To think benefits need to be cut to fund increased spending on defence

[Viviennemary]

This is absolutely necessary. Keir Starmer shouldnt have backed down the last time. But now with the current situation with Russia drastic steps need to be taken. We simply can't afford to sustain the current benefits bill with the armed forces so depleted. The money is needed to increase defence.

Or we could make Amazon and Starbucks pay their fair share of taxes?

If you cut benefits it will just increase government spending in other areas you wouldn't save

Or make companies pay proper wages so that people don't have to rely on benefits to top up their wages with uc!!! It's madness. We shouldn't have to claim benefits when we have a job!!!

Which benefits would you cut?

Or we could just start questioning why MOD procurement is a total and utter farce that has been wasting tens of billions over recent decades on projects which are either never delivered, or arrive late and in barely functioning states, before we start taking food off people's tables in order to throw even more money at it.

Cut welfare benefits - spot on. Get people back to work. Only genuine cases should get benefits - but it’s become a choice and way of life for way too many. There’s been about a 55% increase in claims this past year also which is ridiculous.

I assume you are talking about the area of the welfare budget… pensions?

Yeah, fuck the kids of parents who aren’t able to work or who have been made redundant, let them starve. Think of the poor skint arms dealers!

Minimum wage has been put up year on year and above cost of inflation. It's harmful to businesses so the government has to try to strike a balance. My DS simply works more hours to up his wage.

The benefits system in the UK is totally mad. People have got used to money being thrown at them while they stay persistently underemployed on part time hours and feel like they're entitled to do so because they have kids (or, more recently, dogs 🙄). The economy has inflated itself to fit what people are earning/being topped up by benefits, just like rental standards have inflated rent prices and now everyone's complaining at the cost of accommodation. That's the bit people don't understand when they go on about how "employers need to pay more" the minimum wage in this country is pure gold in the first place! The whole benefits thing is ridiculous and needs deleting and starting again. The country doesn't owe anyone a living, people need to cut their cloth. And ironically the low salaries in the military mean that a single parent in the military these days would likely be better off working part time in B+Q and claiming benefits. Make it make sense.

Yep lets stop all the state pensions - that would be a 146 billion quid saving.

I don't know what you're going to do with loads of starving homeless pensioners but they're at the end of their useful life anyway, there's no way to get them back into work so probably just leave them in the streets.

I am sure you were thinking of cutting the payments to disabled people out of work or in, claiming PIP, UC or indeed both - but that represents a much lower saving and a much higher cost as they'll linger on a lot longer, look really awful cluttering up the streets and blocking beds in hospitals. It's really not the saving you think it will be and, quite a lot of them are working and taxpayers.

Who made you think the West needs to go to war with Russia? Russia does not aim at war with the West. Bloody Americans divided Eastern Europe and took bases in places like Romania and Bulgaria and stirred the Russian shit.

Funny how you didn't have an idea of cutting benefits of UK politicians and billionaires, but immediately went for most vulnerable ones

If you want to spend more pay more

There was simply no need to give UC claimants an above inflation benefit increase. No need to remove 2 child cap. Pensions could drop down to double lock instead of triple lock and PIP should be tightened to only pay money to most disabled and those with ADHD should not get money and those with anxiety or mild depression should be given counselling not money. Bad backs should have scan evidence to claim money. They could up the number of points needed to get higher allowance from 12 to 18. Child benefit should be limited to family income of less than £60k to claim. It shouldn't all be taken from 1 benefit but spread across all benefits and if a person claims pip they shouldn't be given double credit by giving them disability credit on UC as they have PIP for their disability. Carers Allowance is already so low I don't think that can be reduced.

btw , The Americans came to Western Europe at the time of the 2nd world war and never left, the west is a puppet of the USA

Around 3.1 million Universal Credit claimants are in work. Contrary to popular belief, a large proportion of people receiving benefits are working. Many are on benefits not because they don't want to work, but because a full-time wage is no longer enough to support a family.
In many parts of the country, even two people working full-time on minimum wage struggle to support a family once housing, childcare, energy bills and other essentials are taken into account.
When you add the fact that many mothers end up raising children with little or no day-to-day support from the father, the financial pressure becomes even greater.
The real problem is not that people don't want to work. The real problem is that wages have failed to keep pace with the cost of living, leaving millions of working people dependent on benefits to make ends meet.

They could cut public sector waste for starters.

It shouldn't be a simple question of less benefits and more defence. We need to ask what the money for both benefits and defence is spent on as well.

On the benefits side, it appears that some benefits are sacrosanct even if they seem somewhat unfair (triple locked state pension, for example) and also that some well meaning benefits are either being abused or are unsustainable due to increasing genuine demand (eg sickness benefits). Also, it's very difficult to make laws which are both general enough to make sense whilst also being specific enough to prevent fraud or misuse. It's easy to find examples of people who should receive less benefits but really hard to design a system which prevents them getting what they get.

On the defence side, I don't understand how Russia can simultaneously be so shit that they can't beat Ukraine in four and a half years and counting, whilst simultaneously such a threat to us that we have to massively increase defence spending. I also don't understand how we are spending a fortune in defence on nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers and a standing army when surely what we actually need to spend defence money on is drones, cyber defence, and the kinds of 21st century stuff that will be what the next war is fought over. Sometimes I get the feeling that people think WWIII is going to be like WWII when obviously it isn't. So is the defence we're wanting to spend our money on the right type of defence?

I don't know. But what I do know is that we always talk about amounts of money rather than actual ideas and things.

Of course yabu.

That's a brilliant suggestion. I'm amazed nobody's thought of it before.

During wartime conferences, such as the famous 1944 "Percentages Agreement" between Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, the Allies agreed that the Soviet Union would have primary influence in Romania (roughly 90%) in exchange for British influence in Greece. 1, 2, 3, 4]

60% of unpaid corporation tax comes from small businesses. They, as well as Amazon etc, should pay their tax.

Very vague, what sort of benefits do you want cut? And by how much?
Half of all benefit spending is state pension, are you proposing that? If not other targeted benefits polices will regain minimal funds.

Live off UC for a month then tell us how much it should be cut by.
I work full time and get UC. It basically covers my childcare. Without UC I couldn’t go to work.
I pay more in tax and NI than I get in UC so essentially it’s like tax credits.

defence spending is already high but, like the NHS, the spending isn’t efficient or cost effective,