Benefits cap of £500 begins roll-out

[Win2Win Racing]

A cap on the total amount of benefits that people aged 16 to 64 can receive begins rolling out across England, Scotland and Wales.

More... (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23306092#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa)

Benefits cap of £500 begins roll-out

[Win2Win]

£500 Is still waaaaay tooooo high .... It should be half that. How the ::swear did the country get into this position? It's pathetic.

[vegyjones]

How the ::swear did the country get into this position? It's pathetic.

I thought we'd already done that one.

There are some families who are forced to rent private accomodation because of the lack of social housing in London. Some of these people receive way above the cap threshold because of the extortionate cost of provate rents in the capital. As I understand it, these families will now be put into basis B&B's until a suitable council accomodation becomes available. The waiting lists mean that could be anywhere up to 5 years (or maybe even longer).

I doubt this is specific to London though and is probably happening all over.

But while the rishest in society enjoy the tax cuts and continue paying themselves through offshore accounts and other ways Accountants find legal avenues to pay as little tax as possible, I suppose we should all be comforted by the fact that 'we are all in this together'.

[Win2Win]

I think they need to stop giving extra money for people who have children as well. The way the benefit system is set up, it actually pays well having a kid., even better if you have more. A friend of mine has 5 kids, and lives in a 5 bedroom house, all paid for by the state, and it's a decent wad he gets every month. He used to work, but for the last 10 years he's been better off out of work.:doh1:

[MattR]

There are single people out of work getting £350 a week???? That's crazy.

[Win2Win]

Don't forget to include the paid rent and council tax :rolleyes:

[barneymather]

You'll not get any argument from me about forcing the likes of Google and Starbucks (and high net worth individuals) to pay more tax, however that shouldn't obscure the issue of those who see nothing wrong with opting for a life on benefits, notwithstanding the situation with the cost of rent in London.

There are many on benefits who have an income which exceeds that of people who are working and that can't be right. It's a red herring to say that means wages are too low. They may be, but big pay rises aren't going to magically appear in the near future and it is definitely the case that benefits are too high in certain areas.

The BBC are trying to portray this as a war on the poor but the reaction to the feature they ran where a family's benefits totalled more than the average wage and where the husband was complaining that he could only afford 24 cans of beer a week wasn't what the Beeb had hoped for. That's because old Auntie is stuffed with middle class bleeding hearts and not working class people who've had to graft for anything they have.

Many lower paid working class people are sick of
seeing their peers sit around all day while others
have to work hard to fund these benefits. What
one journalist pointed out is that politicians of all
parties have dodged the issue of making those on
benefits who can work take a job rather than
relying on hard-working folks from Poland and other
EU (and non-EU) countries to roll their sleeves up.

Not only does this approach let the bone idle off the hook, continually chucking tens of billions of pounds into the welfare system without a thought as to whether the system needs to be reformed is the economics of the madhouse. Apart from anything else, we can't afford it, even if we squeezed Google and co. until the pips squeaked, a policy favoured by that utterly useless Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey (he's the one who left Britain bankrupt in the late 70s).

Soaking the rich only works up to a point anyway, as they just up sticks and move their wealth overseas to a lower tax regime, therefore it's counter-productive to go overboard with tax legislation on businesses and entrepreneurs.

It's true that the economy has been in better shape but I find it odd that many immigrants can find a job without too much trouble yet the indigenous population claim there aren't enough jobs to go round.

Like many others, I'm not highly paid, and also like many others, I'd rather have the dignity of making my own income rather than going cap in hand to the State to feed and clothe me. Except that there's a large number of people who don't see this as little more than charity which should be avoided where possible but as a right and a valid lifestyle choice.

Of course there must be a safety net for people who find themselves out of work through no fault of their own, but the benefits system in the UK has become a bloated parody of the idea which the architects of the Welfare State intended welfare to be.

Senior figures in the Labour Party (and ordinary activists) from the post-war period knew the only way to pull the country out of the mire in the late 1940s and 1950s was for the nation to work hard whilst the government put measures in place to raise standards in housing, education and healthcare. These men and women, who had a genuine concern to improve the lot of the poor, would shudder at the indolence into which a section of the working class have been allowed to remain.

What makes me laugh is when some of those on benefits try to infer they're making a political statement by refusing low-paid work when they're just lazy swines content to live off the sweat of their neighbours.

[Win2Win]

One of the problems over the last decade or two is that the benefit system has meant that it is no use doing the low paid jobs, like helping farmers harvest crop. You only have to look in most racing stables these days to notice that many stable staff are now Europeans. The British public don't want to be shovelling horse poo for the minimum wage, especially as they can sit at home watching Jeremy Kyle, with a packet of fags and a beer. :rolleyes: