Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Politics

Depressed lefties - what now, is there any hope?

222 replies

electra · 12/10/2010 20:52

I hate what this government are doing. All the sh*t about 'if you're poor/disabled' we'll look after you - yeah right, by designing a test which tries to make people who are disabled look like they're not. Everything else too.

Do you think Ed Miliband will lessen the chances of us being stuck with the tories for another 5 years? I can't bear them.

OP posts:
tokyonambu · 15/10/2010 10:47

"I have been feeling very upset about the fate of people who will have to remove their children from schools, and move away from their support networks, families and everything they know and settle somewhere completely different with potentially not enough money to feed their children."

The problem is, the alternatives are all hideous.

If you index benefit with living costs and number of children, which doesn't of course happen with wages, then you create disincentives to work which become greater with the number of children you have. Someone with four or five children who is unemployed is highly unlikely to get work which provides the same amount of money. A situation in which people who are already struggling to cope are essentially encouraged to have more children isn't good for anyone, least of all the children.

On the other hand, if you cap benefits at a level that will support an average sized family, people who have for whatever reason already got larger families sink into utter destitution, and you set in place some hideous mechanisms which make the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act look like a summer school project by the Child Poverty Action Group.

I'm with Stalin on the Catholic Church (how many divisions have they got?), but I can't imagine that a proposal to make third and subsequent children born after 01/01/12 (to give people time to sort out contraception) not being eligible for benefit would exactly go through smoothly.

So what do you do? Salaries don't pay attention to family size. The tax system could, but doesn't. Benefits do. Working families have incentives to use contraception, non-working families don't, and in some cases have active incentives to have more children. Outcomes for children in poverty are bad and that's exacerbated by large family sizes.

Before the second war, both temperance and contraception were seen as socialist issues, protecting (largely) women from the consequences of drunken husbands drinking all their ages on a Friday night and of unconstrained childbearing. Marie Stopes was with hindsight a hideous eugenicist (she cut her son off without a penny for marrying a woman a wore glasses, even though she was Barnes Wallis' daughter) but the basic contention that giving women control of the sizes of their families benefited both women and their children was absolutely right. Unfortunately, post 1945, most of those arguments are so horrifically contaminated that no-one dares to talk about them. But if you could manage to, in an enlightened and progressive way, "nudge" people to have only the children they can afford to raise, with the state providing funding for up to two for reasons of common humanity, that would be a good thing. Encouraging people who are struggling to provide for their existing families to have yet further children is bad social policy, except for all the worse ones.

SpookyLettuce · 15/10/2010 11:44

Tokyonambu, your posts are fascinating to read.

"I can't imagine that a proposal to make third and subsequent children born after 01/01/12 (to give people time to sort out contraception) not being eligible for benefit would exactly go through smoothly."

Probably not, but it would be fair as it would not penalise larger families already in existence, but would even up the imbalance between salaries and the welfare state with regard to recognising family size. It's not great as you say, but none of the alternatives work.

SpookyLettuce · 15/10/2010 11:47

Having read your post again, the other alternative, to use the tax system to give extra to larger families in work might be workable. Someone correct me if I am wrong but is there a tax allowance for children in the US that could be adopted here?

ScaryMoaningArrrggghhhs · 15/10/2010 11:54

worth a read

tokyonambu · 15/10/2010 14:38

"Having read your post again, the other alternative, to use the tax system to give extra to larger families in work might be workable."

To deliver £1000 via the tax system requires the recipient to be earning £5000. So to use the tax system to provide benefits on a significant scale requires people to have substantial pre-tax incomes. Tax allowances are middle-class welfare, because they presume a significant income to offset them against.

They also have the problem of providing incentives to breed. Over on another thread, people are describing the need for subsidised breakfast clubs in order to ensure deprived children receive food; those child are the subjects of extensive means tested benefits, not to mention child benefit. The implication is that parents are spending money targeted at the children on other things. If you are sufficiently inattentive or uncaring towards your children that you don't regard feeding them as a priority, and expect the state (outside your allocation of money) to do it for you, additional state money to have more of them is a pretty good deal. How you deal with that problem is genuinely hard, and has stumped the best minds in welfare and economics.

ISNT · 15/10/2010 18:30

"Incentives to breed" FFS we are talking about people here, about children who already exist and are already at high risk of poverty and poor life outcomes.

The language makes me feel ill. Why the need to talk that way on this thread. Why not find a different thread where talk of cutting off money for children due to their parents "excessive breeding" is greeted with a whoop and a holler.

Hullygully · 15/10/2010 18:52

SHJ - Spassiba.

SpringHeeledJack · 15/10/2010 21:02

HG- errrm...cinco de mayo??

[baffled]

Francagoestohollywood · 15/10/2010 21:26

I am a deeply depressed Leftie, I feel your pain. I live in Italy, it's worse here, trust me.

Hullygully · 15/10/2010 21:37

It's bleeding russki, innit. Means "Ta."

mumutd · 15/10/2010 22:04

'I hate George Osbourne with a vehemency inexpressible'.

I copied the above from the first page, just wanted to say I couldn't agree more - I feel physically sick when I see his face.

SpringHeeledJack · 16/10/2010 13:28

I don't just hate him I also can't believe that he knows what the hell he's doing Sad

...and I'm sure Cameron exploits GO's loathsomeness-to-just-about-everyone as it makes him look slightly less loathsome himself. Iykwim.

SpringHeeledJack · 16/10/2010 13:36

OTOH- I am liking Ed Miliband at the mo. And I find myself growing tired of this constant muttering about the union vote. As though it's something deeply sinister.

I can't think that a vote from a union member is somehow worth less than the vote of us Johnny-come-latelys who joined the party after the Election for example

...or have we done this to death upthread?

[too damn lazy to read the lot emoticon]

Hullygully · 16/10/2010 14:43

Hullygully Wed 13-Oct-10 12:05:46
Can't stand the way it's perfectly acceptable to vilify a group of ordinary people banded together to try and not starve to death/betrodden all over.

Just for SHJ with a big old red kiss.

mumutd · 16/10/2010 18:44

I hear you SHJ, I am sure DC loves that. I was unsure of Ed at first as I voted for David, but I did put Ed M as my 2nd choice Smile.

I too am bored with the union vote mutterings, lets give him time and see what he comes up with.

I am hopefully optimistic that we we'll only be out for 1 term Grin.

mumutd · 16/10/2010 18:45

I must remember to preview post before submitting - doh!

whelker · 17/10/2010 11:47

I think people talk about the union votes because if it had been up to the Labour Party and its members then David Miliband would have been the leader. So the union did put him into his position although I think its unfair to call him a union stooge.

tokyonambu · 17/10/2010 22:20

"I think people talk about the union votes because if it had been up to the Labour Party and its members then David Miliband would have been the leader. So the union did put him into his position"

The unions don't have block votes. Their members vote. Individually. If the "Labour Party and its members" don't think that union members who pay the political levy aren't fit to vote for the leadership of the party, then they can come out and say so, and hand back the money from those union members. After all, it's not as though the Labour Party is short of money, is it?

leandro · 17/10/2010 23:41

tokyo I think your use of irony

xynia · 18/10/2010 23:50

Ed Miliband needed the unions to get him into his position. The Labour party are ad hoc to the Unions and always will be(this is best shown by their annual rendition of the red flag at their conference). Its notable that the Liberals and the Tories just let their members decide.

mrsdennisleary · 19/10/2010 08:48

FFS - so sick of the ignorance about unions here. I am a professional and in a union. My union is 70% female. The Tories spent the whole pre-election period sliming up to us. Dont they want the votes of working people?

Can the Tory Trolls sod off to another thread please. Is anyone going to the lobby today?

gingercat12 · 19/10/2010 12:24

I could not read the entire thread yet, but, please, let me indtroduce myself as union - basher/member and Johnny-come-late in the Labour party.

mrsdennisleary That is why we stopped having depressed lefties threads. We had enough.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread