£25,000 benefits cap

[Xenia]

Average family has £26,000 to live on including housing. So from 2013 the most benefits available for one family will be £26,000 including housing benefit. Sounds like a sensible plan. Well done George Osborne. How did we ever get to a contrary position in the first place?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11463435

I've got it! How silly of me. It all links now.

The elderly = some find it hard to feed themselves.
The unemployed = some find it hard to feed themselves.

= lump them together and they can help eachother out for free. It's called big society.

Oh, but hang on...the unemployed don't have the "broadest shoulders"...oh no!

Those earning 44k+ have "the broadest shoulders". Maybe they should be forced to go on the weekends into care homes and feed the elderly for nothing.

The £44k lot aren't asking for handouts. Also the discipline of your 5 hours a day at the care home (and are you really saying there is no one who is unemployed who cannot clean or care in a care home or chat to an elderly person?) in return for your benefits will help people keep self respect as they are not getting money for nothing.

Anyway capping benefits is a good start.

I heard on Radio 4 that the absolute minimum a family needs to survive in London is £35,000.00 pa - which to be honest doesn't sound wrong to me, as a london-dweller.

Xeina not sure if your in the Uk guessing that you are since you seem to have such strong opions with what's wrong with the country

so have looked back and can not see the answer to question I asked earlier so shall repeat it .Did you claim CB ? Yes universal benefit but if claimed it why because from what comes across on here you did not need it

Not sure how this would work in practice.

Would somebody from government walk into school at lunchtime, and say "sorry, little johnny can't have that meal, what with the carer's allowance and DLA his family is claiming, and the absence of social housing in this area pushing up Housing Benefit.

Don't worry though, I hear there are some disused mining villages where you could squat for a bit!"

I think the coalition will find they are biting off more than they can chew.

Xenia - you have failed to answer the question about who is going to pay for the CRB's for these people going into the care home/elderly peoples homes. Nor any of the other issues regarding FORCING any old Joe Bloggs to go and do the things you suggest

Besides - contrary to popular belief not all people on benefits sit at home all day and watch Jeremy Kyle.and contribute nothing to their community in some shape or form.

places who take on volunteers don't want someone who is being forced to do the job, untrained, and with no desire to actually help the people that they're supposed to help.

For goodness sake, nobody is going to be forced to go and work in a care home.

We are all going to do it voluntarily as 'we are all in it together' and part of the 'Big Society'.

well if you are telling someone that if they don't go and do some voluntary work (or cheap labour - depending on how you look at it) then they're not going to get their benefits - then yes - you're forcing them.

Another thing that hasn't been mentioned about this - who is going to look after the children - or pay for the childcare?

I do volunteer when I can I go into dd school and help there but not ATM I'm iffically signed up sit on arse watch tv brigade before flamed as lazy workshy that's because am just out of hospital after damaging my hip

yet I'm still doing all the normal stuff that has to be done in a house with dc

but there is no way would let just anyone near my dc not without crb checks and knowing I can trust them with my dc

But xeina if you wish to send one of your maids to do the housework while I sit on my arse please do and could she cook dinner for the dc when they get home as well please

As standing is rather akward oh and the Gardener to as my gardens looking rather sorry for it's self due to neglect

But don't worry I don't live in a slum it's rather well to do area so there be safe infact I might even allow them a cup of tea if there nice

another problem with JSA claimants doing volunteering is that charities and communities groups need someone realiable, someone who will turn up. Now, for arguments sake lets just say that they get a reliable person.......BUT they have to prioritise looking for work over the volunteering. So Joe Bloggs is suppose to be doing something tomorrow, then a job interview comes up - he then HAS to leave the place he's voluteering at in the lurch.

'(and are you really saying there is no one who is unemployed who cannot clean or care in a care home or chat to an elderly person

Some, probably most, can.

So what- we have a system where the more what- respectable? - people on JSA (probably the ones who ahve paid NI then) are made to contribute and the same old drinkers etc stay at home anyway.

Excuse me if I fall off my chair LMAO.

And CRB's- yes, bloody expensive. As a charity it was a major outgoing for us but essential; we couldn;t have taken them on as a responsibility for people who might get a job and never even start. We'd have gone under (oh hang on they did, a year after I left, due to changes in regs that meant SSD got to withdraw funding they had committed).

Yes it is more than enough!
If you can't Feed 'em, DON'T breed 'em!

CJ2010 - what if you've already got 'em when you suddenly find you can't feed 'em (you know - you lost your job, you escape your violent ex, you husband dies?)

So the child's welfare has to be compromised if it happens to be born to someone who "chose" to have unprotected sex when they were on benefits? It's not the child's fault but penalising the family penalises the child and its welfare. Why should the state not help that child?

What if you had multiple children when you could afford them, and then lost your job?
What happens if you fall pregnant accidentally? Your children get to suffer because benefits are now limited.

Perhaps there should be a govt policy on "licences to have children"; or be like China forbidding more than one. Or asking parents in the targetted group to not sleep with each other (maybe separate hostels/workhouses would do it).

voluntary work, oops, i mean forced 'work for your benefits will help people keep self respect as they are not getting money for nothing'.
I don't think i would respect myself more by being forced to do something i didn't want to do. In fact the opposite. And as for getting benefits for nothing, well, they aren't. they are getting benefits because they have no job and without them they would be homeless and starve and start camping out on your doorstep.

capping benefits is not a good start.

Just a thought but isn;t workfair REALLY actually an extension of teh public sector outside the controls of employment law, minimum wage and worker security?

Ah yes sorry, we have a Tory government, of course!

Well its a start. But i dont know about anyone else, but I think 26k is far too high. I would like to know where they got this average from ? Its the equivilent of £500 a week which i still think is ludricous. I am on 18k which is above average aparently. I have never claimed and was a single parent who chose to work full time and not take the easy route. Unfortunately this cap will only affect those on the top bracket and I still think its not enough. My partner is a public sector worker and worked hard for ten years to acheive the qualifications he needed to get where he has today. He has worked for the council for over 20 years and could now face redundancy even though his workload is far more than one persons load. He could easily work in the private sector but loves his job. And now they are talking of cutting the pension! So it makes me mad that my partner and many other public sector workers are facing so much uncertainty, yet there are families out there that will continue to receive benefits for free.

Ronaldinhio - this is what I don't understand..I really don't. Without CB and Dia your cousin gets over £43k a year (net). both DH and I work and our net pay (after tax) is less than that.

I don't begrudge your cousin or anyone. But I do think there is a problem if benfits give you more than working.

but, will it really enhance the quality of your life knowing that so many more [growing numbers of unemplyed] people and their children will be living in poverty, made homeless, etc? It won't make you feel better and you won't get paid more because you work-as you say the public sector will have to pay more into pensions and no ones job is safe. `

This money they are proposing is the 'top rate'. That means there that most families will be living on a whole lot less, I mean they wont all be getting 25k. The detail is in the lack of detail.

Abiq

What makes you think everyone out there gets benefits for free? As you say you are indeed under a lot of uncertainty (and sympathies, that was us a year ago) so coudln;t an awful lot of these people be exactly the same as you? it's not a benefit cap for long term unemployed (and I should say I am not anti cap, although admittedly we are classed as a disabled family AND we have a part time job so doesn't afect me). It's a benefit cap for everyone who was working for the past 37 years of their life; the people whose business went under so they don't have redundancy pay; the public sector employees made redundant......

It's been set as a cap as well, whcih does not mean that everyone will get it: far from. i think in order to reach that level you'd need to be living somewhere like London so most would be in HB: does someone who say lost their job 4 months ago after under a year so no redundancy (they may ahve worked for twenty eyars but moved job) deserve to be made homeless becuase some idiots play the system? Is there not an argument to be made that certainly in the shoorter term- a year or so, in a recession- the state is safer if it allows people to remain stable: stay in their home near childcare provision, keep the children in school so they maintain their educational stability, keep in contact with potential employers they know. I eman, surely in the first eyar or so the best benefit is making people able to remain employable?

Personally I think a very cynical side of this cap in the way it is publicised is the fact it counts in HB- I am certain that most people would wish to live in the far cheaper LA provision were it available. Here however there is a £30k people waiitng list, and virtually no landlord willing to take on a HB claimant. And less jobs than unemployed people (and my guess is with the cuts to middle class incomes and potentially carerrs and the otehr groups out there there are pelnty of people job hunting who aren;t on any list of stats; me for a start).

Ultimately, whsilt there is asense in a limit, the £26k cap ebing so widely publicised is the government trying to direct our wrath against a graoup of people who actually are rarely getting that; you'd need high HB and a big family for that. most claimants are elfderly, disabled...... big family and big house is just a small part of tyhat, one the governembt could quite easily address without tainting everybody else with the same brush.

'But I do think there is a problem if benfits give you more than working. I would agree IF the option to work was there for everyone.

If the Government could make one adjustment to their rules I could work for no additional cost to them, but they won't (my disabled kids can only access a Nanny, I would like to spend the same chidlcare grant incvome on a Nanny rather than a CM or Nursery but cannot).

Now DH works so we are OK and lucky that tax credit system exists (please God may it continue) but when such simple barriers are stuck....

OK another one: if someone caring decides to retrain for a career at Uni or HE, they still provide all outside care and cannot work summer etc as a student usually can but their CA is stopped....

it's like the Gocernmenta ctively want to tip you off any escape ladder...

oh right they do; £56 week is the cheapest labour they can find (and that's not party political, last bunch the same)

Your right legostuckinmyhoover (like the name by the way) I think what frustrates me is the lack of trying to actually get a job in this country. As i said before, I and many of my friends were single mothers. I had a choice whether to work and to be honest I would have got more money not working rather than working which is ridiculous!. The only reason we worked was respect. So many people on the council estate i lived on did not work and actually laughed about how easy it is to claim and not work because they could not be 'arsed' So in fact I get peeved when those of us who have worked hard in education or just hard at their jobs get penalised. Just for the record, I am now on a full-time college course as I wanted a better career as a building surveyor. It will take me 8 years and I get no handouts whatsoever. I am mobile hairdressing to earn while I learn, and have registered my business and pay tax. Things are tight and as we speak as i am not at college on a thursday and am working in a shop as business is quiet and i have a mortgage to pay and children to feed.