I can't see why we couldn't have vouchers accepted by anyone Kov, from corner shop all the way up to the big supermarkets, Aldi & Co included (and have home deliveries as well for that matter)

Seriously? Blimey.

It was tongue in cheek to see how much of a fight I could start, obv.

Sure. Well, the problem *I* would be trying to fix would be the "booze, fags, widescreen Sky TV whilst the kids go without and eat crap" one, not just spending less and everyone (including the completely blameless) suffering. Very long term, this means healthier, better educated kids and then adults, which (incidentally) very much would reduce dependency and costs in the long term, as well as being far more morally equitable, but that's another story I guess.

In terms of saving costs short term, yes something has to be done/we can't carry on the way we have been doing, but in this IT age it seems to me we could be going about it all a lot smarter than we apparently are.

Regarding token schemes, there is a risk that users might feel stigmatised and ashamed to use them in public. I think the asylum seeker vouchers were replaced by a card system to help curb this (Azure or something).

I promise I'm still a liberal at heart but my concern right now based off what I see in my area is that there is a section of society who are chronically unemployed and who literally plan to have kids straight from school in order to get a house and more money who think that working as a cleaner or behind the counter in McDonalds is more embarrassing and shameful than living off of benefits.

We stayed in Chester at the weekend and every member of cleaning staff at the hotel I encountered was eastern European, as well as the people who were clearing tables in a couple of the restaurants we visited. I bet there are local people sitting in their houses playing Xbox and claming job seekers allowance. Now I'm not naïve or disillusioned enough to feel like that's the majority or anything but there are people who just won't work. Or they believe they can't get a job because they don't try and refuse to do some jobs. I've been unemployed, it sucked. So I worked anywhere I had to to get by. I've worked as a cleaner, a maid, in a bar, serving tables in a restaurant, as a kitchen porter, in a call centre, in a shop, in McDonalds...I've done load of crap jobs. It infuriates me when I see people unemployed and there are jobs available.

I can't see why we couldn't have vouchers accepted by anyone Kov, from corner shop all the way up to the big supermarkets, Aldi & Co included (and have home deliveries as well for that matter)

I promise I'm still a liberal at heart but my concern right now based off what I see in my area is that there is a section of society who are chronically unemployed and who literally plan to have kids straight from school in order to get a house and more money who think that working as a cleaner or behind the counter in McDonalds is more embarrassing and shameful than living off of benefits.

We stayed in Chester at the weekend and every member of cleaning staff at the hotel I encountered was eastern European, as well as the people who were clearing tables in a couple of the restaurants we visited. I bet there are local people sitting in their houses playing Xbox and claming job seekers allowance. Now I'm not naïve or disillusioned enough to feel like that's the majority or anything but there are people who just won't work. Or they believe they can't get a job because they don't try and refuse to do some jobs. I've been unemployed, it sucked. So I worked anywhere I had to to get by. I've worked as a cleaner, a maid, in a bar, serving tables in a restaurant, as a kitchen porter, in a call centre, in a shop, in McDonalds...I've done load of crap jobs. It infuriates me when I see people unemployed and there are jobs available.

H
They used to do 'milk vouchers' when I was a little'un. Everyone knew which local and corner shops would accept them for whatever you wanted: people would exchange them for cigarettes, booze, all kinds of things. The shopkeeper didn't care as he was getting his money and an increased trade from the people who sought out his shop because he'd take the tokens as payment for anything.

Scummy practice.

The only problem I can foresee with a voucher system is going to be some kind of gaming or abuse. Logical controls for these kinds of things never seem to work, usually because the attempt to limit it to a household/individual isn't enforced by a decent IT system, or worse, they create an IT system specifically for it and it costs a billion pounds, takes 4 years, and ends up being shit or never delivered. That seems to happen with pretty much every government IT project ever. I'm looking at you BBC Trust/NHS.

Really, if the government would stop engaging giant brand software companies where software development apparently does cost hundreds of millions with absolutely no safeguards written into contracts, that would help. Engage a small IT company with 10-20 staff to work on the project and I bet you they'd come up with something in a couple of years that works really well and would cost a few hundred grand, and even that is possibly overkill.

The Left really does like to come up with these frankly implausible, hugely complex, counter-reality Heath Robinson intellectual constructs for what is, ultimately, a much simpler problem than you seem to imagine. Gilly is right.

Except that's not the problem either. Benefits are a pretty small wedge of the spending (15%, if I remember the budget right), and the bogus / unneeded claims are a minuscule portion of that. The fact that most people seem to think that the fraudsters are the main cause of our money woes is pretty bizarre - pensions are by far the biggest cost.

would it not be better going after the big tax avoiders, i thought that was a bigger chunk of missing cash, compared to benefit fraud.

No-one is talking about benefit fraud though? We're referring to those (legitimately claimed) benefits specifically about to be capped/cut in the first instance, and more latterly Gilly's point about widely available unskilled jobs that anyone could do going unfilled and being very widely undertaken by migrant workers, for whatever reason(s) despite this large 'bank' of long term unemployed etc.

As regards 'pensions costs', though, I think there needs to be some differentiation between basic State pension entitlement and the vastly more opulent final salary public sector type schemes that we, in the private sector, can only dream about.

It might be BS, but I'm sure I read somewhere that a primary school teacher who's done 30-odd years service will have accrued a pension pot equivalent to £600,000 (i.e. the amount needed to pay into a private pension scheme providing the same benefits). If so, that's just bloody ridiculous and more importantly, unsustainable. The young shouldn't be the only ones feeling the pinch, here.

Edit: £600,000 looks like DM bullshit, but the actual figure is still likely to be around ~£300,000, which is obviously much more than average.

Personally I'm glad the governments spent the (albeit derisory, far from commensurate) staff contributions (if any) at the time rather than 'investing' it - you'll know far better than I do, Cras, about what has happened to your average pension fund investment over the last 8 years. My wife's is worth perhaps one-tenth what it was, which is why I've never bothered with one in the first place.

Also, nobody should be prevented from having a family purely based on how much they earn.

Really though?

Work out how much money it costs per child. This is threshold value.
at age of 14, assess each child's future earning potential.
Remove and freeze appropriate number of eggs and sterilise the child.
Once income threshold is met, allow foetus to be grown by surrogate.
Repeat once further thresholds met.

Sorry, I think you missed my point. That "capital growth" you speak of was, in this case, actually a decimation of at least 80% of the whole fund from memory, could be more. There are many other similar examples as you yourself allude to in your earlier post.

(Oh, and this is a static fund as accrued over 20-odd years of (now completed) service, so no-one's paying anything into it).

Whichever way you care to slice it, there's good reason why final salary pensions are non-existent anywhere now, in the commercial world.

Really though?

Really though?

Yes. What's the alternative?

I don't mean having 85 kids and getting a bajillion dollars a day in benefits, but you simply can't stop people wanting to have kids, and trying to deny that people becoming parents based on income is futile and not a good indicator for civilisation.

As Cras said, the impossible question is where you draw the line.

Well, yeah. Purely because any other position is either horrifically draconian (e.g. enforced contraception, criminalising larger families, etc) or adversely impacts the children (e.g. limiting child benefit) who are innocent in all this. Don't get me wrong, it is frustrating, but, seriously, what else could reasonably be done?

As Cras said, the impossible question is where you draw the line.

I would rather it went to families than funding the fucking opera.

Hard hitting interview by Kay Burley!
http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/k ... 1evSUtX8Xl

Poor people with kids don't annoy me on a conscious level. Yes, at times they are annoying when they have the same phone as i do, or "affordable housing" is built nearby

Is 'affordable housing' a code word for something else that I completely don't understand? What could be annoying about housing that's affordable?

Poor people live in affordable housing, and who'd want to live near them!