That all depends on what you define as poverty, and how much of it you believe there's already about.

 

I have a friend from Poland and we spoke about this the other day. He was surprised at the level of benefits over here. In Poland they are much lower, and limited to a period of time. I asked him what happens after that. He said a typical family would be removed from their house (he described it as a shed) kids taken into care, and the parents would be on the street. Now this maybe an exxageration, but its what would happen. If we are prepared to accept it, then fine.
Don't forget, most of the benefit bill go's to either pensioners, of people with kids.

Its not an easy issue to resolve (or it would have been done by now). The working families tax credit was brought in to help keep low paid people in work, rather than on benefits. It tops up low wages. If you remove it, then to keep an incentive to work, you must lower benefits.

 

No Tel, I can't. Seriously.

The whole thing was set off by the mnoey men, yet OTHER groups of society are being singled out as the roots of all evil.

First it was the overblown public services. Then it was Public Service pensions.
Now it's the unemployed.

WHEN are the money men going to a) get the blame and b) do something about it?

OK, you get fed up hearing it because it wasn't you and it wasn't ALL bankers.

Nor were the public service employees IN ANY WAY to blame, any more than the unemployed now are.

The present campaign is like pulling the passengers from a rail crash and beating them up for being on the train.
It stinks.

 

i had a few points pointed out to me the other night which we all forget
1 goverment gets back 20p for every pound the doley spends in vat plus other taxes on top
2 most of it gets spent in pubs and iceland(which ministers have shares in probably)
3 doleys vote there are lots of them
4 cheep imported labour means more profits for companies who probably don't pay uk tax but do pay out share divvies(hint hint)
5 they have money to spend with the companies above therefore even more profits and share divvies
6 there is more to it than meets the eye, but it don't make it right

 

AND THE PEOPLE WILLING TO TAKE CHEAP MONEY THEY COULDN'T AFFORD.

Two sides to every coin, Jeff, TWO SIDES. I am now fed up with your ignorant enshrined view of events, to put it bluntly. I know you'll never change your mind but take it from me, somebody out there thinks your opinion, to use your word, stinks.

 

I've neverunderstood how they were to blame. If Mr's Y in Watford overpent on her credit card, then i don't see how that caused the bank bailout. AFAIK not one single consumer who got into debt was bailed out by the taxpayer.

 

Turn this into a 40 year old English woman with 4 kids and you have .......my sister
Her youngest is now full time at school so the dss or whatever they are called insisted she found work
Lazy bint took a 10-2 job on and is on with the top up £350 a week , no rent to pay no council tax......foook all
She won't do any overtime as it will effect the hand outs.......her eldest has just got a job and is on strict instructions part time hrs only or pack your bags
I said to her go full time, grab the hours , let him go full time etc but noooo
Earns to much with the top up to loose it
I've been self employed years now......good times and plenty of bad times over the years......I get nothing but in the same breath I don't want anything off the fooookas

 

It's when Mrs Y has about lots of different credit cards and store cards and also uses one card to pay off another card because it offered low or 0% interest, remortgage her home to buy a new car or extend her home. Then when the benefit period of low rates ends finds she's over stretched herself and can no longer make the repayments starts to default on her payments.

 

....defaults on her payments then what? Either sells the house, or somehow gets on top again. No taxpayer bailout needed.
I'm not having a go at bankers, but i still fail to see how what the average person did wrong.

 

More likely is that they never had a house/assets to repay the debt, so the debt is written off at the expense of the bank.

 

Many people rushed greedily and irresponsibly into borrowing cheap money without thought to their means or ability to repay their debt. Plus there are many cases where people lied about their income on self cert mortgages in the hope to get rich quick in the property boom before the crash. Property is not sold but repossessed by the lender and written off at a loss in order for them to meet their own obligations. Also you can't sell or repossess intangibles such as expensive holidays and services paid for by credit. Then times that several hundred thousand or a few million times.....people have short selective memory.

 

Agreed as I was one of those people. Got myself into debt because money was so easy to access. Ended up out of a job a few years back, couldn't make the repayments and defaulted. Can't get any form of credit anymore and I won't for another 8 years give or take. As I slowly pay what I owe back, its a bit saddening that I don't have anything to show for it.

Man is naturally greedy, some are just smart about it others are just thick as champ like me.

 

No, you are not the only ugly ****!!

 

Lenders have responsibility first and foremost or at least they did when I were a lad.

Nothing like a good scrounger story to stir the emotions and newspaper circulation.

 

Of course they do, but my point is that the blame does not lie solely with the lenders.

 

Tell the eldest to pack his bags, go full time and move in with you.

You can then charge him rent

 

why on earth is the government still handing out money to these people??? yes there are genuine cases where people deserve to get the money they do, such as wounded soldiers, and also people who have paid into the system for their working lives etc but the general dole scum should get vouchers for food which cannot be used to buy luxuries such as tobacco or alcohol....

 

I'm sure when I lived in Tenerife, the rules for anyone signing on were that you received 80% of your last wage for 6 months, then nothing.

 

I like the OP used to know families of 3 and now probably 4 generations that never worked and have no intention of doing so.

My sister and brother in law are the same, she has had a couple of jobs over the years, she is now 50 yrs old and has worked for a total of maybe 2 yrs in that time, he has never had a job, so between them i dread to think how much tax payers money they have had, and this situation is replicated the length and breadth of the UK.

I recon the bankers had a large sum in one go, but this lot have been at it for 70 odd years.

Then someone like me with 27 yrs of paying into the system couldn't get a penny when i needed it, it beggars belief.

Why are they giving people job seekers allowance when they are clearly not job seeking.

I could go on and on about this subject, but it would just boil my p!ss further and spoil my tranquility, so i won't.

 

And I'm afraid I care not one jot.

YOU are wrong and you get angry because you are trying to defend the indefensible.

Get over it.

 

Scrap job-seekers allowance altogether, I say. What is its purpose?

 

Don't see how the banks are connected to the benefits problem..........

The goverment receives a certain amount in tax, they spend more, and then they need to borrow more.
The expenses keep increasing, and the tax isn't keeping up.........
So what do you do?
You can keep trying to raise tax etc, but they have put corp tax down from 30% to 24%!
Or you can do the most sensible thing which is look at your costs and try and save some.
The benefits being paid these days are a serious amount. So they need looking at, and sorting out..........
As a nation we can't just keep paying such a ridiculous amount of benefits. If having a baby entitles you to free housing and a lifetime salary then of course it encourages you to have babies. The benefit population can only get bigger. What will it be like in 20 years, 40, 60 or 100? The working population won't pay enough tax to meet the bill.
They need to do something drastic now. To protect the future.
If the babies aren't born, then they can't be in poverty

 

Banks lend money and charge interest based on risk, they were bad at analyzing the risk, the structure they created rewarded them in the short term even if in the long term they were crap at analyzing the risks. The result is that the bankers got paid fortunes for being rubbish at their jobs and the public had to pay for their errors. The only way this is the fault of the public is that we should have demanded stricter regulation and punishment for the cowboy bankers who profited from ineptitude.

 

Here's a plan. Reduce benefit payments so they become a last resort not a lifestyle schoice and get the economy growing by taking some short term pain. Then more people will be in work making tax revenues grow and benefit payments shrink..... see what I did there... no and neither will any government!

 

If only it were that simple! Aren't the Tory's trying to do that now, reducing benefit payments and reforming the system? Problem is you can't get people to work if they aren't willing to work, skilled or otherwise. You can't force them to work even if you take their benefits away. Also how would you get employers to take on such people? I would imagine we'd see a sharp increase in crime.

Perhaps the jobless could start working for benefits doing community service or something and those not working only get vouchers for basic necessities. That in itself has consequences too.

 

Yes you can blame the people for their irresponsible and selfish attitude as well as the State for letting them get away with it.

Les

 

No they aren't doing anything of the sort. They say they are reducing benefits, but show me where this is happening.

One easy thing they could do is to start building housing to be state owned again and rent these direct to those that need them. This would a) generate jobs b) give the country some much needed housing c) drastically cut the rents they pay via the benft systm to private landlords who can currently more or less name their price to say nothing of the fact that it generates assets (housing) that will doubtless over time increase in value. Over a short space of time this would just about pay for itself!

They also won't get an, at best, flat economy growing while they appear to tax and charge the working population into the ground. A lot of growth is down to perception and confidence, while fuel, energy and VAT are perceived as high and continuing to rise people won't spend money even if they have it.

Stimulus needs to come through actions not just words. They have to do something as currently we are on a road to nowhere.

 

The Government have taken steps to reduce benefit bill, only today it's been reported that they are looking to cut council tax benefits. Also the Government have put in place schemes and a budget to create more affordable housing. But I would guess that a lot of these jobs going are being filled by migrant workers. Also Cutting rental benefits will do nothing other than force private landlords to change tenants from council to private tenants.

 

You even talk like one of them. "taken steps", "looking to cut".... when I see "doing" I will believe it.

Welfare spending has increased every year since they took power and is forecast to do so again this year.... how is that cutting?

Of course cutting rental benefits will do something other than forcing private landlords to change tenants, it will reduce the amount the government spend on housing benefit!

 

Isnt reducing housing payments if you have an empty room a start on the housing costs to reduce the benefit burden?

They are building social housing - sadly what they are also doing is having city councils - Birmingham for instance - contribute to the building of these social homes but in small quiet towns in the the middle of nowhere - Where I live for instance - and dump the families the cities dont want onto the little towns. Its what is happening here.

The amusing part is that on one side of quite a narrow road is all this social housing which is going to filled with Brummie ASBO winners and on the other is a housing estate full of executive homes that anyone with an ounce of sense won't go near.

Biggest problem in the UK is the salary and pension burden on the public sector.