“Of course it's a good idea to cap benefits but I wouldn't announce the £26.000........some people will now start to work out the criteria for this amount and claim accordingly...The system needs to be fair for the genuine claimants i.e. people with a good work record who have just lost their jobs....as for the long term career idle unemployed, it defitinely needs looking at.......why should some lazy scrounger be entitled to the same amount of money that 2 people on minimum wage have to earn? Also what if a working person isn't earning £26.000, would the government consider making their money up..Hope the government goes ahead with this proposal...there have been too many takers for too long....”

“Lots of working families cope on less than £26000; it isn't fair that those without jobs get more than this simply because their work is to produce loads of kids. How about the goverment thinking of the ordinary working person for a change instead of the scroungers and "benefit tourists"! It isn't going to happen though is it?”

“You would have to earn £30,000+ to receive an income of £26,000. Make work pay? Don't make me laugh. I believe that:-
1. It should be capped at a whole lot less than £20,000.
2. The Government should also say that in 9 months time child benefit will cease altogether for new claimants. (If you want children then pay for them yourselves. It may also reduce teenage pregnancies when they are unable to claim any benefits whatsoever).
3. Reduce all benefits by 5% and not increase them with a 5% 'pay rise'. (We're all in this together. Apparently!).
When people start screaming that it is unfair it should be explained that if they aren't happy they can always pay more tax to share their own wealth with the great unwashed.
Just leave the rest of us alone to spend our lot less than £15,000 we actually earn.”

“I worry that this will please narrow thinkers like ghosts and penalise people who are already struggling. Yes, 26k sounds like alot but that figure will apply to folk in London where the cost of living is equal to or above that sum. What exactly is it that you want to do with people who can't or don't want to work? Gormanghast or whatever his handle is may have an idea Lord help us!!!!!!!!!
We whinge about senior officers in the council justifying their pay and we whinge about councillor expenses, we whinge about lone parents, people on the nick or addicted to something. If you visit a GP or walk in centre one lot are whinging that another lot don't look ill to them and don't think the hairdresser who just whinged to you about her last client isn't going to whinge to their next about you. Its all the fault of immigration, God or the weather!!
Divide and conquer? Its a wonder that any of us speak with civil tomgue to anyone at any time!! Is my virul thingy down to an actual virus (of which their are many), a sickie being thrown or a deep desire to avoid work? Maybe its because I was a lone parent when my girl was a girl (large spotty felines and all that) or maybe skin tone has rubbed off on me when I treat other human beings with respect! Or maybe its because my fella is a veggie or I have gay friends! Or my front step isn't clean enough!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As you may have noticed I get very bored away from my job where I support people who would love to see the back end of a fiver let alone 26k. Why should they have to justify why they receive a pittance? Why should ghost and gormless feel they have the right to judge anyone.
Money may not be the currency of the future.”

“Myself i think the Tories are going to find it hard combining the kids benefit with the £26.000 cap, and what about the ill and carers i suppose they will be hit, the benefit system does want reforming, but not going like a bull in a china shop which this government is doing.”

“Don't worry about me Jobeone, I'me ok....it's just that at 57 and always managed to find work, never committed any crime and never hurt anyone, I take offence at the way some people abuse the system that is there to help the genuine in times of need...I wish I could be as pure and wholesome as thou...”

“£26000 "limit"? Stone the crows, a lot of working people don't earn that yet there's bleeding hearts saying the idle dole scroungers can't make do on £26K? You're having a laugh. Where do the stupid socialists and do-gooders think the money comes from in the first place, Lenin's magic tree? No, it comes from those of us who don't bl**dy well scrounge and work for a living to support our families.

I'd stop the lot overnight, let them either go out and get a job or starve, I wouldn't miss the whining scrounging scum anyway. Always got money for booze, fags, lottery tickets, mobile phones and flatscreen tellies haven't they? The only people who should get anything are those who've paid a full stamp all their lives, OAPs, and fair enough those who are genuinely unable to work (through no fault of their own) due to serious ill health - bad backs, "anxiety" and trendy illnesses nobody has ever heard of don't count. Single parents shouldn't get anything either - go out and find yourselves a decent fella and stop sleeping around and having kids that the rest of us have to pay for! Just because you can't keep your legs together isn't my problem, is it? (widows excepted, of course.. )

"What exactly is it that you want to do with people who can't or don't want to work?"

Shoot them, or sterilise them so they can't breed another generation of subnormal, subhuman delinquent layabouts. They are no use to me or anyone else, except the local drug dealer, and they won't be missed. Surplus_to_requirements, not wanted on voyage. In previous times they'd have been done in for by disease or wars but now we have to mollycoddle and cosset them, and in return we get spat at, assaulted in our own streets, and watch our cities burn whilst these vermin go on the rampage.

I take nothing from the State; well hardly anything, apart from the bins and the roads. I've always worked, my children went to independent school, I don't have any need of libraries because I buy my own books, god forbid I should ever require social services! I arrange my own retirement plans and pension (company) I don't even use the NHS, not for it's own sake anyway, my medical scheme pays me £150 a day on top of costs if I use the NHS so that's a win-win, so what do I need the State for? I just pay in and pay in and keep paying in. Now that's unfair; I should be able to opt out of state schemes and rely on my own provision, but no I have to stump up for idle t*ssers who can't be bothered to get out of bed until midday, or foreign scum who have no right to be here anyway.

But apparently they're entitled to £26K of my money for doing nothing except existing.”

“The Welfare system as envisaged by the Beveridge report in the 1940's was to support people on a short-term basis, not the open-ended system we have now. It was designed for people to contribute into it and to receive from, not just simply get out of it what they can, that's where the problem lies. I am NOT in favour of these reforms, because it's a "catch-all" solution, but the present system is is heading for breaking point, not now, but in the not-to-distant future, and I think all parties at Westminster have now realised this.”

“There was an unemployed woman on the news tonight with 5 children claiming £28,000 a year. This is disgusting, I work a full time job and don't bring in that much, I have never and hope to never claim a penny. It was her idea to have 5 kids but the rest of us have to pay for them. This really makes me sick, she should have been sterilised!”

“BLAIR/BROWN "DONT UPSET THE DOSSERS THEY VOTE FOR US, GIVE THEM £26,000 OUT OF THE POT"
"Only problem is the Pot is now empty!"”

“It's all well and good saying lets put a £26.000 limit on it. but what actually happens if one of you are made jobless, have you thought of that. there is a limit of income that has to be taken into account, under that and you might get some jsa if above that limit you won't get a penny. are the goverment going to increase this limit to £26.000 per year i think not. don't go down putting families down for a lot of children, think about how this might affect you if the worse happens”

“'Benefits' the only British culture left.
Of course, good old SOT excels in the benefits for votes numbers game.
No wonder net population of SOT is dwindling by approx 2000 per year (centre for cities studies 2005-2011) Benefit claimants are not the ones leaving. Therefore the remaining income tax/council tax payers of SOT carry on picking up proportionately more of the benefits invoice.
You would think that in 2012, with the uber intelligence (and salaries) of our Gov and Councils that they could accurately and proportionately target benefits to those whose really do need help and exclude the ones who gorge on benefits simply because they can.”

“"but what actually happens if one of you are made jobless"

lagu, I'd go out and get another job; even if it was some dead-end menial job, as long as it paid the bills. I wouldn't sit around on my @rse expecting the State to take care of me, and it would do until something better came along. It's happened before. I was made redundant in '91, but I saved my redundancy money and got an agency job loading wagons for three months until I found id it something else more suited. I didn't like it but I did it, and I didn't go asking for handouts or behaving that the world owed me a living.

There are always jobs, it's just that the lazy benefit scroungers can't be bothered to do them because they're better off on the dole. That's why all the Poles were let in to do the jobs the non-working classes and permanently unemployed won't do. And give them their due, the Poles are grafters.”

“good for you e d wivens that is what eveyone one would do in 1991, but it's not 1991 now it's 2012, yes there are jobs out there but with a few thousand looking at the same time it is not easy, as for immigrants ( i do not mean that nasty ) it has been proved that when working here they claim benifits eg child support then this money is then sent back to the own country. so e d wivens you are paying for the immigrants to work”

“Did I not say "stop all benefits?" As a matter of fact I happen to agree with you on one point, we do indeed get benefit migrants and cheats as a result of being in the EUSSR, but that is a separate argument; please point out where I said that this was a good thing and I will give you £5.

I am forced on all fronts to pay for a lot of things that I strongly disapprove of, thanks to socialistic nonsense such as the Welfare State and the European Union. Liebore's porous immigration policies didn't do my wallet or blood pressure much good either. I have no choice where the State chooses to distribute my tax and NI payments, nor do I have any choice if they cannot or choose to not enforce the rules. What's your point, exactly?

How old are you? If you are over 40, you may recall that economic conditions in the early '90s weren't much better than they are now - unemployment was still over 2 million, sterling was forced from the ERM and mortgage interest rates rocketed up just as we'd all been conned into taking out endowment mortgages. I remember all too clearly that it was not a particularly easy time. We had a recession in the late 70s and early 80s, again in the early 90s, again towards the end of the 90s, and then the credit crisis and current recession. The only difference now is that we have third and fourth generation unemployed for whom living off state benefits is a way of life and not a temporary indisposition.”

“These any many other reports on these issues really make the older population wondering what madness the Labour party was thinking about letting mainly none workers able to claim such amounts. I worked and paid taxes for 40 years my wife would have done the same but she looked after the pre-school children for 6 years so pays the penalty for this with a reduced pension. I remember that when my two children were getting the paltry family allowance. I had to pay it all back in tax because I earned above a certain amount. We now are on the Standard old age pensions with reductions for every minute we had off work.
Why can these people get these vast sums £26,000 is two and a half times what we get for working and paying in most of our lives and this is after it is going to be capped, but they will get on top of this all the family allowances in tax credits in some cases extra by selling a cheap magazine a few hours a week, why did I work an average of 50 hours a week? The country as gone mad mainly caused by the most disastrous pair of multi millionaires that ever ran this country. Brown & Blair should be put on trial for their mismanagement of the nation. But why should they care along with the rich Judges and Bishops living a life total devoid of any knowledge of what it's like living amongst these people and what this is doing to the country they don't care living in their mansions with servants. The only justice in this country is for the Rich the Migrants and the Scroungers to hell with the rest.
You never get a Labour or Liberal Politician (other than Frank Field) or a Bishop try to explain to the taxpayers why scroungers are better treated than workers.”

“the reason, yesamwargames, was to create an itinerant mass of state dependants who would always vote Liebore because that was the side on which their bread was buttered. Almost like the old Roman concept of patronage which became extended to become the infamous "bread and circuses." As I'm sure comes as no surprise to you!

The mass immigration that occurred at the same time was no coincidence. If effectively you pay a large proportion of the indigenous population to not work, someone has to do the jobs, so why not ship in millions of poor menials from foreign lands who'll work for nothing, pay hardly any tax, but be so grateful for the chance to earn a few coppers more than back home in Magonkawiwiland that they'll automatically vote Liebore as well. effectively it was gerrymandering by social engineering. You now have vast Liebore enclaves in cities where hardly anyone works and you will barely meet an English person (a working one at any rate.)

An utter disgrace, and economic madness. But it kept them in power for thirteen years, long enough to right royally wreck the entire country!”

“Like so many of the correspondants herein, I have worked and saved since my teenage years and If/when I am made redundant, will be eligible only for the basic amount of JSA, which certainly isn't anything like £28k, more like £8k per year. I read in the Sentinel that the leader of the council wants an assistant whose salary will be circa £80-90k. The "average" salary in this city for a PA is around £19K- £22k I have an idea for a new Reality TV show. Let's get togehter all the Whitehall manderins, councilors, MP's MEP's bankers, CEO's Judges and all the other big earners who dictate to the rest of us how much we can earn and how much we have to pay out in taxes and NI and challenge them to live on the "average" income for 2 years, and then an average state pension for the same amount of time without their bonuses and expenses and without recourse to any support from family/friends/state or their huge savings they doubtless have squirrelled away offshore. I woner how they would cope when the gas bill arrived, and they had no spare cash for a night out? What larks!! That would be worth watching.”

“Cap rents - that would solve the problem for people on benefits and the low waged as well”

“the "unemployed" and the "hard working tax payer" are NOT 2 separate species of human (as the Tories WANT you to believe) the vast majority of "the unemployed" are "hard working tax payers" who have lost their job (often as a direct result of Tory policies) and are actively seeking another, (no matter HOW hard the Tories try to make you believe differently )

of course there are a minority who will always try to cheat the system no matter how hard we try to 'root them out'

the OBVIOUS 'fair' answer to this problem is to by all mean introduce a cap on benefit payments, but it should be a regional cap, based on the cost of living in each county or constituency (or do people think the cost of living, and rent is the same in London as it is in Stoke?)
and alongside this we need to have a regional cap on the amount of rent that landlords can charge in certain areas for certain homes, we hear lots of complaints about "scroungers" working the system, but very few about landlords who also take the 'P'....OH...wait... could it be that's because most landlords probably vote Tory? ...I know what I think,”

“I cannot believe the absolute rubbish MP's are spouting about the emotive subject of capping benefit payments because it is claimed some people are getting the equivalent to a £35K salary. If this is so then the MP's are to blame. We are a welfare state and this debate comes at a time when massive amounts of money are being wasted by this government.

They should be targeting the system of bonuses that have and are being paid to public service employees who do a substandard job. The rich who resort to tax evasion at best and tax avoidance at worst. The amount of money this cap will save (£275 million) is miniscule compared to the waste of billions that have been thrown at the banks in order to allow the bankers to continue to give themselves obscene bonuses. One has given up his bonus but will receive a further £8million later. The RBS board will also receive millions despite the fact that between them the share value of the bank has virtually halved.

The government gives continued support via the IMF to the flawed euro, a currency zone that we are not part of. Don't forget the money will not go to the people of those countries but once again to the banks. This £275m could easily be saved by not paying out billions to India in foreign aid. Where is the sense of paying this enormous amount to a country that has more millionaire's than this country, has its own space programme and gives millions of overseas aid itself.

It is argued that welfare hand-outs should only be available to maintain people on 'subsistence' levels. If this is so let us look at our MP's subsistence allowance of £150 per night which equates to approximately £31,000 per annum. That's on top of their generous salaries, subsidised restaurants and other very generous expenses. Is this fair?

People can find themselves on benefits for a multitude of reasons, not because they are work shy or want to live off the state. People suffer life changing injuries and lose their jobs. I know as this happened to me. By this time next week I predict that thousands more will find themselves on benefits. However, I have worked all of my life and paid my taxes and I am only receiving what I'm entitled to. I know that there are instances where abuse of the benefit system has been proved, but for politicians to engage in this type of divisive policy is so unjust.

I believe that the people who are receiving these huge benefit pay-outs probably live in London with housing benefit being huge due to the excessive rents charged. Please remember that any housing benefit paid does not go to the family but to the greedy landlords who charge excessively high rents. The cap will mean that families will have to move into the suburbs. Children will have to leave their school and relocate leaving their friends and secure and familiar surroundings. What effect will that have on them? It is therefore more sensible to have a cap on rents rather than pick on the most vulnerable members of our society.

Neither the unemployed nor their children caused the situation that we are now in; they did not leave the huge deficit left by the previous government which our great grandchildren will probably have to finish paying off. Where is the fairness in that?

MP's talk about fairness. Is it fair that cancer patients may have their benefits reduced? Is it fair that lifesaving drugs are deemed to be too expensive for them to receive? Is it fair that the sick in England have to pay £7.20 per item prescription charge? Is it fair that young People in England have to pay University tuition fees? Is it fair that successive governments have failed to build affordable social housing to meet the country's needs?

The fact is that the lives of nearly 63 million people in this country are blighted daily by 650 people in the House of Commons.”

“As long as people are focused on the bankers, mp's etc who actually do have jobs the unemployed dossers get away with it.Bankers mp's etc people on six figure salaries pay more tax into the system in one year than some of the long term unemployed dossers do in their life but the dossers get away with it because we are obsessed with the headline bankers and mp's bonuses.

Why is the amount of benefits that people can receive more than the minimum wage anyway? People won't take a pay cut to go to work!

Instead of banging on about people with jobs earning too much and paying a large amount into the system what about focusing on the people who don't have a job because they get more money through benefits than if they worked.

People who are unable to work through illness or personal injury are the people who need the benefits not the long term unemployed.”

“I am a working class man, and pleased to say remained true to his root. Started work at 15 and still working now at 65 because I can`t afford to stop. All of the jobs, low paid. I feel dispare for the unemployed because in my experience, most people will work if given the chance.So I find the bitterness in some of the comments directed at this section of the population heartbreaking. It reminds me of the term kick a person when they are down. Will you be happy like the Tories when most of the benefits are taken away, and smile when soup kitchens return?”

“It's ironic that this discussion revolves around the idea that by capping benefits, vulnerable families are "disadvantaged" - I am of the firm opinion that dependency on benefits has the effect of undermining the family and notions of individual responsibility, thus encouraging criminality and recidivist behaviour, and that the modern welfare state has done much to diminish natural moral intuition. Moral rules are part of human nature; but while every culture has a "moral disposition", the practice of morality is something that has to be learned. Such thoughts are anathema to the Left who see the welfare state as an untouchable sacred cow, and we've had it for so long that it's become ingrained - in itself a bad thing, by the way, and a sure sign that the thing has gone wrong.

"Will you be happy like the Tories when most of the benefits are taken away, and smile when soup kitchens return?" why yes I would actually, nolanpat, I would indeed - because then people will have no choice but to look after themselves, pull their fingers out, and make something of themselves instead of expecting the State to look after them all their lives. I don't want to see some of the benefits taken away - I want to see them ALL taken away. The body politic of society is an organic institution and how many organisms, let alone societies, can thrive or survive when they pump valuable resources into non-contributing or useless and parasitical element? In nature, useless members are left to wither and die, and nature does nothing for no good reason.

That's not bitterness - it's common sense. I'll freely admit that I'm a social darwinist and that I hold that everyone finds their own level (and fyi I come from a working-class background myself, raised on a council estate) but why exactly should working people pay for other people not to work? Why should not working even be a choice? but it is when people are better off on benefits than if they worked. And idle hands make devil's work; it's hardly a surprise that the areas of highest unemployment and therefore welfare spending have corresponding crime rates. Kick away the benefits prop that supports this rotten structure and you take the first step towards resolving our festering social ills.

There are many on these boards who are horrified by what I say and see me as almost the Devil Incarnate, but there are also many who tend to agree with me. I take a very clear view of these things and don't allow emotion or class resentment to get in the way. Of course, no government would dare to actually scrap benefits overnight, but bit by bit they are being worn away and withdrawn, and this is an inevitable process that will go on whether one agrees with it or not; we simply cannot afford the welfare state anymore and it doesn't do any long-term good for the individuals concerned or society at large, so why not just get rid of it now and have done? And if that causes some pain then that's what's got to happen, restorative change does not come without some hurt. A few who fall by the wayside are a price worth paying if we can lift the burdensome yoke of the welfare state from the neck of society at large, and it would transform us and make us a better, wealthier nation.”

“like most people I think benefits must have a cap, but there is a difference of opinion about where the cap should be. Apart from the agreeing about a cap. I find great difficulty finding any other common ground with you.Infact the opinions you put forward seem so of the wall, I wonder if you are trying to wind people up for a laugh. Sorry E.D. Wivens you`ve been rumbled.”

“Sorry chap you're quite wrong, I really mean it. If I was doing a wind-up, there'd be jokes, but I'm not joking. You need to sit down and have a think about the correlation of these things. Go back to the end of the war and the establishment of the welfare state and track these issues back from there, you've got ten years on me and more so you should be able to go back further. You could also do with reading a bit of James Q. Wilson (sociologist and criminologist, no relation to Harold.)

These ideas only seem "off the wall" to you because you're totally inured to the concept of the welfare state. You couldn't imagine British society without it, or if you do you recoil in horror at the very thought. But the unpalatable truth is, it's not the solution, nor even part of the solution; it is itself the problem. It doesn't need fixing, it needs scrapping.

The Wivens solution, dismantling the welfare state in its entirety, would seem to have one huge practical flaw; where would the jobs come from? Well I've long had the answer to that. Remove all the economic migrants who came here in the last decade to do all the manual jobs whilst Liebore paid the client underclass to sit on their backsides. But you can't do that Wivens I hear you say! They're EU citizens, free movement across borders and all that! Answer to that one is obvious; leave the EU. We can always negotiate an associate membership of the EFTA, after all we did agree to join the Common market in 75, not an economic and political union. We'd just be restoring matters to what was agreed by the people of this country on the one occasion we got a say.

So there you go, benefits dependency, budget deficit, mass unemployment (and the consequent social costs and crime rate) and the hated EUSSR all sorted in one fell swoop, and our country set firmly back on the road to economic and social recovery; of course, it will never happen.

Think I'm joking with you now, Pat?”