Benefits v Defence Lord Robertson

[Wednesdayschild87]

Lord Robertson’s Speech… seriously does anyone care?? He’s laid out the fact that as a nation we can’t carry on like this… he said we can’t afford to keep throwing money at benefits whilst leaving our country defences I’m actually shocked no one has come out and spoken on this matter before. I’m incredulous.

I can’t tell whether you agree with him or not but he’s right isn’t he?

We can’t rely on the US any longer
and we aren’t in the EU. We need well funded armed forces.

The benefits bill is totally out of control.

Do you include pensions in the out of control benefit bill?

Yes.

I haven't read his whole speech, but I knew it was coming. Top military and MI5/MI6 people have been hinting at us needing to be ready for war for a couple of years. So much needs to be done to get the British into the right mentality as well as getting the military back up in numbers. It's a mammoth task after decades of cuts! But I haven't the first idea how you both cut benefits and build British health and morale up to fight a war.

What do you suggest should happen?

Completely agree.

The benefits bill is out of control.
People in full-time work shouldn't need benefits.

Far to many people are NMW or just over it including people with qualifications jobs with some level of responsibility.
There was someone on here the other day WFH on NMW, I can't think of any desk job without some level of responsibility that could possibly be justified as NMW.

The UK needs a decent military.

The UK needs to secure its own borders.

MOD spaffs too much money on stuff that doesn’t work and goes way over budget and has rightly acquired the reputation of being a bottomless pit. They’re having their day in the sun but they’re not the innocent victims they pretend.

Robertson now works for a US Defence lobby.

I'm not saying he's wrong, but there's incentive for him to make these claims.

Why attack welfare (including pensions) as well though? I feel it's the easy go-to target whereas few in power will be too bothered by the wealth gap, which is already huge and growing.

Why attack welfare, well where else is there to attack?
NHS is already slimmed to skin and bone
Education is similar

What other bits of the UK can savings be made?

I'd like to see something radical like the option for any asylum seeker or anyone seeking immigration without a legal route to moving to the uk to be able to sign up to the armed forces for e.g. five years and be guaranteed citizenship, subject to satisfactory completion. It would offer a great opportunity for training and support and integration and would be voluntary. Anyone else would remain subject to usual process.

Hard to see an argument against immigration if someone has served the country, trained and paid taxes before residing.

How would you trust illegal immigrants not to cause an up rising?

It already worrys me the UK is allowing so many illegal young fighting aged men into the country.
Without arming them and teaching them how to fight

They need to processed and rejected within 7 days of arrival. Rather than housed and fed for months

The armed forces shouldn’t just be a dumping ground for people to get citizenship or young offenders or people forced to do it.

The army, navy and air force are professional organisations, not mercenary squads looking for cannon fodder.

We need to make it attractive as a career path. Incentivise the right and best people to opt for it. Properly fund it and support people when they return to civilian life.

Many have been warning about this for far more than a couple of years...and both Labour and the Tories have been turning a blind eye to the problem for a long time.

Also agree with the comment about MOD and procurement...that said the hurdle at the moment is the Defence Improvement Programme. The delay in getting that approved is potentially very damaging...and that's down to the current Government.

Well they'd be in the military for 5 years so I'm pretty sure any incompatibility with British values would be weeded out quite quickly.

And what exactly do you mean by "uprising"

We need a decent military, we need to protect the vulnerable who cannot work (children, elderly and working aged adults with severe disability or health issues not compatible with working) everyone else should be either working or supporting themselves/by family not claiming benefits (unless they are genuinely carers, not people claiming to avoid working which I know happens through people I support with debt counselling).

Better short term support to get unemployed people back into work, quicker appointments to get those off sick with correctable conditions back fit to work, and sanctions/programmes to get those long term unemployed people into work via meaningful support including those who have disabilities which mean that they could work with appropriate support and adaptations. Finally mental health support needs to be addressed as too many are signed off near enough indefinitely when we should be enabling them to get back into society.

I don’t want a stick approach, we need meaningful support but we can’t have so many working adults off yet have jobs unfulfilled eg farmers are struggling for staff since Brexit, and there’s so many vacancies here in many sectors yet no suitable applicants, apparently people are “too good” for anything manual

Sounds like bs to me. I agree benefit spending is too high, but my solution would be to start treating the people one long term disability benefits and get them better and back to work, rather than reintroducing work houses for them. Also, let’s looks at the facts. We live on an island that is eminently defensible (see history since 1066!). And according to this wiki link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures we are the 6th highest spender on defence.

so we spend more than double Poland who have Russia sitting next door, and almost as much as India who are defending a continent, not a little island and have a two nuclear adversary’s on either side in Pakistan and china!!!. Maybe the defence industry needs to stop spending billions on air craft carriers that are an aggressive tool and can be sink by 50k drones and start spending the enormous budget a bit more wisely.

Not the poster who posted it, but I wonder whether the recent marches in support of Iran are on her mind? While free speech and the right to protest are vitally important, recent world events have shown us that there are a lot of people in the UK who support our enemies. While numbers may be small, it’s worrying. I don’t want to sound scaremongering or in any way like I’m blaming people of any race or religion, I think it’s a wider problem, but if we had lots of young men from Muslim countries in the armed forces there is potential for all kinds of problems (not just ‘uprisings’).

Perhaps the answer is to cut benefits and increase taxes.

He might have a point about defence, but the benefits/defence binary choice is the message he's chosen and I wonder why that is.

I agree with Robertson. Not sure what the answer is or how any government will get to a workable solution.

essentially I would want to be part of a European Defence Force, de facto rejoining the EU (I doubt we will actually do that for years regardless of how sensible it would be).

This would need to be paid for and that money needs to come from somewhere…. The obvious pot is benefits.

I should clarify that I mean very recent immigrants who might not want to be in the armed forces! Obviously there is nothing about being Muslim or from a Muslim country that’s in itself incompatible with serving in the armed forces. Apologies for clumsy wording.

Until the housing problem is solved the benefits problem isn't going to go away. Where would the money spent on defence go; would it even be spent in the UK?

Reducing benefits ie taking money out of the economy will affect other sectors.

I completely agree with this but would extend it to all non-working adults. The armed forces teach skills as well as providing employment. This solves two problems in one.

The benefits bill is too high. Lots of things to be cut there even at first glance. I don’t want asylum seekers in our military thanks, too many seem to have values very far removed from our own and religious beliefs that could be detrimental.

All government depts need to look at spending. If people are going to means test the pension then let’s means test a lot of other benefits too, it’s only fair isn’t it? After all most pensioners paid NI and worked, contributing, many benefit claimants don’t.

My starter for 10 is a U turn on the 2 child benefit cap.

Why not take money from those who have loads, rather than those who have none?