To think there should be some reward for hard work?

petallus, of course you're right to express concern about the impact on children of the current cuts to benefits. We already have food banks, and breakfast clubs in our schools. My daughter found one of her 6 year old boys sobbing. He was "starving Miss, I've had nowt since me dinner yesterday and I've missed breakfast club". Her offer to give him her banana was met with more sobs "no miss, then you'll be starving". She sorted some food for him, and they shared a picnic so he stopped worrying she'd be starving, like him.

I do believe that wages are too low. I do not agree that organisations like Tesco for example, pay the minimum wage, leaving their employees dependent on tax credits, or housing benefits.

It's no good us moaning and making comparisons with how little our own grandparents, parents had. That way leads the 3 Yorkshire men sketch. We live in a society with a huge gulf between the rich and the poor. The working poor are really struggling, and the current government has successfully led a campaign to dehumanise and ostracise those on benefits. Conveniently forgetting of course, that many working people rely on benefits, because they earn so little. The way in which the NHS and other public services are being privatised frightens me. That poor little lad in my daughter's class represents so many children in 21st century Britain.

I'm off to look at the Gransnet Manifesto - to see if we have any constructive ideas.

I agree that it is undesirable that some people are better off on the dole than in work.

Whether or not this is because benefits are too high or wages too low is a matter of opinion.

It is hard to know what to do about families with six children where neither parent works.

If families such as these have benefits cut so that they can only feed and clothe say three of their children, what happens to the other three?

Presumably they would be taken into care eventually and that would cost the taxpayer even more.

Or we could have a situation where we have starving children in our midst. It happens in other countries.

I really understand where you are coming from Iam64. I have realised in the last couple of weeks that I do not, perhaps that should be no longer, believe "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" popularised by Karl Marx and which communist Russia tried to follow.

However, I do still believe in Social Democracy. I do believe that people can come together to support each other should they be in a time of need. I look at social democratic countries where when, because you have hit a "life happens" moment, you call on funding you have put into and often receive back amounts in relation to the position you were in when you were paying in.

I have a feeling that judging everyone, no matter what they have provided for themselves in the past, to have the same level of need is destructive to growth in the economy. It is also destructive to the people it traps in a benefit system; one where working will never give them as much.

Nightowl, I share the frustration expressed in your post. It isn't a secret on this forum, that I'm a Labour voter (even if with gritted teeth at times).

Like Nightowl, I have always supported the need for a fair benefit system. That isn't one in which so many families are better off financially on the dole, than in work. Before the current government introduced the cap on the amount of money any family on benefit can claim, I knew of a number of families with 6 children, whose income from benefits was in excess of £40,000. That simply can't be right, can it.

One of my children is a teacher, she has student debts and teaches in a school in an area of high deprivation. Her starting salary was £21,000. I accept the comments made by others, that teachers have traditionally started on a low salary, but it's been increased annually. That may not be the case now we have so many academies, or free schools.

Oh, I'm sorry - as student loans weren't introduced (by Tony Blair) until 1998 I just assumed that your DD wouldn't have been affected, etheltbags1, but that was presumptious of me. I have no idea how old you are, or she is, of course!

no she had to get a loan which she has never earned enough to pay back has now tripled.

I suppose Uni students still got grants in those days?

Mine ended when DD went to uni but if she had gone to the local college it was classed as continuing her further education (such as 6th form college) and I could have claimed tax credits, but uni is higher education so I could not claim. What is the difference to parents providing support to their kids. They all need the same financial help but uni is not counted for tax credits, however at the time 6th formers got £30 a week ESA. Sooo confusing

Same for me etheltbags1, although mine continued while DD was at college, but that was what the extra money was for, wasn't it, to help with bringing up children?

FIS changed to Fsmily Credit in 1988

the figures I quoted earlier may be out of date since 2012. I know they were correct then. I find out these things from a reliable source but I cannot say where from as it might reveal too much about my job and of course any one on this site may work for the same employer.

I know tax credits are payable to those on benefits as well as those who work, I don't know how this is worked out but the idea is to help those in work to be better off than on benefit. I just know that years ago when it first started I got child tax credits for 1 year before DD left school and I was much better off but when she left school I was back to square one.

When I was a working single parent after my ex and I split up, I claimed Family Income Supplement, FIS as it was known. It was a really simple system, you knew exactly what you were entitled to, and it actually went up as the children got older.

I wonder which government abolished it - will have to look it up!

Yes, the days I was talking about were pre 'Women's Liberation'!

Just differently complicated, I feel, rosequartz and we see more of the complications via the media.

I shouldn't have liked to spend my early 20s, getting married and having my first child in war-time as my mother did and I do seem to remember worrying about the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. It all seems fine looking back but we felt the complications of life at the time.

Pre National Insurance it was certainly more complicated. I wouldn't swap ours for the workhouse, etc.

I think change is difficult for most people. Young people don't see it as change as they haven't known anything different. Society has changed so I suppose the systems that run it will change too at some point.

CSA doesn't always manage to ensure the payments from a father who has lied about his income. Sometimes the father can get away with paying nothing at all towards his offsprings' upbringing. Immoral imo.

Years ago, when life was so much simpler, fathers got a tax allowance for each child as well as a married man's allowance.

Life is so much more complicated these days.

If she won't (rather than can't) then ... . Long-gone to where? If no one is claiming tax credit on the second child which was once claimed then it could be transferred to the mother. However, the father would not then be able, in the future, to claim for another child while the state (taxpayers, friends and neighbours) are paying for the first. If he continues to claim, it should help with arranging that he pays what he should for the child.

I am not saying this is what I would want Ana, although it is interesting to think it through. I just have a feeling that, as society has individualised, with fewer legal partnerships, the government is aiming to individualise the benefit system. If we hear them say they are putting a benefit cap on each individual we will know it wasn't just a feeling

In an ideal society, yes, Gracesgran. These days, family life can't always be so neatly organised, unfortunately. Sometimes the father is long-gone and can't be traced, or the mother won't name him.

Do you mean where a parent has died Ana? I imagine you could deal with that situation. Otherwise I don't understand the single-parent families bit. Single adult households yes, but all children have two parents .

If a family has two parents who split up then I actually believe that parents should still, except in the case of abuse, jointly parent. If one parent has to have the children most of the time the CSA could adjust the payment to include some or all of the none domiciliary parents Tax Credit. If that parent was earning too much to get it before they split they will paying a higher child support amount.

That wouldn't work, though - what about single-parent families?

I have to agree GrannyTwice and Ana that it is actually difficult to see what the Child Credits system is trying to achieve.

In one sense I can see what they might have been trying to do (their logic, not mine). It may be that they are aiming to pay benefits on an individual basis in the future, as they are going to with the new single tier pension.

If that was the case it might work if you could each claim for one child - that limits the family to two children you could claim for and then the combined income would not be so relevant. Perhaps that is where they are going ... but who knows?

Yes Ana - me neither. Tax credits are fiendishly complicated but I can't grasp some of the thinking behind them.

(That's for a two-children family)

But if they're not paying for child care the cut off point is only £35,000.
Which doesn't make sense to me.

The figures bring quoted on here are out of date. In the current tax year, a couple ( both working at least 16 hours a week), with two children and paying child care of £300 a week ( that's the max the government allows in the calculation) have a gross combined salary cut off above which no tax credits are paid of £60,000

I cannot believe that a couple on up to £79,000 could still get tax credits, are you sure that is correct etheltbags?
I know for a fact that young people in my family are in the situation of one earning under £40,000 and the other earning less than £10,000 and they get no tax credits.

Do you mean child benefit, which has never been means tested until recently?