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- Today's leader
Letter: Babies are not a passport to a life on benefits
Tuesday 28th September 2010, 6:42AM BST.
Letter: The media is full of benefit cheats, scroungers, tax evaders, and the over-paid bankers.
Every reader will have their own thoughts about such matters, all pointing towards cutbacks for us all and some losing their jobs.
The area which really needs looking at immediately is families with large numbers of children who expect as a God-given right that the taxpayer should give them thousands each month.
A lot of these parents give nothing back to society and do nothing all their lives except produce children for cash and other benefits.
We should not outlaw having a certain number of children but I believe that, if people want a lot of children, then they should support them.
The government keeps handing money over like a reward for producing child after child and it is no wonder people in these households do not want to work and/or have no intention of working.
We cannot afford this system any longer and should be only paying families who have two children or fewer, with a little common sense built in for those mothers who produce more than one child in a pregnancy.
For those who want more children, good luck to them, but they must use their own resources.
The sooner the government looks at this situation and gives a 12-month warning that handouts cannot go on, the sooner we will get ourselves out of this financial mess.
Those who are already receiving all these handouts we can’t do much about, except get those parents who are not working back into work whether it be paid work or voluntary and out of the habit of expecting everyone else to pay for them all the time.
Name and address supplied
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These letters always amuse me as they are always name and address supplied and based on assumptions and on the whole are assumptions. I have said in the past however child benefit should only be paid for the first 2 children but it is a myth with regard to the large amount of families with large numbers of children on benefits lets face it the odd tabloid comes up with at least 4-5 families a year to keep the odd few amused.
We do have some large families who do work and pay their way but they are seldom mentioned. However the likes of curtain twitching NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED WOULD I AM SURE TAR ALL WITH THE SAME BRUSH. Speaking as a person with the average 2 children and in the world of self employment where we get very few hand outs these continual moans from people like the letter writer become a little irksome and people that keep saying such things start to look and sound like some type of alf garnett character and eventually people glaze over and they become an amusing joke.
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I do agree with you, but the fact is if you look at calculations more often after paying for childcare when you go to work, i can see why people have benefits instead as you end up better off! I have 2 very young children, and yes myself and my husband go to work but i have to say i did do the calculations and i personally would of been better of on jobseekers, which would of then entitle me to receive other benefits due to low income!!! Due to the fact i personally couldn’t live like that i can see why people do!! As for basic rates of childbenefit and tax credits it is nice to get something back after paying so much in taxes and other rates. I personally think if your not working (due to the fact you dont want too) then you should not be able to receive benefits, or you shouldn’t have children if your not able to financially support them!! And sadly due to our government these people that are living off benefits (due to choice) seem to have children wearing designer clothes and driving posh cars, and a good sized house thats paid for by the council!! By the way, i do understand so family’s are on benefits because they have to be due to circumstances…..
Think this is a very political issue that will never be sorted in this country!! There are so many kids in homes looking for new mums and dads, why cant people help them instead?
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Hear Hear Andrew Finch!
What about those who were working and who lost a partner suddenly, or those who had to quit work due to sudden ill health?
It is so easy to dump blame on all and sundry but this is not a cut and dried scenario…all benefits should be means tested and ALL claimants should have to prove their ‘attempts’ at seeking work. I know of many that never lift a finger and sit wallowing on the dole, so many never work at all. Those that have worked and end up on sickness benefits or long term disability benefits are not necessarily “scroungers” and yet are treated as such…meanwhile the MP’s leech from the taxpayers with their ‘expenses’ and screw this country deeper and deeper into the mire whilst smiling sweetly and commanding their massive wage packets.
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Well said.
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There are two sides to every coin. Yes, there are those who are on benefit through no fault of their own, and on the obverse there are those who are milking the system. Sadly the root of this problem is one that cannot be removed, children. Many young females deliberately get pregnant in order to obtain free housing and benefits, it’s a meal ticket for life, but, to refuse her claim would mean that her child would suffer, and that cannot be allowed to happen.
It is a very tricky situation that has no obvious solution. I do think more could be done to get at least one parent of a large family on benefit back to work, if a job can be found for them. Many have not worked for years, (I have personal knowledge of such people), and have no formal training, and, to be frank, no desire to work. What to do about them???
I’m glad I don’t have the job of addressing this problem.
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I am a mum who had no choice to live on benefits for 2 years as every job i went for i was not suited for the criteria even some voluntary places would not have me for i have facial piercings and they saw that as not the face they wanted in their shop.
I am now in work and loving it. My husband is a stay at home dad and the arrangement works for both of us.
I do know of a family that are having kids just for the benefits and yes it can get annoying but please can we all look at the whole picture and not just the minor few and tarring al with the same brush.
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“even some voluntary places would not have me for i have facial piercings”
Now that really does annoy me! What’s more important, keeping chunks of metal in your face or getting a job? I wouldn’t give a job to anyone with facial piercings either if they were ever likely to be seen by customers.
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Well said Kath.
Obviously for ‘Working Mum’, fashion is more important than paying her way.
Bottom line. If you can’t work or afford to have children. DON’T HAVE THEM.
It’s not that difficult.
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What a very discriminatory attitude you have Kath. I know many people who have facial piercings, some of them in jobs that require everyday contact with the public. They have no problem and are damn good at their respective posts, surely a more important factor than that they have a stud or two in their face.
I wonder, if you were in a life threatening situation, and your only hope of salvation was someone with a dozen facial decorations, would you refuse their help????
A personal question I know, but do you wear earrings, and would you refuse employment to someone who did??.
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Discriminatory? Rubbish, no-one is born with studs, bars, whatever in their face, they have a choice. To my mind, discrimination is wrong when applied to characteristics people can’t choose – age, gender, race, nationality, sexuality, disability etc.
If you actually want a job, you conform to the appearance or dress code.
I admit I really don’t like facial piercings and they make me feel queasy, but of course I would accept or offer help – I’m talking about someone who claims to want a job, but prefers to keep the ‘decorations’.
No, no ear-rings.
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I have 4 children and served many years in the military. After leaving military life, I went and worked for a large national company.
At all times, I worked and paid my way. Then, this very well known national company was bought out by A.N.Other and I, as well as many others became unemployed as the buying out company laid off hudreds off people.
The savings I had got us through the first few months, then we had no alternative but to ask the state for assistance, we got it, but fortunately it was ony for a short period time.
Is the writer of this letter suggesting that people who are or are going to be in the same situation as I was, deserve no help and there are going to be many in the coming months.
The writer of this letter, who doesn’t have the courage to put their name to their comments has a very one sided and simplistic view that is not well thought out at all.
They really cannot be taken serious when they hide behide “Name and Address supplied” and are almost on a rant.
Maybe their view would change if it was them or a member of their family in these situations.
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I agree that people should take responsibility for the cost of bringing up their children, but I also know that many will not and if you stop their benefits the innocent children will suffer.
Maybe the benefits could be in the form of vouchers for food, children’s clothes etc. Now I know some “do gooders” would say this would be demeaning to have to present such vouchers and that people would feel discriminated against, but the answer to that I would say is not to have more children than you can afford!
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I suggested this a while back but having spoken to many and given it some thought it is a flawed idea EVERYONE who is an employee will lose their job at least 3 times through a working life and will rely on benefits why make them feel worse than they already are????. It should apply however to long term unemployed who have shown no desire to work.
Why the idea is flawed is also what many people I am afraid will find out over the coming 12 months when they lose their jobs and many will, including some who have posted on forums such as this it is not so black and white . We can all have a go at a group of people from what ever sector if we are not in that situation , and I can assure you the wealthy have done their fare bit of free loading in their time and still do .
MOST people want to work a minority do not. I would also say many on the long term sick benefits due to stress/back/ problems , depression come from the so called middle class jobs.I think many people read the tabloid drivel and believe it which is a sad reflection on the British public and how down market we as a country have gone .
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It’s a conundrum. Those of us who’ve worked and then find ourselves having to apply for benefits generally experience a horrible, unhelpful and most unsatisfactory system. If you don’t ask the right questions, they often won’t tell you what you could be entitled to. Others who would like to work and get offered work, can’t afford to because it would mean losing ALL of their benefits and being worse off. They therefore remain trapped by the system. Perversely, there are some – these being the ones to whom the writer appeared to be referring – who not only seem quite content to live on benefits, but know just how to exploit them to the extent of being able to live very comfortably. I speak from the experience of having had to work 60 hours + per week just to feed, clothe and keep a roof over my family’s head without a penny piece in my pocket, whilst the parents of another large family who were on benefits regularly woke me up with their carousing as they returned home from the pub. These people exist. Let’s not pretend they don’t.
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Or is the problem when or if we find ourselves in a situation where we have to claim benefits we then find out the real story and nope you do not get money to feed your dog, to buy new cars, to pay massive rents for luxury homes, you don’t get your mortgage paid, you don’t get enough to go on holidays abroad, you don’t live a great free life at the tax payers expense, you every private private business is looked in to every two weeks. EXCUSE ME IF I HAVE NOT GOT THE DESIRE TO FIND OUT I AM WRONG BUT I CAN TELL POINT YOU IN THE DIRECTION OF TWO GUYS WHO’S VIEW ON THE BENEFITS SYSTEM SOON CHANGED WHEN THEY LOST THEIR JOBS.
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[I am now in work and loving it. My husband is a stay at home dad and the arrangement works for both of us.]
Good on you,especially that one of you is bringing up your children.
Ever since Mrs Thatcher announced ‘time is money’ and created a society where childcare is considered completely unimportant really very few people can actually afford children.
It is partly the reason we have a demographic timebomb of too few young people with little investment in those we have got and a massively growing elderly population to support.
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Bring in an IQ test before being allowed to have children. If you have children without an accredited IQ test result you get the snip and no benefits. Problem solved!!
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A Hitler had the same view.
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And now we are discussing the implications. Who’s got their head in the sand!!
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im 21 years old wit 4 children,my partner worked since he left school to support us only been on benefits once when he lost his job 2 years ago and even then it was nearly imposible to get a benefit payment, my partner works round the clock to keep our priveted house roof over us…knowing the council will refuse to house us.
i personlly think its a disgrace tht parents are only havin kids to get everythin paid for, when we’re strugglin as it is!
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Personally, I think its pretty disgraceful that by the age of 21 you have 4 kids. Lets hope they learn from your mistakes, The planet can’t sustain this kind of expansion forever.
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To assume makes an ass out of you and me. Don’t make assumptions based on preconceptions, misinformation or tabloid nonsense. Well said Andrew Finch.
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[our priveted house roof over us] ????
What do you live in topiary or a hedge?
Still it’s better than a shoe box in the road I suppose!
So long as you love and cherish your family then you are doing no wrong. I wouldn’t have chosen that kind of responsibilty so young. My granny married at 17 as was the cultural expectation for her time and as was the forced situation for those indoctrinated into catholicism.
It is always so easy to think other people are scroungers and as for the IQ test I thought we fought a war against nazism.
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In my honest opinion If you are already in receipt benefits then you cannot afford further children. You should be told this clearly and any further benefits will be declined..End of problem!
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Except what happens when they do produce more children? Do we punish those children by making them live in abject poverty? Isn’t having feckless parents enough of a poor start in life?
The problem is one of perception rather than fact – it’s a perception amongst a minority of teenage girls that a baby is the path to happiness. The reality, as they discover, is quite different.
The same is true of asylum seekers who come here – they are led to believe the streets are paved with gold, when the reality (other than in the fantasist popular press) is a life of misery and poverty.
It’s education and a correction of these false perceptions that is needed, not punishment.
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It’s a difficult problem… we live in a world of dwindling room and resources and it’s everyone’s responsibility to try and minimise our impact. While I fully support people’s right to have children, certain people (4 children by the age of 21?!?!) obviously don’t consider that this is their problem. It doesn’t matter if you are able to support your children or not; ultimately, they will still take up resources. People should think more about the repercussions of having children and limit the size of their families voluntarily, because if they don’t, then sooner or later the state will have no choice but to start enforcing quotas/allowances as they already do in China, and no-one but extremist maniacs want that.
As for the benefit system… it’s there to provide a safety-net to those who have landed on hard-times but to one degree or another the system is abused. Unfortunately, that’s the way it has to be… we either stop providing help to those among us unlucky enough to lose their jobs or we carry on taking the risk that the system will be taken advantage of. Granted, there are ways that the system could be improved… I personally subscribe to the idea of a voucher system as a partial alternative to cash handouts; yes it may be slightly humiliating for people but no more so than being a recipient of free school-dinners and I know from experience that it’s better to have people know you’re poor than to go hungry!
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Years ago, a friend who was homeless had an interview at Malinslee House for housing.
She was taken on one side by a Wrekin District Council Housing officer who told her: “We can’t offer you housing. You haven’t got enough points! But this is the advice I give to all single girls. Get yourself pregnant, then you will get housing right away!”
She put a formal complaint in, and as if by magic, she got a home even though she was not pregnant.
I heard subsequently that this advice was given out by more than one officer, so might help explain the high number of single parents over the years in Telford.
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Not exactly true now though is it? try hostel etc .
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I work as a Benefit’s assessor and see this everyday it’s frustrating, we have a household income of £42,000 a year and after buying a house recently we are in the position where we could not afford children, so we will wait until we can, shame some people do not have the same attitude!
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For many years this has been a topic of debate and will be for many to come but what I find hard to believe is the fact that when people come to the uk from anywhere in europe they are entitled to claim benefits for their children who still live in their home country.This is a fact and at this moment a man I work with is eagerly waiting for his back payment for the sum of nearly 4k which he did not claim for when he first arrived here some 4 years ago.This is something I feel is very wrong when you consider what our pensioners get to live on after paying into the system all their working lives.If these foreign workers were here with their families that would be a different matter but why should the good old british tax payer cough up for people who do not even live here
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Did she offer the services of the Wrekin District Council Housing special points growth service!
S hropshire
T enants
U pstanding
D evelopment
S ection
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My comment will be considered very harsh but were living in times where unfortunately tough harsh decisions need to be made and unfortunately nobody is willing to make them, just allow the situation to get worse. Educating youngesters about safe sex hasnt worked, UK has been quoted as having the highest teenage birth rate in europe. every government says they going to get tough on benifit cheats, they never do. They allow foreign workers to claim our benifits even though they are not UK citizens but EU ones and therefore it is there right. It is the right of every woman to have children, it is there right this, there right that, blah blah blah.
If a single woman or a woman in a relationship who are pregnant is proven by social services to not be able to support that child when it is born, should have the pregnancy terminated. People go on about protecting the child. Are we not at fault for allowing the birth to go ahead, then to take that child away from it’s parents because it was already deemed impossible for them to support it.
People come up with drastic solutions but then get quoted with ‘mr bad man already thought of that’ and then get tarred with that brush, but yet those people who are quick to make that association, dont or are not willing to come up with a solution of there own, just complain about others.
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Roger
I would look long and hard at the words you have written and consider in full the type of society you propose. In the late 1980s we saw the fall of despotic regimes across Europe where control of people was extreme. We commemorate this year the airborne combat against Nazi Germany and all of the dreadful aspects of selection that regime advocated. More recently we have had Cambodia, Kosovo and Rwanda. Your sentiments would be celebrated as the voice of reason in such places. Personally I think a modicum of shame on your part is required. We are talking about lives not statistics here. I do not consider your opinions harsh; I consider them to be ill thought out, potentially dangerous and somewhat idiotic.
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So it’s the woman’s responsibility to support the child? Did she get pregnant by herself in your scenario?
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No, no you’ve got that wrong Roger M, as your name implies. The real answer is castration for those who create the situation in the first place. ;)
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“And the union workhouses – are they still in operation?”
mayhaps we do have a surplus population!!
lol
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OH YES THEY IS!! £6K PER ANNUM CHILD BENEFIT ALONE FROM MY MOB!! HAHAHAHAHAHA THANKS FOR KEEPING ME IN FAGS MUGS
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Roger.M. Harsh but true,unfortunately not what the do-gooders want to hear.
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Terminations are far more expensive than the snip John, so as a do gooder I am all for the more economic option.
Those blokes are not prepared to take the responsibility of fatherhood line up please.
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