Conservatives maintain that every working family now pays £3000 a year to fund lifestyles of those who do not work.

[moondog]

In addition, there are 3.9 million British households where nobody works-an increase of 200 000 over a decade.

Blimey.

I've just put myself through typing out screeds about this, but actually, Moondog, all you'll do is say, "Oh, another emotive anecdote, and anyway it must all have been some sort of mistake."

So I don't think I'll bother. Might later if I can bring myself to go statistic-hunting, so you can grasp that the problems are structural, not some individual error.

Why was that confusing?

Suit yourself.

I meant that I was confused about how you were hassled in a way that prevented you from working.

I was interested in a concrete individual example.

It depends entirely of what the SLT consisted on in the 1st place.

Just becasue a 'service' exists doesn't mean it is good. Heavens, you have found fault with nearly every one of them over the years.

"Work" meant an average of an hour a fortnight, on the computer from my bed or sofa. The only reason they found it worth using me is they're all incredibly busy with their real jobs or hopeless technically, and I at least know how to set up a database, enter members' names, operate an email programme to send out the newsletters they write, etc. I needed a lead time of at least a week, as I could only do the job in tiny tiny chunks and on days I hadn't done something else exciting, like answer the door twice (penalty of only shopping online).

I had to tell them they should find someone more reliable when the run up to their AGM coincided with the turnaround for another massive DWP form (part of the reassessing everyone again) and I couldn't do both.

Nice one for the Big Society, Dave.

Concrete examples of how the mandatory Work-Focused Interviews at JobCentres (not medicals) are affecting people can be found here. Someone I know turns out to be working for the private company nationally responsible for these buildings, and he said they know it's a problem, they just haven't solved it.

Cage but welfare isn't the only thing being cut is it? Virtually all depts have had to make deep cuts.

So to extend the analogy, if my mortgage is a big outgoing and I am financially really in the shit, I have accept downsizing to a cheaper place is better than cancelling Sky Sports.

Yes I can shave a few quid here & there but we're talking an annual deficit of £160 billion. We're not going to make that right by simple efficiency savings or taxing the rich. If we are serioUs, we must accept we need to make big cuts and as a result, the poor WILL suffer.

But in fact there are lots of make-works going on. Work-Focussed Interviews, mandatory courses to "learn to write a CV", etc. Because, of course, only underclass never-employeds get ill. Some courses have been sending people home as too sick even to attend a course never mind sodding work afterwards.

Niceguy, you explicitly said welfare had to be cut because it was the largest expenditure.

In your extended analogy, you still haven't compromised on the actually important thing, which is "having a roof". You wouldn't say, well, housing is expensive, so let's save by buying a semi-built place, with no roof, but have Sky Sports. And yes, the children's bedrooms WILL suffer, but I'll still have my Sky.

FakePlasticTrees makes the point that is the one that interests me most. The post war baby boomers are retiring now. The pensions bill is going to soar. Also, the baby boomers of the 60s are turning 47, the age at which people stop spending and start saving, so they will buy fewer goods. Demographics is everything. And none of this can have come as a surprise. Italy is going to be interesting. Public servants retire on 100% pensions, but the birth rate has been falling and falling and there are not enough people to pay taxes.

Cage It's obvious to even Labour that the welfare bill has to be slashed. Remember that changes like forcing single parents to seek work and the changes from IB to ESA were introduced by Labour, not the Tories.

I can't see why my analogy is confusing to you. It's not about having no roof, it's about having a smaller roof. So in other words, we must have a welfare system we CAN afford rather than a comprehensive diamond plated one we cannot.

And the simple truth is that the only way to make it work will be to cut the amount of claimants and reduce whats paid out to each. And yes that ultimately includes pensioners.

I'm not sure how politically acceptable that is given pensioners are such a big group and the most likely to vote but there you go.

I wonder how much it costs each family in this country for the lost tax from Philip Green? It runs into billions so each family has lost out

Cage, paperwork (useless paperwork) is the bane of all our lives and needs to be addressed.
In my own job (NHS) I have been informed that the split between my hands on stuff (ie what I was trained to do) and admin. meetings, training and so on shoulb be approx 60:40.

I find this astounding.
What has gone wrong that the powers that be deem it acceptable for this to be the case.

Parkinson's Third Law. Here they are in all their glory.

Parkinson's Law (idea)

"Work expands to fill the time available for its completion." This law was discovered by C. Northcote Parkinson and is documented in his books Parkinson's Law and Mrs Parkinson's law, and other studies in domestic science. Several other laws have been attributed to Parkinson, these include:
Parkinson's First Law: Work expands to fill the time available.
Parkinson's Second Law: Expenditures rise to meet income.
Parkinson's Third Law: Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay.
Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.
Parkinson's Fifth Law: If there is a way to delay an important decision the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
Parkinson's Law of Sience: The progress of science varies inversely with the number of journals published.
Parkinson's Law of Delay: Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
Parkinson's Law of Data: Data expands to fill the space available.
Parkinson's Law of Meetings: The time spent in a meeting on an item is inversely propotional to its value (up to a limit).
Parkinson's Law of 1000: An enterprise employing more than 1000 people becomes a self-perpetuating empire, creating so much internal work that it no longer needs any contact with the outside world.
Mrs. Parkinson's Law: Heat produced by pressure expands to fill the mind available, from which it can pass only to a cooler mind.

An aside, but never knew Parkinson came up with all those other laws! Thanks for brightening my New Year's Day and posting them.

Especially like the Law of 1000 - genius.

Niceguy2, have you looked at the diagram I linked to?

"Cage It's obvious to even Labour that the welfare bill has to be slashed. Remember that changes like forcing single parents to seek work and the changes from IB to ESA were introduced by Labour, not the Tories.

I can't see why my analogy is confusing to you. It's not about having no roof, it's about having a smaller roof. So in other words, we must have a welfare system we CAN afford rather than a comprehensive diamond plated one we cannot."

Looking at it, the reason for the problems is immediately and patently obvious, I would say - the £85.5bn spent on financial stabilisation. Spending on JSA, IS, HB etc really aren't that large an amount relative to many other things. Frankly, we could cut out of work benefits to the point where people were starving on the street, and you wouldn't solve the nations spending problems.

Looking at it, the reason for the problems is immediately and patently obvious, I would say - the £85.5bn spent on financial stabilisation.

Takver - That's a useful diagram you linked to and I think it gives a good idea of the relative size of public service costs.

One warning though - most of the financial stability cost was a 'one off' which occured around 2008 and is not an annual cost.

The problem is our annual costs (excluding the bank bailout costs) still exceed our income, even if our tax income goes back to it's high of 2006/7.

This is the structural deficit - and that what puts our economy at risk.

Niceguy2 X-posted

Just read in the independent that unemployment is predicted to hit 2.7 million. That suggests, in my opinion, that the 3.9 miilion statistic includes more than the unemployed.

Parkinson's Laws very interesting - thanks, Moondog.

However, although the Welfare system should clearly be streamlined, it's not in anyone's interests to cut benefits. If there are any scroungers, they should be dealt with, but what's the point of giving people benefits in the first place? It's to keep them fed, clothed, housed and educated - and off the streets, into jobs, out of the hospitals and prisons. It's not something we've dreamed up to make ourselves feel civilised and smug. It would cost us all a lot more not to give benefits to the people who need them.

Even if we do have to pay £3000 or whatever - I'm happy to pay it to someone who needs free school meals or a carer to come in three times a day. Some people have such difficult lives - it's truly shocking that those who are well off begrudge them anything.

Niceguy2 - did you notice that far from making us money, the bank bailout lost us an extra 12.something billion over the last years - shares in banks owned by the state fallen by that NOT risen.

It's nice to imagine those banks are going to be worth a lot more - but it's highly unlikely, when you consider all the losses on housing loans currently hidden in the banks' balance sheets - only refusing to repossess amid the current low interest rates is keeping those off the books, but within a fw months, that position will become untenable.

Realistically, we continue to lose money from bailing out the banks.

Which no amount of benefit cutting can recover.

whilst DH was working, we easily paid 5k in direct taxation, maybe up to 15k including VAT and fuel...with about 2k back in CTC and CHB

now the state supplements our lifestyle to the tune of 6k per year. someone is paying for that, somewhere out there - possibly the present taxpayer, possibly future ones.

swings and roundabouts, no?

if the state want to help DH get a job, or get me into a better paid one, then any initiaive to aid that is welcome from this household.

as some of the banks were bought at lower than book value, i think that will work well in the long run...