George Osborne's Autumn Statement - your reactions please!

[CatherineHMumsnet]

The Chancellor George Osborne will begin making his Autumn Statement in Parliament today at 12.30. Thought we should start up a thread so Mumsnetters can comment as it happens.

Bonsoir, just to be clear, we are on the same side. I see no reason whatever for hospital cleaners to live near the hospital. I have in my time commuted over three hours for work, spent two nights, then back home. At one point my husband was commuting to Edinburgh every day, and I to Exeter - both of us from Oxford. You do what it takes.

And yes, xenia, my grandparents and my parents both moved for work, not to mention all my forbears' emigration. The wails about it amaze me.

The world's richest cities are always those which have plenty of immigrants - people who had the guts to up sticks and move to make a better life for themselves. Families that stay in the same place for generations always end up complacent and lazy (in all strata of society) - economists and politicians are well aware that immigrants are necessary to shake things up and keep moving onwards and upwards. The worst thing a parent can do for their child is to expect him or her to live around the corner as an adult.

I suppose the bottom line is that those who do what it takes do well and those who aren't prepared to move more than a few streets from their mother and find it even hard to get out of bed each day never mind hold down a job tend not to do so well and the squeezed hard working middle earners of the UK have got a bit sick of supporting those not prepard to "get on their bikes" and of course we have run out of money.

Also genetically it pays to mix genes. Those who stay in the same village have difficulties. In some bits of Leeds I think 25% of children with disabilities come from the 5% who are families from Pakistan who all marry their first cousin; royal families of Europe were beset with disabilities as they only inter bred; the FDLS - small fundamenalist mormon group in the US - 3 wives, loads of children have a high incidence etc etc. The natural imperative to forth and spread seed as it were does mankind good long term in building strong people with mixed genes. SO a boot up the bottom of the non working British poor which sends them to a bit of the UK with a bit more work might indeed be all to their good.

It was fantastic for me to go and live in Japan for a year with DP - but I must say I was very willing ! But I agree traveling does broaden your horizons and increase your confidence.

Sieglinde I suppose it is a balance of wages, commuting costs and child care costs, with more hours required for longer commutes.

I think relocating your family for work can also have negative effects. For example, my mum's family emigrated to Canada and it was great until airbase where my grandfather was an engineer, closed down. He then left his family and went back to UK to find more work leaving his family struggling financially. He then died. My grandmother was left with nothing - a worthless house, no benefits ( this was the 60's) She moved to the UK, to the USA and back to UK again, always chasing work. The effect on her and my mother's mental health was significant.

Another friend's husband has left her and two small children to find work in Australia. He hopes to set them up a better life. She is very depressed.

It's hard on people -the less control you have over your circumstances, the tougher it is on your mental health.

And I should have added that if there IS NO HB then housing costs will fall a LOT.

Exactly! If people cannot afford it then house prices will drop and landlords can then charge less since their mortgage costs are also less.

£1600 per month is a bloody lot of money to be giving someone. And that's just HB. That doesn't even include the other benefits they may be entitled to such as tax credits. At some point we do have to say "Hang on....as much as we'd love to help you, we can't sustain this level forever".

Just out of interest, the children of diplomats and those in the forces living abroad are funded by the tax payer to attend UK boarding schools, even if completely adequate schools are available locally.

Are those people on this board who are OK for the children of HB claimants to be removed from their schools and sent to live in cheaper parts of the country in agreement that the tax payer paying for diplomats and soldier's children to attend boarding school is reasonable?

And I should have added that if there IS NO HB then housing costs will fall a LOT.

"Exactly! If people cannot afford it then house prices will drop and landlords can then charge less since their mortgage costs are also less."

But house prices in the SE have have continued to go up, despite the dearth of buyers in the last few years, so maybe this doesn't hold true. Mortage approvals are the lowest they've been in YEARS and yet within the M25 house prices continue to rise.

"Bonsoir, just to be clear, we are on the same side. I see no reason whatever for hospital cleaners to live near the hospital. I have in my time commuted over three hours for work, spent two nights, then back home. At one point my husband was commuting to Edinburgh every day, and I to Exeter - both of us from Oxford. You do what it takes."

Private rental housing even within a two hour commute of London is still generally more than someone living on a minimum wage could afford without subsidy. Especially if they are paying £200 to £300 a month in commuting costs. And that's not even considering whether these people have childcare costs to meet, which would obviously be completely unsupportable if they had to be out the house working and travelling for 12 hours a day.

What is reasonable for people on £40K a year isn't reasonable for those earning 15K.

The benefits cap from April is £500 a week = £2166 a month including housing benefit( £26k a year). I think if you just claim HB there is now a benefits cap of £20,800 so I a not sure from April whether that cap rises (presumably not) if the only benefit you claim is HB.

There is not much spent on school fees for the army. it's neither here nor there compared to the entire benefits bill so not really worth worrying over although I would certainly support a massive reduction in our armed forces and a Switzerland type UK position on defence.
It is very unlikely a lot of HB tenants will be moving.

Average pay in london is £33,500. Manchester and Birminghma about £26k - £25k.

What the army gets for their children is neither here nor there. MP's apparently are getting £168 a week for groceries. Should we all get that. If somebody earns £15,000 a year they simply can't afford to live in a house where the rental is thousands of pounds per month. And it's as simple as that. I find the thought the rest of us should subsidise this quite frankly totally ludicrous.

Speaking of the armed forces and the benefits cap I know of a young couple who are expecting their first child who receive quite a bit in state handouts.

They do some P.R work every now and again but I'm worried that if you include the cost of housing, that they might struggle on £500 per week with the additional expenses they are bound to incur. Sadly it's been going on for generations and they are trapped in the cycle.

I wonder how much MPs can claim per week? And how that compares to what they think the plebs can manage on...

" If somebody earns £15,000 a year they simply can't afford to live in a house where the rental is thousands of pounds per month."

Never mind 'thousands of pounds a month'. If someone earns that sort of money they can't afford to live ANYWHERE within the M25 without subsidy as there is precious little private rental property to be had for less than 800 quid a month.

Except in places like this: <a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/10/22/article-2052051-0E7A1ABF00000578-370_634x522.jpg&imgrefurl=www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2052051/Suburban-slumdogs-Scores-desperate-migrants-crammed-shanty-town-sheds-garages-ruthless-landlords-No-Mumbai--London.html&h=522&w=634&sz=181&tbnid=-0TWdVq2OQ9PiM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=109&zoom=1&usg=__A7GmwhU08y7d0vQ8iYqWS3avm48=&docid=_NTEWFLuvKbXxM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=j_bCUPmyDYKd0QWWtYHQCw&sqi=2&ved=0CDMQ9QEwAQ&dur=700" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here

edam, like army schoolfees, this is not big enough to be relevant. It might reconcile pdople to the system for MPs to give it up, but it would make virtually no difference to the overall economic situation.

virtually - yes, exactly my point. The whole housing sector in the Se is artificially inflated by HB. Getting rid of HB would therefore ultimately help people on 15k and on 40k, though I admit there would be a hard landing first.

In Paris, commuting costs (season tickets) are met in part by employers. But they certainly don't send cleaners home in taxis at the end of their shifts. Armies of cleaners wait for the first train at Gare du Nord.

I know somebody who has lived in New Zealand for a while. They said there is no benefits culture there. Their expression not mine. But lower paid and seasonal workers get help. That's fine. But not help to the extent that they can afford to live in houses that much higher paid people can't afford to live in. That's where the UK system is absolutely wrong.

This is the big problem to be solved.

Actually if most of the cost goes on the elderly we need to look at that. Perhaps accept NI doesn't really work as we never set up a "fund" and instead abolish it and for those aged about 25 now say you only get any state pension at all unless you have no other funds/savings/a house/private pension. Hoever it woudl be unfair to apply that to any of us who have paid masses of national insurance over 30 years on the basis it will get us a state pension or did Beveridge set up this system on the basis you pay NI and mostly you never benefit from it but it is just a safety net, rather than a contributory thing?

If you said you would not get a state pension if you had no other funds nobody would bother saving. Why bother. We need to encourage work and saving. A flat rate pension for me would encourage saving to top up not for every penny of savings to be penalised. The same with work. More pay before tax and that gives an incentive to work. Cut NI altogether and get employers to pay amount but employees just pay one form of tax. Easier to administer too so would save admin costs. Those calling on employers to pay higher salaries can watch the jobless figures go up as jobs go abroad instead. Thought the speech went well even with slide in of 4g figures. People moaning about tax credits etc capped at 1% should remember that many workers have not had a rise at all and the rise in the pa would supplement this. Just under £50 per month for dual income family.

Yes and a lot of people have been moved to 4 day weeks and not had pay rises for years never mind a 1% rise, many have had cuts.

I think the current system is that couples get £200 (?) a week income and when Labour brought that in it was a problem as those who never saved got put in the same position as those who had. It's the difficulty with having a welfare state which supports those not very well off but also tries to be fair to those who went without a lot all their lives to save for retirement.

Virtuallyarts - I really cannot explain the French taxation system in a post on MN. But, yes, of course people at the lower end of the earnings spectrum are taxed much less than those at the top of the range.