It is a shame

Not sure I'm consumed with rage, but the breakdown of expenditure sure suggests that this family has a higher income than they need.

The main point, though, is that there's no shortage of working people bringing up an equivalent family on less than that. The government's basic position that, as a principle, the income of people who don't work shouldn't normatively be higher than the average income of those who do strikes me as incontestable.

This is a conundrum as old as time, though. If there isn't a safety-net of support, there's always a shiftless or inadequate minority who'll end up destitute.

Which you can say the shiftless among them, at any rate, have brought on themselves; but then the shiftless have kids (sometimes in quantity) who are simply stuck with the parents they've got and, without a safety-net, go down with them.

Monastery guest-masters back in the 13th century faced the same perplexity as they looked at the queue of folk queuing for food hand-outs each morning. So did the churchwardens administering the "parish relief" for the poor in the 16th century - paid for from the rates, which no one welcomed! And the same for the overseers of the poor later on, and the Boards of Guardians who ran the workhouses in Victorian times.

A perennial problem, and history suggests we never feel we've got it right, however we respond to it.

the problem with people on long term benefits is there children learn from them and what they learn is you don't need to work because there is a system in place that will make sure you have a standard of living as high as the mugs going out to work.
unless there is a medical condition your suffering from then you should have to do some kind of work for your benefits (there's plenty of litter on the streets to pick up)so hopefully taking away the attraction of staying on benefits.
as for capping benefits at £500 a week per family i know some working people with families would love to be getting that much its to high! benefits are there to help you get by not pay for the new 50inch HD TV.
i know there are many genuine cases of hardship in the system but there is a percentage that need weeding out.

What is this period of embedded liberalism you're talking about?

why should we allow politics to take over our modern society...i am positive all hazel grove citizens believe the current running withh politics isnt working...i believe what we need is a POLITIC GROUP THAY WILL MAKE A CHANGE!

Not usually as high, surely - though in an increasingly low-wage economy that may be gradually changing!; but certainly high enough to get by. And it is true that one of the relatively few ways to really maximize benefit income is to have a large number of children.

But Slim's quite right when he says that "children learn ... and what they learn is you don't need to work because there is a system in place". In my experience - and throughout my life I worked in jobs that brought me face to face with this - there's not a shadow of doubt that worklessness and consequent benefit dependency, once established, tends to pass down the generations: no one works, no one expects to work, and that pattern becomes entrenched. It's not a new phenomenon: it was as true in the 1960's at it is now, though the considerable disappearance over the years of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs has without doubt increased the numbers of the long-term unemployed.

My theory is that, to use the rather jaded terms, the "right" has won hands down on the economic front, but the "left" has won equally decisively in terms of social policy.

So no mainstream political party - not even, perhaps, Tony Benn! - now seriously argues that the state either can or should directly create jobs for people, or even run businesses. Capitalism rules, and business goes where costs can be minimized and profit maximized - which, ever increasingly, isn't here.

But equally it's now politically unacceptable in this country to let the free market rip to such an extent that we end up with a low tax, completely "hands off" state which leaves it to charities to support the poor and destitute. As long as the state doesn't take responsibility for ensuring that everyone has work, but does accept the responsibility of ensuring that no one - even the completely feckless and workshy, if only for the sake of their kids - becomes destitute, the problem (given how human nature operates!) won't go away.
But as people in other parts of the world - especially China, India, Brazil, &c - become more educated, many of those jobs too will follow the old manufacturing industries and migrate there.

Pfizer announced last year that they were winding up their drug research operation in Kent by 2013 with the loss of 2,400 jobs, and this week Astra Zeneca announced 7,300 redundancies, including some locally at Alderley. Hard times for the pharmaceutical industry due to the expiration of patents and increased costs; but more and more there'll be educated and qualified workforces in the developing world willing to work for less. My son works in IT for British Gas at Bredbury; but he'll be redundant within a couple of months, as they're moving their whole IT operation to India.
I don't know about "all Hazel Grove citizens - there are certainly some posters on here who'd disagree with that! But I think you're right - it's not working, and on a variety of levels, from the expenses scandal of a year or two back to the hollowness of "we're all in this together", about which I've ranted on another thread!

I involved myself in politics locally for twenty-five years, deciding - after years of cynicism in my youth - that I ought to get involved and do something instead of just griping from the sidelines - "better to light a candle than curse the darkness"!

But seeing how our politics works from the inside was very frequently a disillusioning experience; and these days I don't see any significant difference between any of the main parties once they're in office - and that, rather than what they say when they're campaigning for votes, is what counts for me.