I don't know and you don't know. That is the long and the short of it. If you were a high rate tax payer and those people are on benefits and living as well as you then either you dropped your money down a stank or you are wrong. Simple as that.
So that people don't have to sleep on the street, I should imagine.
As to what is essential? Do you know how the rates of benefit were originally calculated? Do you know how they were implemented after that calculation? Do you know the history of cutting them thereafter? I get the impression you don't
Just like everybody else then? You will take a job if it brings in more money than your benefit when you judge that is in your interest? Would you take it if it brought in less? I understood you to say that your pride is worth a great deal of money and that a drop in income is well worth the increase in dignity. What will you work for, I wonder?
You see, your £65 per week is exactly what you say you want: it is the contributory benefit paid for those between jobs: and while you get it you are under far less pressure to take just anything: that is an accepted part of the system: you get that time to seek a job commensurate with your expectations for just the reasons you give. The game changes when that benefit runs out.
See above.
Does not matter what they say: the rules matter and the rules forbid that. Of course there are ways around them: there are for any rules. But the idea that one can just decide to make a choice shows a complete failure to understand the benefits system in this country.
As has already been said: there is a benefits trap. Most people will not make the choice to take a significant drop in an already inadequate income in order to bask in the dignity of work. For most people that would entail impoverishing their dependents, and they don't have such a distorted sense of their own importance that they would do that to their children. Clearly your values differ. And from one perspective they may well be admirable: but I do not admire the idea that your children should suffer for your pride. Many people have to face that stark choice: it is one of the things which underlies the poor mental health outcomes which arise from unemployment, actually. And it is interesting to note that we do not see a choice to maximise income by, for example, setting your self up as non resident or non domiciled so that you can avoid tax, in the same way: that is not only legal, but it is seen as perfectly reasonable unless you want to be a government minister. Why do you expect the poor to be different from the rich? Oh that is right: they are not like us. Seems they are.
You clearly haven't a clue. You don't even know what an area with a lot of people on benefits looks like: they don't have the kinds of adverts for staff in shop windows etc you described upthread. I have visited London and seen that: In times when we were having a boom I have even seen it here occasionally. But not often and not for long. What is the unemployment rate where you live?
Oh and good luck with keeping your forthcoming child happy with the radio.
Do give us your recipe for healthy eating on benefit: I know a lot of social workers and health visitors who need that information, so don't delay.
No I am not denying it happens: I am asking what you actually know about how the system works. Do you know how you claim such benefits? Do you know how entitlement is assessed? Do you know how many claims are denied and how many are successful if they are appealed? Do you know how often the award is reviewed? Do you know how that process works? All of that information is freely available so it is not unreasonable to ask you to outline your understanding: and then tell me it is easy and show how, please
Not what I suggested: you are in a peculiar position because you presumably signed up as a sponsor for your wife and she has not lived here legally as your spouse for 3 years yet and so cannot begin the process of naturalisation. If that is the case you fall under the "no recourse to public funds" provisions. The only other ways you can be in the situation you are in is if she is working: or if your savings are high enough to debar your from means tested benefits.
What i suggested was you try to live on the benefits you would get if you were not in that peculiar position. The benefits that millions of your fellows are living on (and managing to run cars and all of that on, according to you). Try it.
Tough: they should have thought of that. Why should I not expect high earners to make provision for that while they are in work? I read a statistic one time which I cannot now find: the majority of people, whatever their level of income, were 3 months wages away from destitution: that is the level of average cash savings and it did not vary with income except at the bottom and the very top. Funny that: the poor don't seem to be a different breed after all.
Well they cannot tax what you do not earn, so that is inevitably true. So what?
No. Benefits are designed to smooth the transition between jobs and that is fine. If you cannot get a job in short space of time the game changes. It changes because of the views of people like you. So yes, we are coming at it from different angles. You think it is reasonable to force you sell your non-essentials because you are out of work for longer than a few months: I don't. Have you read about the means test in the 1930's? It seems that you wish to return to that system. If we get to that stage I will seek political asylum in a civilised country.
And then?
How did you contribute anything? Were you not paying full uk tax or something? I had understood that most countries had double taxation agreements, and that is how non-domiciled and non resident people get out of contributing to this country. I am very willing to be enlightened about this aspect.
A less good than they were when we paid a reasonable amount in taxes. I said: you cannot have european level services and american style taxes.
They prevent starvation, yes. They prevent sleeping on the street, yes. They put shoes on people's feet, yes.
Do they allow of a life as opposed to an existence? Debatable
Benefits do not trap people in unemployment: low wages do that.
As for wasters milking the system, now here I do agree with you. Sack every charlatan consultant with another super wheeze for getting people off sickness benefits: every one with a fraudulent way of measuring benefit fraud to sell, for a politicians comfort; stop all the rich landlords getting their income from multiple private lets funded by housing benefit and let us have proper council houses again. Etc. I am glad we have at least some points of agreement
They are educating our children, quite obviously. Why do you ask? Did you miss the improvement in standard exam passes year on year? Did you not notice that our class ridden society apparently has to make finer and finer distinctions between exam results so that we can continue to have an elite? Criterion referencing would never do, now would it?
You might also have missed the fact that this is achieved in difficult circumstances: schools which have set up breakfast clubs because the children don't get a breakfast before they arrive are an example: weans learn better when they are fed and the results are there for all to see.
It is not the police's job to reduce crime, actually: that task falls to the street lighting agency and other such bodies. I noticed that a council proposed turning the lights off at midnight somewhere in england: that will help, no doubt. Don't think they implemented it: perhaps sanity prevailed.
No, they don't spend all their time catching speeders: though they do that too and it is very lucrative (you didn't know that income generation is important nowadays? tis another pretty prism from the private sector and another way of raising money from a population which will not pay tax) Like every other public servant nowadays what they do spend a lot of time doing is "accountability": and what that means is writing about doing their job instead of doing it. That is what we demanded and that is what we have got: it is now acknowledged by all parties: they all make noises about how bad it is: yet to see any actual reversal of this nonsense, however
We don't pay enough tax and we make the choices about how to spend the ones we do raise. Oddly enough those things are not a very high priority. We have a splendid army, however. And we have a really thriving banking sector able to pay millions in bonuses.
See above
Interesting. How far below have you managed, so far? How many weeks? I assume you are saving something every week? Is it going to be enough to cover the increased heating costs in the winter? Clothes? Repairs to the boiler when it bursts? I am genuinely interested in how you are managing this: especially since you presumably "have higher outgoings for things that may not be able to be turned off quickly". Seems that turned out not to be true? I do agree that the minimum wage is a lot better than benefit if you have no children, and no special needs, however.
Just like all those people you so decry then? Seems you are no different from them. Again
