Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
£500 still too much
Anyone else think £500 is too high still? Yes these people may be forced out of London and how is that a bad thing? Rents will decrease and as a knock on effect so will property prices allowing more people who make the economy turn get on the property ladder. I work full time as does my wife as with many of you this Christmas we had to struggle to buy gifts for our 6 year old son. A friend of our who is on full benefits and has never paid into our tax system in the 10 years she has lived in this country was able to buy her 8 year old daughter an £500 iPad mini. WOW. I am sick to the point of rage that people who work get less than those who don't. I asked my friend why she has to live in Haringey where the council pay her £1100 rent why can't she be unemployed somewhere cheaper like leeds for example.
£500 I wish I could have £500 a week free. Time to ship out dead wood it will be better for all of us and we know it, cap should be £400 a week and thats still being generous but I think that is the average amount a working family would have so why should those on benefits get more?
Tags for Forum Posts: benefits cap
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by LSquared on
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It's reassuring to see that unlike the rubbish collections, the strawmen arrive on schedule :)
Enter "The Work House". Because clearly working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week and being forced to move to a live in institution where you rise, eat and work when you are told to is _exactly_ the same as living an independent life in which you spend one day a week working to benefit the community in which you live and which you yourself are a part of.
And you still don't get it. It's not about giving the lollipop lady one day a week break. It's about doing extra stuff. Stuff that we'd all like to see done but there is no public money to fund. I really don't see what is so wrong about asking the people who have asked the community to support them to do something for the community in return. -
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No, LSq & John. The Work House or even Workhouse can come later if necessary. We should concentrate on Outdoor Relief targeted on Haringey's Unfinished Jobs. One dear to my heart and near to my home, for example, would be the Brian Haley Memorial Unfinished Footway (Wightman Road West: Cavendish to Beresford jcts), but there must be scores or hundreds of such half-arsed projects boroughwide. A detail of 9 unemployed or underemployed households, including children of 6 years and above, wd provide stonebreaking units for the 600 yds of unfinished pavement. Sturdier heads of household wd be responsible for the tarboiling facs and heavy manually operated rollers. I cannot see any objection to including the Ryan Forsyth h'sehold & his good Friend with their 6 & 8 yr olds as one of those closely bonded units.
The emphasis in all these Outdoor Relief Works must be on real purpose and community need. We do not intend to waste scarce revenue on building walls enclosing nothing or roads leading into bogholes, as you may recall from some of Trevelyan's Irish follies of the 1845-47 period.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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LSquared, do you not see that people are already doing this, apart from the litter picking which is done exclusively by the employed? The local schools are full of volunteers and turning people away. You deny it but other than watching TV, what else do you think they could be doing that makes their £71 a week unjustified?
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Permalink Reply by ryan forsyth on
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My friend reply was. Why would she move when she gets to party in London and in her country she would be told to to p.off if asking for handouts. I don't mind people on benefits, it's a great country we live in that looks after people when they need it but for too many years we bury our heads in the sand and pretend some people are not taking the P. those who find themselves on benefits for no fault of their own be it I'll health of unemployment hate being on them as they feel worthless and degrading. But there are others who have 5 children and expect the government to pay. They expect million pound accommodation in Kensington. You should never ever get
more from not working than those who do. It's disgusting. Society have created a country of scum and we pretend it hasn't. People get respect now because it's law when 15 years ago it had to be earnt. Just look what the future generations did during the riots. Thugs and lowlifes and they have all been created by the labour government.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Hmm, founded on research by The Sun and the Daily Mail I think. Yes, someone did live in a squiliian pound house and it was probably 1 family out of how every many millions who live I this country. This is setting policy by ill informed scandal and spurious facts
Like John says, some people are working for under £2 an hour while their employers are probably paying little or no tax. The bills for unemployment benefit are minute compared to the tax breaks and avoidance regimes many of the employers benefit from. Yes, we have created a society of scum. They take our money every day. They work in banks and multinational companies to take everything and give back nothing. The real tragedy is that this government (and previous governments too) have done nothing to make them accountable for the damage they have done to us. I would be interested in hearing what you think could be done to change this (apart from moving everyone under a certain income level to Leeds - by the way a very nice city, my auntie Mary is very happy there)
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Is she a friend or a thug and lowlife?
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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Let us take this purely hypothetical woman about which we actually know nothing at all and do a case study.
Unlike a working person's salary, it is possible to calculate what a single mother with one child is entitled to claim from the state. [The issue of her original country is immaterial. It is not that easy to claim in this country unless you have worked or have come from an EU state. One must assume that she has a valid claim to state help.]
Income: As an able-bodied person with a child over 5 she will be entitled to Job Seekers Allowance of £71 pw. This will require her to look for work or face sanctions. This is her income replacement. If any worker receives less than this, they are entitled to top ups. [A couple is entitled to 111.45-anyone working for less than this combined rate should look to claim top ups]
Housing: as a claimant, she is passported to full housing benefit. A quick question to a local estate agent confirms that her rent is not outrageous and typical for this part of Haringey. She is subject to a local housing allowance cap which means that she can't just rent the most expensive place and expect it to be paid for. The current LHA rate is £290 for two bedrooms (not available to single people under 35). We can expect this rate to come down. (if she is in council or housing association property and has an extra room she will also lose money under the new bedroom tax)
She will also get council tax benefit, soon to be abolished, possibly requiring her to pay for the first time a tax she was previously exempted from.
Both of the benefits are also available to those on a low income.
The state will acknowledge the extra expense of having a child. She will get (from Jan 7th means tested) child benefit of £20.30 and Child Tax credits of £62 pw.
Again both of these benefits are available to workers. Child benefit is available up to £50.000 and Child tax credits up to £20,000 for 1 one child or £30,000 for 2 children. Her child will get free school meals (also available for low income families) and free prescriptions (as do all children under 16).
In her hand, she is likely to receive approx £153.00 pw to cover all expenses for her and her child.
As you can see, she already receives above the proposed monthly cap before her HB is added (which of course is paid to her landlord not to her). As she lives in Haringey, she can expect to lose a substantial amount come April.
The issue of the ipad appears to have rankled. How can someone on benefits afford £500?
Remember this purely hypothetical person about which I know nothing does have options for getting extra money:
1. She may be a very prudent budgeter/ebayer
2. She may have joined a credit union which allows her to save for Christmas and get low interest loans
3. She may have taken a short term, high interest loan and is sweating on the payments come Jan
4. She may have bought it on some form of HP (not sure if this is offered on ipads but often large appliances are bought by the poor this way) or on credit
5. She may have applied for a budgeting loan to be paid back via her benefits with no interest from the soon to be abolished Social Fund
6. She may have done some casual work in the black economy
7. She may have 'seen a man about a dog'
8. She may have ignored some bill such as gas or electricity and used the money for Christmas.
9. None of the above.
These are the facts of life for our purely hypothetical single mother with one child. Options for working may be limited by issues around the cost of childcare or the number of hours or nature of the work she can do. As a recipient of free school meals, her child will probably be eligible for breakfast clubs and after school clubs if schools run them (recent cuts have seen some of these close).
I think you would do your friend a great service by discussing the cap with her so that she is prepared for the changes.
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Permalink Reply by Alison P on
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Re the point about milliom pound housing in Kensington, this is such a red herring - it frequently crops up on the various myth busting sites springing up about benefits. Eg this from Save the Children:
Myth 9: “There are large numbers of families receiving out-of-work benefits living in expensive houses the vast majority of people could never afford”/ “the state pays for workless people to live in mansions”
The truth is that only a small number of households were receiving support through Housing Benefit worth £50,000 or more a year before a cap came in on the amount of support a household can receive through Housing Benefit (£20,800 a year).
In March 2012 just 110 households in receipt of Housing Benefit received over £50,000 a year (out of 5,014,650 recipients) xxv
According to the latest DWP figures, the average Housing Benefit award is £4651.92 a year.xxvi
In fact, only 0.037% of Housing Benefit claimants are receiving more than £30,000 per annum and most of those are receiving between £30,000 and £40,000.xxvii
Surprisingly a third of children in poverty live in owner-occupier families with around a third in social housing and a third in privately rented housing.xxviii
http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/sites/default/files/docs/Challeng...
As an aside to Liz's very comprehensive commentary, your friend may of course have bought a cheaper iPad mini, £250 or so for the lowest spec.
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After reading back through all this again (sorry if I come across as rude) I think Ryan's friend was deliberately winding him up. At least that's what I'd probably do.
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so your saying, if you can't afford your rent move to a cheaper area. Don't worry i think the council are cracking down on it all slowly but surely. I claim a monthly housing benefit but only because I'm a very low earner at the moment being self employed and not much work around, if your attitude is "why don't people move to leeds cos it's cheaper" then why didn't you think better about having a child if you can't afford one on two salaries ?
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My point in a nutshell is if you do not work and do not intend to you should not have more than someone who does or is trying
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And our response has been that we agree with you but the lion's share of what your 'friend' is getting is her housing benefit which goes straight to her landlord. Your response would be that she should move somewhere "cheaper" and I hope we've demonstrated that this is not right either. Your point in a nutshell is really that it's very expensive to live even modestly in London.
I honestly sympathise. I hold a similar position with regard to road deaths in that if we just decreased speed limits, less people would die. Fortunately for me there is far more evidence for it than your position of if we just decreased benefits, more people would be in work.
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