BS: UK Benefit Reform U-Turn

Subject: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 02:44 AM

Just heard onthe news that the government are set to do a u-turn on their benefit reforms. One reform in particular.

Under pressure from Tory back-benchers it seems that the government will not be going ahead with stopping universdal child benefit for the highest paid earnners.

Obviously as more and more bankers are being denied their miollionj pound bonuses, they need the beenifit to be able to put a meal on their childrens' plates.

Who says we are all in it together!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 04:48 AM

Early for cuckoos, isn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 04:52 AM

If there's ever been an area of politics in which these bloody Tories have successfully (and deliberately) engendered ill-feeling, prejudice and the comfortable feeling that it's OK judge yet not be judged, it's in people's attitude to those on benefits. While Guest et al are pontificating about all these scroungers, let 'em just remember that the self-same Tories are planning to scrap the top income tax rate and have done diddley-squat about the terrible performance of banks and the sheer greed of bankers. Shhh, eh? If you are really going to fall for the chracterisation of millions of legitimate benefit claimants on the basis of the very few cheats that the Murdoch press et al. love to highlight, then, frankly, you're not worth talking to.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 05:17 AM

The original post was principally concerned with 'universal child benefit for the highest paid earners'. Immigration is a separate issue. Surely it makes sense to stop paying out a benefit simply because one has children, with no reference to ones income? Do highly-paid folk need child benefit? I do feel that beyond a certain level of income, it should be refused.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: Penny S.
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 05:26 AM

I heard mention of anomalies this morning. That would be the one, presumably, where a family with one income over £40,000 would lose benefit, while a family with two incomes of £39,999 would still get it, I would have thought.

Not likely to affect asylum seekers.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 07:52 AM

My point - and I can type properly now I've just replaced the reading glasses I sat on last night - is that the u-turn only helps the highest paid - those who would generally suffer least if the reform was to go ahead. But the Tory back-benchers are not challenging the majority of benefit reforms which a punitive to tenants in high-rent poroperties, not the landlords that line their pockets - force job seekers into irrelavant work-experience that provides little scope for employment later on but lines the pockets of executives and shareholders who would otherwise provide real jobs as an alternitive, forcing people with terminal illnesses to be regularly reassessed to find out if their prognosis is down to their last 6 months yet, for continued entitlement to Incapacity Benefits - while not putting place guarantees that noone will be refused employment on the basis of limited life expectancy .   etc. etc.
I think it is quite clear what side the backbenchers toast is buttered on...

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 08:13 AM

Would you also be glad to see over a hundred billion in tax avoidance by the filthy rich recovered? How about billions in bonuses to failed bankers? What do you think of a government whose policies are making unemployment soar, in light of your feeling that lower class types are getting all the advantages? How about that young lady, who never did a day's work in her life, marrying at public expense into an obscenely wealthy and useless royal family? Well, I suppose that was, at least, one good day's work...

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 08:25 AM

This thread is about whatever it turns out to be about. You don't get to dictate. I know several people now on benefits who have worked bloody hard in their time and achieved much. Your juxtaposition is as false as it is mischievous.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: Penny S.
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 08:28 AM

From what I've just heard, the injustice to be corrected is that higher earners with children would be contributing more to the recopvery than higher earners without children, and that isn't fair.

Many with benefits are being supported because their hard work is not properly rewarded, and they need to be helped, while their employers are being effectively subsidised by those benefits, and thus rewarded for their employees' hard work.

This is about benefits being paid to those who could manage perfectly well without them.

Perhaps our anonymous guest would like to try living on the pay of a school cleaner for six months.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 08:39 AM

That's right. We should not confuse the minimum wage with a living wage. You can work full-time here in Cornwall and take home at the end of the month about £800, and have to pay rent on your two-bed house of £650. Then there's all the bills on top of that. Lucky you if you're a couple and you can both get full-time, non-seasonal work round here. So the state has to weigh in with tax credits and housing benefit, etc. The taxpayer is effectively paying some of the wages that the big companies are not paying. I don't know why we don't just cut out the middle man and just give the dough straight to the landlords. You don't hear too many calls from the likes of Guest for landlords to get on their bikes, find proper jobs and do an honest day's work for a change.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 09:09 AM

Don't be silly chaps. "Guest" is probably unemployed and claiming himself: it's true of many supporters of the lunatic right.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 09:12 AM

The anonymous Guest has twice missed my point - which is that the benefit reforms are only being targetted towards those who are worse off, while the better-off are having thier benefits protected. The rights and wrongs of the wider benefit reforms has been debated in other threads.

A personally think that the whole of the benefit reform has been badly thought through and does not do enough to protect those who slip through the safety net - and that is the intiention of benefits, to be a safety net.

But whatever reforms are applied, they should be applied fairly, and equitably. Taking the Guardian/Observer ok lets take one step down the ladder for the good of the country - now those nearer the top of the ladder are getting their feet damp, they don't like it!

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: theleveller
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 10:01 AM

"no wonder the country is in such a state"

The country is in this state because people are seen as having no value - or a value that is based only on what they own or earn. The altruism, compassion and morality that was behind the founding of the welfare state has largely disappeared from our society. The result is greedy, ignorant and immoral people like Guest and the demonising of anyone who is obliged to claim the benefits that they are entitled to (yet who will themselves happily claim benefits in the form of tax concessions of pension contributions etc.). This is the true legacy of Bloody Thatcher and every other government since.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: Penny S.
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 11:01 AM

"badly thought through" implies "thought through". I'm not convinced. Oxford degree in PPE regardless.

And I think the idea that people have no value is only half right. I think that it may well be worse. That many have negative value.

For every year that a teacher works beyond 60, they die a year earlier. (Source - NUT meeting.) In the past, when schoolmasters worked until 65, they often died within two or three years. So what is going to be the result of making teachers work until 67?

(OK,I have just implied wicked thinking, rather than no thinking.)

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 11:05 AM

""Would you also be glad to see over a hundred billion in tax avoidance by the filthy rich recovered?""

Well £500m clawed back from Barclays Bank this week. Half a billion is a start, and it was tax avoidance, not tax evasion, which is even better since avoidance is technically legal.

There is, they say, more to come and loopholes will be closed.

Still, I doubt that would make you happy, since it doesn't gel with your view of this government.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 11:27 AM

Thread drift - but how do we think the guest would 'deal with' the families of single parents? Place into residential care? Assuming there are enough residential care places to go round, the cost of each place is far far more than the combined cost of housing benefits, tax credits, JSa, etc. Or do we think he/she is things that vulnerable children should be left to roam the streets - wouldn't that lead to street crime? Or do we thonk that the guest has a far more sinister final solution?

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 11:35 AM

I suspect GUEST has a modest proposal.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform Return
From: Penny S.
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 11:45 AM

I wonder what he would do with the absentee fathers?

The fathers who leave their families and refuse to pay maintenance because they "need it for their new family".

The fathers who don't stay around for the birth in the first place.

Women can't get children all by themselves. Or maybe Guest missed that lesson.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform U-Turn
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 05:31 AM

The thing that all the political parties get wrong is that they all want to "means-test" benefits. Then they argue about "who" to remove benefits from.
What should happen is make the benefits universal - give the same amount to all who qualify for a basic condition e.g. a fixed amount given for each child up to the age of 16. The money to pay fro it should hen come out of taxes. Tax levels should be set so that people with income above a certain level pay out more than they could gain from any benefits they might receive. It couldn't be more simple, fair or efficient to administer.
How much of the nations cash is spent on departments whose only purpose is to administer and decide who to not give money?
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform U-Turn
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 05:46 AM

There is, they say, more to come and loopholes will be closed.

Still, I doubt that would make you happy, since it doesn't gel with your view of this government.

Don T.

Closing loopholes would always make me happy, though what makes me unhappy is the clear reluctance (in spite of all the fine talk) to get this done. Y'know, leave the rich alone and squeeze the poor. Go and have a lie down, Don.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform U-Turn
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 06:16 AM

The principle of means teasting is to bring everyone who needs benefits to a level playing filed, so that yhose whpo have the most need get the most support.

If benefits were to be universal then the minimum level would have to be set at that of the highest level of need, otherwise the benefit level would not be enough to dover basic living costs - then the other argument would be why would those with comparitively low need levels require such a high level of support.

Another problem is that levels of support such as housing benefit are driven by supply and demand in the private rented market - and if capping housing benefit results in force migration around parts of the country then the movement of demand against a static supply would drive rent prices up elsewhere.

In the UK we haven't decended to urban slums/favolas but I worry that could happen soon.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform U-Turn
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 06:59 AM

What a load of crap. There has to be a cutoff, either that or it's a free for all. Try telling the Benefits Agency that your savings are only JUST over the level which disqualifies you from receiving government help with rent ot Council Tax. Then sit back and watch them laugh at you!
If one set of benefits are means tested, then ALL benefits should be!

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform U-Turn
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 07:14 AM

John, like myself if you have a pension or saving they don't want to know. The lower elements of society are the ones milking the system. Widspread abuse is in the headlines day and daily. Benefits should be paid for three months, then nothing. Also they should be made to sign on daily. Most you see on benefits in council estates don't look starved either. It is now a profession to live off the state.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform U-Turn
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 08:06 AM

"Lower elements"? PMSL.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform U-Turn
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 08:11 AM

The Daily Mail has turned on Scameron. Is this the beginning of the end for him?

Read Sonia Poulton here:


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2110900/Suicide-training-Job-Centres-Cancer-patients-scrubbing-floors-Welcome-Cameron-

Subject: RE: BS: UK Benefit Reform U-Turn
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 08:16 AM

All you need to do to improve the rate of take from the 50% band is to reverse the principle in IRC -v- Westminster. Replace it with a principle that if the Inland Revenue deems something to be a "tax avoidance scheme" then it will be fully taxed (for purposes of income tax, corporation tax, capital gains tax or whatever) - unless the taxpayer proves on a balance of probability that the saving of tax was NOT a material purpose. This already applies in a different form in relation to import duties on items allegedly for personal use, so it is not ground breaking. The rich just don't want it. They want the present system under which the little man is bullied into paying tax by the powerful revenue, but the rich take the taxman for several good lunches and gets off very lightly. Tax should NOT be optional for the rich.