Benefit cuts to hit more than 330,000 children

GirlFromMars_2

SnooksNJ wrote: »

The message here is if you have a family member who is struggling contact them daily, bring a care package over,and check the meds to make sure they are taking them. If they don't have them go to the pharmacy and pick up a refill. Running to the papers because you believe Ian Duncan Smith is responsible is crazy talk.

While I agree with everything you say, people do not always have relatives living close by, and you are forgetting the mental health of the individual & how hard it is to accept help when you are in that situation (let alone ask for help).

GirlFromMars_2

Bogof_Babe wrote: »

Fixed that for you. Plenty of mothers work around school hours, and there are jobs out there, even if it takes a bit of effort to find one.



Does it? It has a responsibility to maintain a society in which people are safe from external threats, and where there is an adequate infrastructure to support the population, but as for day-to-day living, we must accept that we are responsible for ourselves, plus any offspring and/or animals we choose to bring into our lives.

The dependency culture has to be tackled, as it disincentivises the natural human instinct of self-sufficiency. Where would we be now if cave dwellers had sat around waiting for someone else to feed them?

Well, having paid National Insurance, I'm pretty sure they do have a responsibility towards me, and I'm very glad to have lived in a country where the government is expected to have a responsibility to look after the sick, disadvantaged & children.

100% employment is a myth, businesses certainly don't want it, so as a result we need to look after people who are temporarily out of work.

As for people who cannot work, society in general either has a responsibility for them or we can go back to the days of personal cave like responsibility & let everyone who isn't capable of feeding themselves die. It would certainly save a lot from the NHS budget.

Given human nature, I strongly suspect that even in the days of caves & hunter gathering that children & the elderly were provided for by society.

We would not be where we are today if we were all in it for ourselves.

poppasmurf_bewdley

GirlFromMars wrote: »

You genuinely think food banks exist because they don't think the government can/should make sure people have enough money to put food on the table?

Wow.

The problem with relying on charity instead of government is that charity is the worst kind of postcode lottery. Some people are lucky & find that charity is able to fill the gap, but many are not so lucky.

The government really does have a responsibility to look after us, and in particular I believe they need to start taking seriously their responsibility to assess people for benefits in a timely manner. And to apply sanctions only when absolutely necessary & certain an appeal won't be successful. At the moment the government is failing badly on both of these counts, leading to many people becoming temporarily unable to budget & needing to rely on their chances at getting hold of a food bank voucher for 3 days worth of food.

You are twisting what I said. Please re-read my statement on food banks.

GirlFromMars wrote: »

You forgot to factor in the cost of getting to Iceland and having electricity/gas to cook the meal.

Please remember that this is a gentleman who was dying. How do you think he would have had the energy to get to Iceland in the first place & do some snazzy mental arithmetic get home & cook for himself.

Either you have no understanding of what it is to be destitute & ill. Or you are being wilfully cruel.

I am aware that this is a money saving site, and as such many members are used to eking out their pennies. But doing so when you are sick & at the very end of your tether is another matter entirely. I hope you have as much mental capacity and tenacity at the end of your life as you do now, but if not I hope somebody is there to make sure you do not die of poverty.

How do you know this gentleman didn't live in a flat above Iceland? How do you know he didn't have the energy to go shopping? It is all conjecture on your part. If what you say is true, then even if the government had showered him with money and he had thousands in the bank, he would still have died. From what I could see of the article, the poor man died because he was left to fend for himself by all and sundry including his family. I can honestly say that when my own late Mother was terminally ill at the age of 87 and couldn't get out of the house, I travelled 100 miles each way several times a week to help get her sorted out. And if I couldn't do something, I found someone who could. He had been a member of the armed forces. Why didn't his sister contact Help for Heroes or The British Legion to ask them to assist her brother? That's what they are there for.

You don't need to be near an Iceland store. The same prices go for Aldi and Lidl and there are plenty of them around. You are just trying to make excuses to blame the government for this poor man's death. I can excuse the Labour supporting Daily Mirror because they want to see a Labour Government. What's your excuse?

bloolagoon

GirlFromMars wrote: »

I think you're forgetting the scope of the Benefit Cuts. (And playing into the government's divide and conquer tactics of deserving & undeserving cuts.)

Yes, the Working Tax Credit changes hit the working poor very hard. But please remember these are not the only changes.

I don't think they are poor - their net take home and disposable income is often very large

Child Tax Credit changes affect children whether they are in working families or not.

The benefit cap affects all larger families (where 2 children is a large family) where the parents have had the misfortune to be out of work for more than 1? week in the previous year, and are out of work again.

Come on forget the 1 week - you don't claim JSA for 1 week. It's long term unemployed. Why have large families you can't afford. Surely as most have 2 working parents the chances of both out of work are slim. Or they've never really been working


The benefit cap prevents people form accessing the minimum level of money that the government thinks a family of their size needs to live on.

plenty outside the cap do that due to job loss and childcare. For 5 out of the last 8 years I've lived on less despite not being on benefits

The benefit cap was introduced as policy in the first place, as it looked good as a headline. It has always been very bad policy, and is now about to be significantly worse policy. The level at which the government are hoping to set the benefit cap is in no way connected to earnings, and the Welfare Bill will allow the government to change the cap arbitrarily in the future without reference to parliament. The original £26K benefit cap was supposed to be linked to median earnings, but never took into account the fact that Housing Benefit, and Working & Child Tax Credits would apply to large families on median earnings, meaning their take home would be much higher. The new lower benefit caps are just a punishment on being poor, and mean that most of the country is now too expensive for families who are even temporarily out of work.
if temporary then it's managable. I had thousands less and managed
The benefit cap also affects families where the parent is on ESA in the Work Related Activity Group. These are people who have been found unfit for work, and who may never be fit for work.

New ESA WRAG claimants are also facing a £30 (30%) cut to the income they are expected to live on. Again, WRAG claimants have been assessed as unfit for work, and in many instances are assessed as unlikely to return to work.

i agree for those that are "in the wrong group" but WRAG does have people short term illness

Single parents of young children are also affected by the benefit cap, whether or not their children are old enough for them to be able to return to work.
you know many mothers work - not everyone gets £10k to stay home so we work from when they are babies
Carers are affected by the benefit cap if they do not live with the person for whom they are caring.
its not that common
The Budget Changes & Welfare Bill are going to hurt everyone. While I agree that hurting working families is bad, I also think hurting workless families where nobody has any chance of moving into work because of illness or caring responsibilities is equally bad.

Even hurting workless families where the parents are fit to work, is not great, as it is children who will suffer in the long run. This also relies on there being jobs available for the parents to move into. And forgets that many long term JSA claimants face mental health problems which greatly affect their employability.
so we just keep on giving to those who don't want to work and prefer to breed
Even if miraculously you are unaffected directly by the budget changes this is going to take a significant amount of money out of the economy, and is going to mean businesses shutting and job losses.

There are some groups I truly wish hadn't been hit but those who basically have no intention of working I can't feel sorry for. A 2 bedroom up here is £500 a month max so plenty left and not in poverty. Even in more expensive parts you need to do what we did. Really cut back and downsize, sleeping in the living room for eg and a 1 bedroom.

rogerblack

GirlFromMars wrote: »

Given human nature, I strongly suspect that even in the days of caves & hunter gathering that children & the elderly were provided for by society.

My cave had a butler, and hot and cold running bison.
Therefore, I feel I can make policy on the basis that everyones cave has a butler.
Those nasty people I read about in documentaries by Dickens deserve all they get.

GirlFromMars_2

poppasmurf_bewdley wrote: »

You are twisting what I said. Please re-read my statement on food banks.

Ok, I genuinely don't understand your quote about food banks then.

How do you know this gentleman didn't live in a flat above Iceland? How do you know he didn't have the energy to go shopping? It is all conjecture on your part. If what you say is true, then even if the government had showered him with money and he had thousands in the bank, he would still have died. From what I could see of the article, the poor man died because he was left to fend for himself by all and sundry including his family. I can honestly say that when my own late Mother was terminally ill at the age of 87 and couldn't get out of the house, I travelled 100 miles each way several times a week to help get her sorted out. And if I couldn't do something, I found someone who could. He had been a member of the armed forces. Why didn't his sister contact Help for Heroes or The British Legion to ask them to assist her brother? That's what they are there for.

You don't need to be near an Iceland store. The same prices go for Aldi and Lidl and there are plenty of them around. You are just trying to make excuses to blame the government for this poor man's death. I can excuse the Labour supporting Daily Mirror because they want to see a Labour Government. What's your excuse?

Don't get me wrong, there is obviously plenty of retrospective blame to go around in this instance. But a decent fair policy should take into account instances where other support systems fail.

People always talk about the benefits system being a safety net for those that absolutely need it. This guy absolutely needed it. The smaller the safety net and the larger the holes, the more people who need that help will fall through, and the more tragic cases we will see.

This guy needed help, nobody provided it and he died as a result. Sadly I'm sure similar happens to plenty of elderly people who don't have family like yourself.

It is easy from your position of well being to apply retrospective logic to this guy's circumstances. It is exceptionally hard when you are living in those circumstances. Even if he lived above Iceland that may not have been close enough for him in his circumstances.

The guy died. Have a little respect and stop trying to blame him for failings when he had clearly been living in very trying circumstances.

BJV

No-one is entitled to a free ride. Why have we become so misguided that we think that everyone the world included owes us a favour.


I self funded a business venture and went from just about getting by to nothing for 18months. The phone went, sky went, everything went. It was my choice and my responsibility to provide for my children. PS did not claim a penny !


It was tough, really tough. When you tell the kids that you are not hungry because you do not have enough to go around. When you tell everyone that you have been doing the gardening that's why you are in ripped old clothes. Oxfam is good but god it can be expensive. I did anything to make sure my kids where ok and provided for. Because ultimately it was my choice to give birth. Why should someone else have to help. I was lucky, very lucky and now those days are gone I remind myself just how lucky I am. I do charity work, donate to charity and generally try to be a good person. I do not have a lot but what I have is mine and I earned it. The state, the tax payer gave me nothing so forgive me when I hear about people actively choosing that lifestyle.


Again for the avoidance of doubt I know that there are lot of genuine people out there, lots of people who need real help. Unfortunately the stupid greedy tactics of a few means that the system has to change. There has never been anything wrong with the system itself and it is a fantastic concept. Instead it is the people who abuse it who make it difficult for everyone. It is the people who abuse it who make it hard for genuine people to get the help they need.


Strange everyone always has a go at the government, ( who I do not like ) but in this case I honestly do not think it is their fault. Instead it is the hardened benefit criminals and the lifestyle claimants.


The story above ,the gentleman died should never ever of happened but the safety net which "we" as a society have forced to be made smaller failed him.
It wasn't the government or the food bank, "we" let that happen by the greedy, abusive, serial benefit abuse claimants cheating him out of the help he needed.

( sorry rant over !)

SnooksNJ

GirlFromMars wrote: »

While I agree with everything you say, people do not always have relatives living close by, and you are forgetting the mental health of the individual & how hard it is to accept help when you are in that situation (let alone ask for help).

I'm not familiar with Stevenage but is it so remote that there were no neighbors to look after this guy?
The sad thing is the £3 he had left from Ian Duncan's Smith's policies was £3 more than what his sister gave him.
Would you allow that to happen to your siblings?

GirlFromMars_2

bloolagoon wrote: »

There are some groups I truly wish hadn't been hit but those who basically have no intention of working I can't feel sorry for. A 2 bedroom up here is £500 a month max so plenty left and not in poverty. Even in more expensive parts you need to do what we did. Really cut back and downsize, sleeping in the living room for eg and a 1 bedroom.

I can see that many families are going to have to go back to living in very over crowded circumstances. Landlords are going to love that!

Ultimately the people being hit hardest by these policies are children. They had no choice on the family they were born into, or whether their parents are working poor, lazy poor, sick poor or disabled poor. Whichever circumstances they were born into they don't deserve to go hungry or have to live in over crowding.

The number of long term JSA claimants has fallen drastically. This is absolutely something that should be encouraged, but I don't see that punishing children is the way to do it.

poppasmurf_bewdley

GirlFromMars wrote: »

Don't get me wrong, there is obviously plenty of retrospective blame to go around in this instance. But a decent fair policy should take into account instances where other support systems fail.

People always talk about the benefits system being a safety net for those that absolutely need it. This guy absolutely needed it. The smaller the safety net and the larger the holes, the more people who need that help will fall through, and the more tragic cases we will see.

This guy needed help, nobody provided it and he died as a result. Sadly I'm sure similar happens to plenty of elderly people who don't have family like yourself.

It is easy from your position of well being to apply retrospective logic to this guy's circumstances. It is exceptionally hard when you are living in those circumstances. Even if he lived above Iceland that may not have been close enough for him in his circumstances.

The guy died. Have a little respect and stop trying to blame him for failings when he had clearly been living in very trying circumstances.

So basically, you are now agreeing that it's not the government's fault because benefits were reduced, but it's the fault of everybody. Well, at least now we're getting somewhere.

I don't consider myself to be well off. I am a pensioner with a state pension only, nothing else.