Too Many Cuts...come join the #Frothers and have your say

[AnyFuckerForAMincePie]

This is the 3rd thread in a series.

It is for people who are horrified, frustrated and downright sad at the erosion of human rights with respect to how this country is being run, just now and in the recent past

it is apolitical in nature, but of course due to many recent initiatives by the recent govt, there will be rants against our current "leaders"

please join in

I shall post the link to the old threads, our "Too Many Cuts #Frothers" blog that is attracting a lot of widespread attention and a little bit of what we are about in a moment

Hunty
Will you be putting some of your calculations on the blog? I would like to do a general post on cost of living in UK, specifically focussing on the childcare and housing aspects.

I thought I would do it from the "other" side, looking at it through the eyes of someone like Boffy who thinks you are all workshy scroungers.

sorry.

ok this is how i understand it. if they declare me suddenly magically cured i MUST work at least 20hrs a week or i'll be entitled to no help. if i earn below the cut off point i will still be entitled to UC to cover shortfalls in housing costs etc. to just what i need or is it the £500 goes to you if you do your 20hrs at minimum wage?

what is concerning me (other than the obvious fact that personally i couldn't work 20hrs a week with my health problems and there are zero jobs during school hours that i could do for 4hrs a day - not aware of any jobs that fit that mould and my son is 4 so not ready for latch keying yet even in this new world order surely) is that this gives no one incentive to get pay rises or go for good jobs or anything. if i have to do 20hrs but anything earned over a certain amount will be clawed back anyway then surely what they are doing is creating a situation where work will basically be class based - the poor, disabled and single parents are being marked as the peasant class who will take the mw jobs leaving the better jobs for others?

can i ask a really obvious question because i'm not clear - if i can earn my £212 or whatever it is that a single parent MUST earn in 10hrs will that be ok or will i be forced to take on another 10hrs of work? thus meaning i'll have to stack shelves for 35hrs a week as a disabled person rather than being able to do 10 hrs a week teaching or tutoring which would be more likely to be manageable with my health than full time nmw work?

sorry if i'm repeating myself but i need to know whether i have to work 20hrs regardless of how much i earn and regardless of how fucking incapable of doing it i am?

god it's all a mess isn't it?

all i'll say in response to the 'whingers' and 'entitlement' post is that the people discussing the figures here are for the most part either disabled themselves and/or caring for disabled dependents and on top of that are facing the reality that there are no jobs let alone ones that fit with their childcare needs or health issues.

will happily trade you your work ethic and self sufficiency for my health problems if you fancy it?? i used to earn 30k and be looking at being a hrt payer within a few years, own my own apartment and had the status and fulfillment of doing a demanding job that added real value to society. you think i traded that for 11k a year and being treated like scum on your shoe out of a sense of entitlement and laziness? get real!!! try to think outside of the box of tabloid and political propaganda.

what really pisses me off on here these days is wives who don't even work themselves going on about 'their' taxes being spent on entitled scroungers. their wages. it really fucks me off. talk about living in cuckoo land.

Boffy,

The minimum wage is £6.08 for workers aged 21 and over. Where I live chilcare is over £5.00 an hour. That's not a lot to play with.

Great posts on the blog, btw.

my point being where do they think they will be if their husband runs off with another woman tomorrow? or drops dead of a heart attack? or gets diagnosed with an incapacitating illness and needs them to stay at home and care for them?

it's. so. short-sighted.

Actually am LMAO at Boffy's post as it is so far detached from my reality.

DS1 gets HR Dla care element, ds3 gets MR DLA and the other two ahve SEN.

I won't qualify for no conditionality as ds1's DLA expires in Devcember 2012 and despite no reeduction in care needs (I guess you could say that he is now 12 and still needs 1-1 is an increase over the same aged *) I would be astounded if we managed to get HR.

Can hardly have him as a latchkey kid though; for a start his SN transport wopuldn;t allow him in without a parent or carer here, neither would ds3's.

My first instint when I read the details today was I would be better off dead. Seriously: that is not for effect, I have an eleven year MN posting history to back my general sanity up. Homelessness is inevitable if I cannot find this elusive school hours only job, if DH's business can't expand as much as needed to. I fully expect this to be the last Christmas the boys get gifts, or we get to travel to my parents to visit (60 miles). We've just handed in otice for our only hobby as we can't afford petrol after June (it is a year round commitment, signing up for six months pointless) and we needed to sign up for a new team to continue- that means that I now have officially zero RL friends, nobody i will see socially excepting DH and Mum who are adults. A few eyars ago I went ten weeks without speaking face to face to another adult apart from DH.

I tried to set up a business- the landlord's insurance said no. So working from home not happening. God only knows what will happen to us, I am just thankful that I live in Wales and can at least get a free prescription for the ADs.

So can I clarify - trying to get my head round this, sorry - anyone who fails to get a 20 hour job (or couple who fail to get 55 hours) at NMW, or less hours if higher wage (is that bit right too?) will automatically be made to do unpaid work for that number of hours? Surely that can't be right - presumably the person working 35 hours a week in a couple in that scenario would still be a jobseeker - presumably they need some time to apply for jobs and go for interviews etc? What happens if they are ill and can't work?

Are these forced unpaid work placements time-limited eg 2 weeks or something? Do those involved then go back onto the dole after this period? Can extra money for child care costs incurred by having to do this unpaid work be claimed?

Surely if Tesco et al know they are going to be offered hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers for free, then the incentive is for them to reduce their numbers of paid workers and actualy make people unemployed, so they can then rehire them for free at the taxpayers expense?

Please tell me I've got the wrong end of the stick! My mind is boggling.

Also LMAo becuase there is this image that we had kids under Labour, high money etc

first two older than tax credit system, we WERE poor then, I had 2 jobs. That was fine. I got quite a buzz from it in fact and Dh worked nights.

Neither of us can work nights now- DH takes meds that mean he does not even wake for a smoke alarm let along 2 hourly checks on the boys, so I have to be here to do it. Is a shame as opposite us is an ASD unit and I'd have gone on their bank otherwise.

Bread- right although I think you have to meet hours AMD time rules to fulfill criteria. DH easily meets hour rules now but invests most ion growing his business, so not cash rules; he will be forced to from April which means we estimate it will add another 3 yeras to when he can employ someone to help.

Becuase obviously jobs are not needed in this economy and we can afford to stop growing businesses investing.

Is this supposed to kick in in April 2012 or 2013?

Bit of both.

From 2012 some regs kick in- eg minimum hours for TC claims gets upped. UC kicks in from April 2013 though.

boffy subscribes to the "get on your bike and find work" brigade

there are lots of them around

they have no place on this thread, that is for sure, so best ignored

this is one thread that should not be derailed

and when are we due an election?

bread you pretty much have it right regarding these "job experience placements" (with no hope of any job at all) and the fact that Tesco et al's shareholders and executives are getting richer and richer off free labour supplied by the tax payer

no wonder they are no longer taking on school leavers...why would they ?

i really need to understand if it's minimum amount regardless of hours or minimum amount AND you must do 20hrs even if you have a severe illness?

Santa I was told both: there's already an hour requirement that will simply rise (as the job amrket does- oh no wait- ARGH!) and the wage level is new on top.

the difference being that it will now apply to thousands of people too ill to work

ho hum.

And people like me who have disabled people to care for. I can foresee a choice now between placing ds1 in care as he is both non-visibly disabled and twelve.

Thing is people who voted Tory are IME liking this. They bite on the DM crap and the rest- my supposedly best mate the other night told me she is contacting her (Tory) MP to advocate a cessation of all employment rights for anyone paid by 'our taxes', and amssive extra cuts to such jobs.

At the same time she bitterly complains that the nurses were too busy to care properly for her father when he was dying.

Clealr some people would not suffer noticeably should they decide to tax logic and joined up thinking.

(I say supposedly becuase last month she called me becuase someone had told her that sutistic kids actually recover if you ASK them to. FFS!)

oh! single parents have to do 35hrs to qualify don't they - that's where the HUGE change is coming in. it's single parents again who are going to be hardest hit and put between impossible rocks and hard places.

they are more than doubling the amount of hours a single parent has to work to qualify for any help.

you can bet they'll be emphasising the 'average couple' constantly and ignoring the fact that over 25% of all households (don't know what percentage of households with children in) are lone parent households. and how come one of the married people are allowed to work less (acknowledging that they have children) but a lone parent is not??? married people are just more deserving? their children are real children and ours are not? even though there are two of them to manage childcare etc they will be required to work less per person than a lone parent?

it's so misogynistic. and it is misogyny because 90% of lone parents are women so we are basically talking about households without adult men in them. not having a male in your house means your household is penalised. wtaf?!

sorry x posted with you peachy!

i'd exchange the prefix 'supposedly' for 'ex' if i were you.

I think the boffys can be quite useful if your blood pressure survives them, as they point up the areas people with no current experience just don't understand.

MmeLindor's post of 07:23 is a good summary, I think.

It's clear that Boffy had:
? a council house (and before that, private housing at pre-boom prices)
? extensive low/no cost childcare from family and friends (no requirement for CRBs or Early Years quals, etc)
? only one child when she became single
? no major health/capacity issues for child
? mild health problems herself which clearly didn't limit either the type or hours of her work (but which she now uses to validate her comparison to people with more serious health problems)
? an area and time where there enough jobs available that she was able to find not one but two (and of course she was unlimited in her hours of choice because she had so much childcare and there was a much more laissez faire attitude to children being home alone or going home from school alone)

I completely respect her for doing a degree while doing all this. Very well done for that.

But if the list above constitutes being right on the edge of coping, with the aid of cutprice food and low heating, then the worsening of even one item in the list would be enough to push a family into not coping.

And a large number of people on this thread have multiple items worse.

"she is contacting her (Tory) MP to advocate a cessation of all employment rights for anyone paid by 'our taxes',"

Hope you pointed out that included said MP!

I read there was a concession for parents of young children? Ending at 12.

Interestingly a SW friend of mine says she will be following closely any parent allowing their 12 year old to come home alone as a latchkey child, whilst acknowledging that childare admitting over 12s is very rare.