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

This is aimed at people who CAN work but choose not to.

How will they be identified? Currently, if you refuse to work, you'll be sanctioned.

I don't even know how this would work. Benefit money doesn't get spent primarily on food. In fact it mainly gets swallowed up up by other household bills plus childcare, the first thing people do is cut back on food shopping.

I've been unemployed for nearly 6mnths now. I have been living off my redundancy pay and I have been paying in to the system since I was 16yrs, there are huge amounts of us in the same situation. I guess I am luckier than those who aren't able to make their money last but this is the treatmeant people are happy for them to get after working for so long?

I wonder if MPS will also have a pre paid card and unable to use it for their extras? Doubt it very much. Let's hope Kemi never finds herself disabled and having to rely on benefits.

We can all look forward to the increase in health issues, homelessness, crime and then the additional costs on police, courts, prisons, housing and NHS.

Another nonsense proposal for people who don't think things through.

If they're not bothered about feeding their children, pre-paid cards aren't suddenly going to turn them into doting parents. What would probably happen if neglecting their children wasn't a concern is they'd sell the cards under the table for cash and have even less money to spend on the children than if money had been given in the first place.

If they don't care enough about their children to feed them, there's a bigger issue at stake than how they divide what money they have, because if they're not loved enough to be fed, the children will be suffering serious emotional damage.

Exactly this. This is in my opinion, the worst kind of performative, populist politics. It's not about 'the lefties won't like it' - it's about the fact that it's ideological nonsense that won't work, and will probably cost the tax payer money in the long run. People who are addicted to cigarettes and alchohol won't stop being addicted - they'll get hold of those things in other ways, and those ways will likely either deprive the government of the VAT, or push up shoplifting rates (and therefore put additional pressure on the police).

It's easy to spout sixth form debating ideas from the opposition benches, but if a policy like this was actually likely to work, the Conservatives would have implemented it during the fourteen years they had in power. They know this isn't pragmatic policy making, but instead of getting real about serious solutions for the issues the country is facing they've decided to sew division and demonise the unemployed instead. It's lazy and divisive and I am genuinely disappointed - I had actually started to think Kemi Badenoch was a serious politician.

Interesting how all these ‘capitalists’ LOVE state intervention when it’s used to enforce policies that fit their prejudiced ideas.

Imagine being more passionate about state intervention that makes life difficult for people, than state intervention that helps people.

Yes exactly. It's a nonsense suggestion, the type of proposal made by an opposition party with no hope of a majority.

Because after years of working, all it will take is for you to not be able to find your next role quick enough should you be made redundant and you will be subjected to this treatment.

In principle ( I need to read the full details) I would be onboard with this and it’s a step in the right direction for those who can work but don’t

What a predictably spiteful and childish opinion to solve an astonishingly complex social problem. Yawn. Have a day off.

Quite!

I don’t have a problem with not being able to use it on fags and booze, but you genuinely think it’s fair to cut someone’s benefits by 30% if they’re disabled?

Really?

I half contemplated voting Tory for the first time in my life (good local candidate) in the next GE but this proposal leads me to rethink doing so. Incredibly ineffective regressive policy making. As well as callous to those in poverty.

The only way that’s happening is if she gets into bed with Reform and/or Rrstore.

Yes the 30% reduction is too far. The ban on booze fags and betting I’m fine with if it would ever be passed or actually work which it won’t.

What always fascinates me is the people who read something like this and don't stop to think why the Tories never enact this when in power. The reason being because it would cost an absolute flipping fortune in fall out.

This country will NEVER elect a black woman PM. Nice sentiment though.

It's worth noting that a lot of unemployed smokers will not be buying cigarettes from shops in any case - they'll most likely buy packets of rolling tobacco from a mate down the pub who's bringing them in from somewhere overseas where it isn't taxed so heavily, for 1/10th the cost of buying it legally.

'Generational unemployment' - do you mean multi generational unemployment? That's been extensively researched and is just a thing politicians say to wind people who don't know much about the world up.

What’s missing in this is that there will be no increase in benefits for those who have always worked and found themselves made redundant or otherwise out of a job. I had a friend in Italy who told me their system is something along the lines of full previous pay in benefits for the first 6 months, then half for six months, then drops to “standard” after that. Something along those lines, it was a few years ago now.

No, instead we’re just going to cut an already meagre amount even further. How can someone pay their utilities and buy food on £70 a week? Should benefits be a lifestyle choice? No. But people on benefits should at least be able to pay the very basics of survival.

Why so sure? Is that a factor for you?

This kind of idea has the right and those who believe there’s a “deserving” and “undeserving” poor absolutely salivating. It would never work in practice for the multiple reasons already mentioned on here. And do we really want to be emulating a system used by the US?

The Tories, much like Reform, can have as many bstshit policies as they want when they don’t actually have to make them work in the real world. The idea of a pre-paid card (though without the added cruelty of a 30% benefits cut though I suppose the “ever so successful” sanction system was similar) is not a new one, but there will be reasons why the Tories didn’t enact it at any point in their 14 years in power.

Has she tried care work? A friend of mine was in a similar position having been out of the labour market for 10 years while caring for both her mum and dad who have now died, care agencies were really interested in her personal experience and now a couple of years on she's a team leader in the same field and has qualifications in the area

Quite. What's the next suggestion going to be - move them all into Workhouses?

Cutting benefits for people unable to find work in the current job market is a hideous idea.

There are fewer and fewer jobs available

Ultimately it would increase crime - because people need to afford to live - and increase prices for the rest of us.