Benefits cut for 3 years....

The thread title is not really correct, what the government is debating and voting on today, is plans to cap the INCREASE to 1% and not the 2.2% it would have been this year to keep pace with inflation. The 1% for the following two years.

The government has said working people have seen their wages frozen or even reduced and as a result benefits have been rising faster than wages. As a working man I wish my wages had gone up each year to keep in line with inflation, but they have not and the real truth is I’m working for less with each and every passing year.

While I might agree some employers have taken advantage of the state this county is in and used the recession to keep workers wages low, I know for a fact that is not the case where I work or many of the companies we trade with.

I read the link James put up, while I do not see how that lady would be able to save 2 grand a year, I do believe the figures as far as the amount of money she gets in hand outs each year. I wish I could clear that every year, but then I lose so much of the money I earn, taken in taxes so the likes of that lady can stay at home and put nothing herself into this country.

I listened to a debate on the radio today on this subject, one thing I learned was that the person who set up the benefit system, intend that those who put more in, would get more out. But as we know there are plenty who have never put a penny in and won’t as long as they are better off not working.

At one point during the debate there was a man on the phone who had just finished a 12 hour shift and one who does not go to work. The working man said the other one should get himself a job and got the reply the first time that there were no jobs. When it was put to him again the second time he said he would get a job if it could pay him enough to cover his commitments. The money he gets in benefits does and one wonders just how much he would need to be earning to want to come off benefits.

As I have said, there are a lot of good people who do want to work, some who can’t due to illness etc, but there are plenty who know how to work the system in such a way, going to work would make them worse off. It can not be right that people who do go to work can end up worse off than some who do not want to and its time this problem was addressed.

So sorry if 1% is not enough, when I a working man take inflation into account I think it’s likely I’m going to be around 3% worse off again this year and I get up at 5am for that privilege and see money I earn taken off me to give to those who are never going to help themselves, as there is a system that lets them live of the backs of those hard working people who just have to keep making cut after cut due to no wage increases.

First of all, the Mail's story about the woman living the high life was utter rubbish and was not even their story, having been lifted from Closer magazine just as they nicked the story about Sally Bigtits or whatever her name is from Nuts. Deep within the article it mentioned that she was getting a total of £15,500 a year. With two children I suggest to your honour that she does not have enough left over to go clubbing, buy a new car, take foreign holidays or buy expensive presents and that the story is, in fact, a load of tripe.

Surprisingly enough, several nurses went to work last night and organists to church in Sheffield on Sunday and didn't get murdered or assaulted. I seem to recall a poor soul in Torquay being thrown off the roof of a multi-storey car park and a couple beaten to death in their flat on Warren Road but I don't think it would be fair to deduce from those incidents that the town is a hotbed of violent crime. Someone I knew was murdered in a country lane in leafy Derbyshire by thugs hired to do the job by a member of the huntin' and shootin' fraternity, which proves nowt except that there are a few pretty nasty people about wherever you might live.

Actually, I don't find the Mail as offensive as the Express, the Sun or the Daily Star, not that's saying much because they are all shite. What I do find offensive is the lazy and inaccurate portrayal of people on the Left as being not interested in the victims of crime, whether those crimes be illegal or just immoral, such as a Governemnt composed of multi-millionaires, several of whom fiddled their expenses, lying to justify reducing the official subsistence level on the grounds that if workers' incomes are crap the best way to remedy this is to make other people even poorer than they were before.

The other offensive thing here is the word "scrounger" which to me is as as ignorant a term as the racist epithets which would hopefully be banned by this board. My 22 year old son is out of work and if you call him a scrounger I find that personally insulting to a member of my family. You should know better, Joe, and I am genuinely disappointed in you.

Only an idiot or a disingenuous person would fail to appreciate that 1% of very little is even less or that if inflation is 2.5% (which is actually a huge under-estimate if only essential goods are taken into account) the a 1% increase is a cut in real terms and means that recipients will be worse off as a reslt. This applies not just to unemployed but also disabled people and those on low incomes since the Government is also cutting Housing Benefit, abolishing Council Tax Benefit and imposing a cap. Where is your sympathy for the victims here, Joe?

I have written about this subject in great length and gave you a link to read the fruits of my experience. Joe has obviously chosen not to do so on the grounds that his views are so entrenched he doesn't want them to be challenged (which is something most of us are guilty of and the reason I don't subscribe to the Mail). Dave pretended to have read it in a morning, which is impossible because I wrote it and I know how chuffing boring it is!

Dave. If your income is not increasing then join the club. I haven't had a pay rise for 3 years but that is not the fault of people who claim benefits; the financial restraints under which all Western governments are working arose from a crisis caused by rampant and unchecked capitalism leading to the fall of the banks in 2008. If you are trying to tell us that you would be better off on benefits you are talking twaddle. I'd challenge you to work out how much you would have to live on if you broke your leg or lost your job tomorrow, and then to live on it for a month, only it would be cruel to do so because I know that you couldn't do it.

Joe, I never know whether you are having a laugh or whether you really are as Alf Garnett-like as you sometimes appear. I'd love to know what this namby pamby socialist doctrine is that you mention. Do you mean the provision of the National Health Service, free education in well-maintained schools, libraries, working class kids being able to go to University, that sort of thing? And social workers, eh? If you think there are enough of them still around to go and give free nappies to single mothers every day you must be off your trolley. Anyway, I'm sure you needn't worry because all the above will have gone soon but on the other hand you can look forward toTorquay's first 21st century soup kitchen which will no doubt be opening up long before the Government slings its hook in 2015.

Very good post Felix, I am a social worker (and proud of it! ;D), and I can confirm that there is most certainly not enough of us to go round. Our service is being cut to the bone and it sure as hell ain't IDS and his ilk who are suffering as a consequence...
Please people don't get your moral compass from rags like the daily mail and the sun!!

bristolgull

I don't doubt for a minute that bristolgull is right. Subsidise anything and you'll get more of it. Subsidise the cost of being an unemployed teenage mother by providing free accommodation and various other benefits and you'll get many more unemployed teenage mothers than if the handouts weren't available.

And of course the more of a problem you create the bigger the need for social workers to deal with it. So that's more state cash to pay for the bigger problem you've encouraged, plus more state cash to pay for the army of social workers trying to keep a lid on things. Before you know it Dave will have to set his alarm for 4am instead, as we'll need to take even more tax off him to pay for things.

Announce today that there will be no child allowance payments relating to any child born after, say, November this year and a dramatic reduction in the single teenage mother epidemic would result.

Attempts to take control of the language and thereby limit the debate within their own PC terms is a Socialist tactic we must always be vigilant against.

While we would all giggle about having to say 'waste management and disposal technician' instead of 'binman' there are now too many aspects of our lives where the debate is closed down by the new language police.

I would imagine that the term scrounger or shirker has been readily understood for a long long time as has Lambeth's contribution 'workshy'.

I'd guess the true unemployment figure is nearer 3 million at present. If anyone claimed there were no shirkers or scroungers within that number I think few would find that credible. But equally if anyone should make the equally ridiculous claim that all 3 million unemployed are shirkers, scroungers, or whatever the preferred term meaning the same is, that would also lack credibility.

The same goes for Sheffield of course. Plenty of bad stuff to report from there recently but that doesn't mean that some parts of the city aren't wonderful.

Thanks for your encouraging words Felix.

Thankyou bristolgull. Being a bit of a shirker by nature I have to admit I've scrounged that pic off the 'net' and can't claim credit for it myself.

Glad to know that the fact that you and other public employees will be out on your ear if ever I become Prime Minister doesn't affect our good natured comradeship as Gulls fans on the TFF

From the Institue of Fiscal Studies:

"As far as the effects of benefit up-rating measures are concerned, reductions in entitlement are unsurprisingly concentrated in the bottom half of the income distribution. The lowest-income decile group see the largest fall in entitlements as a percentage of income (1.5%) as a result of measures in the Bill, and the second decile see the largest decrease in cash terms, losing about £150 per year on average.

Because the proposed uprating changes apply to almost all benefits and tax credits, both in-work and out-of-work households are affected. Of 2.8 million workless households of working age, 2.5 million will see their entitlements reduced, by an average of about £215 per year in 2015 –16. Of 14.1 million working-age households with someone in work, 7.0 million will see their entitlements reduced, by an average of about £165 per year."

Better set that alarm early after all.