I wasn't talking directly to you more like some of the papers and tv shows that depict the poorer people as lazy junkies that have no intention of getting a job. Some people read/watch these things and suddenly hate everyone on benefits. I should have clarified more. My apologies.
Tightening up on welfare spending yes but people having to go to food banks and old people freezing to death, no. I'm all for tightening up welfare spending. It needs to be done but taking it off people the are genuinely disabled and desperately need the money? That's too much for me. Labour are useless anyway. Just a watered down version of the old labour. It makes no difference who will get in.
How do you hit one group without hitting the other? I think you'll also find it quite difficult to find an exact line between the 'not disabled' and the 'genuinely disabled'. Part of the problem with the implementation of ESA was that Incapacity Benefit was far too lenient, and that those who have never worked (and never wanted to work) are now being told that they CAN work.
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Originally Posted by Shenanigans
The welfare state we have now is too complicated. It has been added too, year after year, and is a huge mess. Carers allowance, ESA, PIP, JSA, Incomes support, housing benefit, council tax rebate, child tax credits, working tax credits. The list goes on. For those who desperately need help, the whole system is a confusing riddle. For those who know how to scam it, it's easy to play on the complications of the system.
I agree, although as someone who works within the benefits system every day I find it quite straight forward. It's not as bad as people think. Income Support can be a complete nightmare, but that's about it. Oh, and the different premiums you can get can confuse. For most cases, the benefits system is easy, but for a few it can be incredibly complicated, even more so when the person is trying to fiddle it somehow. But yes, for those who are outwith the system it can be confusing at first. But there plenty of very good benefit calculators out there for people to access and use.
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Changing the names from incapacity benefit to personal independence allowance. What does that really do?
Incapacity Benefit changed to Employment and Support Allowance. As I said, it has made it more so that people are not simply told "you can't work". It is now, you can work and you should work (if you are in the WRAG, that is). But some people don't want to work if they can get this money for doing nothing.
Disability Living Allowance is now Personal Independence Payment. I actually prefer PIP, and think it is a better system, although I know some who disagree.
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Originally Posted by Enthused
I wasn't talking directly to you more like some of the papers and tv shows that depict the poorer people as lazy junkies that have no intention of getting a job. Some people read/watch these things and suddenly hate everyone on benefits. I should have clarified more. My apologies.
And yet there ARE plenty of people like that. Benefits should not be a lifestyle choice, and it is.
On another note, the attitude towards want rather than need is prevalent across of socio-economic groups. People of all groupings need to learn to cut their cloth and live within their means. The idea of having a "lifestyle" they need to maintain is quite shocking to me, but it is seen with both rich and poor.
Last edited by The One Who : 09-04-2014 at 05:14 PM.
I agree. If I want something I have no problem working hard for it. No idea how they can set up a efficient system weed out the scroungers but at the moment people that need it are having it taken away. I just want equality for everyone.
I can understand how working with the benefits system can make it seem simple, but I know from experience that everyday people struggle knowing what they deserve and what they don't. When my mothers disability became too much for her to continue working, she found it very difficult to understand what she needed to apply for, what my father (her carer) needed to apply for. It was very complicated for her and at a time where she had to come to terms with not being able to work, and learning to deal with the severity of her disability, finding and getting that help was an unending source of stress. For people who don't have much to do with benefits, it is a very daunting experience. I would say that they did get a lot of help and advice from their local CAB. But surely if a system was working well, it should be usable and understandable by everyone.
However, I do agree that people must live within their means. I do not own a wide screen HD TV, my tv was given to me second hand. It is a small, large backed thing. It does the job though. Most of my furniture was either second hand, or free. My washing machine is the most expensive thing I own. I have never been abroad, and haven't had a holiday in over 12 years. I don't complain about this though, I'm very happy with my things and the fact that I own them.
Would I like a lovely new telly and holidays abroad? Of course I would! But I can't afford these things, and I live with what I have. I know plenty of people who live far beyond what is necessary for them and complain that it is difficult. Of course it is difficult to live a lifestyle above what you can afford. If you are on minimum wage you shouldn't be wasting your money on designer clothes or the latest techy gadget. But then again, everyone will do what they want with their own money. Sometimes I splurge on buying brand name food when I really shouldn't. People spend their money as they will and I never want to see it any other way, even if people spend their money stupidly.
You see a mouse trap
I see free cheese
And a ****ing challenge
Thanks Enthused for explaining your position. Of course the media will play up and sensationalise things whenever they think it will help their circulation. Thus, the poor are idlers/wasters regardless of their circumstances; and the rich are selfish bastards who are happy to grind down the poor. We surely all know that these are mere caricatures and that the real world ain't like that.
The one area where I think you are being naive is when you say you believe in equality for everyone. This is of course a lovely thought but however much we might wish it so, life isn't actually like that. There will always be differences between those who succeed in life and those who don't, whether we're talking about financial success, domestic happiness or whatever. For the n'th time, I repeat that I'm sorry for those who are currently on the breadline (though it's not actually my fault) and I hope that something effective can be done for them (though I'm in no position to be pro-active here), but I suggest that whatever is done there will always be some who fall off the end, always. I do not rejoice in it, but it is a sad fact of real life. And of course that doesn't mean that I think that nothing should be done - so far as possible. Sadly, whatever is actually done, I can guarantee that there will be yet still more who cannot cope ... so yet more safeguards, within reason, need to be put in place. But don't delude yourself, whatever is done will never, sadly, be quite enough ...
I hate to pick up this subject again but, despite the signs in recent months of "recovery", an article by Philip Collins in today's Times predicts very much pain yet to come. Amongst the general tenor of his article, which emphasises that we are still living way beyond our means, he says "governing after 2015 is going to be so horrible that I wouldn't wish it on my worst political opponents" - this because of the national debt which despite the austerity measures of the present coalition (which have caused such howls - however justified) continues to grow. That is, we continue to spend more than we earn ...
I read recently that the national debt now represents some £26,000 for every man, woman and child in the country as opposed to the £17,000 per head which I last quoted ( I can't vouch for the exactness of these figures but it is clear that we're hugely in debt - and of course no-one is going to pay our debts off for us). And Collins in his article points out that just paying the interest on our national debt is costing more than we spend annually on our schools, which I find a frightening thought and which perhaps puts the real meaning of our debt into perspective.
I'm not an economist, still less a politician, so have no easy answers to our shared national problem - but clearly they don't either! But my home economics doesn't allow me to spend more than I've got coming in monthly and I'm absolutely clear that the country can't either. Nor, if I've got in a financial muddle, is some fairy godmother going to appear and bail me out.
So how the hell do we get out of it? Obviously by either cutting expenditure or increasing taxes. Someone please tell me (and the government) just how to do this fairly ...
So, reluctantly, am I Whirlpools - though in the days when husband and wife were taxed jointly my wife and I paid 83% on the top slice of a not very large joint income. That was in the last days of the Callaghan (Labour) government in the late 1970s and I can tell you it made our eyes water!
Right now I'd accept a rise in tax if I thought it was really going to dig us out of the hole we're slipping further and further into. But I suspect we're going to hear more of stuff like the mansion tax and other relative trivia which won't really solve the problem ...
An interesting graph Rooke which seems to show that the worst of the debt was incurred under Labour. But I don't care which political party is responsible - who the hell is going to get us out of the present mess?
It seems to me that successive governments, of whatever persuasion, bribe the electorate with goodies/benefits which cannot actually be afforded but, once offered, cannot be withdrawn without the government concerned cutting its own throat electorally. Whichever part of the population the government targets to try to redress the financial balance, the squeals will be deafening. Somehow there has to be a policy of equally shared pain - but agreement as to what is actually equal sharing of that pain is something else. Almost everyone seems to think that someone else should bear the load, not actually themselves - it's always someone else's fault. The poor are wasters/scroungers living on benefits as a way of life; the rich are selfish bastards who only got to where they are by grinding the faces of the poor into the dirt.
Solutions? And somehow there have to be solutions ...
