The thing with poor people on benefits having nice things and choosing where to spend their money... some people, maybe not all, do save up for things they really want yet they're judged as soon as they have anything that isn't cheap crap. It's a pretty cruel and grim childhood to never have any presents, though I do think a lot of people just need to learn to keep their legs crossed if they go and keep having them when they know they're poor, but again that's easy for me to say as a fairly educated person. Also, not everyone can get back into work. Some people cannot improve their health enough.
It's always a tough subject to approach. There's a natural inclination amongst the "working poor" to feel anger towards the "benefit scroungers" who have "better" things without ever working. The TV rhetoric is a popular one, but how much does a big TV REALLY cost? Couple of weeks work at minimum wage would more than cover it, and you're set for the next 5 years. Yet, whenever someone looks through your window and sees a big TV over those 5 years whilst perhaps you're not working... suddenly benefits are too damn high.
To address kids... there's not much that can be done aside from the unthinkable sterilisation when you hit an out-of-work-for-so-long target. Any financial action taken will affect the child, it's not the child's fault. If you drop payments further it might encourage some people to make different life choices, but it's the kids that'd suffer most. And to be honest, we have an aging population and a rapidly falling birth rate (
http://www.ons.gov.u...wales-2013.html ), we need workers for the future to prop up pensions (
http://www.parliamen...ing-population/ ), especially if we're closing the door to immigrants (26.5% of all live births were to immigrant mothers in 2013).
One would think, given these figures, the media wouldn't build up vitriol towards young women on benefits having children... The upper classes will always aim to have us pointing the finger at each other so that we turn a blind eye to the real issues.