Now then...lower benefits for the Northerners ??

grizzly1911

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

The trouble is that increasing minimum wage is just likely to increase unemployment and drive more being paid out in benefits.

The only solution is that people have to accept their lot. Only where basic necessities of food, shelter, and warmth are at risk should welfare be paid, and only for long periods to people who are prevented from working by genuine physical or mental incapacity.


That is no way to run a sane economy and society in a country that is to remain competitive in the tough modern world, but it's where we are. The coalition's ability to change it substantially is very limited because the LibDems essentially believe in it.

It is easy to say that people should accept their lot and workf or less from a position of comfort.

The coalitions ability to change is all down to them. If they wanted to bull doze the libdems they would. Whther they would get the desired result is another matter. The libdems are a convenient chocolate fireguard.




Analysis by researchers, led by the University of Kent's social policy team, said polls and focus groups had revealed a quarter of claimants had "delayed or avoided asking for" vital welfare payments because of "misleading news coverage driven by [government] policy".
This "climate of fear" means 1.8 million people have potentially been too scared to seek help they are entitled to from the state. Such is the scale of successive governments' disinformation that the report calls for ministers to abandon briefing journalists ahead of their speeches and asks Whitehall departments to seek corrections "for predictable and repeated media misinterpretations".
The researchers tested the accuracy of recent government statements and found them lacking. The report highlights that ministers – including the chancellor, George Osborne – had claimed there were families taking £100,000 a year in housing benefit. In fact there were only five such families in the UK.
Last year ministers appeared to brief that 1,360 people had been off work for a decade with diarrhoea, when in fact they had severe bowel diseases and cancer.
The report, entitled Benefits Stigma in Britain and commissioned by Turn2us, part of the anti-poverty charity Elizabeth Finn, examined more than 6,000 articles on social security between 1995 and 2011 from the major newspapers – the Times, the Mirror, the Guardian, the Independent, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Sun and the Daily Express.
Benefit fraud remains a popular topic for papers: 30% of all articles dwell on the issue even though, the report points out, rates of fraud do not rise beyond 3%.
The study shows that disproportionate coverage of fraud is linked to higher levels of stigma, with the readers of "stigmatising newspapers", such as the Sun, believing there were "higher levels of deception within the welfare system".
Not all newspapers were the same. The authors admitted there was "enormous variation" between titles, with the share of articles using negative language – terms that connote dishonesty, lack of effort or dependency – ranging from 78% in the Sun to 36% in the Guardian.
However, the authors said the country was "seeing a surge in negative stories compared to the previous 10 years", noting that the amount of coverage is now comparable to 1998 when Labour arrived with a big "welfare reform" agenda.
The big change in coverage in recent years, says the report, is to focus on "scroungers" as opposed to "cheats". It says this shift began in 2008, when "scrounging" replaced fraud as the main welfare issue covered in the press – at a time when the then Labour government was developing tests for incapacity benefit recipients and the Conservatives were pushing the idea of "broken Britain".
The report says three newspapers – the Sun, Mail and Express – show an "exceptional focus" on claimants' apparent "lack of effort".
"The papers in question are often accused of promoting a 'scrounger rhetoric' with regard to claimants. That accusation seems to be well-founded."
Another theme that has emerged in recent years is the idea that benefit spending is high because of large families on out-of-work benefits. Stories referring to large families more than doubled in frequency after 2003, accounting today for some 7.4% of articles.
However, the charity says families with more than five children account for just 1% of out-of-work benefit claims. "Very large households with 10 or more children are a staple of tabloid shock stories. There are 180 such claimant households in Britain," says the report......

Moreover, there are fears that hardening attitudes have translated into an increase in verbal and even physical attacks on claimants.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/20/scrounger-stigma-poor-people-benefits

Edit:- At least the intergenerationals have a low life expectancy;)

"Another favourite trend that the coalition likes to focus on is "intergenerational worklessness". In 2009 Iain Duncan Smith, now cabinet minister in charge of welfare, said: "Life expectancy on some estates, where often three generations of the same family have never worked, is lower than the Gaza Strip".
Looking at all of those households where there were just two generations living in the same household, the report says that academics have found less than half of a percent had two generations that had never worked – 15,000 households across the UK."

GeorgeHowell

grizzly1911 wrote: »

It is easy to say that people should accept their lot and workf or less from a position of comfort.

The coalitions ability to change is all down to them. If they wanted to bull doze the libdems they would. Whther they would get the desired result is another matter. The libdems are a convenient chocolate fireguard.





http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/20/scrounger-stigma-poor-people-benefits

Edit:- At least the intergenerationals have a low life expectancy;)

"Another favourite trend that the coalition likes to focus on is "intergenerational worklessness". In 2009 Iain Duncan Smith, now cabinet minister in charge of welfare, said: "Life expectancy on some estates, where often three generations of the same family have never worked, is lower than the Gaza Strip".
Looking at all of those households where there were just two generations living in the same household, the report says that academics have found less than half of a percent had two generations that had never worked – 15,000 households across the UK."

All very sad, but the fact remains that it's unaffordable and it appears that the majority of taxpayers' do not support an indiscriminate policy of redistribution for its own sake. To maintain a free democracy, with consumer choice, freedom of employment, of travel and movement, of residence etc the market has to be allowed to operate as freely as possible. Safety nets and sensible regulation are important, but no more than is required to maintain civilised standards of philanthropy and the avoidance of exploitation by corporations. Beyond that interference with the market will not help in the long run in this competitive world. There will be winners and losers of course, but in what society of any size has there ever not been ?

ukcarper

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Won't they be entitled to "benefits" to bring them up to parity?

I appreciate there is always a drain down which, people fall ,who can't claim for all sorts of ludicrous reasons.

　

　

In work benefits do effect calculations a person earning £25k would get £533 in wages and benefits out of that they would have to pay mortgage ? and council tax of £30.

someone not working would get £503 and have to pay rent and council tax of £180

£25k is just below median full time salary and I would think quite a people are in the position of the worker.