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.

Agree with all this, but to add, the insane cost of housing is to my mind the biggest problem and needs addressing urgently.

Well obviously that's fair and reasonable!

Why would it be fair to tax things that haven't been turned into cash yet? You can't spend a share!

And what happens if those shares then fall in value? Do you get a rebate?

How much would you like to reduce my £86 per week carers allowance by op?

There is no way someone from the dwp told you to quit your job.

That’s awfully kind of you to volunteer to give up your UK pension (now, or when the time comes) to buy some repairs to the Type 42 destroyers.

Oooh. I know- why don’t we sort of ‘privatise’ schools? They’ll be more efficient than local authorities and cheaper to run. We can wash our hands of the whole thing. We could even allow them to be accountable to a board of governors who can be anyone at all. What could possibly go wrong?

Absolutely spot on

Which will have been bought with earned income that was taxed, or an inheritance that was taxed.

I'd be interested for you to tell me who you think Musk has stolen his wealth from?

With ‘executive heads’ and ‘consultant directors’ who are all on £200k and former LEA officers!

I find it hard to believe too.

My child was in hospital and the DWP lady was still telling me to 'just do a few hours of cleaning'.

My Conservative led LA have cut millions year on year for the last eight years.

Public services cut to the bone, offices sold off.

What do you suggest is cut to save even more?

Only 15 hours of free childcare when they don’t work?! How absolutely terrible for them!

As has been explained it is for the benefit of the children not the parents.

Benefits should be a safety net for the majority of people. People who are severely disabled and completely unable to work should be supported.

State pension needs to be means tested with the option of the state recovering funds from the estate after a person passes upto the amount paid out.

We should be encouraging private pension schemes with more tax breaks.

Social housing should be just that it shouldn't be that a person can stay in a large family home once their family has grown and left home.

Dla shouldn't be payable to children ten and under apart from those children with the most severe disabilities; remove lower rates. Remove the lower rates of pip too.

We should bring the two child benefit cap back. People on benefits shouldn't have the option of large families when working families don't. We shouldn't be encoraging having children and raising them in povety.

Education: we need different types of schools so that children/ yp have choices eg at 11 they don't need to go to high school with the aim of sitting gcse's, they could go to a trade school where they would have to take basic English and Maths but learn mechanics, plumbing, teaching assistant, hairdressing etc qualifications.

Piss off with your “nearly free houses”. The rent on married quarters is subsidised, and goes up each year, because people in the armed forces don’t have the choice about where they live.

When I last lived in quarters I had a 30+ year old kitchen, an even older bathroom, holes in the roofing felt so you could see daylight through it, the heating didn’t work properly and it didn’t meet the decent homes standard. The service person is classed as a license holder, not a tenant so they don’t have the same rights either.

DS1 lives in the mess on a rat infested camp. They’re in the barrack blocks and soldiers have had to move out of their rooms. He counted 25 rats come out of a drain in about 5 minutes the other day. It’s bloody disgraceful. If that was any other part of society there’d be hell to pay. But it’s the army so they’re supposed to get on with it.

The intention is early years education for the children as studies have shown it improves their starting point in Reception for disadvantaged children more in line with their peers.

So it’s acknowledged their parents are either harmful, negligent or just rubbish, so the answer is to not make them acknowledge they have responsibility or help them take responsibility?

Every time we buy anything we pay VAT despite paying for it through income that's already been taxed!

ALL income generated through whatever means should result in a tax liability of some kind, since it was accrued in a society that functions as a result of government existing. The only question is about proportion. Currently we levy a higher tax charge in income earned through work than acquired through either investment return or capital gains. Seems perverse to me.

And inheritances aren't taxed at all. The estates of dead people are taxed. I know it's a technicality but it's important to get it right. And regardless, most estates aren't actually taxed. My parents could leave me £1m and neither the estate nor I would pay a penny of tax on it. Yet if I was to earn £1m through working I'd pay half back in tax. Insane.

You do know there is minimal correlation between back pain and scan results. I remember reading a study whilst at uni (physio) - they did scans of 100 people 50 with chronic severe back pain and 50 without any issues. The scans were shown to ortho consultants and they were asked to identify which 50 people had back pain. Of the 50 they identified, around 30 gad pain, and 20 didn't. So it was little better than flipping a coin!

In Ukraine volunteers assemble drones. People have parties with their friends at which they assemble drones.

I know it would never happen here, but I have visions of Job Centres being used for jobseekers to assemble drones. Probably a more efficient use of their time than having to do 30 hours or whatever it is of jobseeking a week in areas where there are no jobs that are suitable for them. Keep the benefits, increase the number if drones, which seem to be increasingly dominating modern warfare anyway.

This. ^

The pension welfare bill is double the amount spent on UC, child benefit and income supportcombined. But you don't mean cutting that, do you? You mean taking money from those pesky scoundrels who don't work and spend all day with their trotters up watching Sky TV while chain-smoking fags. 🙄

Im severely disabled and work part time as i can at this point although that may change in the future. I get the highest rate of pip as being disabled is incredibly expensive. So as I can work part time I shouldn't get help so I either need to quit my job or work full time which I can't do. Not everyone fits into your perfect little boxes

It’s not childcare it’s education. Do you think we should chuck the children of people who aren’t working out of school too?

And it’s there for a very good reason unless you want to be increasing spending by much more down the line.

I was going to make a suggestion but I had another thought.

Instead I suggest that every time you meet a public sector employee in the course of your day who does not work in front line services ask them what they did today.

And then over time you'll get an impression of how huge, unproductive and reduceable it is if we had the will to do it.