The Tory attack on family 'v' The State of the Economy. I don't want to like the Tories, I Would Rather Eat my Own Arse. So help Me Understand

[Tortington]

abolition of Child Trust Funds;

money in bank for being born was always a shit idea. lets give kids £100 for existing.

the economy down the shitter - i think its proper that we pull this.

the Health in Pregnancy Grant;

not essential is it. does one reaaaaaaaally need a grant to be healthy in pregnancy?

jesus again i have to say - as a benefit to be pulled, its hardly essential considering that cut back have to be made

Surestart Maternity Grant for second child;

i dont know what this is- more money for having children?

the three-year freeze on child benefits whats the problem
and the introduction of housing benefit caps.
great

then theres the biggee - CB.

WTF am i not seeing that everyone seems to be going apoplectic about?

is there general agreement that a cb cut should be on household income? is it that its unfair in this way?

if that is the case - i see the point.

if its just bitching becuase people who earn over 45k aren't getting cb, then im finding it hard to agree.

and the argument that its a failsafe paid to women that help them get out of abused situations etc - you can't just pay women benefits on the offchance that one dayt hey will be abused.

am i missing a mahoosive point?

tell me the tories are targeting poor people like this but are not targeting rich people.

tell me that yes yes!! yes yes yes!!! you would agree with benefits like this being withdrawn, IF he also targetted rich people by some tax or other

tell me the equality?

they seem like non essential benefits to me - that have to be reined in cos we're financially up the shitter? or are we - maybe we aren't financially up the shitter and its a huge lie and the tories are just lying and whipping poor people? tell me?

LL_ people with a child in receipt of DLA get surestart atm as well, ours went on a secure playpen so ds1 and ds3 coudln;t just pick him up if our attention lapsed

Well if it comes down to that Sancti you can fricking well come and live with us.

We could fit another family in, just, if you don't mind all the crap and clutter and the garden is large enough for about 5 tents.

I can't believe that's what they told you.

FA, we'll get by. Sister won;t like it but she's got 3 spare rooms, we can squat (we'd ahve to as well PMSL)

They said that becuase it's true; by tehir reckoning we need a four bed, we have one of the biggest housing waits in teh UK and a 4 bed just doesn;t happen in a decade. DS1 HAS to ahvea 4 bed; not safe toerhewise, tehre's a real risk that soem of ds3's SN is down to ds1 picking him out of his cot and dropping him as a baby- can;t risk it agin and he needs a lcoked safe area in meltdown.

Ds3 is with ds2 and it's fine but it's also true that ds2's sleep is severely disturned as a result. (Ds2 also ASD as you know)

DS4 with us for the foreseeable as cannot share with ds1 or ds3 (room big enough for three in ds2's but not safe with ds3). We don;t mind that (plan had been to upgrade before dh's redundancy) but SSd say it is unsustainable. Our plan is to get abck on decent income of course and never let it happen.

Loudlass - HRT tax is already doubled as 40% is 20% x 2. So anything you earn above the £37400 30% band plus the tax free allowance is doubled.

For me, I agree that things like child trust fund (which I always thought was silly) and some of the grants are things that we can do without.

However much of what the tories are doing is not driven by need but by ideology... A desire to reward the deserving and punish the undeserving. Which camp you fall into is established by tory mindset (try reading some of the tory papers it is obvious who is who). Cuts are needed but there is by no means widespread agreement on how deep they need to be. And of course where they fall is the governments decision. With the tories in power - raising taxes was never going to be the answer - reducing social spending and assitance for those "undeserving" people in society ie the undeserving poor was always going to be the answer.

Even DH (who is a tory by upbringing, like the rest of his family) is blancing when I point out what things like the cap in benefit actually mean. It's all well and good shouting "scrap handouts for scroungers" but the effect of this policy will be to ruin social cohesion and plunge children into extreme poverty. And the tories know this, this is their ideology, it's what they want. Which is why I feel TBH that talking to dyed in the wool tories about any of these issues is as much point as talking to a member of the taleban about womens rights or a member of the BNP about equality. They're not going to get it, they never are, nothing will chnage their minds. When social unrest starts and people start to really suffer, and I mean really suffer, teh response will be "we always said it would hurt". They don't give a monkeys, that's the long and short of it.

*blanching

sorry spelling gone to pot hard to see screen through red mist

ISNT - "...the tories know this, this is their ideology, it's what they want. Which is why I feel TBH that talking to dyed in the wool tories about any of these issues is as much point as talking to a member of the taleban about womens rights or a member of the BNP about equality."

You are talking to a dyed in the wool Tory with me and it is not what I want. I promise you it is not what the vast majority other Tories want.

In the last few days I have put various links in posts with comments by Tory MPs and bloggers who are very unhappy abut how the CB cut is being implemented. The problem is not the policy of cuts it is the detail of how it is implemented. That really matters and many Tory party members are angered by the slapdash way this was announced, the obvious unfairness, the lack of intellectual rigour and the unecessary political opposition it has caused.

To put it bluntly even a rampant capitalist like me knows full well that a wealth generating society requires social cohesion and stability. Capital flees from societies that are divided, lawless and chaotic. Tory party members believe is self reliance, they believe in low tax and they beleive in solid finances - but they also believe in a society that looks after its weakest.

There will have be tough choices but that does not mean forgetting fairness.

Any comments from tory MPs about how unhappy they are about the cap on benefits? This is what will weaken social cohesion and fail the weakest in society. I haven't heard any outrage about that, just smug ministers saying "well people should have thought about it before they had so many children". It's not something that people can take back, really, once they've had children, is it. Or like sancti says maybe many "excess" children will be put into care - at enormous expense and ruining their life chances even further.

I think you;re right ISNt in that people with a hardcore tory ideology will go ... yeah (ja? ) and....?)

Whereas the ones that float a bit, boted labour in the past, LD will run a amile

People say ah by MAggie got abck after poll tax; Maggie ahd a majority did she not?

Ok, in simple terminology what other cuts are we expecting on 20th. Tbh I would rather be aware now, so those who know about this stuff, what other cuts do you expect?

Don't pull any punches, I want to be prepared.

Been Beta whilst we will ever agre politically I have been impressed by your ability to actually look at what's happening out there and question things

As an example of how cuts will affect ability to work btwe:

my friemdis amrried to someone who has taken a 50% pay but after finding work after redundancy, no blame there you will agree/

She has a disabled child, she is currently at threat of legal action as he (he has ASD) cdannot be amde to attend school before 11 (he's al;most 16, a foot bigger than her). Her job is in childcare so she HAS to be there before 90.

The family house has already been on the amrket for ages, tehy cannot take another cut in income.

She applied for a carer's assessment to help with disabled son; she ahs been refused. She ahd clearly been crying when she answered the door to me earlier.

And more.... if she no longer does childcare then my cahnces of childcare for ds3 go put the windonw when I eventually geta hob as well.

So- one cut service, potentially two people out of work.

Huzzah!

Not had chance to read all this as I'm at work but likes MaMots description of haves, gotabit and havenots. I always considered my situation as gotabit as I work full time but reading threads on here recently has made me realise that I'm just as poor as people who don't work. Income wise. Then there's all the people who have very good incomes, bleating.

Bit depressing all this isn't it?

It is worth remmebering I think that usually ()and this not a usual time) gotabits have one big advantage (and we're normally in that bracket, I refuse to regard this as anything oher than an aberration: I may well go to my elderly grave saying 'it's just for now, of course'

A credit score.

Even if you want to rent / get a bank account etc- not just to get credit- a credit score is useful.

Poverty charities have, I think, done much work on that.

Sancti, I've got one of them, atm, anyway .

I think we might but we're too scared since we lost the house tbh (A long time ago, no remaining sadness so no sympathy wanted).

it's a good thing to have though isn;t it? I mean, DH could get an overdraft (actually I think there is one unused) if the business struggled for a bit; if the car died overnight; if one of the boys needed hospitalisation and we needed to meet the associated costs.

By the time the cuts come in, I will be a higher-rate taxpayer and will lose the CB. I would have accepted that, and even thought it fair, if it wasn't for the fact that my friend, who is on the same as me but has a husband on slightly less, will get it!

So sorry I'm a single parent, oh wonderful Government clearly it's fairer to pernalise me than to do it off household income .

That's my only issue with the cuts so far.

Oh, that and the forthcoming DLA massacre.

Depends which bit of London you go to Riven. Plenty of areas of great deprivation. It's a place of shocking contrasts.

Riven - yy about money sloshing around. Did you know the taxpayer has just spent about a million pounds creating a creche in Westminster for the children of MPs and House of Commons Workers? And this creche is losing about 5k a WEEK which is paid for by.....the taxpayer. 4 children are currently signed up.

I really hate that lie about 'ooh, you can't possibly tax the rich, if you try it they will all go away and then you'll be sorry'. Frankly if they want to piss off, let them. Other European democracies seem to manage a fair tax system without imploding for the lack of rich people. Scandinavia does quote nicely. Unlike Ireland, which had massive tax breaks for the wealthy elite and is not doing terribly well at all.

It's that kind of lie - 'ooh, you can't expect US to play by the rules or pay our fair share, we're special' that allowed the City to get so out of control in the first place. Surely the events of the last three years have proven beyond any doubt at all that that reasoning is plain wrong - not just deeply flawed, not just unreasonable but WRONG.

Yes edam.

someone on another thread actually said that the reason 1 or 2 p on tax for higher earners, rather than all the cuts, is a bad idea is because the rich will simply find ways to avoid paying it.

Seems a bit defeatist to me TBH. What a ludicrous argument. Also typical tory argument - that everyone will always act selfishly. Bollocks. Loads of people are happy to pay taxes, of course none of them vote tory. the tories would never understand why anyone would do anything which didn't have the direct effect of increasing their personal wealth.

edam its not a lie about taxing the rich too much causing them to leave. If you tax them too much then they do leave and you end up getting less tax revenue then you would have done had you taxed at a lower rate because you are taxing more people iyswim.