To be agreeing with new conservative benefits proposal re alcohol etc

[Tigerthebreadroll]

They will cut benefits for people that haven't paid into the system and been unemployed for over 6 months (don't quote me on that number ) by 30 % and it will be given on a prepaid type card. Meaning it won't be accepted by betting shops, for alcohol or cigarettes. I feel that's right . Why should tax payers money be spent on funding cigarettes etc but I have no problem with funding the basics like food etc.
Thoughts?
Basically you will claim full benefits if you've worked and paid into the system. Should reduce generational unemployment hopefully

Many don't bother with road tax, car insurance, MOT, or even a licence so if their car breaks, they just leave it by the side of the road and buy another one for 300 quid.

The income from the JOB pays for the car running costs.

Not rocket science sweetie.

My biggest concern about using a card system is that a lot of people on low incomes find "invisible" money much harder to manage than actual cash.

I used to do a lot of budgetting work with clients, and many of them found it much easier to draw out the amount of money they could afford to spend and leave enough in the bank to cover direct debits. When someone only has, say, £20 in their purse or pocket, they can see that they only have £20 and know that they have make it last X days.

When your margins are so tight that £1 overspend can fuck up your budgetting, and you then end up with charges for overdraft, bounced DDs etc, not knowing exactly how much you have to spend can be disastrous.

In one case, it was literally fatal: the accidental overdraft meant that the client couldn't top up the prepayment meter, the electricity ran out, so they lit a candle. They fell asleep and something caught fire. The cost of that was tremendous; there was smoke, water and fire damage to the other 3 flats in the block, all the tenants had to be rehoused while repairs were done and that's without the costs of the investigation, inquest, staff time etc.

It's infantilising people for a government to control what they choose to spend their money on. I probably spend more in Waterstones than I do in the supermarket and if someone tried to make me buy food instead of books, I'd be bloody livid. And most of my income is my state pension, so it's "government" money.

Then the employer pays to fix the car.

If you've worked for 30 or 40 years, paid into the system and done everything correctly, then are made redundant, why the fuck shouldn't you a) receive full benefits for as long as it takes to find work (as long as you're genuinely looking, and with an obvious long-standing work ethic, why wouldn't you be?) and b) be able to spend the money from the pot you've paid tens of thousands of pounds into on whatever the fuck you want?

And where does it end? What else is considered non-essential? Food to suit certain dietary requirements? Books? What else?

The idea that you work all your life and then lose your job through no fault of your own and can't even have a glass of wine is appalling. And before people start wanging on about redundancy packages, not all jobs come with great ones, and not everyone works in the same job for long enough to accrue it. Many low income or zero hour contract jobs, for example.

'Get' the bus. 🙄Yes, great for those living on a bus route. But, newsflash, not everybody does, or is within walking distance from a bus stop, and bus routes don't cover everywhere a person might need to get the bus from. You've never lived in a rural area, have you?

Labour introducing tax credits was far more of a problem. You only had to work 16 hours a week, but would get topped up to a full time wage until your kids were 16. Also, keep having more kids, and get more money for each one!

Tax credits started the low productivity and caused wage suppression. Once someone gets used to working less hours, they rarely go back to full time work.

There aren’t enough jobs for everyone to work. The population is rising incredibly quickly and companies are making thousands upon thousands of people redundant. The bottom of the middle class is falling off. A lot of them will end up on benefits in the years to come. At what point will people stop falling for the discourse about benefit claimants ruining the country and start directing their anger upwards instead of punching down?

The income from the JOB pays for the car running costs

No it does not, thanks to successive governments permitting the payment of penury wages topped up by UC, hence why the benefit is entirely necessary to stay in the job in the first place.

The attempted condescension is hilarious given you've repeatedly demonstrated your inability to grasp simple concepts.

This is the type of poster who will one day need a carer (who are paid shit, usually mothers and work hard but also claim benefits) who needs a car. And then be moaning on here about the low quality lack of care fml

It's not a benefit. In any case, we are talking about cutting benefits for people who have never worked. Not people who have worked for 35 plus years or even been made redundant, just people Who don't work and have no intention of ever working.

Someone got arrested for trying to invertene by puncturing one of the boats, just proves that it's an industry that the government wants here. It's basically to inflate housing costs and keep landlords paid as much as possible, largely because a lot of MPs are landlords too.

Which NMW employers are going to repair a private vehicle? 😂

It does actually work that way in the US - WIC cards are limited to some items only so the supermarkets have their inventories tagged with allowed/not allowed.

How would it work in the shop?

Would it be shop staff having to refuse to sell cigarettes and alcohol once the card is presented for payment? I wouldn’t want to be in that position.

If shop staff aren’t prepared to do that how would prohibited purchases be detected? How much is all this going to cost to set up and ongoing salaries for those monitoring the scheme.

I don’t have strong opinions either way on the VAT tax for private schools, but my jaw genuinely dropped reading that.

You simply cannot compare closing a tax loophole in a fashion that might inconvenience around 6% of the population, with a policy that risks pushing families into real poverty, increasing the strain on our already buckling public services and costing the tax payer huge amounts of money.

If you are seriously suggesting this is some kind of “retaliation” then that really does prove the theory that the Conservatives are sadly no longer a serious party, capable of pragmatic government.

Did you miss the point that i was responding to someone suggesting the restriction to child benefits, which are paid to anyone with children (up to the 60k threshold at least) regardless of whether they work or not?

The point in general still stands regardless. Restricting what people can spend their own money on is fucking stupid, unworkable and immoral, regardless if it's money from a job, from the state or if they found it down the back of a sofa.

No. The government has decided to close the loophole that meant a category of business could sell its non essential service without a VAT requirement. The fact the service sold happened to be education is neither here nor there. The service sold is a non essential as there is a state offer available, so there was never a valid reason for the VAT exemption. (And yes, I'm aware that parents of children with SEND may consider it essential due to a poor alternative offer, but that's a seperate issue.)

In other words, the perpetual dole monger

What happens if someone who was previously in employment can't get to work and loses their job?

Does that cost the taxpayer more or less?

@ruethewhirl even in a non rural area the bus can be temperamental, not to mention it takes ages! I only passed my test last year and there are just some things that you have to use a car for if you want to be in one place at a specific time.

how is a parent with school children with no car supposed to drop them at school on time and then get the bus to work in a different part of the city.

Ooops you have been late one to many times, now you have no job at all go and enjoy being a full feckless waster.

Employers need to pay more and then we wouldn't be as a nation stuck in this cycle of low pay and government subsidies. I would welcome with open arms a exec/front line pay ratio cap.

So so many people are trapped in the benefit cycle and it is in my opinion a bit too generous, you get your housing mostly fully paid for by housing benefit, if you have kids you get extra. It's not much but it really is not any incentive to get of UC to get a minimum paid job as it really wouldn't make much difference. This is the problem, why would anyone with small children want the bloody relentless life task of juggling work and child care on not much more money. Then loose housing benefit, paid for child care and all the rest. No incentive what so ever.

The problem is you can't say to people without any work experience, possibly not the best education, go out and get a job. There must be some sort of drive to make people want to work rather than sit on benefit.

The gap between decent paid jobs and the lowest paid jobs are so so big. It seems you either have to aspire to become some sort of astrophysicist or nothing. Why is there no more drive to inspire people to become teachers, librarians, civil cervants, housing officers, administrative assistants. Ok not the most glamourous but I work with a lot of people on benefits and it's always seem to be the same story.

Single women, having had kids before ever doing some sort of 'proper' and with proper I do mean any work qualified or non qualified eg. shop work, cleaning work, teaching assistant work but with proper I mean full time dedicated with a chance to improve that work, perhaps become team leader, realising you can become a teacher etc etc, kids get to school age and all of a sudden there is no work to have because you have never worked.

I just don't see the solution but some sort of system where you get your benefits based on your last paid employment like in other European countries with a time limit.

Get a bicycle like Norman Tebbitt's dad did.

the sense of entitlement to a high wage for unskilled basic jobs is hilarious.

We aren't talking about people who work and claim UC top-ups. We are talking about people who don't work and have no intention of ever working.