Government's child benefit changes betray its real agenda

Repost of my blog from Saturday evening - quite a few links in this one, so for those please visit the original post at:
http://skwalker1964.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/ids-2-child-cap-idea-shows-tory-fear-as-well-as-stupidity/

First of all, apologies that my blog has been quiet this week. I’ve been battling a combination of a big work deadline and an episode of what I suspect was actual flu (I hate being ill, so I really don’t do ‘man-flu’!). So, I’ve been a little out of the loop and am now playing catch-up. One thing you can guarantee with this government is that it’s never going to leave its opponents with a shortage of things to be outraged about, or of ammunition to use against it.

So there’s plenty to catch up on – but the first I’m going to write about is Iain Duncan Smith’s outrageous announcement that he’s planning to cap child benefit and child tax credits at two children.

There’s a reason for this. The measure – part of the Tories’ aim of cutting yet another £10 billion from the country’s welfare bill – demonstrates very clearly the Tories’ callousness, stupidity, dishonesty and their desire to divide and rule. But those – though well worth looking at and exposing again – are already very plain to anyone who bothers to look.

What makes this latest announcement especially worthy of attention is that it doesn’t just demonstrate how the Tories hate and despise the so-called ‘lower-classes’ and especially the unemployed, because they only value people monetarily. It also demonstrates their fear. I’ll address that presently, but first we’ll look briefly at the ‘usual suspects’ – that callousness, stupidity, dishonesty and divisiveness.

Callous

IDS and his Tory mates love to present their measures as being ultimately for the good of the people they’re depriving. They’ll speak of people being ‘trapped’ in unemployment, stuck in cycles of worklessness, as if they’re just in need of a little ‘tough love’ to give them a jump-start into doing better, as if being out of work is just a lifestyle choice that needs to be made less attractive. About his latest measure, Duncan Smith said:

“It’s not about hurting. It’s about saying we have accepted far too long in this country that it is possible just to stay on benefits, that we write them off, and we work only with those who get up in the morning and go to work. And that’s simply not acceptable. It’s not acceptable because it destroys their lives… This is not just about the money. It’s also about those children growing up in workless households. Their lives are destroyed by this. They need also to learn that it’s the right thing for parents to go to work.“

If IDS is to be believed, taking benefits away from unemployed people is all about helping them – a ‘this is going to hurt me far more than it will hurt you’, tough-but-fair discipline that’s for the victim’s good in the end.

If the UK was in a full-employment situation, where everyone who wanted a job could have one, that might just hold water. But of course, we’re not even remotely close to that situation: there are more than 5 unemployed people in the UK for every available job - only 475,000 vacancies for 2.528 million unemployed, according to the latest ONS employment stats.

More than 2 million people unemployed, with no hope of getting a job however much they want one, because there just isn’t one for them. I don’t have statistics to show how many of those 2 million people have more than 2 children, but even if only 1 in 5 of them do, then that’s at least 1.2 million children (more if some of them have more that 3 children) who are in families already struggling, and whom the government is happy to push even further into poverty by paying child benefit and child tax credit only for 2 children.

Callous indeed. But then, Duncan Smith has already shown that he’s prepared to push hundreds of thousands of disabled people below the poverty threshold for the sake of a saving and an ideological aim, so it’s no surprise.

Stupid

This one is easy. In its attack on pensions and its drive to force us to work until we’re 68 and even older, the government’s justification has been that Britain has an ageing population and won’t have enough younger people working to be able to cover the cost of pensions for those who have retired.

Yet the Tories are now planning a measure that will discourage people from having children – lowering the birthrate and worsening the problem of covering pension costs.

Come to think of it, this means that either this latest measure is stupid, or else the Tories were never genuine about their reasons for their retirement measures in the first place, and it was just a tactic to get one measure pushed through, and they need a different tactic for the child benefit changes, so they’re hoping we’ve forgotten the retirement ploy. Stupid or liars – take your pick. Or pick both, since the Tories are definitely…

Dishonest

The Tories love to say that their attacks on benefit claimants are about ‘making work pay’. But they never, ever touch on the fact that, for many people, work doesn’t pay. If you really want to make work pay, the solution is exceedingly simple: make work pay. Unemployment benefits do not offer a cushy life, in spite of how the Tories try to imply that they do. £71 a week, the basic level of unemployment benefit, is a pittance.

If the Tories were serious about making it pay more to work than to be on benefits, they would make employers pay a living wage. David Cameron even campaigned on the issue, stating that a living wage was a very desirable thing and an idea whose time had come – and then with staggering hypocrisy he ‘forgot’ all this once he was in a position to do something about it.

A living wage would make work feasible for unemployed people – and simultaneously stop taxpayers making a massive subsidy to corporate profits in the form of income support benefits to the millions of working people whose employers don’t pay them enough to live on. But to listen to the dishonest, weasel Tories, the only way to make work pay is to turn being a benefit claimant into penury. That’s because they want to…

Divide and rule

As further justification for his new measure, IDS said:

“It also destroys the lives of taxpayers who have to pick up that bill to pay for them. It’s no surprise that we are in massive debt and huge deficit because we are not paying our way. All of that is the consequence of years of simply saying it’s too difficult, these people should be left as they are and the rest will do all the work.”

and

“Should families expect never-ending amounts of money for every child when working households must make tough choices about what they can afford?“

Again and again, the Tories frame the benefits issue as being ‘skivers v strivers’, the lazy against those who ‘work hard and do the right thing’, ‘it’s not right that those who work…. while those who don’t…’

And yet – as already stated – child benefit and child tax credit are not unemployment benefits. They have nothing to do with whether you’re in work or not. The government’s own page on Child Tax Credit shows that you can earn up to £55,000 a year and still be eligible for a small benefit – but that the benefit is heavily (and rightly) weighted toward working but low-earning parents. Unemployed people can claim – but they only receive the same level of credit as those working and earning up to £14,999.

If the benefits aren’t only for the unemployed, why does the government insist on casting its statements as if they are? Simple: divide and rule. The government wants working people to think ‘Hey, I’m working and not getting it, so why should those lazy ******s get it?’ It doesn’t want us to realise that it’s just trying to divide people against each other so that we don’t unite against the Tories and resist. For more on this, please see this post and this one.

And now for what I promised at the top of this article…

Tory Fear

What we say about something can often give away far more than we mean it to. In attacking the right of the unemployed and low-paid (though of course he doesn’t mention the low-paid for the reasons just outlined!), Iain Duncan Smith is revealing a classic fear of the rich, ‘ruling’ class: we are many, many more than they are.

When I wrote about the 20 October TUC march in London recently, I used a very eloquent cartoon to illustrate this very point:



In ancient Rome, plans were made to make slaves immediately identifiable by making them wear special garments. The Senate quashed the plan because it feared (I think it was Seneca who raised the point) that if the slaves knew how massively they outnumbered their owners, they would revolt and slaughter their supposed masters. In British sugar plantations, any disobedience by a slave was punished with draconian ferocity, because the owners knew that they were weak and few compared to their slaves.

So it is now. In expressing – albeit in a shaded way – his desire to curb the birthrate of the poor and disadvantaged, IDS is revealing that same fear. The Occupy movement and many others speak of ‘the 99%’, the ordinary people as opposed to the rich ‘elite’ – which, like any elite, is by definition smaller than ‘the rest’.

The Tories know that we already outnumber them by far – and they’d love to stop the growth. The desire to stop the poor from ‘breeding like rats’ is like a nervous tic – and like any nervous tic it reveals what the person twitching is desperately trying to hide.

This particular tic, if we read it properly, speaks very eloquently of something important: the Tories are more aware than most of us of just how weak they are. That’s why they need to employ these tactics – lying, dividing, obscuring – because they know that if we all wake up to what they’re doing and unite, they have no chance. If we even just wake up and all vote, they will be consigned to the electoral and political obscurity they deserve, and they’ll be powerless to prevent it. If we’ll just refuse to fall for the lies.

They’re afraid. Very afraid. And they should be.

Great new thread skywalker, and I totally agree with what you have said IDS is the one minister that did not want to be re-shuffled by Scam..er..on so he has had too look for the nasty Tory within to keep his job as head of DWP.

I think quite a few of Tory ministers are willing to put there signature to the 46 that are needed to get rid of Herr Scam..er..on according to Mad Nad.

Like you skywalker I am waiting for the 99% of the UK to wake up and smell the coffee and send the Tories into Political Oblivion.

As always sky you mak a great point, unfortunately it's always from the viewpoint of somebody arguing from a singular view point. Surely common sense (very rare) says the taxpayer shouldn't have to pay extra for somebody to stay at home and have kids as a source of income. I appreciate that not everybody falls into the breed for money category, however why should I and others pay for a lifestyle choice, of course the majority of the indigenous population already use contraception don't they?

Some of us will remember 1965, when this came out -

"Cathy Come Home still rings true today

Although it was first broadcast 45 years ago, this tale of a descent into homelessness resonates with our current crisis"


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/04/cathy-come-home-rings-true

-----------------------------------------------------------

I think this disgusting appology for a government have to GO

By NOT charging the Mansion Tax, and loading £12.50 PER WEEK onto council housing rents for EACH unused bedroom, (in April), they show EXACTLY where their allegiances lie! When will ED pull in a vote of no confidence in this turn?

Excellent post skwalker.

....and a brilliant example of the bias of Tory ideology by astra:

By NOT charging the Mansion Tax, and loading £12.50 PER WEEK onto council housing rents for EACH unused bedroom, (in April), they show EXACTLY where their allegiances lie!

The welfare benefits bill is not too big and does not need to be cut - in fact the unemployed should get about 10% more than they receive now. The welfare bill is proportionate to the levels of unemployment, wages, house/home prices, utility bills, food, and travel in the UK.

Maintaining a decent level of welfare benefits should not be viewed as a burden by taxpayers. It is a neccesary, and essential, cost for a modern civilised nation - as essential as education, health, maintaining roads, fire brigades, police, etc etc. It is a priority that this is paid for - something that shouldn't be questioned. We should take pleaure, and pride, in looking after fellow citizens in need. If we take any more money off those on welfare we should no longer consider ourselves to be civilised, or humane.

Iain Duncan Smith is killing people through his ideals/policies. He is a crazed sadistic savage. A sociopathic monster.

Not sure where your going with this sickie? Yes we should look after those unable to help themselves, no we shouldn't make the help a lifestyle choice.

hello tlttf,

I don't believe anybody makes being on benefits a lifestyle choice. Nobody wants to be in a situation whereby they need to claim benefits. They only claim benefits out of absolute necessity.

Please don't believe the lies and propaganda peddled by the Tories and the right-wing press about people making benefits a 'lifestyle choice'.

What next from IDS?

Will he ask why the state should spend money educating your 3rd or 4th child, or waste taxpayers money providing healthcare for them?

Maybe we should start charging £600 per year for state schooled kids - and if you can't afford it, your kids will do without.

Don't laugh! Because I'm pretty sure it's the kind of thing the Tories consider behind closed doors........and will try if they think they can manipulate public opinion with more propaganda.

Discussions like this one ignore the basic fact that World Resources are sufficient to maintain everyone in an agreeable standard of living.

Distributed in an egalitarian manner.

But they aren't. Because the greedy are permitted to take more than their fair share.

Discussions like this one ignore the basic fact that World Resources are sufficient to maintain everyone in an agreeable standard of living.

Really ?

Link please, I cannot find this basic fact anywhere on planet earth, we are talking about planet earth I assume ?

sickchip wrote:hello tlttf,

I don't believe anybody makes being on benefits a lifestyle choice. Nobody wants to be in a situation whereby they need to claim benefits. They only claim benefits out of absolute necessity.

Please don't believe the lies and propaganda peddled by the Tories and the right-wing press about people making benefits a 'lifestyle choice'.

The reason for the Tories wanting to cut the Welfare bill is IDEOLOGY, they would prefer that we all go back the the century where Charles Dickens books are based then they will be very happy is that what you want too tittf?

Tosh wrote:

Discussions like this one ignore the basic fact that World Resources are sufficient to maintain everyone in an agreeable standard of living.

Really ?

Link please, I cannot find this basic fact anywhere on planet earth, we are talking about planet earth I assume ?

Excepting only the section of the Earth which you have appropriated to your personal use, Tosh; and those of your ilk.

sickchip wrote:What next from IDS?

Will he ask why the state should spend money educating your 3rd or 4th child, or waste taxpayers money providing healthcare for them?

Maybe we should start charging £600 per year for state schooled kids - and if you can't afford it, your kids will do without.

Don't laugh! Because I'm pretty sure it's the kind of thing the Tories consider behind closed doors........and will try if they think they can manipulate public opinion with more propaganda.

I agree with what you have said SC, that is all the Tory party put out propaganda or spin and if we let them away with it no kids would be educated at all if they thought they could get away with it. I think this will end badly they complain of being out of power for 13 years it will take the people of the UK a lot longer for any body to vote tory IF EVER.

Original, including links, is at: http://skwalker1964.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/govts-child-benefit-changes-betray-its-real-agenda/

The government’s change to child benefit that came into force today betrays its real agenda and perfectly illustrates both its deceitfulness and its inability, or unwillingness, to think through the consequences of its policies.

The government claims that it’s interested in cutting the deficit, yet this change is expected to save only around £1.5 billion in spending, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the overall deficit – which in reality continues to grow under the coalition, in spite of some sly tricks in terms of interest from money ‘invented’ via quantitative easing (QE) and offsetting the proceeds of a telecom licence sale against the current deficit even though the sale hasn’t taken place yet and doesn’t have a guaranteed value.



To put this ‘saving’ into context, when George Osborne announced early last year that he was cutting the top rate of tax paid by the wealthiest, he and his party colleagues argued that the top rate added ‘next to nothing’ to the amount of tax actually collected. But the HMRC official report estimates that the revenue lost by cutting the top rate from 50% to 45% will be around £3 billion.

So, if £3bn is ‘next to nothing’, what does the government think a £1.5bn saving is? Or are the standards of ‘nothing’ and ‘something’ different depending whether you’re taking money from poor people or from rich people?

More context: last year, George Osborne announced an additional loan of £10 billion to the International Monetary Fund – the same amount that he said needed to be cut urgently from the social security budget, and an amount that dwarfs the child benefit saving.

By taking this money out of the pockets of parents, the government is sucking yet more money out of the economy. Parents will have less cash to spend and the economy will suffer – by much more than the amount saved.

This is because of what is referred to as the ‘multiplier effect‘. A popular illustration makes this easier to understand:

Imagine you find £10 in the street, so you go and use it to pay for a haircut. The hairdresser takes that £10 and uses it to buy tea and coffee from the local corner shop. The shopkeeper uses it to help pay his mechanic for repairs to his car, and the mechanic spends it in the pub. Within a day or so, that £10 has resulted in £40 of economic activity. The UK’s GDP is the sum of all the economic circulation of money in a fiscal year.

But if you find the £10 and just put it in your pocket, it causes no economic activity at all until you spend it. You’ve saved £10 but the economy has lost £40 (and more as time goes on). So government cuts have a much bigger impact than their face value.

George Osborne, with incredible naivety or cynicism, uses a multiplier of 0.5. In other words, for every £1 cut, the impact on the economy will be only £0.50. But even the very right-wing IMF estimates the multiplier is as high as 1.7,so that £1bn of cuts has an impact of £1.7bn on GDP. Commonsense dictates that the real figure is more likely to be 2 or 3, or perhaps even higher – with a commensurate effect on tax revenues, employment, the cost of unemployment & income support benefits etc.

Putting money into the pockets of those who need it and will therefore spend it is the fastest – and quite possibly the only – way to turn around our ailing economy. But the government’s child-benefit measure will do the opposite, and will cost us far more than it saves, by taking money out of the pockets of some 1 million families and putting it – well, nowhere, really.

And don’t forget, this change is only the beginning of the government’s plans for child benefit. The government is also looking to limit eligibility to only the first 2 children. This measure, which shows the government’s fear as well as its idiocy, will damage the economy even further, and shows that the government either doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care about, the immediate economic effects of its policies.

But that’s not all.

The move is also a perfect example of the short-termist way in which this government operates, and betrays either a complete lack of thought about the long-term consequences, or else (more likely) a complete lack of interest in those consequences.

Why? Well, when this Tory-led government wants to cut social security spending, it inevitably appeals to demographic change – the fact that we are ‘an ageing society‘, which is becoming more and more expensive because of the cost of pensions and care, with fewer and fewer people of working age to pay the cost relative to the number of pensioners.

Yet its moves on child benefit, as well as its ludicrously misguided caps on benefit rises that are essential for millions of working people (at least 60% of benefit claimants are working but poorly paid) and its failure to cap rents and build affordable housing, will all force people to wait longer to start families and to have fewer children when they do. This can only exacerbate the ‘ageing society’ problem.

The government and its supporters are fond of justifying their ever-increasing cuts by talking of ‘fairness to our children’ – the idea that we’re somehow recklessly running up debts that will burden future generations.

But at the same time, those very measures, along with increased student fees, failure to provide reasonable mortgage lending while shovelling money toward the banks for them to sit on, caps on pay rises and wilful ignorance of basic, obvious economic consequences are contributing massively toward the very future burdens that they claim they want to alleviate.

Clearly, the government is being cynically deceptive about its reasons for the change to child benefit rules – and about everything else it is doing. The obvious logic that it is wilfully ignoring means that the reasons they claim for their actions are self-evidently nonsensical.

So if those reasons are red herrings, you have to ask what the real reasons are.

The government is not serious about cutting the deficit and the debt. It doesn’t – cannot – really believe that saving relative peanuts on child-benefit spending will help cut the deficit when the multiplier effects will more than wipe out any savings.

No, today’s change is the first in a ‘death by 1000 cuts’ move – and not just on child benefit. Child benefit was a ‘universal’ benefit – everyone with children was eligible, with the aim of encouraging people to have children and maintain the birth-rate by providing them with a small helping hand toward the cost of doing so.

Make no mistake: the ultimate aim of this government is the elimination of the welfare state, and the child benefit change is just one small, harmless-seeming step toward the goal.

Taking a step that many people will be fooled into thinking is acceptable because it only targets those on relatively high salaries allows the government to break that expectation of universality with minimal resistance. But it’s really just the first step onto a slippery slope toward its complete abolition – and toward the idea that no benefit should be universal.

Then the 2-child cap comes in; winter fuel allowance becomes means-tested, and so on – our social safety net being incrementally, constantly eroded until there’s barely enough left to be worth a fight – and then ‘oops!’, it’s gone.

This government has cut incomes for ordinary people who would spend the money and promote growth while cutting taxes for the richest and for huge corporations. Can anyone really think this child benefit measure has anything to do with necessity, or savings, or fairness?

No, I don’t think so either.

skwalker1964. I wish that characteristically perceptive article from you could be read out several times on every news channel in the country.

I nearly vomited when I heard Willetts on the radio saying that the winter fuel payment for pensioners was safe because Cameron believes in keeping his promises! Here we have just one more in a long line of broken Tory promises from the 2010 election, namely that child benefit would remain universal.

No doubt the usual suspects will try to portray our defence of child benefits for all as Labour supporters defending the better off, but your post makes the point very clearly – this is the thin end of the wedge. Few people will be too bothered if a person earning £60,000 a year loses their child benefit, despite the obvious unfairness of the measure (two parents each earning £40,000 a year will still receive it). Iain Duncan Smith wants to limit the benefit to just two children (even though he was quite happy to claim it for his own four), and he and his insidious cronies will just keep chipping away at the welfare state in accordance with their Friedmanite doctrine.

Administering this change to child benefits will cost an addition £11 million in bureaucracy and leave the system open to fraud. I hate means-testing of any sort for that reason. I don’t care if multimillionaire Michael Winner does receive the winter fuel allowance; giving it to all pensioners is cheaper to administer and leaves no scope for fraudulent claims. Far better to let Winner and his ilk have their winter fuel payments and then hit them with higher taxes (maybe on their mansions, wealth or inheritance) rather than reduce their income tax, as Osborne is doing, and taking away their winter fuel payments, as Clegg is so desperate to do.

Ivan wrote:skwalker1964. I wish that characteristically perceptive article from you could be read out several times on every news channel in the country.

I nearly vomited when I heard Willetts on the radio saying that the winter fuel payment for pensioners was safe because Cameron believes in keeping his promises! Here we have just one more in a long line of broken Tory promises from the 2010 election, namely that child benefit would remain universal.

No doubt the usual suspects will try to portray our defence of child benefits for all as Labour supporters defending the better off, but your post makes the point very clearly – this is the thin end of the wedge. Few people will be too bothered if a person earning £60,000 a year loses their child benefit, despite the obvious unfairness of the measure (two parents each earning £40,000 a year will still receive it). Iain Duncan Smith wants to limit the benefit to just two children (even though he was quite happy to claim it for his own four), and he and his insidious cronies will just keep chipping away at the welfare state in accordance with their Friedmanite doctrine.

Administering this change to child benefits will cost an addition £11 million in bureaucracy and leave the system open to fraud. I hate means-testing of any sort for that reason. I don’t care if multimillionaire Michael Winner does receive the winter fuel allowance; giving it to all pensioners is cheaper to administer and leaves no scope for fraudulent claims. Far better to let Winner and his ilk have their winter fuel payments and then hit them with higher taxes (maybe on their mansions, wealth or inheritance) rather than reduce their income tax, as Osborne is doing, and taking away their winter fuel payments, as Clegg is so desperate to do.

Thank you! I suspect they'd probably say they are keeping it universal - everyone (who doesn't opt out) will continue to receive it. They'll just have it taken back from them at the same time via taxation. Typical Tory trick, unfortunately - 'one for you and two for me - plus the one I just gave you'..

Winter fuel allowance will be one of the last things to go, I suspect - but only because pensioners tend to vote in large numbers. If only we could get each pensioner to mentor a younger non-voter on the power and importance of our vote, we might have a better society.

Surely one of the reasons for having a tax system is to claw-back benefits from those who patently don't actually need them.

Have I missed the point again?

oftenwrong wrote:Surely one of the reasons for having a tax system is to claw-back benefits from those who patently don't actually need them.

Have I missed the point again?

Kind of. And kind of. Taxes are based on overall income. This is based specifically on receipt of child benefit - i.e. someone with a total income of £65k who doesn't receive CB won't be subject to the additional tax, while someone with a total income of £65k who does get CB will. The person with the higher basic income will be taxed less than the one who only reaches the same level because of the benefit.

And it's still the first fracture in the universality. After that, it's just detail.

oftenwrong wrote:-
Surely one of the reasons for having a tax system is to claw-back benefits from those who patently don't actually need them.

Agreed, but isn't it far simpler, cheaper and less open to fraud to keep benefits like child allowance and winter fuel payments universal, then claw money back from the rich through either income, wealth or property taxation? I'm quite happy to let Michael Winner have £200 towards his gas bill if we can have tens of thousands of pounds from him in some other way!

I read that the income tax reduction from 50% to 45% will cost the Treasury £2.7 billion (I see that Steve Walker has quoted £3 billion). However, this child allowance change will only bring in £1.5 billion and will cost an extra £11 million to administer. It's clearly not being done for the revenue but to end the principle of universality. Child benefit (formerly known as family allowance) has been paid since 1946, irrespective of income, and was one of the three pillars of welfare set out by Beveridge. What the Tories are doing is dismantling the welfare state by stealth, just as they're privatising the NHS piece by piece.

Is it worth hoping that the Ladies might restore some semblance of fair-play with their votes at the next General Election?

Cameron has repeatedly shown his disdain in Parliament, and the whole point of Child Allowance was to provide ALL Mums with a direct personal income to spend on the kids without reference to Hubby, who still very often does not disclose his salary (or personal spending) to the wifelet.

oftenwrong wrote:Is it worth hoping that the Ladies might restore some semblance of fair-play with their votes at the next General Election?

Cameron has repeatedly shown his disdain in Parliament, and the whole point of Child Allowance was to provide ALL Mums with a direct personal income to spend on the kids without reference to Hubby, who still very often does not disclose his salary (or personal spending) to the wifelet.

This is just like the Poll tax the unfairest tax of all that is until this one came along if one parent working earns £60.000 no C/B but if two parents working one earns say £49.000 the other £40.000 they still receive full C/B and it will not be clawed back at the end of the tax year, how is that for a brain wave from the Tory party.

It's just as Ivan writes above, the Tories are not interested in fairness or logic, but taking a wrecking-ball to the entire welfare structure. There's no longer even a pretence of "saving money" because the changes are also designed to embarrass the Opposition into premature disclosure of their alternative proposals.

oftenwrong wrote:It's just as Ivan writes above, the Tories are not interested in fairness or logic, but taking a wrecking-ball to the entire welfare structure. There's no longer even a pretence of "saving money" because the changes are also designed to embarrass the Opposition into premature disclosure of their alternative proposals.

Or trying to get a look at the L/P Manifesto as they have not got a clue for there own OW ?

Sorry gents, like OW I'm not sure where your going with this, why should somebody that chooses not to have kids subsidise those that want them. If you want to minimise the costs of cutting them to those on £50,000 (lot of wonga). Simply make everybody opt out and those that want it will have to be means tested. I'd do the same with the winter fuel allowance too. I know somebody (caretaker) that ahs all his bills paid for yet he is given the fuel allowance regardless because it's automatic. I'm a'll for helping those that need an hand but lets get real about this and leave emotion out of it. Yes it's revolutionary and yes it's 30 years too late.

Sorry gents

This isn’t a public convenience, even if some Tory crap is deposited here from time to time. And don’t assume that everyone who has commented on this thread is male, because they’re not.

why should somebody that chooses not to have kids subsidise those that want them.

A predictably mealy-mouthed response from someone who doesn’t believe in society. Children are an investment in our future. It will be children who grow up, work and pay the taxes to cover your retirement pension – if the Tories haven’t abolished state pensions by then. (Peter Lilley admitted that Thatcher aimed to make them “wither on the vine”).

Simply make everybody opt out and those that want it will have to be means tested.

If you bothered to read what others have posted before burdening us with your mindless drivel, you'd see that the reasons why any means testing is a bad thing have already been outlined.

I know somebody (caretaker) that ahs all his bills paid for yet he is given the fuel allowance regardless because it's automatic.

Yes, and ex-pats living in Spain have received it too. Why? Because they paid into the system and are entitled to it. How typical to worry about a caretaker - someone who does a poorly remunerated job - when you could be focusing your attention on the bankers who shared £7 billion in bonuses last year.

I'm a'll for helping those that need an hand

Really? I hadn’t noticed. But it looks as if you could do with a hand with basic English.

tlttf wrote:Sorry gents, like OW I'm not sure where your going with this, why should somebody that chooses not to have kids subsidise those that want them.

Leaving aside any altruistic motives, pure self-interest. Those who don't have children are still likely to need support in their dotage - and the cost of state support is going to be dependent on a sufficient number of working-age people to pay into the system, just as we all do now both to provide for the current elderly and to qualify for help ourselves when we need it.

Ivan. re-read that crap that you post in answer to my post and you might get an inkling why I could never support your version of socialism, I'm worrying about you of late?

skwalker, read the following please.

The annual cost of delivering the means-test Pension Credit per person per pensioner is £53.70.

The annual cost of paying the State pension per person per pensioner is £5.40 according to the report from the Public Accounts Committee, Tackling Pensioner Poverty: Encouraging Take-up of Benefits, 2003.

There is a National Insurance 'surplus' in excess of £74.1bn now in 2012, it is an assurance that the Government could easily re-link the state pension to male average earnings if it so desired.

But this and previous right wing Tory Government's have and are using this National Insurance "surplus" for that which was never intended.

So an increase in the state pension and the restoration of the link with earnings is affordable, and is justified.

What we have here is in my view a conspiracy to hood wink the hard pressed general public into believing that the elderly are a burden.

This represents the wide spread discrimination and demonization of our elderly people by Government's since the 80's, and aided by the BBC TV media.

Ivanhoe wrote:skwalker, read the following please.

The annual cost of delivering the means-test Pension Credit per person per pensioner is £53.70.

The annual cost of paying the State pension per person per pensioner is £5.40 according to the report from the Public Accounts Committee, Tackling Pensioner Poverty: Encouraging Take-up of Benefits, 2003.

There is a National Insurance 'surplus' in excess of £74.1bn now in 2012, it is an assurance that the Government could easily re-link the state pension to male average earnings if it so desired.

But this and previous right wing Tory Government's have and are using this National Insurance "surplus" for that which was never intended.

So an increase in the state pension and the restoration of the link with earnings is affordable, and is justified.

What we have here is in my view a conspiracy to hood wink the hard pressed general public into believing that the elderly are a burden.

This represents the wide spread discrimination and demonization of our elderly people by Government's since the 80's, and aided by the BBC TV media.

I see where you're coming from, but I think the real situation is somewhat different. The government is going to use protecting the elderly - and the supposedly barely-affordable costs of doing so - as its excuse for dismantling much of the rest of our social security provision. Jeremy Hunt has been positioning himself to divert massive NHS funding into social care for the elderly since last year's Tory conference.

If you want a good steer on what the government is preparing to do, you won't go far wrong by watching what the Telegraph does and says - they're proven and consistent collaborators in trying to prepare public opinion for the govt's next move(s), even to the degree of instructing its sub-editors to leave in irrelevant but damaging sections in articles (and then forgetting, once, to edit out the instruction to do so http://skwalker1964.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/bbc-cqc-telegraph-the-elderly-and-hunts-new-nhs-attack/). And the Telegraph is busily eroding the reputation of the NHS by emphasising the importance of elderly care.

Only once they've exhausted their usefulness as a tool for the government's other plans will the Tories turn seriously on the elderly - especially because older people still tend to vote in large numbers.

It's probably just coincidence that the Tory Party gets much of its support from Pensioners - who can also usually be relied upon to actually cast a vote.

oftenwrong wrote:It's probably just coincidence that the Tory Party gets much of its support from Pensioners - who can also usually be relied upon to actually cast a vote.

There is a lot of truth here, richer pensioners particularly who vote the way their parents did.

Ivanhoe wrote:

oftenwrong wrote:It's probably just coincidence that the Tory Party gets much of its support from Pensioners - who can also usually be relied upon to actually cast a vote.

There is a lot of truth here, richer pensioners particularly who vote the way their parents did.

Did you see that post I uploaded on 'scroungers'' irrelevance to the welfare issue, which you wanted to see, btw?