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?

As for the teacher who lives in Slough. Who the fuck do you think you would be teaching if all your pupil's families had to move out of London?

Errr, the children of people who were paying their own way to live there. There a 7m people in London, many of whom are normal working people who manage to juggle their income and their outgoings to afford it, without every other taxpaying fucker having to sub them.

Most benefit income is spent on shelter, food, clothes. Live or die essentials.

Living in London, Bath, Alderley Edge or any other expensive area is not a live and die essential.That's what this thread is about, in case anyone has forgotten.

Can we all have access to this magic money tree which allows us to live in expensive areas where we can't afford to rent or buy. Heaven forbid that somebody is denied a house in an area they can't afford.

Wages need to go up. Rents need to fall. I think 23k is more than generous short-term. More people should move out of London because it is a crowded mess now, I haven't visited for ages because of the heaving mass and squash on public transport. Most people I know don't live near family, they live where they can find work.

There seems to be such a lot of store put upon working as though it makes you a better person.

What kind of hyperbole is that, this whole discussion is around the new cap of 23k is more than fair for the relatively small number of claimants that this will affect (and it's not just all focused in london either).

The discussion has been steered to only talk about disabilities, this specific cap isnt related to this whatsoever, if a family with adults able to work then it's not unfair to expect one to try and work, the adveradge wage in the UK is something around 25k before tax, It isn't going to cause destitution.

Even in a socialist utopia, thos that are able to work will be expected, your collectively making things better for thos around you.

We were talking about disabilities because.little suggested that the benefits cap should include DLA as people should be responsible for their own outcomes.

And it's hard to get a job

This nonsense about whether work makes you a better person. Nobody is saying that. What money buys is choice. And lots of money buys lots of choice. One thing stands out again and again to me on these threads - people who need benefits perceive themselves as more helpless than those who don't. They can't move or make changes, but other people can. The benefits TV shows are rubbish, but on here, I start to see what's meant by a benefits culture.

MrsDeVere

London is its own micro-cosm, it's an international city with limited space, it not only attracts international workers it is a brain drain on the rest of the country, all suburbs of London change over time always has, always will.

If a place becomes gentrified then it's actually the current haves who enjoy there new found wealth and go and displace further afield, it's the newcomers who generally sneer at the locals, and during this transition the generally working poor would have already moved on.

What do you mean "here". Dh and I are both working. Yet I think people are too harsh in assuming it's that easy to find a job these days. And they do think they are superior to those who don't work.

Do you have personal experience of looking for a job fanjo? In what way is it hard, if you mean your applying for a job that everyone wants then that's the luck of the draw.

Unemployment figures are down, and I no doubt there is some massaging of numbers, just as labour and every previous governments has done.

I think its usually the other way around when a place gets gentrified.

The have nots insist they should be able to live there as their parents did and they grew up there.

London is a brain drain for the world, and most new builds get sold to overseas investors who plan to let them sit empty.

My grandmother was a single nurse and her old home is now worth several million.

HB is proping up rents and creating a dependency. People should only ever be on it short term, but many are on it long term.

So what is so special about my son that he got a job as a postman within the M25? Are jobs really that hard to find now or is it that the unemployed would not like to get up at 5am and carry heavy bags all day when they would get as much if they sat home on fat bottoms all day?

It's always been hard to find a job though fanjo, long gone are the days of finding a job for life or walking down to the local factory after leaving school and walking into an apprentichip, it's part of the globalised economy, we have free movement with the EU, plenty move here for work, there are jobs out there, because it's hard to get a job is no reason why we should not introduce this benefit cap.

They wouldn't get as much. A single unemployed person would not get anything like what a postman earns.

lotus

Did your son find it easy to find childcare early in the morning, can his wages afford a nanny. I never knew it was such a family friendly job.

oh, not got a family yet? Well hardly relevant then.
My ds x2 have got several jobs between them, they don't have a family neither. funny that.

Petty, I agree with that.

We do punt a lot of the flats overseas to investors, but when we have collectively as a country built our economy on house prices and the easy credit has dried up, what do you expect them to do.

Talk of raising wages is also short term ism.

I would hope the 23k benefit cap would drive people into work. Anything that promotes this idea can only benefit the families in question.

He has colleagues with families, colleagues with a wife or husband who have a full time job each between them. And by the way one reason he is a postman is for childcare reasons as he collects his brothers from school every day so even though he has no children yes he is juggling childcare at one end of the day. No reason two single mothers could not live together and one takes on a post man job and the other goes out each night to do bar work. That would be a really compatible combination.

Indeed as connie says the lower cap is brilliant for the benefits claimants, even more so than higher tax payers, because it pushes the claimants into work which is hugely to their benefit.

Single mothers should just magically produce another single mother who works opposite shifts?

If it's that or eat I think they could.

Maybe they could go one further and share a bed - you know like they did in the victorian era - one got it at night one in the day - lovely ... as long as it's not paid for by housing BENEFIT of course

Yes or just put them in a workhouse with all the other single mothers.

mind you beds are a bit of a luxury - entitled bastards - a washing line would be enough

yes a shared washing line in a shared room paid for through selling a kidney or a spare child

Has nobody got any gumption? Helping each other out is what women do or at least they should do. Trading childcare. I know tons of women who did this. Mainly single mothers but not always. My own mother did it. My sister-in-law and I did it. Sure you need a bit of flexibility and the ability to make connections with other people but, if you haven't got those qualities, you're stuffed in life anyway.