Christ!! And people in this country think £3510 a year for Job Seeker's allowance is a luxury! A typical Employment & Support Allowance claim will only net you £5192. It seems paltry in comparison.

Maybe someone could point this out to the Daily Fail and its self-righteous readers.

But does Germany have a similar situation to the UK where people seem to actively come here for the benefits?

I've no idea, so I'm asking

The job seekers is only your spending money though. Your housing is paid for and if you need any domestic appliances or help with transport to hospital appointments or anything that's paid for too.

I'm not claiming it's a great life, or that it pays well, but you can live fairly reasonably without working in this country. However, you couldn't have the benefits set to a level you couldn't live on otherwise there'd be no point having it.

Housing benefit will only cover your basic rent (if your bills are included in your rent, you will receive a lesser amount to take this into account). Or you can get help with your mortgage interest, but only the interest (through the SMI scheme). Any other bills - electricity, gas, food, credit card etc, has to come out of your £68 per week.

I know this. It's enough, I have family who manage it. They even have a car and pets.

It might be for someone who makes a living out of it, but for someone leaving employment I seriously doubt it is, not without facing bankruptcy.

Oh no, definitely not, but then do you have any right to more than enough to live on if you lose your job?

I like the sound of the German system to be honest - a proportion of your wage for a while to keep things going whilst you try to walk into another job, before dropping down to a lower level.

Who knows, you might even save the NHS a small fortune in GP visits and anti-depressants.

I like the sound of that too, but I wonder if we could afford it as, without sounding too daily mail about it, we have to pay for the permanently unemployed as well. I'd be interested to know what the situation in Germany is for the permanently unemployed and whether there are as many of them as there are here. Obviously, they are a better off country than us us as well, which helps.

Sure, but then they would always be at the £3510 level.

This government harks on about wanting to shift focus and help people who work and pay into the system, here's one way it could put its money where its mouth is.

Perhaps they could provide government funded child care centres as well. I find it odd that my wife can't afford to work, when it would be better for the economy as a whole if she was working.

This is by far and away the biggest thing they can do to incourage people to work. Neither the Wench nor I earn stellar amounts and it's highly debatable on a purely fiscal basis to work with a child in nursery (especially if we have a second), not taking into account the benefits that a stay at home parent has on a child.

My wife is going to go back to work part time as she's going a bit mental staying at home on her own all day, but she won't be bringing in any money. When you consider the fuel for the car, it will probably end up costing us. I'm fairly sanguine about it as having children is ultimately a lifestyle choice, but it does seem odd that there are such barriers to work when it's so important to the economy.

I doubt that our benefits are the real reason for many. Arriving from a war zone to claim benefits is unlikely. The fact that many seem to play the system should not really surprise us.

The problem is it is, as you say, a lifestyle choice. And if the government gave masses of help and/or cash to married couples, for whatever valid reasons, it would be seen as unfair by those people who have chosen another lifestyle i.e. not to have children. While having children is of benefit to us all, it is also a cost to us all. Whether it's overall a cost or a benefit in the long term is.. well, I doubt it's something we could ever reach a definitive answer on. Nevertheless, there are many more voters these days who are childless, either by bad luck or often by choice, than there used to be. The government must be seen to be trying to be fair to all it's citizens, whether they have children or not. So the amount of help the government can give will always be limited and less than married people would like to have. Equally, it will always be more than some people who have chosen not to have children believe should be given. I don't honestly think any government can entirely win on this issue.

To put it bluntly, the government hasn't put any barriers in the way stopping your wife working. You put the barrier there when you decided to have children. You made, as you say, a choice. The government doesn't have the mandate to relieve you of the downside of that choice, no matter how much you or I might think it would be a good idea.

Jon