http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17821018

Perhaps theyve totaly forgotten all the new flats and homes that where built for the olympic games fiasco, perhaps move thenm into those homes, and move some of SOT down as well.

At least theyll have plenty of stuff to paly on.

This is a good thing.

It means that someone who works, can then rent this apartment. Maybe.

Housing benefit in this country is utterly sick and lines the pockets of landlords and in the end banks at the expense of the councils/state/public.

High housing benefit -> creates minimum floor for what landlords will let their apartments/houses for -> pushes up cost of property in the long run and pushes working people out to other areas -> makes the UK less competitive due to misallocation of funds and banks investing in PROPERTY as opposed to “wealth” creating investments, causes increase in property prices which is not a good thing as the workers of the country need to earn more to live i.e. pushing salaries up -> more jobs outsourced to other countries (production, manufacturing etc etc).

I will now await the barrage of “buy to let” landlords because property is your pension innit.

Overly simplified, but hey, you can disagree. In the end, housing benefit is obscenely high.

Given that what you say is true about HB, but where are the poor people going to live?

This was tried by Westminster council in 1987 (Lady Porter and all that) and suprisingly no other council or HA wanted the poor of Westminster decanted onto them.

Ohnohesback: I suggest they live somewhere cheaper. Basically.

Edit: incorectly spelled your name.

They can live in the Olympic village as part of the glorious Olympic ‘Legacy’ we keep hearing so much about

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16655455

And how do you expect them to find work in London? Should they commute each day from Stoke on Trent?

housing benefit is obscenely high.

It would seem that way.

The new Lower Amount is £12k per year for a single person in a one bedroom flat !

And basing it on the lower end of the rent scale for an area, rather than the mid point makes perfect sense surely.

I work hard every day to earn enough to live below the “mid point” of the rent scale in my area.

ohnohesback: Perhaps they need to live somewhere else? Shock horror.

Is one entitled to live in London, funded by the public teat?

I can’t afford to live there. Why should someone on benefits?

I always find that the word ‘cleansing’ is dirty & horrible, IMO.

So where would you have them live? A ghetto? A camp?

cardboard box

ohnohesback: Perhaps they need to live somewhere else? Shock horror.

Is one entitled to live in London, funded by the public teat?

I can’t afford to live there. Why should someone on benefits?

Why shouldn’t you be able to live there if you choose? Why is it so expensive?

ohnohesback: build more social housing. Move them somewhere else. Stop paying entirely. Any number of options really.

Why shouldn’t you be able to live there if you choose? Why is it so expensive?

On the flip side, I’d like to live in the north. The biking is much better and the people are more friendly. But I can’t afford to because there’s no work up there (in the trade that I do). So i’m stuck in London. Wanting to live somewhere doesn’t automatically qualify you to actually live there.

Ohnohesback: I think I have just twigged who’s back.

you might have a right to be housed.. a good thing. surely though dictating where that is is not a good thing..
if you historic links to an area ie grew up, lived there more than 10 years then fair play but perhaps people with no incomes need to look in the mirror and say do i really need the extra bedroom.. do i need the large garden.. do i really need to live right here..
dont forget these are privately rented properties that the council is subletting to what would otherwise be council propety tenants..

the countrys skint everyone living off benifits has to accept some cutbacks..

how come i can buy as many terraces as i want in rochdale oldham for 60-75k thats 500 pcm mortgage or 6k a year why arent they all re homed up here it seems unfair letting stoke have all the opportunities

Perhaps if there was a legal ceiling on what landlords could charge rather than what tennants could pay then the problem of high housing benefit charges would stop. Insist on minimum standards of upkeep and occupation to prevent landlords presiding over slums or the non-occupation of perfectly usable housing.
If you then gave councils first refusal on all the properties that private landlords could not afford to keep or maintain, those properties would be returned to the social housing stock in perpetuity and you would defuse the issue.
Sorted…

hmmm fair rents eh ? don’t think the government would like that. could drive down house prices and make us feel all poorer.

So here’s a place to rent, 7 bedroom in Mayfair. Are you saying the landlord should be limited to a couple of hundred a week for it?

Rightmove

No flat is worth £312k per year to live in.

Ever

more to the UK than London. 12k in stoke would get you a mansion.

It’s not just the one council down there:

Up in York, and I’ve mentioned this before, Lord Freud has said that workers here who are affected by the upcoming housing benefit cap should be transported 12-16 miles away to the poor areas and commute in (Tadcaster, Selby, Malton) Many of these workers are working shifts public transport does not cover and the unsubsidised bus service will probably cost more than the rent difference as it is.

Yes, there are rich areas where poor people should not be living in, but entire cities? In homes that were built for the poor by companies and organisations that helped build houses for their workers and homeless families? When these properties are artificially increased in cost past their purpose the error must be fixed. Greedy homeowners moving up the ladder, greedy estate agents and their lackeys boosting prices, southerners paying over the odds to buy houses up here and then commuting back to London everyday. There are a number of reasons prices have shot up unfairly.

It’s social engineering at it’s worst.

Oh, and here’s another money saving idea from the Tory Scum!!! to totally cut HB from under 25’s.

mrdestructo – Member
Oh, and here’s another money saving idea from the Tory Scum!!! to totally cut HB from under 25’s.

Yes, those evil tories trying to balance the budget. I suggest you read the below link.

Let’s get those nice labour in who know how to spend! Yeah, cause we deserve it. We’re entitled, innit.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/britainrsquos-debt-the-untold-story-2025979.html

The true scale of Britain’s national indebtedness was laid bare by the Office for National Statistics yesterday: almost £4 trillion, or £4,000bn, about four times higher than previously acknowledged.

If the current generation of taxpayers wanted to remove the higher bills facing their children and grandchildren, they would now be paying around 30 per cent more in tax.

They are not trying to balance the budget. Instead of spending money to make more money they are following, as someone pointed out, a Keynesian throttling of all spending. Only problem is, they’re grip is ridiculously tight and they’ve watched the body kicking it’s feet just before dying and failed to release.

Newham the new playground of the rich and famous?

looks lovely to me.

Instead of spending money to make more money they are following, as someone pointed out, a Keynesian throttling of all spending. Only problem is, they’re grip is ridiculously tight and they’ve watched the body kicking it’s feet just before dying and failed to release.

Pop quiz – How much do you think the government has cut spending, percentage wise?

Pop quiz – How much do you think the government has cut spending, percentage wise?

in real terms (ie. over and above inflation?) – not at all is my guess.

mrdestructo – Member
They are not trying to balance the budget. Instead of spending money to make more money they are following, as someone pointed out, a Keynesian throttling of all spending. Only problem is, they’re grip is ridiculously tight and they’ve watched the body kicking it’s feet just before dying and failed to release.

Yes let’s spend MORE. That’s the solution to everything.

Let me tell you. The UK is in dire straits. The only reason why it hasn’t ended up like Greece or Spain or Italy yet, is because it can magic up money quite easily.

The downside to “printing money”/quantitative easing is the devaluation of the pound. Which now, for instance, means that your pound doesn’t buy 1.5 Euro. And why petrol now costs a heck of a lot more than it used to and why most things are more expensive now.

The UK has overspent for years. If the UK does not cut back spending, shit is more likely to hit the fan when the UK can’t actually borrow the money it needs every year (like around 10% of GDP every year unless I’m mistaken). When that happens, all bets are off.

So here is a scenario for you. a family of mum dad 2 kids, Mums a stay at home mum, dad works in a job where they just have enough money to get by and not claim benefits. they are in a rented property in London paying more than the new maximums. they have lived their for years.

Two kids both of school age.

he loses his job – thy are forced to move out of not just their home but he area they live in to an area they do not know and where jobs are scarce. is that fair?

Or the single man = high flyer 28 years old works in the city in a good job earning loads. pays a high rent for a flat near to the city

Loses his job -not only will he lose his home but he will have to move into a flat share – housing benefit will not be given for him to have a flat on his own at all – only the local going rate for a room in an HMO

is that fair?

There are savings to make, I’m not one of those who says we shouldn’t try and make cuts. But cuts as in money saving, or cuts as in ideological? Some people are saying every £1mil worth of cuts are costing us £0.9mil to make, which isn’t making sense obviously, hence the Keynesian comment.

We’re finding out with raised costs of manufacturing and services abroad that some things are coming back here. It’s about time, before we run out of workers in foreign countries to exploit, that we consider putting back in place our manufacturing industry.

I’d quite like to understand what the comment about cuts costing money.

I don’t understand your Keynesian comment? Not being difficult, just don’t get it.

build more social housing.

Good idea. It would make up for all those council properties that were sold under the right to buy scheme started by the tories in the 80’s.

Move them somewhere else.

Yes, lets move them to a part of the country where there’s less chance of employment. That’ll save money. out of sight, out of mind and all that.

Stop paying entirely.

Well the displaced could set up a tent city in places like Hyde park, just like they did in central park in New York during the great depression. Of course this might upset your perfect world of pretending that these people shouldn’t exist. I suppose we could get the Police to move them along, I’m sure you wouldn’t object to spending money on the Police to do that sort of thing after all.

i think thurrock coucil accepted lots of tennants from one or two london boroughs a few years back.

there was an explosion of exotic fruit and veg shops and hairdressers specialising in hair braiding.

from what i heard on the grapevine Thurrock got bunged “x” amount for each household they provided housing for.

Sorry, it’s just generally about cutting back to bone on all outgoings, until the debt is paid off. But economies don’t generally work like personal bank accounts. By investing money, they can make money, the workers distribute the money they earn into the economy too. Work, leisure, family life, spend. The costs from cutting so much may be greater in the long term as society is harmed. We could be looking at 20-30 years of ‘austerity’ and our society cannot possibly survive this unless there’s a massive ideological change that obviously isn’t going to happen.

TJ – it’s difficult – funding for ‘social housing’ isn’t there to maintain a standard of living, merely provide a ‘legal minimum’. One might argue that the high flyer shoudl have insured and if he shoudl then why not the family?

shirley the problem is that someone sold off all the council houses to make a fast buck, now who could that of been………………?

swedishmatt – Member

I’d quite like to understand what the comment about cuts costing money.

Someone losses their job as a result of the cuts – lets say a school cleaner. so their salery is swved.

howevr there then are costs – the benefits that have to be paid to that person. the reduced profits in the local shops as they cut back spending meaning less tax take. the taxes they no longer pay, the incresed illhealth they will have, the costs o any medicines they will get as they now are entitled to free prescriptions etc etc.

and the school won’t be clean any more, so all the children will die of dysentry!

I’ve had a change of heart. Let’s all get a council house. And let’s all get a citizen’s income. I think this sounds great. I think everyone who wants to live in London should, because it would be unfair otherwise.

Forcing poor people to move, terrible. I mean, it’s just horrendous isn’t it. Like moving. Yeah. Normal people don’t have to do they. Commute? What’s this? No, people DESERVE to live in central London.

How can we make this happen. String some bankers up maybe? Print some magic money?

When did the UK end up a socialist utopia?