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.

pensions make up the largest portion of the welfare bill, it’s time they were seriously looked at. If you has a decent private pension maybe it’s time to stop giving a state pension alongside…

That might work if you go back to a National Service model but it's no good at all if you have limited spend and want a professional defence force.

Stopping MP expenses & capping their wages to a normal wage would be a good start.

National Service took everyone though so presumably could be made to work for two years. There would need to be a pacifists alternative work scheme possibly
People who signed up for longer, after the two years, could actually learn a full trade by following an apprenticeship.
Sounds like we have the beginning of a plan!

Not a workable one.

There isn't enough time, let alone enough facilities or personnel these days to turn the forces into some extension of DHSS (job creation) or even the Home Office (asylum seekers).⁰

I think that I disagree. It would need work and planning but should be permanent and money saved from the benefits bill would simply be channelled elsewhere.
Anything is possible, if there is the will to engage.

My take on part of the UC situation is the 16k cap on saving

A lot of UC especially the ones you see in the media are so much due to high rent.

If people could save into perhaps a government bank account, purely for the intent of purchasing a house. Not a LISA with money returned by government

Then they would be able to buy their own homes. Stopping the government paying rental income, to in the majority portfolio landlords.

Council housing is never going to be built quickly enough to house all who need them. Rental prices are insane.

A lot of people on UC are living close to the breadline. Others can get a bit of wiggle room due to now earning a bit more and being used to living with nothing and can save a bit, as they are used to being extremely frugal

In the end it would save millions off the benefit bill as mortgages are not paid for and people want secure housing.

What are you incredulous about? Do you agree with him or not?

Not sure if you agree with him either op

If the benefit bill is too high the first place they should start is reversing the lift on the two child cap!

Have you or your's served -do you have any insight into what most serving personnel do?

I have and IMO you can't run HM Forces as some sort of mass job creation/training scheme and also maintian them as credible effective professional fighting forces...not in this day and age.

It really is nonsense to bleat about the benefits bill being out of control.

When in reality:

• the UK has some of the lowest pensions and benefits in Europe.

• many people on benefits ARE in work but with wages being stagnant and rents so high they have to claim UC. Which means that as long as we have an affordable housing crisis and employers paying poverty wages then this is not going to change.

• there are about 720,000 job vacancies in the UK. So not enough for everyone to be employed.

• many employers are unwilling to hire older people, people with disabilities and young people with no experience.

• Rachel Reeves has made it more difficult for businesses to hire with her daft NI increases.

• people who are sick and/or disabled will not magically become any less sick or disabled if their benefits are cut. Their hardship would just increase.

I am always staggered at how so many people in the UK lack basic critical thinking skills. They will happily parrot what they read in the right wing media or what some populist politicians say and start frothing at the mouth when benefit claimants or immigrants are scapegoated but have zero ability to look at actual facts...

This is like saying that 2p down the back of the sofa will help you pay off your mortgage. In theory yes it will save money. In practice it’s like a grain of sand on the beach.

Yes, this about who he works for now. Why he's saying this now hasn't been explained enough.

I agree we need to spend more on defence but there's really nothing to cut. So taxes rising seems the most logical step.

The UK is structurally fucked.

And no, I don’t really have the big ideas to fix it either. We shouldn’t be in this situation but it’s on the back or decades of now irreversible choices. If North Sea oil and has profits in the 70s had gone into a sovereign wealth fund like Norway, that would have been a good thing. If foreign investors weren’t allowed to treat prime London real estate like an investment, and only citizens could own property we wouldn’t have the ridiculous situation where house prices inflation has far outstripped all other inflation. The UK has always had some of the highest prices for consumer goods compared to other European countries, the absolute profit drivers for global manufacturers. The same with cars, we’ve bought into the farcical dream of seeing them as shiny toys which much be new all the time rather than bits of machinery to own until they die. We don’t know how to save for retirement.

Poking at MPs wages and expenses, to use as example, won’t make the slightest difference to the scale of challenge faced.

We have the lowest pensions in Europe for a reason. If I save for a pension, I and my employer put money into my (crappy) DC benefit scheme. Many public sector workers have defined benefit scheme. In most EU countries the employer and employee don’t put money into standalone pension scheme, but instead pay that money into the state scheme. So OF COURSE European state pensions are much higher!

It should be done like disabled students allowance - where you get up to £x amount per year depending on your situation and you have to pay and then claim it back.

No second homes. Have something similar to student accommodation

There also needs to be a rent cap. You see it on Facebook groups where people claim so much in benefits because of their rent

Stop putting illegal immigrants into hotels and stop the gravy train which is the free human rights lawyers, paid for by us. Do what Poland does.
Employ an army of benefit fraud officers doing the 8am Saturday morning door knock to see who has got their boyfriend living there while claiming single parent.
Bring back personal responsibility. Get rid of the nanny state.
Make the able bodied go out litter picking and tidying up the area to earn their benefits.
Get a grip on the huge drugs problem

I'll get my coat

Blame the Tories and Thatcher for selling off the council houses and not allowing them to be replaced.

removing the 2 child benefit cap costs £15bn. The defence funding is due to be cut by £3bn next year. Welfare is the issue.

Good post @Dollymylove . I think society as a whole will probably be forced to toughen up like this because of the hard times ahead. We are soft and complacent as a society because of the good times but we can no longer afford it.

How would that work? Say someone gets £30k a year from a private pension, do they then lose the £12k state pension? Wtf? The irony is that the person with the decent private pension will have likely have paid a lot in tax when they were working whereas the person without a state pension may not have paid much in at all.

Why do people always come out with this rubbish. The problem is mainly supply and demand (and to a lesser degree lax lending rules). Thatcher's policy (which my parents benefited from) did not affect supply just the mode of ownership. Importing an extra 10 million plus people people (many of whom are in social housing) in 25 years was the main source of the problem.

Get rid of the triple lock
Phase in a means tested state pension (over next 40 years or so)
Make all disability benefits means tested
Reinstate the two child cap
Increase expectations around working hours if you receive top up

As a start.

Ooooh yes this too