Can we all take a moment to pray for Thea, living life on the brink of poverty at £6k a month (£3.2k of which is UC).

[BananaramaDefence]

In a good month when UC gives full entitlement, Thea has a total of £6,142.00, from £2,800 in take-home pay and £3,342 in universal credit plus child benefit. Her monthly expenses such as childcare, rent, council tax, energy and food etc are usually around £6000. She says: "So it’s living very much on the edge."

And now the cap is removed she will get more!!

From this: Pregnant mum-of-four: 'Budget benefit change saved our Christmas' - The Mirror https://share.google/QGbNeuIKPAmg1qNG5

No wonder people get pissed of with welfare in this country. I work 40 hours plus a week, have children, have to pay a mortgage, childcare and I earn way less than this!!!

No child should live in poverty but at the same time no family should get this muxh in benefits.

Before people say, yes but it's to pay rent and collate, I also have to pay all that and my mortgage is half my wage!!

@FenceBooksCycle

What a strange little Prisoner Cell Block H you have going on in your head! Does it come complete with leather and gimp masks?

No, the more boring solution is for people to commute, as I do and millions of others do? I commute for an hour and a quarter, my sister for 50 minutes and my best friend for just over an hour.

That's what I expect them to do. Do you think they are entitled to live in wealthy neighbourhoods just because they work there? How odd but if this is the next Big Idea from the Labour Party Backbenchers, then maybe I should sort myself out a cleaning job in Eaton Square and someone will pay for me to live there!

I work in one of the most expensive areas outside London. I can't afford to live there, so I commute.

If you don't want to commute, move to somewhere nearer your budget but don't stay working somewhere because you worry so much that the rich people there will have to go without your services.

I mean, that's a very altruistic attitude to want to work somewhere you can't afford to live simply because you would feel badly for those who would do without your services if you moved somewhere more suited to your own pocket.

Put aside your faux worries for those who might need the services of a low paid worker and either commute or move. Don't look for a job where you can't afford to live and to which you can't commute. It really isn't rocket science and anyone who tries to muddy the waters by pretending it is, is pulling the nation's collective todger.

The third option under the Labour Party of course is to find accommodation you cannot possibly afford and expect others to pay the rent for you.

That's what works for Thea. Thank goodness, London does not have to do without her services...they must have been in a cold sweat that she might up sticks and move to a two bedroomed mid terrace in a northern mill town.

Commuting is expensive though. It’s not feasible to commute 90 mins for a minimum wage job in London. If you are one of the people who works 12 hour shifts, adding 3 hours a day to that would be hellish.

And again, who’s going to look after all the elderly and disabled if all the care workers move away? Who is going to work in nurseries to look after the children of high earners? Who’s going to clean the offices?

It’s not about feeling bad for those people. Low earners have lives they might not want to give up.

(We DID leave London and move somewhere cheaper. Lots of people can’t or don’t want to).

It’s not melodrama. It’s serious. It really serious. I have seen it first hand. I continue to see it today, first hand, where I live. Children my children are friends with. Actual families. Hard working families not in the place they’re in by ‘choice’ but by circumstance including ridiculous high rents, overall inflation. Stories that you see in the press are clickbait. They aren’t representative of real life. I have also looked at it academically as part of my job. So I’m kind of well placed to say that it was a good decision to at least ‘try’ to lift children out of poverty. Yes there will be some awful despicable parents who just spend it on things not for children but I can assure you that the majority will be relieved they now have some breathing space.
Go and try six months working voluntarily for a food bank then come back and tell me I’m being ‘dramatic’.

They are if they’re deliberately held under the poverty line and derided for being helped by wider society.

This country in 2025 ..what a time to be alive ffs

Exactly. It's not just low paying jobs. How many 30-40k teachers, nurses, health practitioners, social workers, midwives etc are going to be able to pay market rate for a home in London, or the thousands to commute.

Society had a need for people in all of these jobs in our cities therefore there needs to be support from society to make that happen... Whether it's affordable housing or in work benefits to cover unaffordable prices.

I think some people assume when they see these huge rents people are living somewhere dance. They're not. They are ordinary flats in nondescript areas.

Children are only in full time childcare for 3-4 years. Then that bill reduces and the UC reduces in line with it whereas high earners continue to have high earnings for the rest of their life.

It's ridiculous to suggest both groups are in the same situation.

Blind empathy isn’t insight, it’s just emotion with a halo on it.

Volunteering or studying something might shape how you feel, but it doesn’t change the structural reality: choices and circumstances both drive outcomes, and pretending only one matters is just wishful thinking.

You keep presenting your experiences as if they override the need for clear thinking about how welfare actually functions. They don’t.

Empathy doesn’t become a free pass to ignore incentives, responsibility or basic cause-and-effect.

If anything, letting emotion cloud judgment is exactly how systems end up being unfair to the people who fund them and ineffective for the people who rely on them.

What does that matter? If he pays child maintenance- that doesn’t affect the universal credit she receives.

Where have you formed the idea that 'thea' has an luxury lifestyle?

Um I haven't and I didn't say that?

She's on the same money as a before tax high earner - you know, those people MN insist can afford endless and various taxes. Or are we now accepting these are not exceptionally high salaries if you're London based?

She is getting that as a short term measure whilst she has high childcare costs and high rent.

Children only go to full time childcare for 3-4 years, being a high earner is for your whole working life.

A high earner can move and take their high salary. They will be accumulating pension on it.

It is disingenuous to suggest it's the same thing.

She gets about £6150k via a combination of her own salary and UC. Her outgoings are £6000.

As are many Londoners who fund raise outgoings through their own salaries. They tend to attract "world's smallest violin" comments though.

Well, like has been said already, this lady will only have the childcare element for so long.

Blind empathy is insulting given I’ve also said I’m involved in this academically and I’ve seen all the actual evidence for lifting the cap. And it’s not ‘just’ emotion. It’s facts. And reality. Followed by emotion at seeing people struggle because I care. People care about other people who are not doing as well as they are. And care about seeing
children being left without the basics. Well, some do. Not all it seems, I’m not an idiot. I’m well educated, lucky, comfortable thought modesty so financially. But I did grow up experiencing some of the things kids are experiencing now not through my own fault but by the ‘choices’ of my parents.
Those ‘choices’ were two people highly incompatible being married having kids, then separated. Being taken away from a family home because of that. Being saved by a strong support network and education and the ‘good choice’ of having an intelligent mind. I’ll leave it here. You have No IDEA what people go through. Bless you.

You’re clearly very invested in your perspective, and that’s why it’s been difficult to have an actual discussion about the point I raised. When emotion becomes the only frame, it leaves no room for nuance or for recognising that hardship and personal agency can both exist.

Your experiences don’t invalidate a logical argument, and they don’t mean that anyone who sees this differently “has no idea” what people go through. That’s not a conversation, that’s just shutting the door on anything outside your worldview.

Hopefully you hold more of a balanced view in your academic pursuits.

Yep. The UK is completely fucked.

Quite correct.

Edit - also very well put. I have lost all patience with the suicidally empathetic, blindly empathetic and those who simply refuse to have any empathy or understanding at all of what it is like to work a 40 hour week and be told that a huge chunk of your own hard earned money will go to people on benefits - forever. And yes of course many ARE rorting the system, despite the blind refusal to admit this.

I simply want this nonsense where we are supposed to be workhorses for other people without complaint, forever, or be called slurs and told we don't know what reality is - I want this to stop.

Exactly.

Her situation is temporary due to childcare costs and nothing at all like those who earn the same and will always earn the same (or more).

Im not an academic. I’m involved in it academically as I work to make academic research reach policy and practical decision making. We are all very logical people. But also care. And want to make difference to people who are less fortunate. I’m fully aware of the full picture, This cap lift is merely a little sticking plaster on the state we’re in at the moment. Housing being a massive driver. It has given some families a lift. A breathing space. If you resent that then I feel sorry for you.

You're incredibly rude, patronising and totally unsympathetic to anyone you deem to be undeserving.

You've been answered in full, repeatedly, and with far more diligence and patience than you deserve or have exhibited.

Maybe stop harrassing ordinary people who hold uncontroversial and standard views, and find something useful to do.

Have you actually read anything I said? Or are you just a bit ashamed of your point of view?