I bet she got a hearty round of applause after those rebel rousing words though.

Thats what politics is all about, say something that makes the masses applaud without actually saying what it is that you do, why you are here, or what you intend to do about it.

You might be waiting a while. I fully expect he'll come back with some lazy answer about how I'm the stupid one and how he refuses to answer such a silly question.

I suppose in some cases you need to help remove those on benefits who can work by still subsidising their wages, if a minimum wage job is less than benefits, the government should bump it up go the level you would get when you were claiming benefit. Surely paying half of the benefit rather than the full benefit is better for the government and helps fill out a job space? I know there are not enough jobs per people but at the very least we should aim to fill the jobs that are.

Thats what the Working Tax Credits are for.

If only anyone knew how it is they worked.

Why's it not working then?

Because its an incredibly complicated method of refunding money back into working people/parents pockets, and anyone who claims it lives with the spectre of over-claiming and having to repay what you claimed in the next tax year.

Bear in mind that part of the application process is based on what you earned last year (lets say it was zero because you were unemployed) and also on what you are earning now - what are you earning now if you've just found a job with an agency on minimum wage, how many hours are you going to be offered next week or for the whole of the current year ?

So you estimate, and they estimate, and they credit you a payment every month, and then next April they decide that they granted you too much and now they want it back, which means that next year you are actually worse off.

It doesn't take too many bad experiences for word to get round that actually the whole thing is a crock of shoite administered by people who only know as much as the recipients (which in the main isn't much).

In my youth I remember it as supplementary benefit (a catch all). I had to claim it when I left Uni because it also covered those of us who had not paid enough NI contributions.

Friends of mine had to get their local MP involved in their tax credit overpayment. The DWP had estimated they had overpaid them by around £3,000 and wanted payment within something silly like 60 days.
When the MP got involved, it turned out they had only been overpaid by pounds not thousands of pounds. Caused them quite a lot of grief and stress until it was sorted. IMO it its a silly system cos my friend did various amounts of overtime - no two weeks were the same hours due to the nature of the job. Headaches all round trying to fill out the forms.

Thats exactly where I am right now.

Well, regardless of whether it was or wasn't ... it won't work any better now that Osborne has frozen them.
Maybe someone should tell that Briscoe woman that Cod'ead mentioned a few posts ago.