Living on £53 a week?

FatVonD

kafkathecat wrote: »

But FVD that will still punish the children for the parent's behaviour. And if you have 4 which you can afford and then you lose your job, what then? If you wanted to target only people who had children whilst on benefits that ignores the fact that most people move in and out of work so where would your cut off point be and how would you administer it.

Link benefits to NI contributions paid.

kafkathecat wrote: »

Until there are enough jobs every 'scrounger' pushed into a job is one less vacancy for someone desperate for work.

That's assuming that the 'scrounger' chooses to work so they can have more kids, most of them will choose to limit their family to the number of kids they are eligible to receive benefits for.

kafkathecat

Pollycat, as you asked: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17190185
I would recommend reading the Spirit Level to anyone who is interested in the link between income inequality and social problems.

daska

FatVonD wrote: »

Link benefits to NI contributions paid.

Yes it's true, if you've never paid a bean in NI conts you'll get more in your pocket on JSA and ESA than if you've worked for years. It's marginal but grossly unfair.

daska

Pollycat wrote: »

Exactly - I've used it as an example.

Did I say that DLA fraud is higher than for other benefits?

Nope, didn't think I did. :cool:

I used 2 examples, I didn't think I needed to list every benefit and rank them according to the number of fraudulent claims.

Could it be that you're a tad too touchy about DLA and fraudulent claims.....

I'm touchy because I'm a target and I would be surprised if any disabled person didn't feel touchy given the hate campaign being waged against us.

Thankfully I can provide a substantial amount of evidence to support my claim but I am getting sick of the deliberate misinformation being spouted by MPs and newspapers while those who are really draining the public purse barely a mention. Because the result is exactly as you have proved, you've chosen a benefit which has very little fraud in comparison to others as an example. If the vilification doled out by the papers and MPs was done in proportion to the rate of fraud/ cost to the taxpayer you'd barely hear about DLA claimants, it would mainly stories about Housing Benefit and Income Support.

Pollycat

daska wrote: »

I'm touchy because I'm a target and I would be surprised if any disabled person didn't feel touchy given the hate campaign being waged against us.

Thankfully I can provide a substantial amount of evidence to support my claim but I am getting sick of the deliberate misinformation being spouted by MPs and newspapers while those who are really draining the public purse barely a mention. Because the result is exactly as you have proved, you've chosen a benefit which has very little fraud in comparison to others as an example. If the vilification doled out by the papers and MPs was done in proportion to the rate of fraud/ cost to the taxpayer you'd barely hear about DLA claimants, it would mainly stories about Housing Benefit and Income Support.

You've totally got hold of the wrong end of the stick - in fact you're nowhere near the stick at all.

I didn't use DLA as an example because I've heard MPs spouting about it and read in newspapers about it.
I used DLA as an example because it's a benefit that I'm aware of because my Dad used to be on it - totally above board as you say you are.

I wasn't picking on DLA claimants at all, I wasn't 'targetting' you at all.

DLA is a benefit.
There are people fraudulantly claiming DLA.
Therefore it was a reasonable example to use.
The fact that you didn't like it is, quite frankly, tough.

If nobody was claiming DLA fraudulently then I would concede that I was wrong to use it as an example.
But I'm not wrong.

daska

Pollycat wrote: »

You've totally got hold of the wrong end of the stick - in fact you're nowhere near the stick at all.

I didn't use DLA as an example because I've heard MPs spouting about it and read in newspapers about it.
I used DLA as an example because it's a benefit that I'm aware of because my Dad used to be on it - totally above board as you say you are.

I wasn't picking on DLA claimants at all, I wasn't 'targetting' you at all.

DLA is a benefit.
There are people fraudulantly claiming DLA.
Therefore it was a reasonable example to use.
The fact that you didn't like it is, quite frankly, tough.

If nobody was claiming DLA fraudulently then I would concede that I was wrong to use it as an example.
But I'm not wrong.

Your reasoning doesn't really make sense. If the government and media were doling out the hatred based on cost to public purse and rate of fraud then you would be far more aware of benefits other than just the one/s your dad received and would therefore have been more likely to use one of them as an example.

Pollycat

daska wrote: »

Your reasoning doesn't really make sense. If the government and media were doling out the hatred based on cost to public purse and rate of fraud then you would be far more aware of benefits other than just the one/s your dad received and would therefore have been more likely to use one of them as an example.

My reasoning makes sense to me, even if not to you.

But then again, as you've admitted, you're 'touchy' about your DLA.

The fact remains, I sat at my laptop writing the post and DLA was the first benefit that came into my mind - and not because I've been listening to or reading about the 'hatred being doled out'.

daska

Pollycat wrote: »

My reasoning makes sense to me, even if not to you.

But then again, as you've admitted, you're 'touchy' about your DLA.

The fact remains, I sat at my laptop writing the post and DLA was the first benefit that came into my mind - and not because I've been listening to or reading about the 'hatred being doled out'.

And thereby proving my point much more effectively than I could do myself. :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

neverdespairgirl

iwb100 wrote: »

Nonsense. The answer is to invest in our infrastructure, housing, businesses, Health Service, Education etc etc. This government is doing none of that. It is turning a blind eye to tax evasion, which costs the taxpayer far more than the Welfare state ever will, and focuses all it's energy on making the poor, poorer.

I don't see this "blind eye to tax evasion".

There are certainly difficulties with tax avoidance, and this is something that often has to be considered at an international, rather than national level.

But the budget, for example, contained a number of things aimed at tax evasion, with the aim of recouping £3billion.

From the BBC website summary of hte 2013 budget:

Tax avoidance and evasion measures, including agreements with Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey, aimed at recouping £3bn in unpaid taxes

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21851965

Those tax evasion agreement with the Crown Dependencies have all now been signed:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-21857777

Jersey is the last of the crown dependencies to sign up following both Guernsey and the Isle of Man.

The UK has followed the US in introducing a Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) law.

The Isle of Man became the first jurisdiction to commit to UK FATCA on 7 December, last year. Guernsey's is "nearly finalised" according to the island's chief minister Deputy Peter Harwood.

iwb100 wrote: »

This week we had the death of the person largely responsible for the sections of society who are long term unemployed. When Maggie closed down the mines, shut down manufacturing and turned us into a finance and service driven economy set up to provide for the rich and middle classes and deprive the poor, what did you expect? We threw a generation of working class people onto the scrapheap. In fact what Thatcher did was put loads of them onto disability allowance to massage the unemployment figures. So what you're seeing today are the results of her policies.

The idea that "MAggie closed down the mines" is not based in the facts.

The peak of employment in coal mining in the UK was a hundred years ago. The industry has been in decline, constantly, for a century.

In 1923, there were 1.3 million men employed by coal mining. It then declined, with the figures from each 5 year reporting period showing a steady, continuous decline. The number of coal mines operating, and hte total tonnage of coal produced, also declined over the same time, not surpisingly.

There were 914,000 men employed in mining in 1930, 690,000 in 1950, 602,000 in 1960, 287,000 men in 1970, 230,000 in 1980, 138,000 in 1985, after the coal strike.

Does that look as if it was all Thatcher in the 1980s.

iwb100 wrote: »

Cameron and Osborne are merely making matters worse but lying to everybody and using the right wing media to convince everyone that the country's economy is just like someone running a home budget (Thatcher did the same). It's not and economists have shown that.

Some economists. But there are different views. Moneterists most certainly take the view that to high a debt is a Bad Thing.

iwb100 wrote: »

So whilst they are busy telling everyone how broke the British economy is, and pretending that all they can do is cut, and that really they musn't harm the "wealth generators" in other words the rich, all they are really doing is exactly what Thatcher did. Make the rich, richer and the poor, even poorer, whilst blaming the poor for all the wrongs in the country.

I don't know who you mean by "the rich", but it doesn't appear to me that "the rich" are getting away with cuts.

For example, higher rate taxpayers paid 40% tax throughout the Labour government, wiht the exception of the very last month out of the 13 years they were in power, when it went up to 50%.

Child benefit has been withdrawn from higher-rate taxpayers.

The highest rate of income tax is now 45%, 5% higher than under Labour.

neverdespairgirl

kafkathecat wrote: »

The wealth gap is the largest it has been since the 1920s which led to the 1930s depression.

What is your source for this startling assertion?