If you're really fed up of all "your" money going to benefits ....

[Yesimmoaningaboutbenefits]

We really need to be campaigning for more council homes. One of the biggest payouts is housing benefit because of the extortionate private rent costs.

That single mum topping up with UC to bring her to over 100k? (supposedly) Wouldn't happen if her rent wasn't >£2000pcm for a 1 bed flat.

Build a 3 bed house for £300,000 (presumably less with large contracts). Charge £500 rent, they'd make the money back in 50 years even without increases. And houses last more than 50 years!

I know I've read several comments over the years from people saying this. RTB was the worst etc. So why hasn't it happened? Upfront cost. It would cost the government a hell of a lot upfront, despite the astronomical gain further down the line. But if they're not in power when the gains start to show, they get none of the glory. And that's what it boils down to. Elected governments only want something they can boast about within their term. Who cares if it benefits the country in the long run? If it doesn't benefit them short term, it doesn't matter.

Same with education. Better funding will result in more people in work, out of poverty and out of crime in 20 years time. It's the best use of money possible! But no.

SEN funding. Early intervention can prevent children getting to crisis point and keep the gap from widening so they have a chance of staying in school, getting qualifications and contributing to society in the future. Not funding SEN effectively is pretty much cutting off a section of society and forcing them to spend their lives on benefits. Funding could give them a chance. But no.

How many health conditions could be improved by early treatment so people don't end up out of work and incapacitated on benefits?

You've got to spend money to make money...

There is a cap on rent. Most people, over 90%, live in homes where the rent is higher than the cap so they have even less money to live on. It hasn't stopped rents going up.

@FlowerUser If you are not disgusted by nearly half a million children living in poverty because the Tory government introduced the two child cap then there is something wrong with you.

Arrant nonsense.

The Tory party isn't responsible for people having more kids than they can afford to raise.

Are people too stupid to work out how expensive it is to raise a child? Don't they know they need to save up before they start even thinking about having a family?

Don't they think about how they would manage if the main breadwinner died or walked out?

Far too many clueless people go in for a family and expect everything to be ticketty-boo and if not the government will pay for them.

We see it all the time on the Relationship pages where women choose idle, mean, nasty men to be the father of their children and then wonder why they don't lift a finger to help.

If women made better choices it would be a help.

Education of parents? Well investing in education would be a good start, something the previous government failed to do.

Meanwhile leaving children go hungry to punish them for their parents is not somethig a society should be proud of.

How appalling are you.

Your belief is that we should pay these dreadful little people to behave-maybe you could go further and brand Burglar Bill on their forehead, so that all those who are living, loving and being happy, could be on their guard.

You are beyond words but what a great insight into why the soft heads who read The Guardian believe in an ever expanding welfare bill: it's simply to keep "these people" quiet and make sure that their incontinent morals and ways don't seep out into society.

Bread and circuses and keep the Barbarians away from the gate.

Yes, who did put them there?

Feckless parents who had more kids than they could afford.

That's who.

Well yes, but outside major cities you'd almost definitely drive to work if you're doing a night shift. It's prohibitively expensive to drive into London daily for work. Or min. wage night work (bars/restaurants/take aways).

Night buses are only good if you can afford the rent along that route! Are there any night buses outside zone 4? Idk the routes tbh, last night bus I got was in 2007, N64 Elephant & Castle to Croydon. Croydon rents are still exorbitant. Not compared to Mayfair, but compare to much of the country.

Build a 3 bed house for £300,000 (presumably less with large contracts). Charge £500 rent, they'd make the money back in 50 years even without increases. And houses last more than 50 years!

Oh if only it was that simple.

You've missed out these costs and probably others I've forgotten.

Bad debts.
Estate Management.
Routine replacement kitchens and bathrooms.
Ad hoc minor maintenance like tiles off the roof, broken seals on double glazing.
Major repairs and refurbishment after throwing out a bad tenant.
Major repairs due to acts of nature or things that just happen (tree through the roof, drains blocked, for example).
Managing the ceaseless tenants issues and complaints.
Replacement or major refurbishment at end of life.

What ridiculous comment. "Women should make better choices."

Where are the men in this?

What about those who did calculate they could afford children because they went without holidays, alcohol and a car? Who then lost jobs or lives? And most of us expect to live to 70 or so.

More importantly in the eight years since the cap was imposed, people did not reduce the number of children they had, so it was a deliberate policy to impoverish families.

So let's have all these children starve and die. Let's not give them anything. Let them go without clothes, soap or a house to live in. Do you want that homeless smelly shoeless child in class with your kids? Or running wild because no school will have them?

Let's return to Fagin's society. It sure looked like a lot of fun.

Either we live in a compassionate society or we don't. And in a world where we cannot (and nor would we want to) control others' choices, let's err on the side of compassion.

Of course there will be additional costs. Obviously I've oversimplified, im not putting in a funding application, I'm starting a discussion on MN.

But the fact of the matter is, long term solutions might cost more upfront, but save money in the long run.

"But, like it or not, it will lift children out of poverty"

But will it though?

I've worked for a charity which helped with debt, and issued food bank vouchers. I was also brought up in a poor northern town and I have a lot of relatives back home who are on benefits. I cannot remember meeting anyone in the charity job that should have been in debt. They each had about 20K in debt (that's when they came to us to try and get it written off for free) and it was all spent on clothes, holidays and flash stuff. In the 2 years I worked there, I never met one person who was in debt due to not being able to feed and clothe their kids. This was an area with high employment levels.

I did meet quite a few people who had 3 under 5, and didn't work and their partner (not DH, as he didn't want to get married) was work shy and couldn't hold down a job. They would smoke and drink high energy drinks whilst telling me I needed to hand over more money to them for food.

Do you really think all this extra CB is going to go on better food, clothes and nice things for every DC. Or is some of it going to be pissed up the wall? Better to spend this money giving it to the schools to better feed the DC breakfasts, snacks and lunches, and give the schools extra money to educate.

As for benefits, I have quite a few able bodied relatives back home who have totally fleeced the system for PIP, UC, new doors, insulation, mobility scheme etc. I also have many relatives who left that place and worked bloody hard and now have very high paying jobs. We are all cut from the same cloth. Some of us choose to work hard, and some of us think "it's a mugs game, I'm not paying tax".

I've also lived in other countries and their benefit system was nothing like ours. It is a joke. This country is already on a nosedive decline and Labour just put its foot down on the accelerator.

There is no excuse in this country not to work if you are able bodied and minded.

Build a 3 bed house for £300,000 (presumably less with large contracts). Charge £500 rent, they'd make the money back in 50 years even without increases. And houses last more than 50 years!

Oh if only it was that simple.

You've missed out these costs and probably others I've forgotten.

Bad debts.
Estate Management.
Routine replacement kitchens and bathrooms.
Ad hoc minor maintenance like tiles off the roof, broken seals on double glazing.
Major repairs and refurbishment after throwing out a bad tenant.
Major repairs due to acts of nature or things that just happen (tree through the roof, drains blocked, for example).
Managing the ceaseless tenant's issues and complaints.
Replacement or major refurbishment at end of life.

This

No, but you do find people on good incomes who have embezzled money, have been actively involved in tax swindles, have exploited the legal loopholes that simply aren't available to those on lower incomes, have been involved in fraud on a large scale, and have otherwise stolen money from other people.

There's more than one way to be a robbing bastard, and there's no shortage of criminals at the top, it's just that we tend not to be so upset about that as we are about the kids who nicked our car stereo.

You can’t just give up your job and claim benefits, you will have deliberately made yourself unemployed and you will be sanctioned. I hate this trite comment, and maybe some of us believe working to enrich the lives of the children we can afford is the right thing to do

What about all the parents who have paid taxes all their working lives (and still do) and also have SEND children?

Most of us want the exact same thing every parent wants for our children to have the chance at a good education, just like everyone else.

I don’t want extra funding to support all children/school.
I want proper funding for all children, so nobody is left behind. Early support helps every child, SEND or not, to thrive later on and eventually contribute back into society. It’s not about taking resources away, it’s about giving children the right help at the right time so they can reach their potential.

That gave me a shudder - it reminded me of "Jude the Obscure".

I absolutely believe in social housing replacing housing benefit but it doesn't save money. Social housing costs a great deal to run and always did and that's why it was largely got rid of. Housing Associations are heavily supported by the tax payer.

Maggie's terrible social housing sell-off wasn't to create some dream of house ownership for everyone, it was to dump the cost of ongoing maintenance on the buyer!

And even if it did actually save money, it doesn't. Because if a private rent is £1500 and the social housing rent is £500, then for every person in social housing who wouldn't be claiming housing benefit, the council are losing £1000 a month in the opportunity cost of not renting that property at the market rate.

@FlowerUser What ridiculous comment. "Women should make better choices."

If you have a look at the relationship board you'll see what I mean.

More importantly in the eight years since the cap was imposed, people did not reduce the number of children they had,

And where is the evidence for this ^ ?

So let's have all these children starve and die. Let's not give them anything. Let them go without clothes, soap or a house to live in. Do you want that homeless smelly shoeless child in class with your kids? Or running wild because no school will have them?
Let's return to Fagin's society. It sure looked like a lot of fun.

Please just stop with the emotive rhetoric, it doesn't help the discussion.

If you feel that strongly about it then perhaps register as a Foster-parent?

Either we live in a compassionate society or we don't. And in a world where we cannot (and nor would we want to) control others' choices, let's err on the side of compassion.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. ^ Sadly the world is full of people living in appalling conditions but we cannot help them all and we cannot bring them all to UK.

You can be as insulted as you like, but the ONS stats and a multitude of research studies evidence the link between poverty and/or unemployment and criminality.

As with everything else- it does not mean that being poor means you will definitely become a criminal, but it means that the risk of criminality is higher in poor/unemployed demographics than in middle class ones. The reasons why this would be so are so bloody obvious that a 7 year old could identify them.

What is disgraceful is sticking your head in the sand or voting for a party that will do nothing to alleviate that poverty or improve employment prospects …

My point is that if it is true that people make choices to be on benefits, then why don't more people do it?

It's not as simple as all that.

No-one really chooses a life on benefits. They do it because they can't get a job, because they didn't get an education, because they had children before they got a job, because their feckless husband left them without paying maintenance, despite his millions, because their husband died, because they can and do work but have no-one to pick up the kids at 3pm and look after them, so they're in part time work, because there are no jobs or because there is no transport to a job or they are disabled or have a disabled child(ren), or because they're in a coercive relationship with someone who also doesn't have a job, or for many, many other reasons that I am delighted do not apply to me.

Either we have a system that takes care of everyone, or we let them all fend for themselves. And let's be really fucking grateful that we are in a position to pay for it through our taxes, than be the recipients of it for any of the reasons given above.

Can we be clear please that the poverty being talked about is not "starving kids" poverty it is relative poverty. Kids living in homes with a lot less money than other homes have.

Neither are desirable but they aren't the same thing. And if you live in a rich country like ours, many of the children who are defined as living in poverty would be considered very well off in many other places.

"In the UK, child poverty is primarily defined as a child living in a household with an income below 60% of the national median household income. "

Do you feel any good grace towards the US multinationals who underpaid more than 5bn in tax last year?

There isnt such a thing as free childcare unless a relative or friend is doing it. State run free childcare would mean a rise in taxes.

State run childcare could easily be nurseries managed by local authorities so at least money paid out in childcare payments wasn't going to private companies.

I've said since the cost of child are surged when tax credits came in that there should be state run facilities so at least the money was going back into state pockets.

Large nursery chains have made good profits over the years and it could easily have been set up that that was the same for state run nurseries.

This is why it is called relative poverty. Would them queuing at a well make you feel better?

Does it make you feel clever to be rude?