Tories consider limiting child benefit to three children

Energize said:
Well it's a start, benefits should be means tested not handed out on a platter to anyone who pops out kids, like couples earning £80k a year with half a dozen kids. Child poverty is not going to be increased by reducing child benefit because the core issue there is the parents behaviour and spending pattern not the actual lack of money.
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I don't think you mean means tested here. The current situation is exactly what you get when benefits are means tested.
 
I believe imposing a child benefit cap won't go down well with our overlords in Brussels is it a human right to pump out kids regardless of whether they can afford to raise them
 
amigafan2003 said:
Exactly. We could even meet 100% of our farming/food requirements if we fully adopt GM foods and intensification. (Thelandmagazine.org.uk, 2015).

We've loads of room for people/houses as well, especially if we go vertical.
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Ahh, the typical townie/Anthropocentric response. :p

How about all the other living beings that call this country home? We have lost 50% of the worlds wildlife in 40 years thanks to rampant population growth, destruction of habitat and monoculture - farming in the UK is one of the worst causes of wildlife destruction, those fields of crops and moors managed for shooting and sheep are environmental wastelands. More intensive farming and greater population will only increase that issue. Currently 60% of British wildlife is in decline and 10% close to extinction, largely due to more intensive farming techniques.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/29/earth-lost-50-wildlife-in-40-years-wwf
http://mobile.wildlifetrusts.org/si...ecies-decline-groundbreaking-study-finds#2887

I'm sure you don't care, but some of us do...

From your link
This lack of awareness has traditionally been interpreted as a lack of interest by both the mainstream media and the government who have come to regard farming as an "industry" like any other, as opposed to the culture associated with growing our food.
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It is an industry, yet as much as the article suggests government treats it as one it's missing the fact it is only treated loosely as one, even inside government. It is "poorly" regulated and, as the most environmentally damaging industry in the country, it doesn't have to conform to many of the regulations other industries do, for example Environmental Impact Assessments (there are specific points where they do but limited).

The rest of the article seems to concentrate on how many people we could employ of we moved over to organic. It even calculates how much land we would need to do it, but crucially doesn't compare it to what we already farm. That means there is no way of calculating how much more/less land we would need to farm and how much would need to be more intensively farmed.
 
grumpysculler said:
A child costs about £250k to raise.
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Horse Poo.

Presuming you're talking 0-18 that's nearly 14k a year per child! Unless you include the money the State pays for schooling/NHS I can't see how you get to that figure.

Let's be generous....

£2600 - Food (£50 a week)
£1040 - Clothes (£20 a week)
£300 - Energy Bills (Difference between average flat and average small house currently)
£1000 - B'DAY AND XMAS
£1500 - Holidays and days out
£520 - Pocket Money

So that's currently £6,960 for a fairly well looked after kid so how do you account for the other £7k a year?
 
arknor said:
I believe imposing a child benefit cap won't go down well with our overlords in Brussels is it a human right to pump out kids regardless of whether they can afford to raise them
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Removing child benefit does not stop people having children.

Energize said:
Well it's a start, benefits should be means tested not handed out on a platter to anyone who pops out kids, like couples earning £80k a year with half a dozen kids.
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Erm, child benefit IS means tested. It's even paid at a variable rate depending on no. of kids (more for the first, less for subsequent).
 
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The Geezer said:
Yet more pandering from the Tories. Chasing the grey vote who lap up the single mothers and benefits headlines. What is the net gain about £200m really !

What our friendly masters are forgetting is the population is getting older and we are not reproducing enough to sustain the balance of old vs young.

The reality of every benefit reform the government has brought in has hit the poor and vulnerable but hey if their motive is to ensure the 'have nots' keep kicking the 'really have nots' they have delivered on that promise during this term.

"Let them eat cake" .........
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So are you suggesting we have more children to look after the older population? In which case do you agree that we will have to have even more young people to look after the young when they get old, then more young people to lol after them as infinitu...

That whole idea is a pyramid scheme and is a recipie for disaster.
 
I think it's a good idea..

We all have the responsibility to provide for our children, and giving people flats, or larger houses, or more child benefit based on the amount of kids we have is a nice incentive to have more..

I know a few people that:
A. Got pregnant just to get a flat
B. Got lots of kids to get more benefits, child allowance and a bigger house
C. People on the dole who buy dogs and other animals because they get free VET car through PDSA

I'm sorry to say that IME, having obvious mechanisms that promote living outside your means is always going to be taken advantage of..

And that's not getting into the whole aspect that a lot of spongers I know really don't spend the money on their kids, in fact of all the large sponging families I know that are milking the system, their children still seem to live in poverty..
 
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On one hand I despise peasants breeding like Rabbits (the difference being Rabbits don't ask other families to give carrots for their young), on the other hand it's unfair that Children should be brought up in poverty because of the poor life choices of their parents. No easy answer really.
 
Given the population rise as a result of immigration is an unknown number of million. That the population rise is mainly confined to England, there are no Tory MPs in N Ireland. The Tory's can bugger off and sort England's mess out and leave us out of it. :p
 
Mynight said:
Child benifit is 9/10 of sod all, I imagine it helps but those that spew out children aren't going to stop it just because they lose out on £80(iirc) a month. I'm sure another benifit will increase to compensate.

So in essence I agree with you it's only punishing the children.
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Send me a grand a year please if you are certain child benwfit is sod all, I would like the money.

Anyway to the OP. I think going forward this should apply, but not retrospctively.
Just like no one should be on a final salary pension scheme.
The wge limit for cig smoking shoudl go up one every two years and so on.
 
Child benefit is nothing compared to child tax credits.

Child Tax Credits should definitely be limited to 3 kids.

There are women out there with 9 kids at the age of 27 with plenty of breeding left in them getting handed about £500 a week tax free in child tax credit alone never mind all the other stuff.

I have a mate who works in tax credits and he says the maximum number of kids he has seen on a claim is 14 (that's 14 kids in one household he has seen personally). They get roughly £8 per kid per day on child tax credits. They then get income support and child benefit on top. He has seen single mothers with 9 kids getting paid double what he does working for HMRC.

They get substantially more if a kid is disabled which has seen a rise in the number of kids with attention deficit orders. Basically they tell their kids to act like psychos in front of doctors to get them registered as being disabled so they get more money.

I would rather they keep child benefit unlimited and put a limit of 3 on child tax credits.

Limit tax credits and it would stop welfare abuse.
 
Sounds fair to me.. even a limit to two children would be fair to me. With obvious exceptions like unexpected twins.
 
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RDM said:
Are you sure you are voting green? As population control and anti GM are cornerstone policies for them. :D
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There isn't a party that has 100% of the policies I agree with, but the Greens are the closest.

Energize said:
Paying less for subsequent kids isn't means-testing it's just an arbitrary decision.
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That's not what I said. I said it's means tested AND variable with # kids.
 
simple solution anyone living on benefits and not having worked should have the child removed and sterilized. and as for the extra cost of the ageing population if they can't fund their old age with a proper pension should be put to sleep this would reduce the tax burden

we could also move to a pay as you go type model and scrap the huge tax burdeon that is the nhs this would also help with reducing the ageing population

although all of the above are complety insane no more so than current goverment solotions to the problems
 
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s innes said:
simple solution anyone living on benefits and not having worked should have the child removed and sterilized. and as for the extra cost of the ageing population if they can't fund their old age with a proper pension should be put to sleep this would reduce the tax burden

we could also move to a pay as you go type model and scrap the huge tax burdeon that is the nhs this would also help with reducing the ageing population

although all of the above are complety insane no more so than current goverment solotions to the problems
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It's funny when a post is hard to tell if it's serious or a parody of genuine extreme right-wing authoritarianism.
 
s innes said:
simple solution anyone living on benefits and not having worked should have the child removed and sterilized. and as for the extra cost of the ageing population if they can't fund their old age with a proper pension should be put to sleep this would reduce the tax burden

we could also move to a pay as you go type model and scrap the huge tax burdeon that is the nhs this would also help with reducing the ageing population
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Well said. Spoken like a true nutter. ;)
 
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