New £23k Benefit Cap.

[legotits]

AIBU to ask if anyone still supports this?

Which families is this targeted at?

Anyone who will be affected, is it even feasible to not be pushed into debt?

Pickled onions - thats a difference of over £500 a month. (Meant to say i earned 14k before take so actually would have been 13.3k a year) that is a huge difference!

Contraception error? With a partner that then bailed on her? Funny how she gets the blame, but nobody says "why did HE have another baby with her?" It's always "why did she have another baby?" Perhaps because she's the woman and it's the women that carry babies? So therefore women get smeared in it all, while the men walk away.

Plenty of blame to go around. Here's my suggestion: if you can't afford a child and can't stomach an abortion, get very serious about your birth control.

Plenty of blame to go around. Here's my suggestion: if you can't afford a child and can't stomach an abortion, get very serious about your birth control.

I can't put my suggestion on here, as I suspect it will violate Talk rules.

£1k a month on rent is an enormous amount.

Ginger I can't comment on why he had another baby with her. He wasn't the one being interviewed, so I can only go on what she herself said. She herself said she was struggling before the cap. She at no time said that her partner had died, or left her, so that can only be speculation. In fact, we don't even know if the father of the baby is the father of any of the previous children, so we can't actually, as you did, say why did he have ANOTHER baby with her.

And, harsh though it sounds and I'm prepared to be flamed, if you already have three children and you know you are barely coping financially with three children, then you do all you can to prevent another. For example, use two methods of contraception, not just one, as it's pretty rare for both condoms and the pill to fail at the same time (yes, that means the man is just as responsible). Or choose to become sterilised (either partner). Or if you won't consider abortion, adoption. We're not living in the middle ages when contraception didn't exist. We have choices.

Shatners
Limiting tax credits to two children would address that.
OK your example.

How will it assist the situation by cutting her benefit now?
She goes to work and doesn't earn enough so accesses more benefits?
She stays home and gets into more debt?
Kids/life get pushed over the edge to food bank?

We know the problem is cost of living and wages so how does that help?

It will punish her though, is that the desired outcome?

I don't believe people have children for benefits but I believe that when some people have another child they know they will gethen extra money in benefits so their decision to have that child would be different than someone who works.

I understand both sides. My mother bought us up on benefits and we had little as it is. If it had been capped then we would have even less than we did.

However my sister has six children all within a short amount of time and has never worked. She has recently been given a large council property.

My other sister has 3 children (single parents and different dad's who all said they didn't want the child when she was pregnant) and gets more in benefits per week than I do working full time. Yet has absolutely nothing to show for it (struggling to furnish house, no car and never been on holiday).

When I told her I will be going back to work after 9 months after having my first baby she said "aww you can't leave a baby at that age". She has never worked.

So I can understand both sides but it's frustrating. However like my dp says would I rather be in my position or theirs?

It's easy to come up with individual cases where benefit claimants are clearly taking the piss - the urban myths of huge TVs, holidays abroad and driving to the food bank in an expensive car. There are benefit cheats just as there are tax cheats - the difference is the tax cheats are usually fiddling the exchequer out of much larger sums and I don't see any calls for tarring all tax payers with the same brush. While it sounds laudable in practice to say that no benefit claimant should be bringing in more money than someone on an average income, actually calculating what that means for each individual case would cost far more money than the initiative would save with the result is that it's a one-size-fits-all cut off point - even if that mean pushing many families into real hardship. I think what is really sickening about this policy is that it is setting some of the poorest people in society against one another - as if scraping by on a zero hours contract really lifts anyone out of the benefits trap. Obviously it's brilliant that those people are working, however precarious the work, but it could be them tomorrow.

The 15 hours childcare, for those whose children are old enough to get it, leaves you much less than 16 hours to work- unless you can get 15 hours a week in the same nursery, then you need to allow for travel from nursery to job, and find a job whose hours match those the nursery offers.

If you are paying £500 pcm into a mortgage, you will eventually get richer. If you are paying rent, you never will.

If you or your child have a disability, it will cost more to live.

If you are poor, you will make worse decisions and choices (research shows the stress of poverty negatively impacts people's IQ) and get even poorer.

If you have to move to cheaper housing, you lose the support network that keeps you covered if children or you get ill.

If you are poor, your bills cost more because you are put on higher tariffs (pay as you go) and need more fuel to keep your property at a passable temperature.

Work in a food bank for a week, then tell me it's a good plan.

Lego I have not suggested limiting tax credits to two children.

No Shat the government did

I have always said, if the benefits life is so great, why dont you pack in your jobs and go on it yourselves then?

I was on disability for a while- I have a chronic illness 30 + years now and I wouldnt wish that on my worst enemy- the constant stopping of my benefits while I was investigated, often without warning. Proving I was sick enough at any opportunity. The neighbour who reported me because she thought I was running a creche- I wasnt (the kid they said they saw was my nieces at my sons birthday)

PaniWahine

Im Irish too and that is horseshit- sorry but it is- They would get maybe 320euros a week in benefits and I dont begrudge them that at all- if they are working cash in hand elsewhere then report them but dont tar everyone with the same brush.

Shatner not shat sorry my lazy typing turned you into a shit!

Add in the rip off businesses that "rent to own" things like refrigerators, cookers, and such. So the person can't save up for months on end to get a cooker or fridge, they need it now - so they buy it on "rent to own" and pay three times as much (or more) than if they'd been able to purchase it outright at Argos.

My brother works, my SIL doesn't. She is always upfront that with tax credits, there is no point in her working financially. They have 3 kids, the youngest is 14 years old.

Lego Turning it around, what is the argument for saying it's a sensible thing to do to give tax benefits no matter how many children you have? I've never heard one. No one NEEDS to have more than two children.

Ginge just how many 'opportunities' are out there to rip off poor people?

Pre payment meters, bright house, wonga, provident, shopping catalogues....

They all make a fair bundle off the back of poor people and not a landlord in sight.

The list of people there to make extra money off the poor is indeed a long one. It's dreadful. And yet, the cuts are continually made to the poorest.

I should point out that we were ridiculously poor when I was growing up. All clothes jumble sales, didn't have a telephone in our house until I was 10 (1984). My parents scrimped like mad. I asked them why I was an only child once and the answer was "we couldn't afford any more".

The great majority of company owners in the UK are proprietors of small businesses, with fewer than five staff. The majority are responsible and their businesses are too small for them to be taking the sort of dividends and salaries that would excite the FT. When their companies are busy and prospering they save for the rain days that will come again, when they will go without pay for months to keep the staff they value in a job. We have done this when times were lean; none of our staff are on NMW or zero hours contracts, but some of them are sub-contractors and work for other companies too, even though we might like to have the work to keep them on the payroll full time.

I do support it, but I don't support it. It needs addressing, but I'm not sure this is the way to do it.
It's a complex issue. No one wants anyone in poverty, but we can't have people living a better life on benefits (serial non workers - and yes there are some) than those working.

Plenty of blame to go around. Here's my suggestion: if you can't afford a child and can't stomach an abortion, get very serious about your birth control.
and in the case of abuse and rape?

How do benefits add up to 23k anyway?

Housing benefit, council tax benefit, then what? Presumably no jsa if not seeking work?

I have been out of work twice. I have always fallen into some sort of loophole and never qualified for benefits.

I guess it was fairly obvious on a thread about benefits that there would be a little single-parent bashing as well. My son has ASD; at the moment, he only attends school for three hours a day. His father is in and out of work and contributes nothing. It makes finding employment very difficult.

I'd LOVE a real job. I have a first class degree, people skills and am not at all choosy about what I do. In a way, a job would be more about adult interaction than money for me. I'm used to struggling, I don't bemoan it and am extremely grateful there is a 'safety net' for people like myself who suddenly find themselves as a lone parent. But that 'net' can also become a trap.

I'm so tired of reading that surviving on benefits is a 'lifestyle choice'. You think I'd choose that for my son and I? You think I wouldn't like to own my own home and have something to leave for my son? I'm working on it and will continue to do so, but criticising benefits claimants does nothing to boost morale or encourage them to believe they can change their lives.

It's not sensible to arbitrarily raise benefits based on how many children.
Or put benefits up with inflation instead of wages.

This cap isn't for any of that. It's a sound bite to make things simple for poor people.

Working poor They get more than you attack.

That's why the public figure of 23k.
£20k sounds less.
£23k - £12k rent = £11k which sounds poor so we don't get to see the breakdown.

No one gets this £23k take home.