interesting commentary here from the guardian’s Polly toynbee on the sharp cuts going in on Monday.

http://guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/28/benefit-cuts-monday-defines-government

Government or no, I think as human beings we have the obligation to care for those less fortunate

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

THIS and very interesting about how the papers dont cover this in a fai ran impartial way – we are not in the shit because of benefit claimants however hard they try to make us think this we are in the shit because of the actions of the greedy and the wealthy.

It is shameful when we all tut at tax cuts for the rich, turn a blind eye to tax avoidance and still shop with amazon, ebay etc. We then demonise the poorest in our society as feckless layabouts – as if there were enough jobs to go a round anyway and it is their fault they dont work.

It never ceases to amaze me how you can unite people around hatred.

It is true that a number of people [ small IME] dont want work but tbh it is irrelavant what they want as there are no **** jobs so demonising them will make not one jot of difference. Provide jobs then you may have a point and just be heartless rather than being a ****

Its not about helping peoplle help themselves its about the fact this shower dont want to help anyone but their own who we use awesome words like “wealth providers, “risk takers” to describe them.
Its an odd propoganda war and tbh it never ceases to amaze me how the Tories manage to convince poor folk to vote for them its like Turkeys voting for Christmas

I don’t understand why the Tories aren’t getting excoriated in the mainstream media (all of it). Every time i hear Nick Robinson on the BBC he acts like Cameron et al are doing a great job, when by their own targets (on the economy for example) they are failing miserably.

Oh come on, we all know it’s the poor that are to blame.

what a crap article, is Mark Steel drying to get a job with the Daily Mash?

nick robinson was chair of the Tories at Uni where he surprisingly studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford.
He laos spent a year a sleader of the young conservatives
He must be friends with some of these folk and been mates for a while

he is probably personally delighted by it all – tbh he does a fair job of being balanced given how right wing he is- obviously having a Tory as head political correspondent in no way suggests the BBC is oanything other thanleft leaning

What a crap article, is Mark Steel drying to get a job with the Daily Mash?

he over eggs the pudding in places but he has a point – we demonise the poor as if they are the cause of our problems. perhaps you dont do sarcasm , perhaps you dont like his style but I doubt you missed his point

Blame people who can’t answer back – it’s the oldest political trick in the world.

nick robinson was chair of the Tories at Uni where he surprisingly studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford.
He laos spent a year a sleader of the young conservatives
He must be friends with some of these folk and been mates for a while

he is probably personally delighted by it all – tbh he does a fair job of being balanced given how right wing he is- obviously having a Tory as head political correspondent in no way suggests the BBC is oanything other than left leaning

Two words, Andrew Marr

Our welfare state is very important. It has however been horribly abused and unless we fix it we will loose it all together.

bencooper – Member
Blame people who can’t answer back – it’s the oldest political trick in the world.

We live in a democracy, that’s how you answer back

Horribly abused – what do you mean by horribly abused ?

as for loose it it will never happen as evena tory can work out that the costs of police and prison are more expensive than just keeping people in abject poverty

Two words, Andrew Marr

caller, what is your point?

£56 is the amount before rent/council tax that is deemed adequate for an adult to live on, per week.

And while we could all manage that for a week or so, what happens when you need to replace clothes, white goods, car problems or any other larger expense.

And this is not just for those unemployed, but the amount deemed ‘enough’ for those on low wages.

Our welfare state is very important. It has however been horribly abused

Evidence?

No actually you’re right, it is horribly abused by being used to subsidise the profits of large corporations paying their staff less than a living wage, good point.

We live in a democracy, that’s how you answer back

But what do you do when it’s a multiple choice question where all the available answers are wrong.

We live in a democracy

guffaw 😆

grumEvidence?

No actually you’re right, it is horribly abused by being used to subsidise the profits of large corporations paying their staff less than a living wage, good point.
Evidence everywhere … the very fact there was uproar when the government proposed a cap on £25pa in benefits (that’s tax free money by the way) shows how much money very many people are receiving. Recall that dreadful story where the family set light to their own house – the woman/mistress living their was on £50k pa in benefits

Massive abuse of housing benefits, far too many larger properties provided for families who don’t need them

6000 council houses provided for families with an income over £100k

Disability benefits are massively abused taking money from the really deserving and being paid to skivers

EU workers entitled to benefits from the day they arrive, EU workers claiming child benefit for kids who remain in their native country

Once you’ve paid for your sky, ciggies and minimum priced white lightning, £56 isn’t going to go far is it?

We live in a democracy, that’s how you answer back

Find me one voter who voted for a ConLibDem coalition and I’ll concede your point. Even Tony Blair, at his most popular, only managed to get 22% of the voting-age population to vote for him.

Never mind the fact that the people hit hardest by these cuts are also the same groups who are least likely to vote – they know there’s no point, really.

The economic mess was caused by wealthy, greedy financiers, and it’s being paid for by the poor, the disabled and the young – who had nothing to do with causing it.

Evidence everywhere …

Right, so your evidence comes from the Daily Mail. Got any proper evidence?

Once you’ve paid for your sky, ciggies and minimum priced white lightning, £56 isn’t going to go far is it?

DD – that applies to everyone, all of us

Evidence everywhere … the very fact there was uproar when the government proposed a cap on £25pa in benefits (that’s tax free money by the way) shows how much money very many people are receiving. Recall that dreadful story where the family set light to their own house – the woman/mistress living their was on £50k pa in benefits
Massive abuse of housing benefits, far too many larger properties provided for families who don’t need them

6000 council houses provided for families with an income over £100k

Disability benefits are massively abused taking money from the really deserving and being paid to skivers

EU workers entitled to benefits from the day they arrive, EU workers claiming child benefit for kids who remain in their native country

Funny; I thought this was a cycling website, not the Daily Mail.

far too many larger properties provided for families who don’t need them

No you’re right about that one:

It’s feckless wasters like these who are bleeding the country dry. 😥

The economic mess was caused by wealthy, greedy financiers, and it’s being paid for by the poor, the disabled and the young – who had nothing to do with causing it.

Amen.

What is even more annoying is that it is these same people that are egging on the Tories to ” get a grip on the deficit”, while often remaining in their well paid jobs at the tax payers expense.

when people start starving to death on the streets, who’s going to pay for all those free burials?

DD – that applies to everyone, all of us

Oh I know! Therefore I would propose a cap on cable/satellite TV spend of £5 per week for those on certain benefits. Branson and Murdoch can supply the figures on a house by house basis. If the spend exceeds a fiver, then whip it out if the lazy arses’ total each month. Or make them pick litter to the value of the overspend.

shows how much money very many people are receiving

People always use atypical exepmlars to show this – it is so far from typical that it is laughable to use it as an example. Would you like to put a figure to “very many ” in terms of a % of the population or even those claiming I assume it must be a massive % then

PS the money is due to how many children they have so it is for their family rather than for them personally

Recall that dreadful story where the family set light to their own house – the woman/mistress living their was on £50k pa in benefits

evidence of this 50 k per annum income please followed by an explanation of how typical it is.

Massive abuse of housing benefits, far too many larger properties provided for families who don’t need them

in what sense is this an abuse? what % is this of claimants? do we actuallu have th ehousing stick for everyone to move into a smaller home?

6000 council houses provided for families with an income over £100k

council housing is not part of benefits.

Disability benefits are massively abused taking money from the really deserving and being paid to skivers

ok you seem confused now the only beneift with disability in it is DLA and

You can get DLA whether or not you work. It isn’t usually affected by any savings or income you may have.

Who exactly are more deserving than those who have mobility issues and require care for simple tasks like cooking meals or shopping?

EU workers entitled to benefits from the day they arrive,

Depends if you are A8 or not though about to change iirc

The rules are complicated and can be different for different groups and nationalities. Foreign nationals are not entitled to benefits when they are seeking work, unless they have already worked here and are temporarily unemployed. Citizens from the A8 countries for example, become entitled to benefits and housing if they are self-employed here, or if they have a job and register with the Workers Registration Scheme. Once they have been working lawfully for a year they no longer have to register when changing jobs and they become eligible for benefits when temporarily out of work as well as when working

EU workers claiming child benefit for kids who remain in their native country

what like we can in their country – we cannot ignore EU rules so if you obect to this blame Europe not the benefits system

Oh I know! Therefore I would propose a cap on cable/satellite TV spend of £5 per week for those on certain benefits.

This is where the money goes, the majority to either pensioners or those in work – to save any real money, you’d have to hit these too.

But then a fair number of the pensioners must have been ‘feckless wasters’ at some point 🙂

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/jan/08/uk-benefit-welfare-spending

what like we can in their country

Where is the best place for state sponsored mountain biking?

Alpes Maritime, Var, Pyranees Orientale, Malaga or St Remo? 🙂

In France can’t you get a significant proportion of your previous wage as unemployment benefit? So you just need to get a high-paying job, then get laid off and move to France and you’re quids in.

About time attention was turned to very wealthy pensioners, can’t be right that they get heating allowance and free bus travel.

Not talking about those that are comfortably off, just the very wealthy who get more pension than most people earn from working

We live in a democracy

Indeed we do. Democracy was first postulated as a political system by Cleisthenes (“the father of Athenian democracy”) in Ancient Greece, which was a slave-keeping culture. Which seems to be the way we’re heading now.

About time attention was turned to very wealthy pensioners, can’t be right that they get heating allowance and free bus travel.

Quite right, either they stay at home heating the house, in which case they don’t need the bus pass, or they’re out jollying about on buses, in which case they don’t need warm houses.

aye just shows you what can happen if you vote
they rode the housing bubble, got fre euniversity education, did not pay enough to cover their pension sbecaus ethey now live longer and we must proetc these folk at all costs

I dont get it either tbh as a number of pensionable age individulas are some distance from poverty – my parents live abroad for the winter in a 100k camper van and still get winter fuel payments.
they get enough income to pay tax and everywhere we go they get in cheaper than me – they probably have a greater income than me and certainly have a greater disposable income than me and yet we protect them.

Tijuana Taxi – Member

About time attention was turned to very wealthy pensioners, can’t be right that they get heating allowance and free bus travel.

It’s the old saw of admin costs- these aren’t massively expensive benefits (per capita anyway) so the cost of evaluation could easier be higher than the price of universal payment.

About time attention was turned to very wealthy pensioners, can’t be right that they get heating allowance and free bus travel.

This would cost more to implement than it would save.

Intead of blaming the poor, or immigrants, or the disabled, or oaps.
How about blaming greedy bankers, tax dodging multi nationals, etc, and polititians who pander to their needs, instead of helping the people who they’re supposed to represent.

Lets put Toynbee and Hitchens in the same room, lock the door and let the strivers/shirkers debate (sic) create enough hot air and BS to power the UK as our gas runs out. Both create lovely headlines but make the central argument as clear as mud.

But hat’s off to Toynbee in this case for cleverly quoting JK Galbraith as if he were still alive today! JKG was a Keynesian economist who would have shuddered to watch both Labour and Tory governments run up budget deficits during good times and thereby restricting the ability to react to the bad times – and one of those parties pretends to be Keynesian!!

Perhaps Toynbee chose the wrong Keynesian to quote as Krugman describes JKG (unfairly IMO) as, “an economist who writes solely for the public, as opposed to one who writes for other academics, and who therefore makes unwarranted diagnoses and offers over-simplistic answers to complex economic problems” (Harsh?). He asserts that Galbraith was never taken seriously by fellow academics, who viewed him as more of a “media personality”. If Krugman is correct then perhaps he fits nicely with Toynbee (and Hitchens)?

Taking away pensioners allowances goes against the basic “universal benefit” principle of the welfare state. Like benefits, it is a political red-herring.

How do you actually get £50k in benefits btw?

Always look forward to the right wingers impertinent reactions to good old Polly. 😆

This may be the first time ever I agree with Polly. She’s usually so reliably wrong.