at least one out-of-work benefit. Only 8% of benefit claimants have three or more children. What evidence there is suggests that, on average, unemployed people have similar numbers of children to employed people ... it is not clear at all that benefits are a significant incentive to have children."

And so Carol what do we do? Seriously, what do we do? I know what this unelected coalition are doing, they started at the bottom of the pile, they started on those unable to help themselves, foolishly they thought that they had started on those who wouldn't fight back. They started off with the sick, the dying and the long term disabled. They created distinctions between the poor, so we had the poor and the undeserving poor. Then they lied, then they claimed that everybody else was lying, and that The Trussel Trust were being political when it was pointed out that foodbank use had increased from 41,000 in 2010 to 500,000 in 2013. Bedroom tax ensured that disabled people suffered again and the reassessment of many people with disabilities put lives at risk and caused deaths, assessments by people unqualified to do said assessments, working for a company banned from practice in many parts of the world.
But no, they don't matter do they, we still need trident and the like so we won't make any cuts there, and so it goes.

So what to do Carol - you say no one can afford to pay a living wage, so we're stuck with low earners having to rely on top ups - thus having to pull from the government pot. But those people are scroungers, apparently, but big companies refuse to pay a living wage (and yet many of them manage to doge huge amounts of tax). Who are the real scroungers here?

And why do people keep on about £26k? It may be a cap, but that doesn't mean that people are actually getting that. While I was looking for a job I was expected to live on £13k with a child with a weekly rent of £110. £26k would have been pie in the sky amazing.

I have a friend - he's on his second heart. His kidneys have failed and he's on dialysis several times a week and on the transplant list for the third time in his life - and yet he's supposedly fit for work. He tried to go back to work but his employer decided it was too much of a risk to employ him because of his failing health. In reality, he's often so ill he'd have to call in sick if he was able to get someone to take him on. What is he supposed to do.

People like this, people who are trapped by circumstance and are trying ot get out of it - they are not the scroungers, the banks, the companies who dodge taxes and refuse to pay a decent wage, and various other well oiled machines - they are the scroungers.

there is plenty of money if they collect the taxes from the corporations owed to this country

austerity is another misnoma

40 billion needs to be collected and that is a conservative estimate

if tax loopholes were closed significantly more could be brought into this country

the money is there

17m spent by whitehall paying for fucking bunny outfits and meals out and hotels in Brazil!!

hotels in brazil!

paying for MPs second homes when they live within easily commutable distances

paying gas and electricity

so let me get this straight - i am paying for MPs second homes - inc food, underpants for ian duncan smith, decor, all bills and mortage

they recieve - c. 80k and then they can farm themselves off to "consult" with different organisations and recieve payment

17 million on meals, bunny suits and brazil
100million on expenses 12/13
40 billion uncollected tax

then lets talk about benefits in more detail (2012)
47% of UK benefit spending goes on state pensions of £74.22bn a year, more than the £48.2bn the UK spends on servicing its debt.

in contrast

Jobseekers' allowance - £4.91bn

collect the taxes that need collecting and this is covered

whats more you can cover

Disability living allowance of £12.57bn .
and
statuatory sick and maternity pay of 3.58 bn.

and have some change to cover
carers allowance 1.71 bn

and income support 6.92bn

AND YOU STILL HAVE CHANGE LEFT

its the pensions that are crippling the welfare bill

not the unemployed

I'm glad someone mentioned pensions - I wanted to but was being cowardly. My grandparent-in-law sit on over a half million in their bank(which with the current interest rates is losing value), have two properties which they own outright and don't rent out the spare one and bleat on about immigrants and benefits claimants and single mother (who must all be criminals of some sort by the way) and how they have to live on a pittance of a pension - which they erroneously think they paid for. They sit on that money and still expect their pension and their free bus passes and their winter heating allowances - and waggle their fingers at everyone else.

and we have the money to spend 600m on NON means tested free school meals

cost the country is on its arse bollocks

I'd like to add that I know there are plenty of pensioners out the struggling horribly (my grandmother is one). Pensions, winter fuel allowances, bus passes - should be means tested like all other benefits.

Custart - that's interesting - I thought free school meals were means tested?

happy they are introducing free school meals for all in some year groups - agree is bonkers.
custard you and everyone else has ignored why question about why anyone should pay tax - ie what is in it for the taxpayer beyond thier share of services?

Why do you think people shouldn't pay tax, carol?

the proposal is that all school meals for everyone no matter income for infants

caroldecker - not sure if you really meant your question.

Why should anyone pay tax?

How could the country pay for schools, NHS, roads, police force, defence, public service employees, state pensions, JSA, housing benefit etc if we did not pay tax? Do you think these should all be charitably run on voluntary donations, or do you think we should individually pay at the point of receipt (not sure how that would work for police but I guess you could charge for arrests, prison etc if the criminals were good for the money - or perhaps charge the victim of, say, mugging, for looking for the mugger?)

[[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16744819 this bbc article is interesting, a tory mp in 2012 put forward a piece in the daily mail about individual tax statements to show people what their taxes are spent on
he worked on out on a £25,500 salary

£2,080 Pensions and Benefits
£1,094 on the NHS
£824 on Education
£339 on Defence
£160 on the Police
£44 on Prisons
£92 on Roads
£71 on Railways
£59 towards overseas aid 
£28 to the European Union.

tbh, i'm happy to pay towards everything there except the fucking railways

more than 2000 enior public sector officials are being paid through private companies rather than the government's payroll in an attempt to minimise their tax bill, according to a leaked Treasury document. even the govt are trying to avoid paying tax!!