The big lie : 120,000 families who cost £9 billion a year

[TalkinPeace2]

There is no empirical evidence that these families or this amount exist.
Why is the government putting so much emphasis on it?

They have also admitted that they will no longer be strictly adhering to the 'every child matters' framework.
Because apparently they don't.

The Government is apparently passing this 'project ' on to councils. So a council with, say, half a million residents might be told from those bald criteria to go out and find the supposed 1,000 families that it should be intervening with.

For every family it 'turns round', it will get £4,000 (??).

The Government is also passing to councils the responsibility (but not anything like the money) for the Social Fund and Council Tax Benefit.

Pickles and our dear Chancellor just loathe local government. But then, they won't need a council sheltered home or local authority dementia care home place one day.

It was the same here, Kalskrata Single parent family, council estate, going without food and heating.

what does 'turning round' actually mean? Removing 1 or more of the 7 criteria?

Kal, who knows? If I were a clever council I'd sign up people like myself as a 'troubled family', suddenly notice my DC's excellent attendance records, and claim the four grand. Ker-Ching.

LInerunner
Ah, but that is where it gets sneaky.
As these people do not exist, P-P-P-Pickles will be able to move the goalposts and deny the councils money after they have stuffed up other services.

I'm glad there are so many posters highlighting the real problems with these claims. Pickle's figures essentially come from the University of Made Up Stuff. He's essentially trying to say poverty = moral degeneracy, which is pretty classic Tory stuff. But making the figures up and claiming to have evidence of stuff that just does not stack up is Not On At All. You might even think this kind of spin is a moral failing in itself, since it's a Big Fat Lie.

It won't work. Councils have to put up the 60% of the cost up front and if it doesn't work they councils lose out.

Its just another soundbyte...

Ian Duncan smith made the same assertions in 2002 - equating poverty with moral failure.

Moral Failure definition:
Using people in poverty to make your friends/party contributors richer than they already are.

morally abhorrent

"Kal, who knows? If I were a clever council I'd sign up people like myself as a 'troubled family', suddenly notice my DC's excellent attendance records, and claim the four grand. Ker-Ching."

indeed linerunner, and i am sure that hasn't passed then by, the result will be statistics which claim that the tory fuckers are correcting morally bankrupt britain and saving our taxes.

next thing you know, it will be claioming a reduction in child poverty

fuckers =- i detest them

And everyone else with one exception obviously

''next thing you know, it will be claioming a reduction in child poverty''

Like to see them try!

www.regen.net/Policy_and_Politics/article/1135906/report-coalition-policies-risk-increasing-child-poverty/

KalSkirata MrsDevere

Some very good examples - what made us a 'problem' would have been debt (supposedly making us feckless according to IDS). That debt was a mortgage on a home bought while we were both working, affordable while only one was working and then fell into disrepair when I became too ill for my partner to carry on working (hence 'workless' household).

We stopped being a 'problem' because we were moved into council accomodation and I stopped paying the mortgage - instantly removing two of the criteria that made us a 'problem'. How is the state of the house someone lives in their own fault, especially if like most people in poverty they will be living in someone elses house and the govt refuses to build enough affordable housing for everyone to be abel to live in a decent home??????

I saw a comment on here from someone admitedly on a different thread something about who creates the conditions in a pig sty? I thought it was an odd example as pigs are very clean animals and a pig sty is an artificial structure made by man that the pigs have no choice in using or how they use it - you may as well stick someone in a damp, mildew infested home with no hot water and a leaking roof then ask why they smell of mould.

Apparently Labour were going in the right direction towards eradicating child poverty - more slowly than they hoped, but on the right lines - according to a fiscal study I read about today in the Guardian.

Cameron's legacy will be to have undone all that.

I'm glad the Lib Dems, even Clegg, have told the Tories to go fuck themselves over Jeremy Hunt and Murdoch. Vince Cable was right to say the government should fight the Murdoch empire. It's just a pity the Lib Dems in Government didn't tell Cameron to go fuck himself over the NHS and shafting the disadvantaged.

Still, better late than never.

Why should the government be fighting the Murdoch empire? What happens if they win the fight? Someone else will be the largest media conglomerate. Do the government then start to fight them?

There's nothing like when villians fall out. They were all cosy cosy, now they arent and various politicians must be shitting bricks about who knows what.

I see Rebekkah Brooks was in court today.

Apparently Labour were going in the right direction towards eradicating child poverty - more slowly than they hoped, but on the right lines - according to a fiscal study I read about today in the Guardian.
Utter crap. Typical of the Guardian, they are so biased it's untrue. Labour were the worst government in this country's history, that is undeniable fact. They spent like drunken sailors, and instead of addressing route causes of problems, chose to throw money (that they didn't have) to relieve the symptoms. Britain was in a far worse place in 2010 than it was in 1997. Thank God that the Tories are in now to take the necessary steps in order to get us on an even keel again.

JosephineCD

Erm, read the link i posted then. I labour are pissing money like drunken sailors why have the tory's borrowed more money then labour?

If the Guardian told me it was raining I'd look outside to check, wouldn't believe a word they say anymore.

However.

Let's focus on these numbers plucked from the air regarding deprived families, that way no one remembers the 50p tax rate cut for the well off. Yes? And don't fool yourself that Labour only introduced it at the last minute of their government rather than years before when they had plenty of chances. They're all in it together.

The Guardian would gain more credibility with me (and I pay for a copy once a week) if they systematically demolished the bogus figures again and again.

But sadly as most of the journalists (like Polly Handwringing Toynbee) were affected by the 50p tax rate, they are as out of touch as the politicians. They think that private school and salaries over £150k are normal

The issue is that as the families and the spending do not exists, what political plan is being hatched and who is going to be discredited and then emasculated.

Possibly hard workers like MrsDeV - because they did not succeed in helping families like those she and I mentioned up thread.
Then what.

I'm not even sure this is a political issue.
Maybe it is the sort of thing the ONS (Office for National Statistics) should be forced to debunk.

Erm, read the link i posted then. I labour are pissing money like drunken sailors why have the tory's borrowed more money then labour?
Because you can't just turn things around immediately. Labour created a massive client state in order to give them votes, and you can't just cast those people out on their ear immediately with no means of supporting themselves.

"if you meet 5 of the 7 you are costing the county an arm and a leg (subtext feral children etc etc)

? No parent in the family is in work
? Family lives in poor quality or overcrowded housing
? No parent has any qualifications
? Mother has mental health problems
? At least one parent has a longstanding limiting illness, disability or infirmity
? Family has low income (below 60% of the median)
? Family cannot afford a number of food and clothing items

Eric pickles quote "Not only are these families destroying their own life chances but they're destroying the lives of their children"."

Bollocks to him. My family fits 5 (and a half) of those, we are far from a "problem" family. How dare he suggest we are destroying our own lives, let alone that of our child!

The Guardian was quoting a study by Mike Brewer, Professor of Economics at the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex. It was a news piece, not an opinion piece.

glad to see you say that Josephine because thats exactly what the Tories have done with disabled people. ESA has now been time limited, even for those with terminal cancer. So many people found their ESA stopped abruptly in April. Genuinely disabled people. Some are now left with nothing as they cannot claim JSA as they are clearly unfit for work but its taking 12 months to appeal against the ESA decision. And even then you best hope your brain damage repairs itself or limbs grow back before the 12 months is up.

Pickles is a knob-end. We have 5 of the qualifyers yet 2 kids at University, 1 going next year and the 8 yo has written and had published a book. Does Pickles ever acknowledge families like ours? Or does he just see the crappy house, the disability and the scruffy clothes?
And no, I'm not for Labour either. Far as I can see they are all the same.