The benefits cap

[TheCat]

So last night, another benefits show, I wouldn't have watched if was channel 5, but was BBC.....and was still hard to empathise with the benefit claimants....

[TheCat]

When one guy claims 40qued a week in 'booze and smokes',,,,,

[Jules-and-Boo]

There is that - but there is the real fact of people not getting the benefits they need in time.

It's no joke that some people think of benefits as an entitlement while for some people it is a lifeline.

I watched recent similar programme with a mother refusing to work because she felt it was not reasonable to leave her young child with a nanny. Not only that, but she was complaining she didn't get given enough money to get the bigger house she needed for all her kids.

No mother wants to leave their family but many women do - just to work.

There is also the comment from the head of the benefits system saying that they punish people for making the wrong choices (not to work). They seem ill prepared to differentiate between those who can and don't and those who can't.

You have to also consider the message the programme wanted to convey and whose 'side of the story' they wanted to report.

[Otta]

Pathetic poverty porn.

They will always find some wanker that just takes the puss, and they'll put them on telly and (stupid) peiple wa5ch and decide that's the norm.

[Loz]

The Beeb (which is usually better than this) ran a story earlier in the week, the headline of which was 'Thousands on 50p-a-week housing benefit'. When you read the story, you then discovered this was because they had hit the ?23k cap and housing benefit was the last one on the list.

[Pugwash]

My mother was a single parent as my Dad had walked out on her when I was 2 years old. She applied for National Assistance as it was then, but was refused as she was a healthy woman in her late 20s and was told to get a job. However in those days child care was more affordable (50% roughly of earnings) and I went to a state nursery (Dog Kennel Hill)whilst Mum did office and shop work. Money was limited and finding food for the week was problematic - yet my favourite meal of the week was mashed potatoes, with chopped up tomatoes, sometimes some grated cheese, other times some chopped up spam. This was end of the week dinner and would have cost around 50/75p in todays money for 2 of us. Thursdays was the only day we had cake as my Nan used to come for tea and brought us cake. I grew up knowing the value of money and how to be thrifty.

This stood me in great stead when a former partner left me with a 3 year old, a mortgage and all the bills to pay. After paying the bills - I had roughly ?10 per month for food and fares to work. We survived like this for 4 years.

40 plus years later I find it difficult to freely spend money without arguing with myself as do I need this item, if it is food how many days will it last, how many people do I need to feed this week. Living in poverty at an early age can make you either scrimp and save, acknowledging the value of money or it can make you spend every penny and let others support you via benefits.

My youngest daughter works part time term time and has a 3 year old and 1 year old. Although her partner works, she has chosen to work and pays 90% of her wages in child care fees. Whilst working out that they may be better off in claiming child credit/working tax credits (cannot remember which one) she feels that she does not want to be dependent on the state and is emotionally better off working.

In contrast, another relative is on benefits and has a 7 year old at home. She did work part time as a nursery assistant for a few months but then went off sick with 'depression'. She is always asking for money as finds it difficult to manage on benefits but when her eldest son (22 and working and living on his own) pointed out that if she stopped smoking (roughly ?14 per week, stopped drinking lager (roughly ?10) she would have a better lifestyle.

There will always be some people who can manage on benefits (just scraping through) and others who do not have a clue re budgeting.

[????]

The thing is these reforms are not about saving money but changing behaviour I think that's admirable in some ways but in real life the actual reality of what that means on the ground (in some cases) is heartbreaking...

[uncleglen]

I saw a programme about Benefits some months ago. Single mum with 8 kids and no sign of their father(s). She was ?1000 in arrears with her rent to the council and was very proud of the fact that she had a large cupboard full of tatty plastic (Frozen and other Disney paraphernalia) which she had bought for her kids' Xmas pressies. She was also hoping for a larger council house but thought she wouldn't get one because of the arrears. Anyway the council gave her a larger house and wrote off the debt!

There was another programme in the same series who entered her child (about 8 years old) for beauty pageants and thought nothing of spending hundreds of pounds on hair braids...

And then you have young disabled people still living at home with elderly parents and not entitled to housing benefit or their own homes...

[singalto]

I am a teacher and am amazed at how many children whose parents are on benefit have the latest iPhones and go on the sort of holidays I could only dream of. As a lone parent myself, I worked long hours and my children only got small Christmas and birthday presents. I do not see them as having been deprived.

[uncleglen]

Yes singalto me too....there was a student I taught in the gcse year. She was barely literate and was hopeless at maths. She asked for her parents' evening reports to be sent home as her parents couldn't attend...the reason was that they were buying a new Merc...I thought of only they had spent some money on a tutor for her (she was not statemented or anything)- still she probably has 10 kids and all the designer gear by now!

[rendelharris]

uncleglen Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Yes singalto me too....there was a student I

> taught in the gcse year. She was barely literate

> and was hopeless at maths. She asked for her

> parents' evening reports to be sent home as her

> parents couldn't attend...the reason was that they

> were buying a new Merc...I thought of only they

> had spent some money on a tutor for her (she was

> not statemented or anything)- still she probably

> has 10 kids and all the designer gear by now!

What has this got to do with benefits? Presumably even in your fevered imagination people on benefits don't buy new Mercedes?

[Pugwash]

The answer I give to parents worried about giving their kids the latest gadget/trainers etc is that you give your children what they need not what they want.

Eldest daughter as a teenager always wanted the latest fashion - when asked who made that item fashionable, replied 'them'. Following some discussion in which we talked about sheep and shepherds, she came to the decision that she would not be a 'follower' (sheep) but be a 'leader' and developed her own fashion style. Her friends and their parents thought her 'weird in a nice way' as she was into cheesecloth and ethnic designs in the early 80s. Later in the 80s cheesecloth and ethnic design was all the range.

While it is understandable that children want to be like their friends and have the latest technology, if these are beyond a parents financial means - this should be explained to the kids. Or if an expensive item for Christmas or birthday - let all friends/relatives club together to purchase it.

[Blah Blah]

The group who find it hardest to live on benefits, are single people receiving JSA with no dependents. But for most of those, the new benefits cap, won't have an impact, except where housing is concerned is a small number of cases.

For families with say, two dependents, the cap does start to bite, especially in areas of more expensive housing. People with more than two children are those who will be hardest hit.

The disabled have also been hit hard with the removal of many extra benefits that pay for mobility and care packages.

Programmes on TV tend to seek out those with no sense of personal responsibility and we can't pretend that isn't a problem. There are people who just keep having kid after kid, who think the state should pay for it all, and it is a generational problem in some ways. The question is, what does it take to change that way of thinking? How do you make someone resigned to a life on benefits, start to understand that benefits are not free money, but paid for by others who go out to work and pay tax, many of them just as poor as them. And how do you do that in a way that doesn't also penalise the far greater number of claimants who do want to try and get back into work if they can.

The cap gets one thing right, in that it does not apply to those in part time work. That in itself should incentivise some to seek work. And I can perfectly understand why it's hard to have sympathy with anyone spending money on cigarettes and alcohol while on benefits. There is plenty of free help avaiable on the NHS to help people give up cigarettes.