To think some posters need a "reality check" re. views on benefit changes

[lesley33]

I have some concerns about some of the proposed changes to benefits and how these may adversely affect people. So this is NOT a thread about that. But I am getting increasingly fed up at some of the frankly ridiculous reasons some posters are giving against the proposed changes. Examples include:

1. That children 12 and over will be traumatised if both parents work - even if second parent only works 20 hours a week.

1. That a parent with children 12 and over shouldn't have to commute up to 90 minutes each way to work. Far from ideal I know and if someone is on low wages this might not be affordable. But perfectly doable.

1. That childcare is impossible to get for teenagers. Ignoring the fact that many parents, myself included use a combination of kids home alone and afterschool activities.

AIBU to think some people need a reality check? Plenty of people with children already work, many with both parents working full time by the time their kids are teenagers. Plenty of people have long commutes, struggle with childcare, etc. Things might not be "ideal", but these are things that many many working parents already do.

Oh but there is massive fear, and it is expressed not as 'concern' which is rational but as anger, which is not -- you yourself characterised it as anger; Heitmeyer (link above) is absolutely right in his conclusions, imo.

On the whole, and not just here on MN, people, both working and welfare recipients, in single parent and two parent homes, have thought long and hard about what factors go into making a job worthwhile, what constitutes 'worthwhile' and what is a reasonable sacrifice in terms of children's welfare and family life in order to enable a parent, or both parents, to work.

Some musings:
Should families who are doing well on two incomes be told that one parent should stay at home because someone else who has no income should have the 'extra' job that is nice but not exactly necessary for that family's financial security?
Should families who can afford it be automatically required to pay for certain health services or pay towards their children's education? Yes, there is a lot of self selection at the moment, but basically the level to which better-off families or individuals avail of certain government services is up to the families or individuals to decide.
Should adults who have received free state-funded education or other services be required to remain employed until the state has been refunded the cost of education in taxes? How fair is it that sahms can drop out of the workforce after receiving so much from the state including perhaps the delivery of their children in NHS hospitals?

OhDoAdmitMrsDeVere - DPs brother is in his comfort zone on benefits & you cannot have a rational conversation with him about why he doesnt work.

its.. i will get a job, just not now. i dont feal ready. i have a cold. my leg hurts. i dont think he is stupid but he says he's 'lazy' - 'why work for a bit of extra money?' he would rather sit & drink beer with his friends.

i think the benefits system has made him like this. he is ruining his life but he doesnt see it & does not want to change. its a type of instiutionalisation.

yes it is a very different case than other posters' but i am not speculating about some woman down the road buying a pony. so i do want his money reduced or other pressure. he is way too comfortable & if things dont change he will have wasted his working life. Said to DP i would offer his DB a job, but DP said not, he doesnt want it & you cannot help him.

i dont think i am better than him. the main thing i think whenever he crosses my mind is that his life is passing, with no change, its so unnecessary: his family are powerless to help, other than reporting his dodgy activities, which is something they are trying to avoid but might yet happen.

math I don't know when you spent any real meaningful time talking to ordinary working class voters.

These are proud hard working people from communities who have been through too much to be frightened easily. No. They are pissed off. And no amount of articles in the Guardian is going to change that.

Not too long ago I had a conversation with Yvette Cooper and she had to admit that the people in her constituency were no push over. And that much of they wanted and didn;t want had very little in common with what was put forward by the party at the last election.

As for Tower Hamlets, I worked on the Roman Road for quite a few years and it is not only one stop on the tube to lots of boroughs with employment opportunities, it is walkable. It's a fucker to park there so I never did. Walking it turned out, had not been outlawed.
The problems in TH are huge and complex tho.

I applaud your noble stance callme
Wish I knew what you are on about though.

Mrsdevere's comments are not one bit snide. What she says is unpalatable and it is true.

It is almost impossible to find childcare for a job with hours that can change from week to week. You need a granny in the wings (i.e. unpaid voluntary childcare labour) to make such a schedule worthwhile. The basic fact of life that seems so difficult for so many here to understand is that it often takes two people working together, and one without any direct income arising from the work, to enable one person to be gainfully employed.

The second basic fact of life that goes unacknowledged here is that the sort of jobs that are available to those who have little work experience or education (a lot of welfare recipients) require commitment to work whatever hours are asked, and that involves far more dealing with the general crappiness of life than I would imagine many here have ever experienced or would ever want to.

Tilly he needs to get out and work.

But saying the benefits system has made him like this is surely absolving him of any responsiblity for his situation?

He has made the choice. There have always been lazy feckers. Even before the welfare state. They just had less money.

If someone is determined not to work, they wont. They will find a way.

Those people will always find a way but the reforms are not only going to touch the hardcore are they? They will not descriminate.

I work, my OH works. We have worked through disability, single parenthood, pregnancy, bereavement, illness, one wage going only on childcare, crap jobs that made you cry every night, even war...

I am no fan of scroungers and fakers. I just do not buy into the notion that our society is crumbling due to a lazy, feckless underclass.

It is a red herring.

Where is the evidence that children with parents who dont work won't do well in school? I was a sahm until DD went into nursery after her 3rd birthday. When she started the nursery were very impressed by her concentration levels, speech, numerals, recognition of letters & her ability to pick things up quickly & her imagination. Now she's in full time Ed she's writing sentences, doing sums and her teachers have said she's very easy to teach. Now you tell me that by being at home not working was bad for her! I've been jobless since she started primary school and she has continued to bloom amazingly with her learning.

Oh come on- I'm crediting you with a bit of intelligence mrsdevere. I am 'on about' your post, where you stated that there are plenty of people on MN who spend there time not doing things they don't want to do, but they're not the

Not the ones on benefits. Thereby implying all those not receiving benefits do what they like all day! Hahahahahaha

Thank you for crediting me with intelligence callme

Its very kind of you.

Em all the research shows that DC from workless households do less well in education and are far more likley to be workless themselves.

That's not to say that that is what will happen to your DD. But statistically it is more likely.

But having read the rest of your post I can see you are even more wronger than I first imagined.

You have entirely misinterpreted my post.

RE: affordability of public transport. In my city we have two different bus companys. Depending on where the job is , you could need two monthly bus passes. That on top of other costs could make you worse of. A 90 min commute rule with no consideration of local affordability is unfair IMO

math - it depends on the town and people should definitely ask. We have a few children in our setting who do erratic hours and have always taken them. All the past settings I have worked at have done this to. You have to do this in towns where there are lots of shop, waitressing jobs etc.

worse off.

That could be for a lot of reasons though couldnt it?
One being that children whose parents dont work grow up without a work ethic.

Another being that workless households are probably more likely to be situated in areas of high unemployment.

Like many working people who doesn't receive, and never has received, a penny in benefits other than child benefit, I am absolutely in favour of a welfare state to Protect those who genuinely need it. But many of the people who post on MN sadly do themselves no favours with their desperate 'justifications' for not being able to work, or their 'need' to not have benefits capped

Frankly, I suspect that the people we should be really concerned about are the ones not posting here- because they can't afford Internet access, pcs, or even the time to post during working hours!

The working people are angry and no doubt. But the anger comes from fear.

If the government was making it easier for adults to retrain, to take up education where it was left off, to allow pregnant teens to continue their education, with support from social workers/counsellors as necessary, in their local school with a nursery for the babies on site (this last was the case in the comfortable middle class area in the US where the oldest DCs went to high school) then I think there would be less fear and less anger, because people wouldn't be engaging in so much DM-fueled whack-a-mole type 'logic' -- "if I have something you can't have it (status driven perception); if you have something then I can't have it" (again status driven perception). Above all, if the government was looking at ways to redirect British capital back into Britain and out of China, there would be more faith in the future (anger comes from the death of belief in good things to come too; or fear of the future in other words) and less likelihood of the sort of casual scapegoating that happens.

OhDoAdmitMrsDeVere no i dont think it is 'crumbling due to a lazy, feckless underclass' thats just the scapegoat.

but i do want change - but NOT the same changes as are actually happening. you are quite right about DPs bros responsibilites - i have zero idea how to act on that though.

Mind you, I have learnt loads from MNers i disagree with.

Perhaps I should point out here that both me and OH work and have done since we were 16.

We are now in our mid 40s.

Just incase you were being a bit snidey.

(When the amount of cash in circulation gets cut through welfare and benefits cuts there will be huge losses in the waitressing, personal care and shop sectors, Molly. Ironically, the number of people offering reasonable rates for childcare will go up.)

Math - I work at a setting where no one affords to pay fees without tcs, including none of the staff. We have lots of teen parents both as staff and as people whose children who come to the nursery. They get care to learn so get their childcare funded and all are at college. They also have the intervention of social workers, 10 hour pilot scheme to look after the 2 year olds if they cant cope/are struggling, free maths and english classes with free creches etc.

I think a lot is provided by the government to be fair and this is what is still be provided after it has been put out to tender and after our local cuts.

Also a lot of schools nowadays have creches where they look after your kids whilst you do your gcses. (well they do here anyway)

We will have cheaper childcare math. A lot of people have to pay now if they want their 2 year old to come, after september 2013 it will be free for a lot. Our LA have to expand so much to cater for them and we have got to expand our setting like loads of settings in the area to cater for all the new free places.

THe trouble with these cuts is that the public has been fed the idea that they are aimed at tackling the feckless.

But they will actually affect a lot more, because people on all types benefits are lumped together in one mass.

And bearing in mind that 75% of the country rely on tax credits to a greater or lesser degree, and that 7 out of 8 recipients of HB are either already working or retired, not on jobless benefits. Apparently, about 40% of people in London are in receipt of HB!

There are a lot of hardworking tax payers who are going to be hit by this, but they are under the mistaken impression - deliberately encouraged by the government and the media - that it is only the so-called underclass who are being targeted. I think if the general public really realised how much this would affect the disabled and people like themselves in work there would actually be a sea change in opinion.

Oh and there seems to be confusion about working and children's outcomes.

The single most (overwhelmingly) important influence affecting a child's outcome and educational performance is the parent(s) income.

The second is the level of education of the primary carer, and indeed this can completely negate the negative effect of low income.

Working or not working by itself does NOT make a difference, though there is definite evidence that children - particularly teens - left unattended for long hours are at a higher risk of getting in trouble. If having a non-working parent was detrimental, how come the upper classes do not work and many of the MC aspire to it? These are the most successful in our society. The answer is money.

There is a strong link between poor outcomes for children who come from families where no one has ever had a job, which is what I think some posters are referring to, but it is nowhere near as simple as saying it's because it sets a poor example. It is because these households are usually poorly educated and with very low incomes (see above).

If we really want to break the cycle of three-generation families unemployed, we should be positively throwing money at improving schools, launching maternity and pre-school services etc in these deprived areas. But these were among the first things cut by the government. Unfortunately, not trying to deal with the causes rather the symptoms is going to cost us all a lot more in the long run, including possible social unrest I think.