AIBU to be sad and shocked by this article? part 2

[FAQinglovely]

Moondog - that's the reporter that said those things - just pointing out what I should imagine were some pretty obvious things to the naked eye

The same article says that

"Louise is not inclined to blame the government for her difficulties. She is grateful for the money she gets every week and doesn't think her life would be much enhanced by increased payments."

I am SO glad I saw this thread. I recently have found myself in Louises position. I am single, dont work and have two young children. I am 23.
The money myself and her get will be exactly the same.
She will be allocated £456 a month towrds her rent - no more, no less. If her rent is LESS than this, she gets to keep the extra.
She will have no Council Tax to pay.
Her CTC is £90 a week.
Child benefit £30 a week.
Income support £60.50 a week, shortly going up to £64 a week.
I get no CSA off my childrens fathers (one iis full time uni student, other is skint and going bankrupt.)
Out of this money, I pay £119 a month to top up my rent. I pay £30 a month car insurance.
Both things I dont need. I have a huge 42" flat screen tv. Im sure all you "single mum haters" would assume i bought it? No, it was bought with my ex'x inheritance from his mum.He gave me everything in his house, and as we speak, he is sleeping on a single blow up mattress, in a house with no curtains, no wwasher, fridge, freezer, NOTHING! The house i sbeing repossesed.
I am also in debt, but this debt just isnt being payed, a choice I have made so that I can get my ds to school in a car. Also, I live rurally, and the local supermarket is tiny and crap!
The rent round here is astonishing!

PPlease dont tar everyone with the same brush. I have 11 GCSE's, two AS levels, and an FD in Animal Care(was training to be a vet nurse when got pg).
After reading the whole thread, until 2am last last, I was inspired, and started looking at my local college (luckily the best animal training one in the UK) and read u oncourses i can do part time or by correspondance. I am going to have a better read today, and if thee is nothing that seems appropriate, then I will have a look at open university, and see if there is anything just to keep my interest up.
I would like to thank the SANE contributors to this thread (FAQ SGM and others) for trying to make people see how tough things are, and how UNeasy it is to get out of this trap.
And Xenia (who always seems to have something bizarre interesting to add) thanks for giving my the determination to prove you wrong!

Flubdub, best of luck. What a very positive post!

Yes, good luck. I worked when I was 24 full time and had a baby and a 2 year old and my childcare was more than the income of either myself or the children's father but 24 years on the investment, the working at a loss as it were certainly paid off (and we were lucky to have two salaries coming in of course).

Yes, I am sure it is hard to get out of the trap. If we paid everyone regardless of income level £200 a week and abolished all benefits then there would be fewer disincentives. Get rid of tax credits, housing benefits, state pensions and just pay the flat sum so you get £200 if you stay home and you get £200 plus your wages if you work.

And the other advice is to get on your bike. We left our families entirely behind and had zero family help with children to seek work and it paid off. You go where the work is even if that's abroad. In the 1840s I think it was some of my family left Ireland because of the potato famine. They would probably have starved had they not worked.

In 1929 my mother was born. The same year her father died and the Great Crash happened. If her mother hadn't worked they would have been much worse off.

lAlthough Xenia's views can be extreme at times, a lot of the basics make sense. The idea of a flat rate of pay,enough to live on but without luxuries, and then getting to keep that plus any earned income would be a much better incentive than the current benefits system. It's ridiculous to have a system where people can be no better off, or only marginally better off by working. Even the lowest grade, most lowly jobs should pay significantly more than being on benefits.

And I also agree that people should be far more prepared to move to where the work is. It astonishes me when people think they have a god given right to remain in the village where they were born, and whinge if there isn't the right job for them... no one has an automatic entitlement to remain in the same area their entire life, and actually life would be pretty dull if we all did!

a nice idea, but unworkable in practice. The cost of living varies so greatly within the UK, 200 a week in London is the equivelant to £10k a year, very hard to live on. If you doubled it to 400 per week, that makes a total of 1600 per month,or £20k per year. sounds great. Until you factor in the cost of living. A two bedroom flat for a family in the private sector will cost anything between 240 -300 per week, so thats 1,200 per month gone, take away council tax, another 100, then utilities another 100, leaves 200 a month for childcare, food, travel, clothes, less than current benefits.

yes we need a minimum wage, but one that genuinely reflects the cost of living. Working family tax credit is actually a wonderful thing, it enabled me to get back to work asap after being made redundant. I wasn't picky, as I had a mortgage and a small child to bring up by myself, so I took a job in a school. Appalling wages, but a marvellous job that was very fulfilling and extremely valuable to society. So often society penalises women because they know they will take those insultingly low paid jobs in order to support their families. And they are jobs our society needs done to function. We can't all be lawyers and bankers in the city. Those who are blessed with the brains, and yes, the drive to succeed in our society should also have the humility to be grateful to those who clean our drains, pick litter out of the tube at night, care for our children, and strive to ensure they are rewarded for their contribution to society as a whole. Not dismiss them as stupid and so not deserving of a decent life.

Xenia, that is stupid idea. Some people CANNOT work. Some people have more children than average so need more help with chilcare.

I work part time to get tax credits and my rather measly wages, that enable me to survive financially while I get my degree. I could survive on tex credits being replaced by £200 a week, but I would probably then quit my job to avoid paying childcare costs, and skip lectures for the same reason...

TAX credits, not tex!!!

Violethill..........who SAYS that no one has the right to stay where they were born and seek work there?? Why should they move to find a job? And in many cases,how?

'Dur to recession no one can be bothred to service thier cars!'

Really? That's funny, because car sales are dropping, which means people are . . . hanging onto their old cars and servicing them.

We just had to have new front brake discs put on our car. Cheaper than buying even a second-hand car.

It costs a lot of money to move. Ever tried to get a job in a place where you don't live? PMSL! No, we're not talking high-paying jobs, but jobs a lot of people on benefits are going to be able to do.

It's not really feasible when you're on the breadline to pick up and move on the off chance you'll get a job.

Haahaaa. It's not free to move, either.

Of course some people cannot work manatee. Xenia was probably talking in very simplified terms. The problem with the benefits system as it currently stands is that it provided very little incentive. If you have a disability, or some either reason why you cannot work, fair enough - but there are hundreds of thousands of people who could work but don't.

Also, regarding how many children you have... surely the issue is that we all have a responsibility to try to keep our family to a limit that we can afford to care for and raise. (And yes, I am aware that some people have triplets or whatever unexpectedly, but again, this is a very small amount we're talking about). I could have gone on to have four children but we didn't, because we felt that three was the number we could pay to look after and raise in the way we wanted. No one has a right to have six or more kids at the tax payers expense!

I think the £200 level was an arbitrary figure for the sake of illustrating the point. The general point is that while you need a welfare system to support those unable to work, the system should not support those who CHOOSE not to. Work needs to pay signficantly more than benefits, otherwise people who work only for financial reasons (and not for self worth/fulfiment etc) will have no incentive.

I lovetiffany - if the jobs aren't there then they're not there! Yes - I know it costs a lot to move - I've done it several times. I also moved away from the area I was born because I realised it would take me decades to get onto the housing ladder there.

Xenia, this whole Monty Pythonesque 'I ate snails and live in a hole in the middle of the road and still grew up to run a multinational corporation, why can't they?" rif is either disingenous stirring, or reflects how out of touch with you seem to be with how a society works how it mutates, adapts and changes, how socio-economic and geographic mobility is part of a much bigger picture. All societies have a tiny minority which will always be a feckless underclass. If you are going to be all Samuel Smiles about it, at least be a proper Victorian and distinguish between the 'Feckless" and the 'Deserving" poor.

Flubdub......she gets to keep the extra rent if it's below £465 a month? Not heard of that before! If it's true then I'm owed money!!

Yes, it is silly to have more children than you can afford, but I have 2, I don't think I am being unreasonable there, and both born when I was married. When I became single and both kids needed full time childcare, it cost £350 a week for both kids with a childminder.

I was doing a 'taking any old job' style job in Debenhams until uni started, and if it wasn't for all the financial incentives to work in a low paid job (tax credits housing benefit) I would have had to remain on income support, contibuting nothing at all to the ecomony.

And in working with children you are also creating jobs in childcare, it is not like the child care tax credits are being given to you, it is funding someone else's employment (who may otherwise also be on full benefits).

As in working as a parent, not literally doing a job with children!

There is a case for saying we need to have more children, in order to have enough workers to sustain our economy and society with an aging population.

Yes, there is a case for saying we need to have more children (although there are a lot of holes in that case). I do not think there is a case for saying that people living solely on benefits are the people most capable of raising this group of extra future workers.

But it is educated women not on benefits who feel that they cannot have as many children as they want.

Agree Milly. I am a teacher, and when I look at my classes, the kids with most siblings tend to be from families where parents are less likely to work and be on benefits. A disproportionate amount of these kids are also low achievers academically and have low aspirations.

Conversely, the children of professional, more higly educated parents tend to be the ones from smaller families. They also tend to be higher achievers themselves and have high aspirations.

Now, this is anecdotal of course, but if that's what I experience day to day, I suspect it's replicated all over the country and that the statistics back it up.

It's a dilemma - yes, we want enough children to be born, but they need to be ones who will go on to achieve well and contribute to society, not be a drain.

Of course, there are exceptions - we will all know of children from non-working families who are clever and motivated. And some professional working parents have large families. But as a general rule, what I've outlined is the trend, and it's a huge issue for society to deal with.

Chellesgirl, would it make you happy if the illegal immigrants were made to exist in concentration camps until they were dealt with appropriately?

In 1901 census my grandfather lived in a 3 bed terraced house with 26 other young men, presumably squeezed about 6 to a room nd he couldn't afford to marry or have children until he was over 40. That was often the case - people couldn't afford to marry and have children until they were older than they wanted.

Anyway the whole system is going be very interesting. Unemployment is only 2m now. I remember it at 3m. We have a long long way to fall yet and then we'll be trying to pay for all this mess and won't be able to afford to. It will be pragmatic issues like that which will probably determine future benefits payment levels rather than what is academically right.

but by saying that you should have teh number of children you can afford you're forgetting to factor in relationship where when the mother and father were living together they could afford their children.

But the relationship breaks down and suddenly that "affordable" number of children (and I'm still curious as to what "being able to affford" actually means......) becomes "unaffordable".

I wonder if the trend for small families amongst higher socio economic types (for want of a better phrase) is changing anyway.

There is a massive boom in the birth rate at the moment and it has been going for a couple of years, the reason for it is all the women who delayed children due to careers suddenly reproducing like billy-o.

Out of my close friends the majority of them have 3 children, the ones with less haven't completed their families yet.

I think it's part of this whole back to nature/organic/earthy nicey thing and a backlash to the material values of the 80s/90's.

Highly educated people and people with good jobs seem to be deciding that money is not king and are having babies left right and central. (IME)

Not sure that I had anything to add to the poverty debate but wanted to comment about the numbers of children etc.

I think Xenia is right. We are going to see a big change is how benefits are regarded/delivered. I wonder if it will become more streamlined and efficient.