General Discussion
It really pi--es me off when IDS and the broadcasters state the average wages are £26,000
per year.Are they bloody joking.Why is the South West tarnished in the Great North/South
Wealth debate.It should be Wealthy London and Bo--ocks to the rest of England.
As for the £26,000 Yes please.I can start tomorrow.
b.o.liking you are spot on it annoys me to i have worked everyday of my life and never seen anything like the average wage it is all a load of Bo???cks.
On this £26,000 pa issue.
As I understand it that is the net national average salary. To net that amount you would need to gross about £36,000 pa.
And as the figures quoted are the average I imagine they must be arrived at by including the millions earned by the relatively few as well as the part-time, minimum pay rate earned by the many.
I agree that London and the south-east has a cost of living much higher than the rest of the country. Therefore the cap will have its greatest impact there and the larger the family the greater the impact.
Which then begs the question of where in the rest of the country will a cap of £26,000 be a sufficient amount and will it be to such lower cost of living places that those large London and south-east families end up being rehoused? And is there work going aplenty in these lower cost of living areas?
Or, might it be that because those London and the south-east families have no local connection to other parts of the country that the local authorities there will have no obligation to re-house them? In which case the onus will be on the London and south-east local authorities to rehouse them. But where? And at what cost?
In other words. Will this benefit cap be cost effective? or not?
As an aside, the cost of living in London is only when it comes to property. Like for like I pay more in council tax, public transport, petrol and water rates down here than I ever did in London. And on the rare occasions I've needed to get a taxi to/from Exeter, it's been as expensive as my old mini cab firm!
@Brazilnut, you posted a link but didn't type anything. So I assume you think that £26k is too much.
I agree with Mcjrpc - the cost of living in London is not necessarily any higher than anywhere else, except housing costs. That is why so many people who grew up in London or the suburbs have had to move out to areas they CAN afford. I've said it before and I will say it again - people who are not claiming benefits but are paying their own way cannot live just anywhere, they are limited to what they can afford and so they locate accordingly. So why should it be any different for people on benefits?
It doesn't matter really how they come up with the £26k figure, the fact is that it is widely accepted as the average wage and is plenty of money to be given away in benefits to people and so having a cap at that figure is fair on the tax payers who are paying for it.
And as for Lynne's comment on people in London and the South East not necessarily having family connections elsewhere - in some areas of London you would be hard pushed to find anyone who was born and bred there. People move in and out of London and the South East all the time. Think back to when the Garden Cities were being built or Milton Keynes was built and how Londoners were encouraged to move out to these new areas. This isn't necessarily a new idea. My husband's family come from South London - they all moved out at various times for various reasons and now live in Kent, Hampshire, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire (and him down in Devon of course). We made the move to Devon for economic reasons as have plenty of other people and so if necessary people will just have to relocate to an area they can afford if they want to continue to be totally on benefits, or they can get employment that will pay them enough to live in the area they choose to live in and come off the benefits.
And Paul, as for saying make it £6k - that is just a stupid statement no doubt made to provoke a reaction. Benefits need to be enough to give people that safety net, but not so much that it becomes a lifestyle choice.
@Paul, i didnt type anything because the way i feel about ids and his nasty party is unprintable!!! and you need to stop believing the hype
The benefit system was introduced to be a stop gap for people who fell on hard times but it was never meant to be used long term. I myself had to use the benefit system many years ago (working tax credit) for a period of time and it was a lifeline for me while I was struggling to get back on top of things. I completely agree with people using it support them through difficult times, I absolutely disagree that some people use it long term and some children know nothing different than life on benefits. A system has to be found that cannot be abused but that is a challenge, unfortunately I dont think that the Government have thought this one through properly and the new system is affecting vulnerable people who should not be affected. They need to go back to the drawing board quickley and find a system that is fair and workable.
As long as this government thinks it has the vast majority of the electorate on its side re its approach to Welfare then it will continue to act in the way that it is. As I have said before though, whether or not such politically popular acts will prove to be cost effective is another matter entirely. Indeed, and again as I have pointed out before, even the government department for Communities and Local Government has its doubts about the knock on financial effects.*
*http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jul/02/full-text-letter-eric-pickles-welfare-reform
I don't see anything wrong with trying to economise.
National debt: £1.19 trillion.
Budget deficit: £118.8 bn. year to April 2013.
And I guess a lot of us would agree with there not being anything wrong at all in trying to economise. Trouble is, it might just be the case that a greater cost to the public purse could be the result if things aren't thought through and get done for ideological/political reasons rather than sound economic ones.
Extract from the link that B'nut gave us in the first posting of this thread.
"It will likely cost more than it saves
For all the political attention devoted to it, the cap is expected to save just £110m a year, barely a rounding error in the £201bn benefits bill. But even these savings could be wiped out due to the cost to local authorities of homelessness and housing families in temporary accommodation. As a leaked letter from Eric Pickles’s office to David Cameron stated, the measure "does not take account of the additional costs to local authorities (through homelessness and temporary accommodation). In fact we think it is likely that the policy as it stands will generate a net cost. In addition Local Authorities will have to calculate and administer reduced Housing Benefit to keep within the cap and this will mean both demands on resource and difficult handling locally."
£201Bn benefits bill. Even if we managed to half that figure it would still be utterly ridiculous. Something drastic needs to be done about it quickly.
Benefit amounts need to be reduced and less people should be eligible for any benefit. This is not about being nasty to people, the country simply doesn’t have the money and is still borrowing at an enormous rate.
Simple really, when I want to buy something but I can't afford it I go without.
Paul you are a lost cause!! your like somebody who will drive 5miles to save 50p on fuel, the gov are conning you and everybody else who believes their policies, I bet you can feed yourself and are not reliant on food banks. Some of these people in receipt of benefits are workers, disabled etc. The vast amount of this benefit amount comes from the London Area and payment to greedy landlords with their high rents forcing people who do work to claim Hb because wait for it they have no alternative.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=609098175796766&set=a.531527170220534.117368.185180654855189&type=1&theater check this out Paul
B... you must spend hours finding all these political links. Why dont you just stand as an MP and sort the country out?
,
I spend hardly any time at all finding them they find me, popping up on my FB page from pages Ive liked 
Paul Your problem is and i am just clutching at straws but everything may seem rosie in your life as mine was untill at the age of 59 when i had a stroke. So instead of going to work everyday as i had since the age of 16 i became dependant on the benifit system for a number of years. Believe me anyone is a split second away from depending on the system and its a good job its there.
@Paul where do you think this supposedly debt ridden country is going to find £60mill 
http://welfarenewsservice.com/iain-duncan-smith-caught-out-lying-yet-again/#.Uekgk-5wY1g another link for you
£60M on the future no chance but £201B on the benefits bill is OK. We would still be living in caves with that notion.
@leatash, i've never said we shouldn't help people out. it's annoying to see so many work shy gits sat around in parks up and down the country including dawlish drinking their benefit hand outs. when the rest of us are working and have a lot of tax to pay. i don't mind paying tax if it goes to worthy causes, providing 3 litres of strong cider a day to the lazy isn't.
@Brazilnut, we could stop the benefits of people that are capable of work but continually refuse job offers.
they do!!! if you are talking about the single people that frequent the town they come under a different remit,they are excempt from signing on
http://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/News/MP-claims-8500-in-expenses-for-his-children-19072013.htm WHAT LEACHES THEY ARE!!!!
This is the Torygraph's review of the programme.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10238532/Benefits-Britain-1949-Channel-4-review.html
(and the comments underneath the review are worth a read as well)
we watched the programme last night on Channel 4 and thought it was excellent. Very interesting to see how the system helped people in different ways back then. Hearbreakingly sad for the pensioner they showed, brilliant result for the chap in the wheelchair and VERY interesting to see how the lady on disability benefits with a list of things wrong with her as long as you arm behaved and reacted to how she was treated. She flatly refused to even try the work option shown even though there were people there with obviously far worse disabilities than she has - as far as she was concerned she was ENTITLED to money and that was the end of it. Disgraceful and such a different attitude to the other person on disabiity benefit. It does go to show though that although you can't necessarily do the job you once did, you are more than capable of doing something worthwhile rather than just sitting back and waiting for the money to arrive.