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.

No i didn't, i said you had skills that could be used and transferred to other jobs?!

If a business can't afford to pay its employees a living wage, then the business isn't viable.

So you’d cancel the triple lock for the wealthiest - or just penalise everyone ?

Has anyone else noticed that @Viviennemary has only been back to the thread twice - and that was two days ago. I know something of their posting and thread history so the post and run doesn’t surprise me. The title is a red herring. There is nothing altruistic about it. It’s a benefit bashing post disguised as something else. Evidence ? The title asks if benefits should be reduced in order to increase defence spending. How many posters have actually answered that ?

How to say you know nothing about running a business or basic economics.

Better close the business and everyone gets on benefits than trying to build wealth and growth, because benefits' money will magically appear from somewhere, if we close our eyes and manifest it real hard, it will happen, promised, and there are pots of gold at the bottom of rainbows, guarded by leprechauns.

smh

@Pikachu150

This is my direct comment.

Your post : "you said that disabled students get more support than other students and in the next sentence said that people on benefits shouldn't have a better standard of living than those who work which strongly gives the impression that you begrudge everything they get if you don't get it too.
Also, the support you mention isn't something other students particularly want anyway. Nobody particularly wants the ground floor or have a noisy mini fridge in their room. The DSA is very limited too. It in no way levels the playing field."

I do believe people on benefits shouldn't have a better standard of living than those who work full time. It isn't right or fair, I own that i wrote that as that is what I believe.

Benefits should be a safety net for people in difficult circs and people should have a minimum standard of living regardless. As I've written many times on this thread though there is only so much in the pot and we are discussing how it should be spent. I believe work should pay and people should see a difference in their lives who work full time to those who are on benefits. That's common sense.

In regards to the uni comment the pp to most post wrote that disabled people can't just go to uni or something similar, they can and they are supported to do that. I agree with that and don't want people thinking the reverse is true.

I can hold two different thoughts at once about benefits, it isn't an all or nothing. Ie work should pay and disabled students should be supported to improve their qualifications.

You might want to see my post correcting a pp who said that all disabled people had care in the community now too. I pointed out that they don't and some of the most vulnerable are still locked away without commiting a crime in hospitals because it costs too much to care for them in the community. Benefits are varied and people are varied.

I don’t have the answer if I’m honest! But perhaps if those companies who make a certain level of profit, and have employees who are paid in work top up benefits, were charged in lieu of the benefit paid by the government, thus paying from their profits, and making less, obviously. There would be issues - e.g. if people choose to work part time when full time jobs are available- and how that affects in work benefit paid.

I just think it cannot be right that a higher level of profit is generated on the back of pay that is too low to live on, via the taxpayer. There must be a solution. As others have said though housing costs are a huge factor and I would start to look at rent controls.

Yep always the way with these threads

It’s a benefit bashing post disguised as something else.

I mean with a title like AIBU To think benefits need to be cut to fund increased spending on defence it's not very well disguised 😃

It always turns into disability bashing because people have to concede basic UC is shit and instead pick on those getting the most - usually the disabled. Or picking on some family living in Kensington and claiming everything, then represent their income as typical.

Everyone. The triple lock is not sustainable full stop. We can't continue to pay it when young people are struggling so much.

Yes, I advised another oyster early in the thread that she was wasting her time trying to explain.

Maybe i can afford to?!

Have you thought about how not to be an arse? Maybe you could consider or learn how to debate without resorting to stupid comments.

This is what I take issue with. There are no ‘lower rates’ of PIP. There is the standard and the enhanced rate. There are some very severely disabled people claiming the standard rate because their condition doesn’t meet the threshold for enhanced rate. That’s why two rates exist - because it’s enshrined in law that all disabled people are supported, not just the most severely affected.

These people would lose all support. And it’s not very forward thinking either. Just because you abolish the support doesn’t mean the need disappears. You don’t save any money because inevitably the people who lose the standard rates of PIP/child DLA and carers allowance along with it, will end up moving to social care, which is much more expensive. It’s robbing Peter to pay more to Paul.

Thank goodness no one else does because it’s massively over simplifying disability. More ill informed nonsense.

Why do you not understand that an able bodied person telling a disabled person they are lucky not to be more severely disabled than they are, and that there are other people worse off than themselves, is not insulting in the extreme ? Where is your filter for offence, because there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of it here.

For pip it is colloquial as there are two rates; one being lower than the other.

If you read the other posts and don't take this in isolation you will see that i've wrote that I believe reforms are coming and the gov cannot reform benefits without also looking at disability. I'd rather they removed the lower rates than the people who get the higher who would arguably need more support. I've posted this with other things such as claiming state pension back from estates after the person has passed.

I've also posted that I don't feel the current system is fair and that some people require higher rates than are currently given as they have arguably more needs/ required support than other claiming at the same level.

I've posted quite a bit on this thread I don't want to continue to write out every detail in reply to every post i'm quoted or tagged in.

Just for clarity though I do think that there are also claiments especially for the lower rates where they are trying it on. People do lie.

There has to be some sort of benefit overhaul coming, there are political calls for it. I expect if Reform get in that is likely when it will happen.

Another little gem there. Government claiming back state pension from the estates of those pensioners who are deceased. Laughed my arse off at that one. Good luck getting anything back from anyone’s estate after they’ve finished paying care costs. You want state pension to be repayable after people have contributed through work/NI for it ? You’re a piece of work.

I wondered when ‘people lie to get PIP’ would be trotted out.

Seriously, you're going through all my posts and taking each one in isolation?

Why do you have issue with me thinking that there are people who are so disabled that they cannot work and describing this as severly disabled?

Why not? Pensions make up half the welfare bill. If people claim state pension to help in their retirement and have an estate to leave why not pay it back?

Yeah I'm the one being an arse 🙄

Are you saying that every person who claims pip at every raye for every condition is completely honest?

What nerve did i touch? Was it when i corrected you that not everyone is cared for in the community and some with disabilities are still locked away or when i said i was surprised you agree with the send reform given most disability charities don't?

I take issue with the fact that you’re using the ability to work as the yardstick for assessing the severity of disability. Another example of your wrong thinking because PIP and DLA have absolutely nothing to do with the ability to work. They don’t assess for it at all, because it’s not an out of work benefit - it’s purely to help with the cost of disability. It’s also massively over simplifying complex disability.

There are many people who could work but are allowed to choose not to because their disability would cause them difficulties or embarrassment at work. I fully support that, having supported a disabled lad who tried to work despite severe spinal issues affecting bowel and bladder. He lost control at work and couldn’t get to the toilet in time - left a mess on his chair and had to go home to bathe and change. Can you imagine having to walk back into work the following day and face your colleagues after that ? And before you say work from home, where are the work from home jobs. It was all trotted out very neatly by various prime ministers speeches but the fact is that WFH jobs tailored to the needs of the disabled are very few and far between, if they even exist at all.

Killing people in two ways. Charming.

Why is it always the most desperate people who get the boot? There's this fucking pervasive view that if you receive benefits you're a lazy scrounger who spends all of their time smoking fags and drinking when in reality it's just not true.