The Student Room Group

"Shame of Condem cuts"

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Original post by Falcatas

Britain is not returning to some Dickensian society where people had to steal or beg for survival. If this was the case, why are there always reports how apparently more children are becoming overweight?


Because fast food is the cheapest food, and also the fattiest. The poorest kids often end up overweight as a result.
Reply 21
Original post by scrotgrot
Ahh, thought so. The wisdom of the great goddess Anecdote. If you're so sure, why don't you knock out a quick report on that? I'm sure the DWP, the Treasury, the CAB, the Trussell Trust, the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the social policy academics, the think-tanks and the general public would be very interested to hear what you have to say.


We live in a country that gives you free education up until you are 21, gives you free money to look for a job and is generally fairly good at providing equality of opportunity. If you still end up in this situation, obviously excluding the desperate cases, you would have to say you probably made some bad decisions along the way.
Obviously it seems like you have some sort of connection to this, whatever that might be , but I don't see why it should be so taboo to suggest that maybe a lot of these people had at least some hand in their own situation. Or do we absolve them and point the finger at the system? Yes I haven't linked you to a peer reviewed study, and frankly I can't be bothered to find one, but if you are honestly claiming that all food bank visitors are there through no fault of their own that seems like a fairly blinkered outlook.
Original post by Huskaris
Good.


Does it make you feel big to say things like that?
This is why I love The Mirror. It's a shame that other tabloids try to turn poor people against each other instead of focusing on the real cause of their deprivation. We should be getting angry about things like this, not someone who claims benefits or has come to this country to do a **** job for a **** wage.
Original post by scrotgrot
In any self-respecting country this would be on the front pages of ALL the newspapers. One ****ing million people, one-third of whom are CHILDREN...

Last night when the news broke I worked out the following:

Since the Tories took office, there has been a 25-fold increase in the number of users of food banks. The foul Tory lie that food banks are supply-led is debunked by the fact that, though the Trussell Trust slowed down its building of new food banks in 2013/14, it has not stymied in any way the vertiginous growth in the number of users.

In 2010 all food bank claimants would have fitted in the North and South stands at Old Trafford. If the trend continues, by the start of the new football season, all 44 grounds in the Premiership and the Championship PUT TOGETHER wouldn't be enough to hold them.

In the equivalent period from 2006-2010, Labour had to negotiate a major spike in world food prices, a disastrous financial crisis and the worst recession since the 1930s. And yet the Tories have still managed to SEXTUPLE the growth rate - let alone the growth itself - across a corresponding four-year period when food prices have been falling and the economy supposedly recovering.

I've never seen anything like it and I have been shaking with rage ever since the story broke at around midnight. Anyone who defends the Tories' benefit cuts is a despicable piece of ****.


How many of these people has satellite TV or smoke? North Lincolnshire council have banned folk who do from hardship funds and quite right too: http://www.scunthorpetelegraph.co.uk/bedroom-tax-relief-smokers-satellite-TV-customers/story-20227560-detail/story.html
Original post by scrotgrot
Does it make you feel big to say things like that?


Not particularly. I just don't see why I should work 40 hours a week to fund the feckless.

It's not my responsibility, its theirs.

And do I "feel big" well get you, the champion of the underclass. I'm sure they'll personally thank you.
I worry that a lot of people on TSR think you can just walk into a food bank a few times a week and walk out with enough food to allow you to keep paying your Sky subscription for another two months.

I can assure you, that is absolutely not how it works. :rolleyes:

You can keep thinking that if it makes you feel better though. Keep thinking that poverty in this country is all relative and nobody is actually going hungry. Keep thinking they all have iPhones and nicotine addictions, and more kids than they can count. Keep thinking they've been unemployed their whole lives because they're too lazy to work. Ignorance is bliss after all.
Original post by Dnator
We live in a country that gives you free education up until you are 21, gives you free money to look for a job and is generally fairly good at providing equality of opportunity. If you still end up in this situation, obviously excluding the desperate cases, you would have to say you probably made some bad decisions along the way.
Obviously it seems like you have some sort of connection to this, whatever that might be , but I don't see why it should be so taboo to suggest that maybe a lot of these people had at least some hand in their own situation. Or do we absolve them and point the finger at the system? Yes I haven't linked you to a peer reviewed study, and frankly I can't be bothered to find one, but if you are honestly claiming that all food bank visitors are there through no fault of their own that seems like a fairly blinkered outlook.


Nope. We transitioned in the 1970s and 1980s to a service-driven economy and automated most of our manufacturing. Since you can cram near-infinite amounts of knowledge into one service employee's head if you really need to (while factory workers' physical capabilities are fixed), this means that, especially but far from exclusively in a downturn, companies can employ way less people and lose very little productivity. This is called the "elastic labour force".

Therefore what it means is that many, many more people are surplus to the requirements of the job market, and it is prima facie impossible for somewhere between 5% and 10% of jobseekers to get a job, no matter how well the economy is doing.

That has nothing to do with bad decisions or anything else. You could send every single person in the country to university, graduate school, put them through as many invented public sector jobs as you want, and it would make not a jot of difference.

I have no political connection to this whatsoever. I have never been involved with a political party and the closest I've come to donating to charity is working for Oxfam at Reading festival. It's called reading the lefty papers and having a bit of humanity. When that is enough to get you accused of shilling for a shady political group you know you're through the looking glass. No different from McCarthyism.

As to whether I should be worrying about a tiny minority of benefit recipients who cheat the system, the DWP's own figures for estimated losses from fraud and error is 0.5% of the benefits bill. I think that says it all.

By far the largest part of the benefits bill goes on pensions, followed by housing benefit (keeping the housing racket afloat, that money goes straight to landlords). There are a raft of in-work benefits that have had to be brought in to subsidise businesses' poverty wages; you may not know that for the lowest 10% wages stayed flat in real terms from 1980 to 1994, I can't find data for the boom/minimum wage period, but thenwages for the majority of earners, not just the bottom 10%, began falling sharply in 2003 and haven't recovered. That's why Brown had to start giving out all these handouts.
Original post by Huskaris
Not particularly. I just don't see why I should work 40 hours a week to fund the feckless.

It's not my responsibility, its theirs.

And do I "feel big" well get you, the champion of the underclass. I'm sure they'll personally thank you.


Quite, what about the shareholders and executives in your company? Maybe you should be looking at how hard they work, what do they do with their taxes, and all the rest of it. Because that's who you're enriching by slaving away 40 hours a week, not benefit claimants. Maybe if they paid you a fair wage you wouldn't be such a spiteful person.

At least I don't gloat when a story comes out about one million poor people in the sixth biggest economy having to resort to food parcels.
Reply 29
Original post by scrotgrot
.


So in your faultless world what is your solution? Endlessly supporting an ever growing mass of people who have no hope, though no fault of their own, of ever being net contributers?
Original post by scrotgrot
Quite, what about the shareholders and executives in your company? Maybe you should be looking at how hard they work, what do they do with their taxes, and all the rest of it. Because that's who you're enriching by slaving away 40 hours a week, not benefit claimants. Maybe if they paid you a fair wage you wouldn't be such a spiteful person.

At least I don't gloat when a story comes out about one million poor people in the sixth biggest economy having to resort to food parcels.


The directors at my company work exceptionally hard and have built the company I work for from the ground, and as a consequence have gone from working alone to employing around 100 people, for which I am extremely grateful, if they had been feckless and sat on benefits all their life, I wouldn't have a job, and if everyone took that attitude the people you are championing wouldn't have their benefits.

The fact is that these people are able to live the life of a layabout because of people like me, and my bosses who work, so don't start slagging them off.

I don't gloat about a story which states that 1 million get handouts from foodbanks, I just think that people use them because they can.
Original post by Lumberjack 101
How many of these people has satellite TV or smoke? North Lincolnshire council have banned folk who do from hardship funds and quite right too: http://www.scunthorpetelegraph.co.uk/bedroom-tax-relief-smokers-satellite-TV-customers/story-20227560-detail/story.html


Well knock me down with a feather. I can't tell you how shocked and surprised I am that there are no figures for how many people this will actually affect in that article.

Maybe you should read closer, it appears to be just a panicked, reactionary statement from a Tory councillor after a Labour councillor, in a close-run (23-20) constituency, dared to criticise the bedroom tax. Much like the level of debate we have had so far from right-wingers on this very thread.

Maybe she took a few tips from Godfrey Bloom, MEP for the region and not known for his considered and erudite opinions.
Original post by scrotgrot
Well knock me down with a feather. I can't tell you how shocked and surprised I am that there are no figures for how many people this will actually affect in that article.

Maybe you should read closer, it appears to be just a panicked, reactionary statement from a Tory councillor after a Labour councillor, in a close-run (23-20) constituency, dared to criticise the bedroom tax. Much like the level of debate we have had so far from right-wingers on this very thread.

Maybe she took a few tips from Godfrey Bloom, MEP for the region and not known for his considered and erudite opinions.


Still a step in the right direction. If the taxpayer gives you money to cover the bills and you chose to spend it on crap then I don`t see why the taxpayer should spend more money bailing you out. There`s plenty of help available for smokers on the NHS so they have no reason to continue.
Original post by Huskaris
The directors at my company work exceptionally hard and have built the company I work for from the ground, and as a consequence have gone from working alone to employing around 100 people, for which I am extremely grateful, if they had been feckless and sat on benefits all their life, I wouldn't have a job, and if everyone took that attitude the people you are championing wouldn't have their benefits.

The fact is that these people are able to live the life of a layabout because of people like me, and my bosses who work, so don't start slagging them off.

I don't gloat about a story which states that 1 million get handouts from foodbanks, I just think that people use them because they can.


That's more of the sort of company we could use around these parts. Still, you can't possibly believe the giant corporations aren't merrily riding the benefits gravy train. As you say yourself, without them, nobody would have a job, and we would be in a fix then. So the government hands over its protection money. Apparently we have to let them choose how much tax they pay as well.

I just don't see how anyone could see people on benefits as the problem and not the corporations.
Before we go benefit bashing remember they only make up a very tiny percentage compared to those who avoid and evade tax that if they paid could sort out these problems.

Shocking we have food banks for hungry people in the UK.

The Red cross had to give food to these people, so much for aid to 3rd world countries, this **** is happening in the 1st world.
Original post by Blueray2
Before we go benefit bashing remember they only make up a very tiny percentage compared to those who avoid and evade tax that if they paid could sort out these problems.

Shocking we have food banks for hungry people in the UK.

The Red cross had to give food to these people, so much for aid to 3rd world countries, this **** is happening in the 1st world.


Lets keep it in proportion. There are over 63 million people in the UK, and assuming nobody makes a repeat visit to the foodbanks then only 1.6% of the population have ever used one.
Original post by Lumberjack 101
Lets keep it in proportion. There are over 63 million people in the UK, and assuming nobody makes a repeat visit to the foodbanks then only 1.6% of the population have ever used one.


1.6% in dire conditions that need help.
Original post by Blueray2
1.6% in dire conditions that need help.


On the flipside, 98.4% of brits didn`t need to use a foodbank during one of the worst recessions in decades. And I suspect quite a few of these people would have needed help regardless of who was in power or how well the economy was doing.
Original post by Dnator
So in your faultless world what is your solution? Endlessly supporting an ever growing mass of people who have no hope, though no fault of their own, of ever being net contributers?


Nope, but due to the elastic labour force remove all conditionality. For starters, this would cut the benefits bill significantly in itself. For example, I have just looked up figures on housing benefit. The benefit costs £25bn, and the cost of administering it costs £900m (excluding overheads). That is a 4% cut in expenditure right there, if replicable across the board (and remember to include overheads too) it would eclipse the 0.5% currently lost to fraud we spend so many column inches pontificating on. This is also not considering how much money the government/councils could make from selling off the 750 Job Centres and sacking the 78,000 staff in them.

Even libertarians are into this universal basic income, it's not just a loopy lefty idea. I am keeping tabs on the imminent Swiss referendum which seeks to introduce one, the first of its kind in the world: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-16/inequality-fight-swiss-will-vote-on-minimum-income.

These people might turn out to be deluded fantasists, but at least they're looking forward to a world that faces up to the resource scarcity challenges of the coming centuries rather than wasting everyone's valuable productivity time spitting blood over the amount of cigarettes poor people might or might not be buying.

I would probably say restrict child support to replacement rate, though might have to wait till everyone's forgotten about Hitler and Chairman Mao first. I believe it's already restricted to six children, in fact, but I'm not sure (that is clearly ridiculously too many especially if the family demands a seven-bedroom council house...)
Original post by Lumberjack 101
On the flipside, 98.4% of brits didn`t need to use a foodbank during one of the worst recessions in decades. And I suspect quite a few of these people would have needed help regardless of who was in power or how well the economy was doing.


Yes, according to the Trussell Trust (from vouchers with reasons on them written by the Job Centre/doctor/CAB) only 40% of them were there as a direct result of benefit cuts or delays last year.

The DWP has now redesigned the Job Centre voucher to omit this detail.

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