Universal Credit

Discussion in 'Bulletin Board' started by portsmouth tyke, Dec 3, 2018.

  1. AthersleyRed

    AthersleyRed Well-Known Member

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    I'm on social security due to disability. If people do deliberately choose benefits as a lifestyle choice, they need their heads checking. Its depressing not being in control of your income. Like having the sword of damocles over your head.
    Anyway, as with all Tory flagship policies, UC was handled like a monkey trying to paint the Cistine Chapel armed with only a butchers knife. And as for these health assessments, they make me ashamed to be British.
     
  2. Dalestykes

    Dalestykes Well-Known Member

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    What is it with people. As a country we spend £253 billion on benefits and welfare. Do people on this board think that’s too much! It’s about 35% of GDP. If you do, get in there and campaign for cuts. Nearly half - £111 billion isI spent on old age pensions. ********! If they don’t want to work they shouldn’t be sponging off the state. That’s MY taxes you know. I’m not happy about disabled people and personal social services either - £80 billion. Jesus! Just because you’re disabled doesn’t mean you shouldn't Pay your way. It never stopped Stephen Hawking.
    Let’s get these wasted benefits down to what we spend on Unemployment Benefit £2 billion, then we can really start tos save money. #makebritaingreatagain.
     
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  3. Skryptic

    Skryptic Well-Known Member

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    I was involved in the initial UC rollout, the benefit is much better than the previous archaic systems the DWP relied upon. We're talking MS-Dos level architecture. By combining 6 benefits into a single payment (disability benefits are not affected) the system makes it easier for people to budget, and help and support is available to assist.

    The main gripe seems to be that you have to wait a while for the first payment, but if you go into employment it's likely going to be the same anyway. The company I work at runs payroll on the 14th of the month, with payment on the 27th. That means if you join on the 15th you have to wait until the 27th of the following month for your first payment. Budgeting support and advance payments are available. The other gripe is that by not paying directly to landlords, some people are unable to handle the responsibility to run their own lives and spend it all. Boo, Tories, boo.

    Of course there will be exceptions, a benefits system for millions of people is never going to be tailored to suit everybody. Yes the person with a controlling partner might suffer, the solution is to provide support (and there is), rather than go back to the mess we were in before.
     
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  4. shenk1

    shenk1 Well-Known Member

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    I choose to live on benefits.

    I get £64 a week + £35 income support to care for the missus who had to pack work in due to MS. To qualify you must care for the person for at least 35 hours a week....do the maths and work that out per hour....would you choose it ?....I had a choice....leave her at home on her own unable to get out of bed, go to the toilet, make some food or even make a cup of tea or pack my own business in to be there for her but drastically take a cut in income.

    Anyway, it's a good week this week...it's Christmas bonus week. £10 each extra to blow on ourselves (same as it's been since the early 70s but don't let that stop you slagging people off ).
     
  5. troff

    troff Well-Known Member

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    You absolute pillock.

    Unemployment benefits make up less than 1% of the welfare spend. More than 25 times more is paid to WORKING families. More than 50x more is paid out in old aged pension. Bloody freeloading old gits, going to war for us or working for fifty plus years, or both, and wanting an allowance barely half minimum wage to live off now they cant do it anymore. *****.

    The issue with universal credit is that it doesn’t work and people who need the money, as after working full time and still having next to nothing, aren’t getting anything. Disabled people are deemed fit to work, people with incurable and sometimes terminal conditions.

    My dad died at the age of 42 due to MS and complications it caused. He’d only have been 56 now had he lived - I’m almost glad he didn’t as I just know, having seen family and friends struggle to prove things, that he would have had money stopped. Not too sure how he’d have paid for his residential care - which he certainly didn’t get for free. What a ******* freeloading dosser though, he didn’t do a day’s work after the age of 27. Should have hung him... drain on society.

    It’s not unemployed dossers queuing up at food banks in tears with their kids in tow. It’s the old, infirm, working mums, even nursing staff. Get down there and see it with your own eyes.

    But you won’t, so you carry on with the Daily Mail, or right-wing media fuelled agenda. You’re not alone.

    Tell you what, look at it like this. The current government, brilliant as it is, tell us they’ve cut unemployment levels to record lows. Barely 4% unemployed apparently. Yet they still look to cut the welfare spend. From who?

    The record numbers of people in employment include people on zero hours contracts. They include people on 16 hours a week so they are legally deemed full time employed but can’t afford to heat or eat. Saves choosing I guess.

    I’m disabled myself, technically. I’ve never had a penny in disability benefit as I’m very fortunate in that at the moment I’m still able to work, we live ok, and I have never applied for anything. Doubt I’d get it in any case.

    However at the age of 35 but with the physical restrictions of someone much older, I know realistically I might not physically be able to work to 67. If in the future I need some help, I’d like to receive some.

    Narrow minded idiots such as yourself mean I’ll probably be in food banks as soon as my savings (which I’m working like a dog to accrue for my family) have gone - as I’ll get the square root of **** all assistance. My wife should be able to carry on working, unless I deteriorate so much I need caring for.

    I just hope I can carry on long enough to get all my kids grown up and settled into their own lives before that happens.
     
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  6. PLOBBY

    PLOBBY Well-Known Member

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    'The unemployed didn't and don't ruin this countries' economy'
    'The unemployed didn't and don't ruin this countries' economy' . No they didn't , that would be the Labour Party .
     
  7. Jimmy viz

    Jimmy viz Well-Known Member

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    It saves money albeit an incredibly minimal amount.


    The problems you list are scratching the surface. If you were to look at a system like UC you would expect it to increase your benefits bill not decrease it.

    The average benefit claimant will lose between £1000 and £2000 a year a lot of money if you are a disabled person or their carer with complex needs and no real opportunity to work. Osbourne in 2015 took 2 billion out of the system causing IDS to resign as all the incentives to work has been removed and what was left was a system designed to punish.

    It relies on people being computer literate and having access to both a computer and the internet. Some benefit claimants are barely literate.

    For those in work and claiming benefits it makes their lives very difficult. Many single parents who have gone back to work if they are working part time have done so with child care etc in mind but now regardless of practicality must demonstrate they are looking for full time work. If you are working full time but claiming in work benefits. You will be expected to attend job Centres ( during your work hours) to demonstrate that you are looking for a better paid job. If you are working a zero hours contract you are ******. It’s a benefit now designed to penalise and kill the poor. It’s as straightforward as that.
     
  8. Jimmy viz

    Jimmy viz Well-Known Member

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    You realise that Osbourne admitted that they had lied about hiding the impact of a global economic slowdown that to fool gullible idiots into buying in to their political choice of austerity
     
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  9. LiverpoolRed

    LiverpoolRed Well-Known Member

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    Yep, nothing to do with a financial crash
     
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  10. Redstone

    Redstone Well-Known Member

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    Sorry I have to say that reads like a propaganda piece from the Tory party to me. You say it doesn't affect disabled people well it does if you have disabled children and as such get the disability element of tax credits. Guess what a lot of people with disabled children do claim tax credits because at least one parent has had to give up work to care for the children.
    People in temporary or agency work whos wages fluctuate will see payments of benefits go up and down in response leaving them on the brink and open to pay day lenders and bad credit card deals.
    This system seems designed for nothing more than to punish the poor for being poor. It staggers me how people just seem to hate on anyone who claims benefits. Yes some lazy folk see it as a easy ride but I'm certain they are a small minority. I'm proud to live in a country where we help the poor, elderly, disabled ect.
     
    Last edited: Dec 4, 2018
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  11. Sab

    Sabre-toothed Tyke Well-Known Member

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    Look, the Labour party just happened to have had the misfortune to have been "in power" at that particular time. Modern political parties are a total con and a waste of time, merely two masks on the same face....basically its a question of whether you would like a red mask for a few years, or a blue one. They are both funded by the same big companies and wealthy backers who fund both parties knowing full well that whoever wins, they have them in their pockets and their will be done, sod the ordinary man. That is why, in my opinion, we have such a devided society today...to keep us from (en mass) realising what the game is and kicking the lot of them out. So its all about black against white, gay against straight, muslim against non-muslim. Keep everyone tribalistic and into their own little camps and they will war and fight amongst themselves and leave the real enemy alone.
     
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  12. wombwell-red

    wombwell-red Well-Known Member

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    How can she not be brought up in a discussion like this in a place so badly affected by her doings?
     
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  13. pin

    pingiskola Well-Known Member

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    They also take quite a chunk off their benefits for other debts they owe, which leaves those on UC in an even worse position...
     
  14. Old

    Old Gimmer Well-Known Member

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    As you say, you've been lucky. So have I. Some people haven't.
     
  15. Sco

    Scoff Well-Known Member

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    In principle, Universal Credit is a good idea. However, the Tories continually prove themselves unable to implement anything more complex than their expenses.

    I understand there are a few problems:

    1). Lead time to payment.
    People who lose their jobs are often at a low point. Suddenly having to wait 5 weeks for a payment can make a massive problem to the new claimants.

    2). Lower payments
    Many of those transferring to universal credit are getting less money than they were on the 5 or so older benefits. This is causing quite a few problems to many people.

    3). Zero Hour Contracts
    Many of the lower-end jobs are now ZHCs. People can find themselves (at no fault of their own) with no money for a period of time (up to 4 weeks), then get a weeks work and the clock resets.

    Someone also mentioned the pension budget. Within a decade that could be somewhere around £200bn with a potential maximum of 17 million pensioners. It won't actually be that high as some will unfortunately die, but it dwarfs all the other benefits budgets.

    Personally, I think Universal Credit is a step in the right direction, but I'm a big advocate for Universal Income. Everybody in the country gets paid a set amount. Massively reduce bureaucracy and it gives everyone a safety net. At the same time, scrap the benefits system as it in and any tax allowances. You earn money, you pay tax on every penny of it because you already have a guaranteed minimum income and companies (or customers) pay on every sale in the country. With the way things are going in terms of automation, etc, we could lose a significant number of jobs over the next few years and the benefits system in its current form is completely unable to cope.
     
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  16. Tek

    Tekkytyke Well-Known Member

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    I think the overwhelming majority of people on benefits are not there through choice and are there because minimum wage policy allows employers to pay a remuneration that does not enable them, particularly those with parental responsibilities, to live independently without subsidies from taxpayers. Those benefits enable Corporations and businesses to increase profits pay high salaries, pensions and bonuses to CEOs and directors and shareholders.
    I disagree that small businesses would fail due to increased wages bills since, if ALL businesses were forced to pay a real living wage, the Benefits bill could be cut and the savings transferred to things like cuts in business rates.
    HOWEVER, there are a number of people, particularly youths, that DO see benefits as a lifestyle. When I took voluntary leaver package, whilst waiting to sell our house (which obviously took time, prior to moving to Italy, I decided to seek temporary employment so had to register at the JobCentre. On each visit, I was surprised at the number of people outside, smoking, swearing, texting who , frankly looked and behaved in a manner that made them unemployable. (If I was seeking work I would at least make the effort to look presentable when attending an interview)
    I was also surprised at the fact that the place needed security quards who looked like a couple of night club bouncers. I was talking to one of them and was told that they did have to intervene occasionally with 'incidents' usually involving claimants 'allegedly' under the influence of drink/drugs.
     
  17. Marlon

    Marlon Well-Known Member

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    Well count yourself lucky because 25 years ago the help was there 25 years later and the help isn’t there so you would now be homeless and/or destitute.
    Nothing like a Thatcherite to pull up the ladder once they’ve had their fill
     
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  18. Sco

    Scoff Well-Known Member

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    And all it takes is a driver with a split second of stupidity, a few cells mutating in a malignant way or any one of thousands of other issues, and you could be unable to work *again*. You might not need it now, but you do not know if or when you will.
     
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  19. PLOBBY

    PLOBBY Well-Known Member

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    So you saying that everyone who loses their jobs 'would now be homeless and/or destitute'? .
     
  20. BarnsleyReds

    BarnsleyReds Well-Known Member

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    I've not been 'lucky'.

    I worked ******* hard to get to where I am.

    I started with nothing. Literally nothing. I was in education living off not much money, working multiple part time jobs, until I was 23. I then got myself a job and continued education in the evening.

    I worked 7-6 when I first started out in my industry, to get the experience I needed, then completing my education at home until late.

    I'm now on a 6 figure salary, when you take bonuses into account, with all my student debts paid off, no mortgage, no car payments.

    I'm sorry, but I don't buy this whole 'I had no choice' ********. everyone has the opportunity to make something of their life. Unfortunately too many people are more bothered about wasting their teens and early twenties.

    That's not to say that I think benefits should be scrapped or anything. It pisses me off though, that people are allowed to be on benefits for decades, without ever getting a job to pay back into the system. Benefits should be exclusively to assist in supporting yourself, not a long term thing. In my opinion.
     
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