To think that a 23k benefits cap will drive some families in the SE

[Minifingers9]

... Into destitution?

I live in a pretty unappealing and comparatively cheap part of greater London but you can't get a 3 bedroom rental for under £1400 a month.
If we lost our jobs we wouldn't be able to live on 23k a year as a family of 5. Not when 15k of it was going on rent.
Why don't they have regional benefit caps?

There is so much more to working than money and there's a huge difference between taking some time out for young children and being fully caterered for by benefits.

I wasn't suggesting for a moment that your children haven't thrived morethan. Mine too thrived while
I was at home, also when worked part time and then full time. Most children do when they have love, care, stimulation and good routines!
Not sure what you mean about not 'needing' a career...I guess no one needs one, but many of us find an interesting career is another facet of life, sitting alongside being a parent and all the other myriad things which make up life

£23k is nothing .........my DH works full time 6 nights pw in all weather delivering milk. His take home pay is LESS than £23k pa.

He will be thrilled to be told that his effort and unsociable hours in rain snow and wind in not worthwhile, because he gets NOTHING for it.

FFS. Give your head a wobble and come into the real world.

If 23k benefits cap will drive families in to destitution, they will have several alternatives (or not as the case may be)

1. Earn more than 30Kpa, and be better off financially.

1. Move far from London. I live a good way off from London, and the number of people who commute from their nice 4 bed detached houses in to London to work is considerable.I have only met one person on full benefits who moved from central London, to a small but nice three bed semi in suburbia. It was so unusual the neighbours decided she must be on a witness protection scheme. Realistically you will still be able to live off benefits in an area where rents are much lower than London.

1. They get in to debt; need to use food banks, are made homeless. More children than would have been are taken in to care. Destitution, basically.

So those able and clever enough will survive. But those with big problems anyway will really suffer.

custard

Most people who receive benefits are working though, or are in a working household.
I don't know anyone who is fully catered for by benefits except the unemployed and they hardly get enough to live, let alone be fully catered for.

23k is a fuck of a lot more than a lot of people earn. I have supported a family, sahp and all on a lot less than that even before tax.

Not only that, but my wages were GOUGED every month by the tax man.

There are adverts on mumsnet.com atm for jobs under a 15k salary at Barclays. There will probably be stiff competition for those jobs.

So yeah "23k is nothing". What an insult.

32

I think either I didn't come across as intended or you took the wrong end of the stick.

I am not begrudging anybody their choice, we all have different opinions.
However, when I see people sneering at people who choose to live differently it gets my goat and I responded.
My problem wasn't with any of your comments.
To me it seemed daft to work for nothing, or at times at a cost, to others it doesn't seem daft, as I said each to their own.
Neither is better or more worthy as there are arguments for and against both.

i don't think anyone is disputing that they are a business (although that is loosley based in some cases) and they want to make a profit. The issue is that landlords used the HB as a floor in rent regardless of the owners outgoings. That floor has now been lowered so you can still run your business, if you don't want/can't afford to take HB tenants there will be always someone who can, that's market dynamics.

The same excuse was made when the initial cap of 26k was brought in and although this cap affects ~5 times more than the initial cap, it's relatively few.

Is give your head a wobble the latest mn cool put down? Seemed to be everywhere.

But usually if people are earning under £20K, they don't have DC, or they have a partner, or they are receiving tax credits, which top up wages.

£15K is great if (like me) you have a partner who earns considerably more. It not only covers child care, but pays for treats too.

But £15K pm, as a house hold income with no benefits to top it up? I don't think so.

Personally I feel that 23k is fair. My DH and I both work our arses off around sharing childcare of our son (can't afford it) and get a combined wage of approx. £24k. So for a grand less why don't we just give up our jobs and live off the state?!

I can understand if people NEED benefits and have nothing against people that claim them but if I can live off £24k in the SE inc house, car, bills etc it CAN be done...

I wasn't trying to be insulting, I just can't imagine raising a family on 23k (pre-tax).

BUT MOST BENEFIT CLAIMANTS WONT GET £23k, So stop clutching bosoms and shrieking.

And remember that much of that will go in housing benefit to private landlords. It won't leave much even IF you meet the criteria for such a large amount.

BUT MOST BENEFIT CLAIMANTS WONT GET £23k, So stop clutching bosoms and shrieking.

Exactly, so setting this cap is a good thing.

In fact what it will do is drive some families into - full time work like the rest of us have to suffer so is a very good thing and the majority of people even Labour supporters by the way support the benefits cap. £23k is £30k of before tax income - it's enormous. If I stopped work tomorrow we'd get £18,000 in housing benefit along. It's ridiculously high and a huge incentive for people to piss around with part time hours, long lies in, late starts and the like when the rest of us are working very long full time hours and chasing round getting children to nurseries and the like in order to fund these people on high benefits who choose mostly not to work full time as there is no financial incentive for them to do so.

The people who will be helped most by this new cap is those subject to it as it is likely to nudge them into life improvement and full time work.

landlords still need to find tenants though.

a large proportion of the rental market relies on hb recipients who pre right to buy would have rented directly from the state.

29 Justanotherlurker no it's not a good think that a relatively small number of children will be hungry and cold. The cap isn't intended to save money and anyone who believes so is naive.

Lotus you're seriously grating on me with your extreme right-wing "benefits street" style views.

You need to turn off your TV, stop watching channel 4 & stop acting so entitled because you work like the rest of us.

Why aren't you getting annoying at multi national tax dodging companies & high powered individuals costing this country hundreds of thousands of much needed pounds every year?!

Morethan, you may have chosen not to work as you didn't need the money but I'd hesitate to guess that your household claimed top ups due to only have one worker and multiple children. Of course if you claim them it seems daft to work as its free money.

For others, they want to support their own children and that means working.

Landlords still need to find tenants ? I hope they don't and then those properties can go back into the hands of the generation below me of 30-39 year olds who missed out on home ownership by a whisker.

Lotus, I would agree the cap doenst go far enough. It needed to include workers so as to stop people choosing to do just a few hours or having one adult not work. Or better still, stop with the top up benefits and just give free childcare where all adults work.

It might grate on people that I support the benefits cap but most people in the UK support it and it's reduction to £30k (£23k after tax) so that's a lot of us behind it.

Why am I being niave?

Unless your reasoning that it's not a saving is some variation of 'Tories hate the poor' I would like to hear it.

There are many caveats that negate this cap and although it's a relatively small saving it is setting a limit that many working couples manage on without children going cold and hungry.

Also Ragingjellybean the government is also tackling that issue and has done more to tackle that issue in the last 5 years that labour did in 13, it's not a zero sum argument.

RagingJellyBean

As well as the recent changes to moving corporation tax abroad which is just bedding in.

Here are 2 others:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_tax
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Anti-Avoidance_Rule

We can address more than on issue at a time.

I DO agree with the benefits cap, but I can't stand how entitled you're acting. You're so bitter about working full time you've managed to insult part time workers & people who claim benefits as a means of surviving.

You can't use the fact you're subsidising anyone as an excuse to go off on a tangent about benefits receivers.

We all subsidise each other - via the NHS, funded schools & benefits (and probably loads more I can't think to name). You're not solely subsidising anyone, you're contributing to a society.