To ask why Universal Credit is so terrible? (Not goady)

[evilharpy]

I've seen several threads (one today about food banks which I can't seem to find now) where people have had some strong things to say about Universal Credit and the feeling seems to be that it is contributing to the poverty problem and forcing people to rely on food banks and causing more problems than it's helping with.

I'm wondering what exactly makes it so terrible and why it's so much worse than what came before it. Google hasn't been much help as most of the results are just official links on how to apply for it etc. But it seems to be that it's paid monthly rather than weekly or fortnightly and there's a long wait to get it?

I would just like to understand a bit more about it. And I don't mean this to be in any way insensitive or goady.

Taking away her CB wouldn’t have meant her and her children going hungry though would it? Which is exactly what is happening under UC, spurious sanctions and the fit-to-work assessments. People are actually starving to death in the UK in 2017. People cannot afford to heat their homes in the winter, to clothe themselves or their children for the winter, cannot afford the rent/bills/food. Your pal with a household income of £45k is exactly the kind of person who shouldn’t be getting government funding! I’d rather see it cut from people who don’t fucking need it than those who desperately do!

That's a good point made by a pp

What about all those absent fathers that pay nothing?
My ds2 dad is working cash in hand. (Ds2 told me hed been to visit his dad at work) I've told csa, HMRC, council. No-one cares so im only getting £4 a week in maintenance. How is that helping me support our child?

Why isn't more being done to make men pay for their children rather than leaving it to the woman to claim benefits to help raise them?

The very fact you think it’s exactly the same thing shows you haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.

UC eliminates the above as it obviously provides an incentive to work

Are you sure about that? As a full time, single mum teacher of 3 children, I am set to be about £2k a year worse off under U overall Credit. What incentive?!

Why isn't more being done to make men pay for their children rather than leaving it to the woman to claim benefits to help raise them

This!!! Never had a fucking thing from XH in 10 years bar a couple of payments through CSA which he then used as more control. He’s had 3 more kids since I married him (while I was married to him!) and found out about 2 more, so 7 kids all in. Pays fuck all for any of them. Yet I was the one who stepped up and actually parented but according to many on here I should have known what he’d do and not had my child!
I hated being on benefits, the judgements made me feel fucking worthless. But I was bloody grateful for a welfare state that enabled me to leave him before he killed me!

And that’s exactly why welfare reform is needed notreallyarsed because to date, mixed in with the people who REALLY need support were people like my friend, as well as the people who have chosen to under work & under earn and take tax credits to top up their life style choice. None of them really need it.

Why isn't more being done to make men pay for their children rather than leaving it to the woman to claim benefits to help raise them?

In a word.... misogyny.

In more words, it is perceived a private issue. If you have an ex who doesn’t pay, that’s your fault. You shouldn’t have had children with him. You should never have entertained a relationship with a loser and your punishment is bringing up your children yourself whilst everyone else stands around and points. No amount of logic will change this position,

Have you ever had perfect strangers question you? The desperate stumble around someone else’s life to find a reason for their single parent status....did you marry young, were you a teen mum, are you educated, do you work, how long had you known him before getting married, did he not beat you into a hospital bed before you married him, did you want release he would get cancer and die at 34, do your children have the same father....I have literally had people go ‘ha! There you go, it’s your own fault!’

Bollox. All of it.

Disabled people lose out big time. You are worse off if you can’t work (no benefit increase for years and years under protection ) until you get what current claimients get. Then if are able to work you don’t get any of the Disability tax credits like
Before. So you will be worse off if
You can’t work ANDif you do. Least if you end up a single parent or low wage and nee tax credits it’s only for limited time until Children are older. If you have spend 50 y in poverty it’s oh well the country can’t afford to support Disabled people

Really? She was only able to be a SAHM because of an extra £218 a month on a £45k household income? Sorry but that’s bollocks.

And it’s not remotely the same thing anyway.

Why the heck some people think it's ok to have X number of kids, both work 16 hours a week and expect the state to top them up is why it is seen as "terrible".

Ffs the sense of entitlement drives me mad. Own and support your own decisions!

It’s social cleansing.

When you’re disadvantaged and undereducated you’re very unlikely to end up working for more than minimum wage. Often on a shitty zero hour contract. Likely to be shift work. You’ve probably got more than one child (see above). Magic wraparound childcare doesn’t actually exist so you are unable to up your hours. Little family support so time off for kids illnesses etc means you are in a precarious situation at work anyway. And now they’re slashing your benefits so you are having to choose between heating or eating, and going without food so the kids eat.

Plus now you have to factor in work focussed interviews because they expect you to up your hours, which is more childcare to pay for because you can’t take your kids in with you. Sanctions because you have to turn down more hours at work, or a second job, because you can’t up their hours at nursery. And you get paid five weeks in the month and something goes wrong when you reapply so no money for two months .

How anyone can think this is progress is beyond me. It’s disgusting.

Tax credits were introduced so that businesses didn't lose out having to pay a living wage and the government would top up the workforce wages to a living wage... So effectively tax credits were money already earned by the family and if they had a working parent and sahp then that was their choice... Under UC this choice is removed and children are in childcare, but how many suitable jobs are there for these women? How much suitable childcare is there available for these children? I really do not think that this is the best way for children, I think many families are going to have a hell of a time desperately trying to make these criteria and real life meet! Sahp are not lazy and I resent that Sahp are presented as such! (and I'm in full time work BTW)

It’s social cleansing

But home come they have left out the over 2 children families??? Surely it should be the same system for everyone

They haven’t. However currently they cannot manage the change over for this group so until and only until Nov 2018 are they prohibited from claiming it.

But before they decided to action this exemption they had already forced many to switch over and once you have you can’t switch back so we do currently have a fair few larger families on UC who are in a dire situation and due to the UC rules they just can’t afford to work huge amounts of them have been forced into unemployment

*Today 19:12 AnachronisticCorpse

Really? She was only able to be a SAHM because of an extra £218 a month on a £45k household income? Sorry but that’s bollocks.

And it’s not remotely the same thing anyway.*

Firstly, it’s not supposed to be the same thing as disability benefit. If you read the original thread you would see it was aimed at the poster who asked how many benefits claimants people thought were happy with her situation. Well she was. It helped her.

And yes, £218 a month can certainly be the difference between ability to SAH and not (funny how that’s intermittently everything and nothing based on your own view of the person receiving it )

And supporting a family of 5 on £45k isn’t so easy when you’re paying to commute to London and have a grand a month mortgage. None of which is unusual btw.

“Under UC this choice is removed and children are in childcare, but how many suitable jobs are there for these women? How much suitable childcare is there available for these children? “

This is exactly the issue- tax credits allowed parents to have bigger families than they could afford to support. When is taken away, they can’t see a way out.

It’s not personal. It’s a generation of people doing this, and it can’t carry on to the next generation. Something has to change.

CB used to be universally available to anyone who wanted it, let’s not even start to pretend that when the high horse brigade start sniping about benefits claimants they’re even considering someone on a £45k income. That’s utterly ridiculous.

Oh our household income is more than double that and we’d certainly feel the loss of £200 a month. But that wouldn’t be the difference between me working or not. And she certainly wouldn’t have had each child rubbing her hands with glee at the extra £20 a week.

You’re trying to draw a comparison between the thousands of families on a decent income affected by that cap, and the millions of families on a low income affected by the loss of twice or three times that amount. It’s rubbish.

So what do we do about feeding and clothing the ‘tax credits’ kids that are already here then?

Or do we say fuck em because their parents should never have had them in the first place, the dirty povvos.

“Today 19:43 Notreallyarsed

CB used to be universally available to anyone who wanted it, let’s not even start to pretend that when the high horse brigade start sniping about benefits claimants they’re even considering someone on a £45k income. That’s utterly ridiculous.“

I don’t understand what you mean by this?

It doesn’t matter what the high horse brigade think. The family claiming CB, the pensioner claiming state pension- they’re all on benefits?

Today 19:48 AnachronisticCorpse

Difficult one, I agree. How would you propose changing that culture though?

I find it really really hard to imagine a child starving because of their parents benefits being cut. Certainly one would expect to hear about it if it had happened. It’s fifgicult to imagine, even in those Tory era, that there isn’t assistance available to someone whose children are in danger of starving. But maybe that’s more dramatic than the situation you’re referring to?

Child benefit was a universal benefit.

Most of the others we are are discussing (apart from pip and sometimes ESA) are low income benefits.

Conflating the two is a non argument. And it makes you look a bit dim.

It’s a generation of people doing this

Actually birthrates have been falling for quite a while.

I think many families are going to have a hell of a time desperately trying to make these criteria and real life meet!

This is an excellent point. Universal Credit was designed on theory and completely ignores reality. The same with the "free" childcare offered, it doesn't even cover the costs of the childcare provider, so costs are passed back to the parent, it's an endless spiral.

I know people that have tried to discuss this with our local MP, and the response is that his family manages to do it. That's his (inherited) multimillionaire family, who don't have the first idea of what it's like to manage on a basic income. Although he does recognise some of the challenges working parents face, he successfully campaigned to get a bus stop placed outside his remote farm, so his kids could get to school more easily!

Really? You haven’t noticed all the food bank drop points, the breakfast initiatives at schools, the campaigning? The only real assistance is coming from charities, who are utterly swamped with the explosion of need.

Children all around the country are skipping meals and sleeping in cold houses. This is the reality of British life c2017.