What will it take for the Government to enact welfare reform?

[Schlossadler]

What has to break, before the Government is finally willing to enact welfare reform?

Of course it is. The vast majority of people don’t pay their way. Just want to ever increasingly “tax the rich” whilst kids run feral.

Look at Middlesbrough recently. I bet none of those “good lads” contributed anything to society. Some morals instilled during their childhood years might have corrected that.

When did Britain break?

We do. The cost of parents doing otherwise is so high.

Easy to say that, but how exactly. The courts won't solve that trust me. As for prison that would cause even more issues.

The vast majority of British people work and play by the rules. We are all paying and working and bringing up our families as best we can.

The biggest expense is pensions, we can't stop paying people who can't earn. That's just a stupid idea flaunted by people who don't have a clue.

We can certainly help people into work who should be in work but there's a need for jobs and growth.

In America where's there little welfare, they have worse problems. Fall I'll and you are not only skint you can't afford the medication...

Teaching kids the right values is easy. It starts with parents having the right value.

for any that don’t, I’d give them a chance to buck their ideas up and if they don’t, keep them locked up where they can’t have any / any more kids. After a generation or two, the issue will have died off.

🤣 You are jumping the shark now.

Interesting because most children do have great values, far better than their role models who take financial bungs, lie and zero morals....Farage who keeps telling us society is broken. Trump hardly a beacon of light.

I'm afraid if the successful and powerful don't practice what they preach how do we expect young people to behave.

A broken clock is right twice a day.

I am not sure Sir Jim Ratcliffe should be held up as any type of political or economic visionary.

Covid

I feel like he has better knowledge of both than most people on this thread. He wouldn't have done so well otherwise without understanding the country and the world.

And Brexit. Plus Austerity.

"Austerity" had to happen due to Labour's mad spending. We had a record breaking deficit, the Conservatives didnt want to pile on more borrowing costs to future generations to pay for jam today and there was a threat of fiscal crisis. Presumably (unless a fiscal crisis happens this time) we will have to have the same austerity down the line again. Because Labour can't live within the means of the UK.

Speak for yourself! I have just come back from brunch with old friends…. Cafes were packed and thriving! Sun is shining, off to watch my daughter’s hockey match (at her school that she loves!) and I got my scan results on the superb NHS app yesterday - confirming I have nothing to worry about (they’d identified a thickening in the lung from a previous scan)

It didn't work.

No because the pendulum swings and we always end up with the maniacs in government going nuts with the nation's purse. Although this time unfortunately world events combined with Labour policies (and Boris's Conservative immigration policies) have meant that no one will be able to turn this old tanker around this time I don't think.

Labour can’t borrow more, will probably try to tax more but it too will impact something like jobs negatively so that leaves spending.

On Sir Jim Ratcliffe - he’s one man with one opinion. There are plenty of people as well off and successful as him, who presumably understand the world and the country just as much as he does, who take a different view, as the existence of this movement demonstrates: https://patrioticmillionaires.uk/

Its also worth bearing in mind that - stretching back to 2021 - Sir Jim Ratcliffe has appeared near the top of the Times Rich List but been conspicuously absent from the Times Tax List…

Yep.

Labour have already started the ‘difficult decisions’ line. There’s spending more or not, it doesn’t matter what label it’s given re austerity.

If austerity was such a great success why are we in such dire straits? Why, for example, do we have a COL crisis that began under the Tories?

Even Hammond more or less admitted that with hindsight austerity was a mistake.

I was replying to a PP who said I am not sure Sir Jim Ratcliffe should be held up as any type of political or economic visionary.

Whats your point? Because other successful people have different views to him that means he must be wrong? Or his views should not be taken seriously?

Plurality of views of successful people is a good thing. And if you are a master of your field (which he most certainly is) and vital to the health of the UK economy he should be listened to.

I think the scariest part is the cuts we have to make are huge.

We have to cut enough so we aren't spending more than income each month and thus adding to the debt.

On top of that we have to cut further to start repaying the debt.

On top of that we have to factor in the fact that as our bonds fall due for repayment or refinancing the interest rate has gone up alot. So even with no extra borrowing our interest cost will be higher.

I honestly don't think people realise the scale of it.

The only other way out of course would be to dramatically increase income via growth and taxes. Some growth should be achievable but I don't think we are going to be able to purely grow our economy out of this mess.

There is only one solution and that is to make things 'acceptable' that we, society currently think is unacceptable. I mean sure we should grow our economy as well and pay our debt down as well. In the meantime the first job has to be to make spending less than income. No more borrowing except for investment for capital expenditure only that will back itself back.

So what do I mean by unacceptable cuts. We accept parents pay for their own kids and if they can't, they can go to the workhouse. Failing that we have to get used to kids on the streets hungry and homeless like days of old.
Same benefit claimants - pay for yourself, go to the workhouse or be on the streets.
Obviously not an ideal situation but years ago it was quite normal for children to be barefoot and ragged and starving living on bits of charity here and there.
Now apply this to every area.
If you need a doctor you pay for one. If you can't you don't get one.
If you need a house you buy or rent one and if you can't then you go to the workhouse.
You save for a pension and if you can't you go to the workhouse where you will likely die quickly.
Okay you get the drift.

We repay our debt, rebuild our country.
The price of this is some people will die. It's the way it was before the welfare state which was not that long ago.

We need to accept that no money means no service. Full stop.

As a byproduct immigration will drop like a stone after all there is no freebies to come for.

Law and order will probably suffer in the short term so we will likely need tougher laws and sentences. Execution for murderers. Severe sentences for minor crimes so they stop happening.

So for anyone that is about to protest in 'horror' give me a practical alternative.

None of the 'it's inhumane' or 'it's our job as society to care for the young and old'

That may well be your viewpoint but it does not balance our books.

Practical solutions to balance our books, reduce our debt, regain financial viability and rebuild the country.
So for anyone that is about to cry 'we can't do that because........' I want you to give me a real, practical solution to fix our spending/debt problem.

I think there will have to be a phasing situation though.
So state pension for example. Frozen in value.
People in sixties get 80%, people in fifties get 60%, people in their forties get 40%, people in their thirties get 20% and people in their twenties get nout cos they have time to save still. Then as people die off the state pension no longer exists.

Remember when / if we manage to return the country to profitablity we can start paying things again if we choose to (once we can afford them).

I suppose I am saying we need to return to a pre welfare, pre NHS type of country until we 'fix' the issue.

It is absolutely wild that - within the same thread - people are simultaneously arguing that the choices the Conservatives made over their 14yrs in government were all the fault of the previous Labour government, but at the same time that after only 2yrs in government, Labour shouldn’t be saying they are dealing with the fallout of the last Conservative government.

Austerity was a disaster. The cuts of that era were short-termist and badly thought through and have had unforeseen consequences that we are feeling the effects of both socially and economically now. Even Michael Gove has said cutting sure start was wrong - and contributed to some of the crisis for young people today.

It is really, really important that in getting the welfare bill down the same kind of mistakes aren’t made again.

Although even having said all that, I still don’t think Britain is broken. That isn’t my experience of my country or my community at all.

Broke with financial crisis in 2008 then Covid then rapid increase in energy prices due to Ukraine attack. The former was privatised gains but publicly funded bail out which pisses me off (and I worked in finance at the time). If it ever proved was that Covid was from a lab leak, could countries sue I wonder?