Government cuts affecting women disproportionately.

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

Heard in a R4 doc that £5billion of the £7billion raised by the emergency budget has come out of women's pockets.

Also got sent a link to this event, which sounds interesting: Women At The Cutting Edge

So what do you think? Are they targetting women on purpose? Or is it just a by-product of the traditional Tory Appeal-to-the-Rich-and-Wannabe-Rich mentality. I.e. because women are lower paid and more of us live in poverty, why should they listen to us?

They are cutting benefits across the board. I doubt any group will receive special treatment other than the disabled/SN.

If women are being affected more, then surely the question should be why are so many women claiming benefits?

The only hard rule in what they are doing is that the benefits system should continue to function as the saftey net it was originally intended to be. Right now its just a bloated engine of government that Labour increasingly used to reward its core vote. Thus its credibility as a system is gone and it needs massive overhaul.

Child benefit is for the child, who when I last checked is normally part of a family. Yes there are exceptions, but not enough to view CB as a female specific benefit.

IMO there's so much rubbish in your post ccpccp, but I'll pick just one bit. Many women are being made poorer by the cuts not because they are benefit "scroungers" or "breeding their way up the housing ladder" (vile phrase), but because they make up the majority of public sector workers. This does not equal queueing up for handouts, it means going to work bloody hard day after day as nurses, doctors, teachers, cleaners, cooks etc etc etc.

TBH reading your posts make me more sure than ever that underlying a lot of Tory policy is a quiet hatred of women - the breeders, sick-people-looker-afterers, child-educators that we are. Doesn't it make you sick? All these selfish ladies depending on government handouts just because they go to work every day and answer the phone to old people needing help with their pensions. Selfish.

And I repeat "we" did not spend too much in the boom years. The government might have, but we didn't get to decide what they spent it on then, any more than we do now.

Personally my deficit reduction plan would be:

Abolish the royal family, give them a grant to move abroad and let out the royal palaces as affordable housing.

Sell off crown jewels, they're rubbish anyway

Pull troops out of everywhere apart from UN peacekeeping missions.

Cut winter fuel allowance to older people receiving over £15000pa in pensions or earnings.

Forget this marriage ridiculousness

Stop f-ing about with the education system and sack everyone who keeps jiggling with it, it'll make you go blind.

Raise the minimum wage

Force companies to publish their pay gap details, and fine them if they don't move to improve it year on year. Nice source of income there.

Cut foreign aid budget to countries that treat women like animals

Close tax loopholes - that's a big one.

That'll do for starters.

'If women are being affected more, then surely the question should be why are so many women claiming benefits? '

No, it should be 'Why aren't men doing their fair share of caring?'

All sensible ideas ElephantsAndMiasmas.

Though you seem to be struggling with the idea that the benefit cuts are NOT targetted at women.

Hatred? Only in your mind I'm afraid.

Did you read the recent public sector report? The one done by the highly regarded Labour MP? It was pretty damning of the waste and excess that has built up.

BTW - you can do all those suggestions, and barely touch the deficit.

(last time I checked, the Royals were net contributors to the country when tourism take was taken into account)

To be pedantic sethstarkaddersmum, that would likely be one of the answers to the question.

Why are so many women claiming benefits?

Because men arent doing their fair share of caring.

Plus, no doubt, there are many further reasons why.

yes but it is so bloody obvious that it is the answer that I wouldn't insult anyone's intelligence by pointing out that extra stage of reasoning. Even yours.

Actually ccpccp I am sure I read the tax loophole thing would significantly dent the deficit

Although as I read a left wiong apper I think your hands might buirn if you touched it .

Seriously though, there is a lot to be saved there if done properly; likewise banking etc can be held to account for a contribution. It should be proportionate to all; so emaning that someone who has £15 a weekd after food etc should not have to forsake a higher % income than soemone with £150.

Or £15,000; they do exist.

VAT is the worst overall solution for penalising people disproportionately, and they chose to go with that.

Oh really? well then we'll keep one of them - the queen - in one of her houses - buck house maybe. Let out of the rest of the building and all the other palaces etc. Or maybe just hire a succession of actresses who look like the queen to go around the country waving? Pay them by the day. Much cheaper.

I'm not struggling with the idea thank you. I started this thread to ask about it (you can spot that question in the OP "Are they targetting women deliberately?"). The fact is, the things they are targetting are hitting women harder - there's no question about it. So as more people slide into poverty, more of them are going to be women. Benefits are supposed to be a safety net, yes, but women are slipping through it already and far more will under this government, it's obvious. And when women fall below the poverty line, they take their children with them - it's just what happens.

Nothing changes does it? I was reading a while ago about the myth of "the merry beggar" in the 17th/18th centuries. There was a stereotype of a beggar whistling a merry tune, faking an injury perhaps, being a jolly figure in the neighbourhood. So when they started to build poorhouses, they divided the buildings with at least half for men, because that's who "beggars" were, in the common conception. Imagine their surprise when they were flooded with poor women and their children who were starving - there was nowhere to put them. The men's side of the building stayed half empty. The women's side was stuffed to the gills. A later survey of "paupers" revealed that 75-80% were women with children.

The face of this recession will be single mothers with at least a couple of kids. the Tories never even pretended to like them, or regard them as anything other that social and economic pariahs, and that explains their (at best) cold indifference as to who exactly is paying the bill.

I read many papers SanctiMoanyArse, and recognise bias in all of them. No burns on me

The problem with the whole tax avoidance/evasion thing is that Labour and HMRC spent 13 years at war against it. It was GBs particular pet hate and he brought in much (draconian) legislation to catch people. The result is always that the extra tax take is less than the cost of implementing the new systems. (see IR35)

Tax avoidance is a tough nut to crack as there is a whole industry facilitating it, with other countries acting as willing accomplaces. The Tories would do no better than Labour did, even if they had the political will to do it (which they dont really - its a LD policy).

The banks should be made to pay a lot more than they are, but of course they hold the purse strings. Any attack on them is only ever going to be for show.

The main problem we have is we are spending too much. The taxes, TBH, are already high enough to make us uncompetitive worldwide. Condems are focussing on the economy at the cost of short term pain for the population. They have a few years to get it done before the popularity contest starts up again.

It isn't short term pain for the population though is it ccpccp? It's short term (allegedly) pain for certain portions of the population. Was there anyone who didn't choke on their coffee/vomit sadly into the bin at DC's "we're all in this together. NO we aren't.

That's the whole point of this thread.

If you are e.g. George Osborne and absolutely loaded to the rafters, you are not going to suffer from the cuts.

It's as if a load of blokes in expensive suits went out for a big meal, loads of champagne, steak, private string ensemble to play for them, cabaret afterwards at an exclusive club - then presented the split the bill and presented it to their cleaning ladies to pay.

couple of spare words and a missing ", my apologies.

that's v interesting abt poorhouses Elephants.

Thats an interesting tale ElephantsAndMiasmas. Not heard it before and its quite enlightening.

I'm not going to argue that the Tories prefer marriage to single parent. They've never made that a secret, and in fact the £150 marriage allowance or whatever is a clear war cry. A lot of people see marriage as a more socially cohesive influence I guess, warts and all.

Personally - I'm not bothered either way. I think their support of single parents was one of the good things Labour achieved. However I do think there should be a disincentive for, erm, procreation for property. (I think thats how they termed it in the Guardian)

phrased it

But if you agree to house all the children in the country, because kids shouldn't be on the streets, a side-effect is that some people could use their capacity for childbearing to get a house. I don't know how many (if any) people actually do this. Are there figures available?

Got another part of my plan:

scrap all second home allowances for MPs. Let them all stay in the royal palaces or build a special holiday inn or similar, deducting a flat rate from their wages.

Use the money to fund truly effective sex & relationship education programme for ALL children no exceptions (shut up church), and offer contraceptive implant/pill to all at age 13.

elephantsand miasmas your suggestions won't even scratch the surface of the deficit and some of them would actually increase the deficit. The deficit needs to be cut and unfortunately it is not going to be a good time for the vast majority of people (myself included). The Government cannot risk the countrys credit rating or carry on spending around £40 billion on debt interest a year.

Elephants - what a brilliant analogy
"It's as if a load of blokes in expensive suits went out for a big meal, loads of champagne, steak, private string ensemble to play for them, cabaret afterwards at an exclusive club - then presented the split the bill and presented it to their cleaning ladies to pay"

Hudd - you're telling me the military bill and the tax evasion bill amounts to nothing? Frankly I don't believe you, unless armaments makers and soldiers now form part of the voluntary sector?

And funnily enough I'm not running for chancellor of the exchequer (and thanks, I know you don't "run" for it, before anyone else tells me I have trouble with concepts). That was just a list of a few things that would save a lot of cash without impacting women unfairly.

Have you heard anything about targetting old people? Old people are a drain on the state - why do they have to get so old? We shouldn't be allowing them "survive their way into cushy hospital beds" - it's their choice not to top themselves at sixty so they should make sure they have the money to pay for their excess of longevity.

What about rich people? They are the banking classes (all the bankers I know come from equally well-off parents who maiinly work in the same industry), they are still receiving bonuses, they are not contributing anything back to the state, it is outrageous. But heavy forfend all these "talented" people are frightened away from our shoes by nasty tax collectors! What will we do without them? Will I have to start setting fire to my own tenners, without them to do it for me?

Elephants stamping down on tax aviodance and evasion is something that all politicians promise but in reality its nearly impossible to do and the costs of doing it often outweigh any extra revenue gained.

Withdrawing from Afghanistan would save £2.5 billion (est) but this would cause us diplomatic problems with other NATO nations.

I very much doubt that pensioners will not see some of their benefits reduced or scrapped in the spending review as the DWP is looking to make around 25% cuts and this would be very difficult to do if pensionersd were exluded.

Bankers already have a large tax on their bonuses and the top rate of income tax is at 50% so the Government has already targetted them as they have imposed a banking levy also.

Interesting. But it seems to me that politicians in power have a tendency to wet their pants with fear/excitement in the presence of businessmen, and bow to their (crap) logic that we can't allow all this talent to leave the country. As if businesses based in England are here currently to do us all a favour, when they would be better off elsewhere.

They are right though we do need busineeses to create wealth and jobs in the country and we do have to be wary of driving talent away from the country.

we can somehow afford to waste talent by not educating 10000s of kids properly but not to waste the talent of businessmen

oh, and we can afford the talent that is wasted by women leaving the workplace to do unpaid caring work and then not being able to find work that uses their skills at an appropriate level when they return to the workplace.

I will happily retrain as a stockbroker in a few years. I am quite good at maths, investing etc. Do you think any employer will have me? I very much doubt it.

How interesting that businessmen must not leave the country as they are so valuable, yet they happily "outsource" GOd knows how many jobs to India. thus increasing the number of unemployed here, who cannot get similar jobs, cos they are all outsourced...so it's ok for businesses to get rid of the workers, but we must keep the actual businessmen.

Why?

Making the country into a good place to be a rich selfish git, on the grounds that the rich selfish gits would go off to another country if we upset them, is not a compassionate or likeable society.

:o Miggsie. Exactly.

I agree that the education system in this country is not good enough but I don't see what that has to with businessmen.

Taking a career break does unfortunately lower your chances in the labour market and so women who do this do find it difficult when returning to work. I know this from personal experience but markets are the most efficient way at allocating resources.

miggsie of course businessmen and their businesses are valuable as they generate wealth and employment large amounts of tax revenue to help fund public services.

Jobs are outsourced abroad because those countries have a comaparitive advantage when it comes to production of the good or service being sold. To keep producing something somewhere else when other places have a comparitive advantage would lead to you being undercut and nationally the inefficient use of resources.