to be utterly disgusted at people's comments re. welfare cuts

[HappyGoLuckyGirl]

Yes, I'm aware that our welfare system needs reforming. I do not profess to know how this should be done.

I've just read a few articles on the proposed cuts that primarily focused on reducing tax credits. The vitrol is appalling. I can't believe this is the country I live in.

I am a single mother working 40 hours a week also mid way through a 5 year part time degree. I earn slightly over minimum wage. Things are tight enough as it is, with the tax credits I get (80% of which goes on my weekly childcare bill) and now they are planning to reduce them.

I am trying to better myself so I don't always have to rely on benefits to get me through the month and yet I'm being punished! Why are working people being targeted? How is that fair in the slightest? If I wasn't so furious I would cry.

And as for people saying that employers should raise workers wages, I can say with 100% surety that if I approached my employer and asked for a living wage (increase of £8k+) I would be flat out refused and or fired. And I work in a skilled job! What hope do people who work for a large multi-national company have?

I am very this morning.

Most reasonable employers (and I am one) would happily give an advance to cover travel costs. Many even offer interest free season ticket loans.

Yes, it's difficult but everything worthwhile is!

Lotus you were one of the ones moaning about family care for their elderly on previous threads.

How do you propose they do this if they take your advice and keep moving for work.

Globalisation is making life harder and more competitive for everyone. I am not surprised that the working class does not want to be driven to compete at the level of the 2 billion poorest people in the world. I don't blame them. The UK is a successful society and economy and everyone should share in that.

Helena, and then when you don't have childcare which you can't afford to pay for because minimum wage job, that's still your fault as you uprooted yourself from a network of family

You can't win

Bringing in the example of economic migrants from syria etc is moot as they seem to be able to rustle up a couple of grand to pay people smugglers.

I still think there is lots of lost money in the private sector which needs to be sorted before looking at people.

Wether its unpaid corporation tax and also renationalise our energy sector and get those profits back reinvested in the UK.

People whine about Europe but wake up people, of the big six

EDF Energy is French,
Npower and E.ON UK are German,
Scottish Power is Spanish owned.

Don't even get me started on the chinese being paid over the odds to build a nuclear plant!

I doubt I was moaning on another thread. I do say we should stop ring- fencing the NHS, education and old people from the cuts.

Lots of people spend half their lives saying something is impossible and the rest of us just find a way. You find a way if you have no other choice and reducing tax credits will help ensure people better themselves by removing a bit of their current choices for their own good.

If you are in receipt of state pension you get free bus travel so those people within a family obviously can travel to find work, In our family people work until they are almost dead - my father until 2 years before he died full time, on the other side the 90 year old grandfather still working a day a week. It keeps you happy and young. My 16 year old gets free bus transport in London. Obviously people in between those ages might have to cycle. My son cycled to Brighton from London at the weekend. I realise you'd have to find someone to lend you a bike. However employers do provide travel expenses for a good few jobs in London for those interviewing for some jobs.

We just need to move the impossible can't do mentality some people have and change that to let us find a way to make this work so I can find full time work.

"The rest of us just find a way"

You are PRIVELEGED. This is what allows you to find a way. Again I say this as a privileged person too.

People have explained to you why certain things aren't suitable and you have done the forum equivelant of sticking your fingers in your ears and repeating yourself over and over.

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse, are lacking basic intelligence or are just extremely sheltered. Probably a combination.

Lotus - you would probably heartily approve of me, I spent the whole of my 20s working 6/7 days a week, my dad worked very long hours. If there's ever been an employment issue with us it lasted all of 5 minutes.

Guess what? We were fortunate. Not everyone is that lucky. and the fact that some people have health problems seems to have passed you by completely - others will know I've mentioned mine but I happened to have been in jobs where there was long sick pay. At other times I was a contractor - lucky doesn't even begin to cover it!

Props to the poster upthread who talked about the difference between physical jobs and "strolling to the study with a coffee to check your email". I am in the white collar category but I will never understand why people can't switch their brains on and realise how hard it is to do a physical job.

I didn't see the thread the OP talked about but had to come here to address LotusLight. I just don't know what planet you are living on. I don't wish to subsidise anyone unnecessarily, I'm not handing over my tax money with cheer. But if these cuts attack the most vulnerable, I find that ridiculous and unfair.

When you are young and single and poor - and all you have in the world is what you can carry with you, it is easy to move - I did it twice.

Nowadays I'm nicely settled, with savings, no debt and mortgage paid. I am under NO illusions that it would be so if I had stayed.

At least now, should circumstances change, the house can go - that would give some considerable leeway.

YANBU OP and I am one of the very fortunate ones. Shitty schools but supportive parents. Yes I work very hard but likely not anywhere as hard as some one pulling 60hrs on minimum wage. My peers rarely understand this.

I am so tired of people like me thinking we some how did something magic to get here. We all had some form of privilege.

My privileges were my parents, poorish but believed education was a way out, free university tuition and a Dad who paid my living expenses (which was tough for him), buying a house just after the end of the 90s crash. It all adds up to my life today.

My kids are much more privileged than I was but I will never let them think it's all down to them. If they work hard maybe they too will do well and lead a comfy life. If they take it for granted likely it will disappear.

Hard work alone is just not enough these days to "better ones self". It just isn't and that is a major issue that needs fixing. And I do wish people wouldn't ignore our hidden advantages, home based or generational, free university education which was also valued by employers as not so many people went. This list is endless, stop assuming people have it tough just because of their own folly. Rarely is this the case.

Lotus you are right about the "can-do" mentality. There is a depressing lack of it in some of these threads.

FWIW I know exactly what being poor means. I could not afford to attend any university open days (no family car, no money for public transport) so I picked one based on the prospectus. I worked full time every holiday and PT during term, including cleaning jobs. As a child we had no phone, central heating or colour TV. It's precisely because being poor IS so shit that I worked my socks off to qualify in a lucrative career. And no, I don't think that makes me "better" than others, it's just a fact. DH laughs at my "Calvinist" work ethic, but he comes from money and has no idea what it means to go without.
It's amazing what suddenly becomes "possible" when there are no alternatives. Some people on here have a "why bother?" approach that I find quite depressing.

Here is something to think about. I am looking for a job. I found a job about a month ago for a marine insurance claims analyst in London at £50K/year. I have a background in shipping, the education for analysis and the pay was about right for my career background. So, I looked further. They wanted someone with master mariner's experience. That is a ship's captain. A sea captain in the merchant marine (who is from Western Europe or North America) earns about £200/year. (And they should, the ship and cargo is often worth a billion, not to mention the lives on board, etc.) I could not get my head around why someone capable of earning £200/yr would consider a job earning £50/yr. I asked dear old dad, who explained that they will probably fill the job with someone from India. That person will speak, excellent English, be intelligent, have a good education, and the experience they want.

Now, just consider that you have a nice position, working from home doing something highly intellectual, like legal work. At the moment, you feel insulated from international competition and being undercut. I suggest, that there is no reason that someone extremely clever and hard working in India or China (but particularly India because of their long connections with English language and culture) cannot learn what you know and take your work away from you by charge half what you do.

Free bus travel for your 16 year old Lotus? Something for nothing at the expense of the tax payer? When you're sitting in that house. Fuck me that's taking the piss.

Maybe Oldfarticus but some also have short memories of pulling the ladder up behind them and setting fire to it.

The thread continues to make me see why those who don't have the can do attitude suffer and if in stead they adopted it they would be happier and do better in life.

Don't tell me those escaping Africa are only able to do it because they are privileged or the Poles working in construction in London. We have a major state school building project near my house. Keen foreign workers arrive very very early to queue up to ask for work. Not surprisingly they get the jobs and benefit their families. British people can and some do the same. I graduated a teetotal virgin aged 20. There is nothing to stop people from working class backgrounds in the UK not having sex and not drinking in their teens in order to better themselves. No one forces you to drink alcohol go to parties or have sex and plenty of those from difficult backgrounds do make it through although I accept it is harder . We are in a country with free state education which people flock from all over the globe to obtain. We are so lucky in the UK.

whattodo you are absolutely right. It is already happening in my sector. At the moment, the UK and Europe still have some educational advantages, but the rest of the world is catching up and it's not an issue confined to UK workers either.
As a country we are competing with other whose workers expect a much lower standard of living without much employment protection and few rights. Their employers benefit from low tax. How can we compete? I don't know what the answer is, but we can't print money forever and (somehow) we need to expect less from the state.

If you live in an area with no prospects for even a nmw job then I'm even more perplexed why you wouldn't move heaven and earth to get somewhere with such prospects rather than condemn yourself and your family to a life on benefits.

I'm also quite sceptical that such places even exist - just people grasping at 'hypothetical' situations where there's no solution at all other than leaving a family in complete destitution because benefits have been cut.

It's also perplexing why people who say they were born with privilege don't seem to think that people who were born without that so called privilege should be strivers and aspirational - instead condemning them to living in poverty by reinforcing myths about how 'hard' it is. How the fuck do you know if you were already lucky enough to have wealthy or supportive parents? Surely the most supportive response is to say 'work hard, think big'.

So many middle class apologists.....get on my nerves with their hand wringing about what can and can't be done depending on your background.

Lotus, so you think people risking their lives and dying is acceptable and people in the UK should be doing more of it?

For the record I'm neither working class or a drinker, take your stereotype and shove them up your pretentious arse.

Sorry committing a cardinal sin in not rtft, but really want to say that I AM a higher earner, and, having come from a poor background, I earn a very good salary because I had free healthcare, free education, went to university on a grant, and continued to receive free healthcare as I built my career up.

I believe extremely strongly in a welfare state because of that. I don't want to pay less tax to fund increases in inheritance tax for people who want to leave million quid houses to their offspring. Or to fund reductions in income tax. Of course I would like to pay less tax if all else was equal - who wouldn't after all? - but people like me did well because there was a state sector supporting families, education, and health, as well as those who were less lucky in life.

I am hugely upset at this government cutting away again at the worst off in society, and don't think I particularly want to live like that. There is an old saying, which is that you should judge a society by how it treats its poorest members ( which can be taken to mean those literally with less material wealth, or with less resources iro health etc), and, IMO, anyone judging our society the way we're going, wouldn't think we're very nice.

We are indeed lucky in the UK.

But what if life changes drastically and suddenly. A "can do " attitude will do nothing for that. Sometimes life is unpredictable, I picked myself up and started again from nothing. I moved half way across the country for work but at present I have to concentrate on my child.

I do this in the knowledge that it is not forever. Have over 30 years if work behind me and probably many more on front of me.

It doesn't change the fact that currently I need to claim benefits ....something I never expected to ever do.

Mrs dv

It was Just an example of how people can get on if they have the will. I don't pretend to know what u do for a living or your current situation but you sound very angry and worried about potential tax credit cuts. No amount of arguing on this thread is going to change the outcome. I merely suggested you had another option B to your option A ( wait for it to happen and do nothing).

Option b would be to think about what you could potentially do to improve your situation and lessen the impact of tc cuts. Be that through working more/ working differently/ lifestyle changes etc. you're the one that needs to do that bit if you're so inclined.

Or you could stick with option A

reducing tax credits will help ensure people better themselves by removing a bit of their current choices for their own good.

There is so much wrong with this I hardly know where to start.

The mentality that says making people's lives just that little bit harder and more stressful is a Good Thing is just...just...incomprehensible. That removing choice is helpful. That forcing people - people, not units of production, not 'resources', not 'human capital', but PEOPLE into a corner where they have even less choice, fewer options than before is somehow laudable...

And what, exactly, does ''better themselves" mean, lotus? It means Earn More Money, doesn't it? Just that. EARN MORE MONEY. Then you will be Better. Better than you were. Better than the person next to you. Better than benefit scum.

I absolutely despair about the way this country seems to be going. I could cry that there are people in the world who honestly believe that the worth of a human being boils down to the numbers on their pay packet. It is wrong. Completely and utterly wrong.

Connie which bit of Mrs DV's post did you not comprehend. Her dh has MS and can only work part time. They have a disabled son who needs round the clock care. They both work. There are no ways round some things, particularly when disability is involved. Your assumption (and yes it is there otherwise you wouldn't be making suggestions) that somebody with a disabled dh and a disabled ds is not doing enough to help themselves is disgustingly outrageous, patronising and rude. Your name is indeed, apt.