Another one of those benefits threads

Harry_Powell

carolt wrote: »

And another one:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1282969/Housing-benefit-families-pocket-26-000-plus-excessive-claims-continue-rise.html

Note that:

"The study also shows that more than 750,000 families receive benefits and tax credits worth in excess of £20,000 a year.

In total, the Government will this year spend £200billion on social security and tax credits - the largest area of public spending.

This equates to more than 13 per cent of gross domestic product and is nearly double the amount spent a decade earlier.

The analysis also found that nearly 13 per cent of Britain's working age population are on out-of-work benefits and nearly two million children live in workless households - the highest of all industrialised nations."

Are we assume that you propose a cap for the receipt of family related benefits? Are we also to assume that the amount you set the cap to be will be higher a higher figure than YOU currently receive in family-related benefits yourself? In a similar way that you think some family-related benefits should be scrapped, AFTER you've finished receiving them?

In my opinion, the amount of family-related benefits YOU receive is too much, yet you say you're now dependant upon them and couldn't make ends meet. From what you've said on this forum, you're a teacher (with or without your own school, dependant on which 'story' you're living that week), have a husband working full time and have a House deposit running into tens of thousands of pounds, yet you still need me and other tax payers to subsidize your lifestyle. With all that income and all those savings, why should I subsidize you and your 3 kids? If you can't afford to pay for your own kids, then why did you have so many?

carolt

sjaypink wrote: »

erm, carol, you're a teacher :cool: ? step outside the world of education and term time, part time, 9:30-2:30 work is VERY hard to come by

erm, why do you think I'm a teacher?

Not by some blessed accident.

I was actually going to leave teaching around the time I had my eldest. I didn't, because I knew it would allow me to fit my work around my children.

There are loads of jobs in schools that fit around children, whether or not you have a degree.

There are other jobs I'd like to do and many that pay far better - I continue teaching at least in part in order to fit in with my kids.

I have had to make sacrifices to do that; other people should either make the same sacrifices or stop moaning.

sjaypink

carolt wrote: »

erm, why do you think I'm a teacher?

Not by some blessed accident.

I was actually going to leave teaching around the time I had my eldest. I didn't, because I knew it would allow me to fit my work around my children.

There are loads of jobs in schools that fit around children, whether or not you have a degree.

There are other jobs I'd like to do and many that pay far better - I continue teaching at least in part in order to fit in with my kids.

I have had to make sacrifices to do that; other people should either make the same sacrifices or stop moaning.

All the responses you have given to the 'well, I'm a home-owner, I could afford it, so should everyone else be able to' type posts....

....and yet your response to parents finding difficulty in juggling work hours and childcare is 'well, I have a child friendly contract, so everyone else should be able to obtain the same' ? Really?

wageslave

DD and I had a huge row last week, strangely enough it centred around child care or the lack thereof.

She spent large chunks of her early childhood with a childminder and has less than happy memories. She has tallied up every time I missed sportsday and can name every mother who managed to attend.

By the end of our conversation, I wished I had just sat on benefits.

I think working mothers are in a lose/lose situation. Damned by our children when we do and thrice damned by society when we don't

Shakethedisease

She spent large chunks of her early childhood with a childminder and has less than happy memories. She has tallied up every time I missed sportsday and can name every mother who managed to attend.

By the end of our conversation, I wished I had just sat on benefits.

I was the same on my midwifery training with 2 of them. All those rota's I got handed with Early/Early/Late/Late/Early Off/Off/ Night/Night/Night/Night/Night

Late to Earlies were terrible. Finish at 10pm and be back at 7am.. I had an hours travel home and to on public transport. Nights it goes without saying.

I missed a LOT. I started training when my youngest was 6 months old and my oldest just started school.. and I was always tired. However, I was lucky that gran stepped in for the majority of childcare. No WAY I could've paid for childcare. And even less so for 2 on lates ( 2 - 10pm ) night-shifts ( is it even possible ? )... Most aren't so lucky.

I often wonder now about those kinds of shifts and how people cope as single parents being offered 'work' with those sort of time frames. The threat of 'those that can work when any job is offerred will do them or benefits will be cut'.. scares me. The childcare just isn't there for most. Simple as.

Fang_3

SingleSue wrote: »

Actually, it is not that simple.

Some people are not working (in the official sense) and claiming benefits, as they are carers to someone who is disabled.

And how would you define 'faux disease'? How would you seperate those who are claiming genuinely for an illness or disability and those who are not as bad as they make out?

Very simply - they would be assessed on what they can do, rather than what they can't. They would be required to turn up at 9am and stay for the day, repeatedly for weeks on end and be assessed. It would soon become clear who is and isn't capable. Benefits should be extremely difficult to get and if you want them you should earn them.

Fang_3

sjaypink wrote: »

All the responses you have given to the 'well, I'm a home-owner, I could afford it, so should everyone else be able to' type posts....

....and yet your response to parents finding difficulty in juggling work hours and childcare is 'well, I have a child friendly contract, so everyone else should be able to obtain the same' ? Really?

As she has said, sacrifices have to be made. Make them or stop moaning. Simples.

SingleSue

Fang wrote: »

Very simply - they would be assessed on what they can do, rather than what they can't. They would be required to turn up at 9am and stay for the day, repeatedly for weeks on end and be assessed. It would soon become clear who is and isn't capable. Benefits should be extremely difficult to get and if you want them you should earn them.

And the carers?

Fang_3

SingleSue wrote: »

And the carers?

Would not be claiming JSA because they are not seeking a job.

carolt

Shakethedisease wrote: »

I was the same on my midwifery training with 2 of them. All those rota's I got handed with Early/Early/Late/Late/Early Off/Off/ Night/Night/Night/Night/Night

Late to Earlies were terrible. Finish at 10pm and be back at 7am.. I had an hours travel home and to on public transport. Nights it goes without saying.

I missed a LOT. I started training when my youngest was 6 months old and my oldest just started school.. and I was always tired. However, I was lucky that gran stepped in for the majority of childcare. No WAY I could've paid for childcare. And even less so for 2 on lates ( 2 - 10pm ) night-shifts ( is it even possible ? )... Most aren't so lucky.

I often wonder now about those kinds of shifts and how people cope as single parents being offered 'work' with those sort of time frames. The threat of 'those that can work when any job is offerred will do them or benefits will be cut'.. scares me. The childcare just isn't there for most. Simple as.

I totally agree; it isn't easy - but I objected to sjay's point that I was in some favoured position because I happened to be a teacher.

There's no happened to be about it.

Before I'd had my DD, I'd moved up to management level, and my future pay and level of work would have been much higher had I continued down that road; but I couldn't as it is virtually impossible to be a part-time manager.

So I returned to classrooom teacher, at lower pay and status, so I could fit in with my childcare responsibilities.

And your situation, Shakethedisease, of having to rely on family to help, is very common - you were fortunate in that you had that as an option - many don't ( we did only until my eldest was 2 - until my mum did her hip in... after that we had to pay for childcare).

I think sjay's post ignores the reality of the choices that all women - teachers included - have to make to fit around their children.

I'd like to see a situation where all mothers - single parents or in couples - received sufficient income from the state towards either childcare costs if they wish to return to work OR the same amount to stay with their own children if they don't, up to the age of 2. Followed by part-time childcare from 2-3, as well as the part-time childcare they currently get from 3.

I don't think it's easy for single parents to find work to fit in with school hours, no, not at all. But parents in couples have to do it, or starve, so it can be done.

And in the longer term, if those single parents are out of the labour market entirely for a decade, say, whilst they bring up 2 kids and are paid to do it, it's not going to really be doing them a long-term favour; even competing against other mums in couples, who've been working part-time for most of that decade, they're clearly not going to get the jobs, as all their experience will be a decade out of date. So by allowing a single mum the luxury of staying at home with her kids for a decade, in reality, you're condemning her probably to a lifetime of no/low pay once they're older - so not really doing her a favour, longer term.

Plus the knock-on effect of all those kids growing up in households where no-one works is that you have loads of kids growing up with no (work-related) role models, no idea of how to get a job, no career expectations, no connections (shouldn't matter but it does..), etc.

So it just builds problems for the next generation too.

I don't see allowing single mothers (uniquly) to stay at home till their youngest is 7 really benefits anyone, TBH - the single parents, their kids and certainly not the taxpayer.