Benefits are now really capped at £33,000- disgraceful!

Instead of turning this into a scrounger-hate fueled race to the bottom, maybe we should focus on raising the bar for everybody (instead of making life worse for people on benefits). Raise the minimum wage to ensure that people aren't faced with lower living standards just because greedy businesses don't want to pay them much.

Then surely scrap child benefit and over financial incentives with direct links to education? What's wrong with that?



That's my point. £20 will do **** all to change that.

Then surely scrap child benefit and over financial incentives with direct links to education? What's wrong with that?



That's my point. £20 will do **** all to change that.

You seem to have perfected the art of the strawman.

The benefit is not £20! It is about £2700 a year of child tax credit on top of the twenty pounds a week child support. And I can assure you that it does make a difference to a childs upbringing, given that my WORKING single mother received it when my dad left, and it allowed us to stay in the same house while I was doing my exams.

Ok, well let me give a personal view point. To me, that £20 bought me my school equipment. With my new pens, I personally felt like I was engaged and motivated to learn. Even something as small as new stationary encouraged me to want to be proactive. But, not everybody is like that, and the child benefits in some families gets spent else where, not on the child.

Sometimes, I do get infuriated too, like you, that benefits are given to families which waste it on alcohol, drugs, etc. And ultimately the children suffer because of selfish parents. The £20 a week thing you were talking about should not be stopped, rather I think the government should give some of that child benefit in vouchers, say for WHSmith where parents have to buy stationary.

£20 will put warm food in a childs belly though.

you right wingers are utterly disgraceful.

If you read, I was questioning a point that was being made arguing that children are not able to help the life they are born into, so we should thus pay for them.

I said that children cannot help being born into life in Somalia, or any one of numerous other countries around the world, I was enquiring whether the OP thought we should support them too, if the argument they are making is 'we should support children who cannot help where they were born'

You seem to have perfected a lazy way of dismissing an argument without having to formulate a response.

Pens cost £1 for a packet, in fact even less.

What kind of parent can't afford to feed their own kids? Shouldn't be ****ing having kids in the first place if you can't afford food.

Good, then you'll tell me how a country such as ours can pay child benefits to every disadvantaged family in the world, how much each child should get and how much you estimate it will cost.

www.wfp.org/node/491 says there are about 400 million undernourished children globally.

What kind of parent can't afford to feed their own kids? Shouldn't be ****ing having kids in the first place if you can't afford food.

I obviously meant £20 a week.

In 1970 there were around 300,000 people employed in the mines. The service sector has not grown to support all of these miners, industry workers and the new generation that would have previously been employed in those sectors. Getting an apprenticeship is becoming increasingly difficult and going to university is a big time and monetary investment and the job market isn't that great for graduates either.

What on earth did they do before the creation of the welfare state...

Those on benefits SHOULD only have basic lives, if that.

Reduce the cap!

What kind of parent can't afford to feed their own kids? Shouldn't be ****ing having kids in the first place if you can't afford food.

You've never met anyone then who struggle to pay the train or bus fare for college then to the point where it's a massive part in the decision in where they go to college?

Firstly, it is possible that (and this is hypothetical) if everyone was united under one goal the poverty problem could be solved easily.
Secondly i didn't say that. so i guess you are a straw man in which case arguing with you would be like arguing with a baby that jingling keys aren't funny.