Tory welfare cuts will impoverish 200,000 children next year and more than 600,00 in 2020

www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/blackburn/13893407.Former_Blackburn_bus_depot____will_house_homeless___/

This is even better, JessM.
Does it sound like a workhouse to you?

Obviously what Cameron had in mind when banging on about The Big Society back in 2010.

Iain Duncan Smith has said that the DWP put advisers in food banks!
Food banks are now part of the welfare system!

djen to put it simply, your tax code changed when you had a child, and for each subsequent child, so you paid less and less taxation at source.
That was years ago but I can still remember it.
There is more money in your pay packet rather than having to apply for tax credits which is more like claiming a benefit.

Family allowance (different to tax allowances) was the former name for child benefit. I think it changed in the mid 1970s, was it Barbara Castle who reformed it and made it payable to mothers?

That is what happens with child benefit, rose.

I am not talking about child benefit djen although you keep mentioning it in every reply to my posts, so I am obviously not making myself clear at all.

I think we need a whole new system - I don't know what! - because quite honestly I think it is demeaning for working people to claim benefits which is what tax credits are. They were introduced by Gordon Brown and possibly it was a cynical move to get more people into the welfare system and therefore voting Labour.

Giving very low paid people a boost to their income is fine, but I still think that the old system of tax allowances to be set against income tax when a certain level of income is reached is the best way for working people to be helped and to avoid being sucked into the benefit system.

Nothing whatsoever to do with child benefit. I know all about child benefit.

Roseq, I think your system penalises those who do not marry. It is right that people should not gain by just being married.
I acknowledged that and said it would not work nowadays.
It was just an example of how people used to have allowances to set against taxation.
Anyway, women want equality. Married man's tax allowance does away with that fight for equality that we have been through over the past fifty years.
Beating head against the wall now .....
I am not saying we should bring it back, but perhaps a tax allowance for each child would be an easier system than taking it with one hand and giving it back by means of complicated form filling, benefits payments etc. Obviously the very low paid would have to be helped as they would not be paying tax but someone on reasonable pay could benefit in that way.

I tried to listen to Professor Paul Gregg, who helped Gordon Brown implement the tax credit system. Unfortunately, due to very bad driving conditions I wasn't able to take in what he was saying.
www.bath.ac.uk/ipr/our-experts/paul-gregg.html

Did anyone hear him, Radio 4 at about 5.30 pm.

They care, about big business, off shore accounts, buying the grey vote

Osborne is such a noddy - he really has no credibility and how anyone could possibly imagine he might one day be prime minister is quite extraordinary.

They really are out of touch with those who are struggling to keep going.

"Caring Conservatism" my foot!

To people like most Tory MPs a thousand pounds over a year is about the equivalent of a few pence, relative to their incomes. So they think, what's all the fuss about?

www.thecanary.co/2015/10/26/devastating-new-report-finds-majority-brits-surveyed-now-borrowing-just-eat/

Could you imagine being in this state and being told you are going to lose over a thousand pounds of the money you have?

We need a no confidence vote in Osborne on the government's epetition website.
Have to go out now, but I might start one if there isn't one when I get back.

Do you really want a PM who tells more lies than the present one?

I noticed in the Lords debate that Dale Campbell-Savours called Cameron a liar about half a dozen times. The freedom of the House of Lords - he wouldn't have got away with it in the commons.

Boris is going to be in trouble for fiddling the planning process for his Boris bridge, so sorry, not Boris.

Oh good - we can have Boris!

Hope so, tigger. Anyway, someone who snarls the way he does when he hears bad news ought not to be PM.

Goody goody - does this mean that George Osborne is out of the running to be PM.

Anyway, women want equality. Married man's tax allowance does away with that fight for equality that we have been through over the past fifty years.

Roseq, I think your system penalises those who do not marry. It is right that people should not gain by just being married.

That is what happens with child benefit, rose.
Child tax credit is completely different.
Everybody gets child benefit, and they do not get tax rebates to do with that. It's only when earning over £50,000 that the benefit is clawed back.
Do you not remember the problems when that was introduced?
It is now based on family income, so if two parents earn £30,000 each, some is clawed back. But if only one works and earns £49,000 the family still get the lot.
Child tax credit is for low earners, and has to be applied for separately.
It would make it simpler if they did away with child tax credit and doubled child benefit, increasing the tax threshold so that those caught in the tax trap did not lose out.

We have a two tier tax allowance for married man's allowance already, we will have two tier pensions and possibly two tier benefits.
What a chaotic mess!

What worries me now is what changes the Government will try to make to the proposals.

One option that has been mooted is to only apply the changes to new applicants. I got the impression listening to yesterday's debate that the Lords would not have opposed the changes if that had been the case. However, to me, that measure still doesn't alter the fact that large numbers of 'hard working people' on low salaries would still suffer. To add insult to injury, they would be part of a two-tier system where someone living next door with identical circumstances would be much better off.
Yes, I know that this already difference already exists in relation to other benefits in relation to mixed-age couples, but I don't see that as fair either!

No, child benefit isn't what I meant djen, I meant tax allowances which was a system done away with years ago but which seemed simpler. The tax was not paid in the first place, it wasn't paid back as a benefit. There was more dignity in that system I feel.
A form was filled in when a couple married and 'married man's allowance' was applied. If you married at the right time of year you could get a rebate for the whole of the year. Then for each child you told the taxman and an allowance was set against your tax bill.
It all seemed so much more simple, but of course family life is so much more complicated these days too and it would probably be impossible to administer.

I do think that GB made the tax system very complicated.

I don't think I am explaining it very well!

ps I've looked Baroness Hollis and she's 74! So there's hope for the rest of us.
It didn't say whether she's a Grandparent though. Perhaps we could invite her to answer some questions on here?

I watched some of the H of L vote etc last night, and husband has just givn me a link to Baronness Hollis' speech - she was excellent!
Quite a turn up for the books, and Cameron's reputation down a bit more.
That must apply to Osborne too.

There is quite a lot of damage done both to Osborne in particular and the government in general.

Osborne has either wilfully or failed through ignorance to accept what they are doing to the poorest workers in our society. These workers do everything that is asked of them by working hard at a low paid often unpleasant job, whilst receiving little remuneration and thereby struggling financially day to day. They do this whilst watching the better off receiving handouts in the form of lower tax and other bonuses such as inheritance tax etc.
These folk have already received body blows in the bedroom tax and this from a Chancellor whose twin goal of a small state and future premiership will stop at nothing to achieve this, that is until he is stopped by forward thinking and compassionate people who understand that this is not the Britain we want.

and Lawson, no less, spoke against.