Some people are less clever, they are usually poor ones.I bet the people using food banks still have TV, phone and internet though.
If you really do struggle as said above ditch the tv phone car and internet.I spent several years on income support and survived without any of these luxuries.
Maybe you would have got a job quicker if you would have had a phone and an internet connection, they're useful tools when looking for work.
Pretty sure a phone is a requirement these days, I don't think you would be allowed to claim benefit without one.
As for cars, don't see how anyone who's been on benefits for any length of time could afford to run one, insurance alone would make it an unfeasible expense.
Regards DD (Unemployed, no car or internet)
Happy or do I need to get rid of my phone, perhaps I should give up my flat and go and live in a doorway?
Happy or do I need to get rid of my phone, perhaps I should give up my flat and go and live in a doorway?
Do they not have a local poor house you could re-locate to? I think a diet of stale bread and gruel would be of great benefit.
I've worked in the voluntary sector for a good few years now, and met all kinds of people.
Met lots of people who were just like us - normal, healthy people with jobs/careers, families. But through accidents or severe mental/physical illness end up on the bottom of society.
A lot of us never imagine it could happen to someone 'like us'.
It could.
That's why a good, fair safety net is important to everyone, not just as an abstract concept. We don't have that anymore.
So examples of people not playing the system don't make any impact with the 'benefits claimants are scroungers and deserve to have everything taken from them' mindset.
And there are loads of people troubled by the idea of giving HMRC a percentage of the hard earned house price (did I say earned? I meant highly inflated by insane house price inflation, of which they only put in a tiny percentage*).
So, to solve this country's woes, we need house building. So much house building that the supply increase halts the upward pressure on house prices. So much building that kids can afford to rent and then buy houses. So much that people don't see their modest house inflate from tens of thousands of pounds in value to attracting inheritance tax. So much that if you're not well paid you can live cheaply without the government needing to top up your income (and if you're unemployed, housing benefit isn't the horrifying Daily Wail issue it's become).
House prices completely skew our economy, people spending so much of their income on homes ties up money that could be spent on stuff and activities in the non-house price economy and boost retail, manufacturing and services.
*this happened to me - in four years my London 64k house quadrupled in value - did I earn this? No! Should I share my good fortune in some way - yes. Have I tried? Well yes, but that's another story.
IHT used to be £325k as you couldn't double up, my ex MILs right to buy council house in Oxford was worth more than that. When speaking about people like Tony Blair rules like IHT are simply too easily avoided, IHT generally only catches only the unprepared which is one of the daft things about it. Blair does most of his speaking abroad so it's easy to be paid the fee into an offshore company and then keep the money offshore or buy assets with it. Tax is only due on paying the money into the UK and if Blair is smart he'll only take the money when he's resident offshore sometime in the future
class war stopped years ago,
It never ended.
House prices completely skew our economy, people spending so much of their income on homes ties up money that could be spent on stuff and activities in the non-house price economy and boost retail, manufacturing and services.
Yep, a huge amount of debt which has no productive use, and no value created from it. Part of the reason the 2007/2008 crash was so slow to recover from.
Yep, a huge amount of debt which has no productive use, and no value created from it. Part of the reason the 2007/2008 crash was so slow to recover from.
Exactly - and a nation divided into people who have taken on massive debts and feel impoverished (and quite probably are - running just to keep up with the mortgage payments, childcare and travel to work costs etc) and those who feel that they have wealth in the form of a house (but probably spent nowhere near the amount of money on it than what it's now 'worth') which they are keen to hang onto. Both looking down on the people who do not 'own' a house and have little potential for intergenerational wealth (even with the government asking for a slice).
Jambalaya, did your ex MIL actually spend £325k + on the council house she bought?
@Clover, no nothing like that. Was bought and then loan paid off. Her husband used to work for the council and she was a mother / school cleaner.
Food banks in Surrey! - what is the world coming to?
To be fair, by the time you've paid out for a new carbon santa cruz Bronson, a VW T5, a go pro4 black edition and all the rest of the kit, who has money left for food?
The biggest problem with rising house prices is they're a complete illusion when it comes to making people richer. A house which goes up £100k in a year is not money which can be spent, it's just a number on a computer screen, which deludes people into thinking they're wealthier when in fact they have no more actual cash in their pocket than they had a year ago.
Sure, they can borrow off the back of it but that's more debt, not wealth...
It'll come crashing to a halt at some point. You can't spend money you don't actually have, forever. The banks found this out in 2008 and UK house prices are only being kept up by government subsidy...
It'll be interesting to see who all the BTLers blame when they lose their shirts...
brooess - Member
The biggest problem with rising house prices is they're a complete illusion when it comes to making people richer.
Not true, the "wealth effect" associated with rising prices has a direct impact on consumption/aggregate demand and national income.
A house which goes up £100k in a year is not money which can be spent, it's just a number on a computer screen, which deludes people into thinking they're wealthier when in fact they have no more actual cash in their pocket than they had a year ago.
Yes and no - but things would be better if people talked about the net asset value (ie, minus liabilities) than the value of the house they own!
@brooess - of course its real money, you downsize, sell up and move away to retire somewhere nice and cheaper. Alternatively you leave the money to your kids or charity. House prices are where they are as we have huge demand with a growing, ageing population and more divorced people living alone. I'm in my 50's as I've been reading about excessive property prices since I was in my early 20's. The financial markets crash has shown property is a great investment, property has outperformed most other asset classes and it's subject to the smoke and mirrors nonsense like happened with Madof. You can see it, feel it, touch and rent it out for an inflation "linked" income stream.
On the original point I would think Surrey is a good place to collect money for foodbanks as its an affluent county so people have more money to give. Where its spent / needed is a different issue, plenty of parts of London (in Surrey) would benefit.
[i] Also Surrey has some decent vineyards.[/i]
I must say being Surrey born and bred I wouldn't have thought of vineyards as being high on the list of Surrey attributes. As Jambalaya says, living here, you get one 'get out of jail card' free. You can sell up, move further South and cash in the money. Houses are way cheaper only a few miles out. Of course you can never move back, but you wouldn't want to if you had retired.
The biggest problem with rising house prices is they're a complete illusion when it comes to making people richer. A house which goes up £100k in a year is not money which can be spent, it's just a number on a computer screen, which deludes people into thinking they're wealthier when in fact they have no more actual cash in their pocket than they had a year ago.
Depends what you do with it.
We sold our '2 up-2 down' terrace in the South East for an inflated amount and took that money to Wales where it has gone much further and bought us the kind of place we'd have never been able to afford in the South.
I agree with your sentiment if you're talking about people who struggle to make their mortgage payments and just sit on a house that is supposedly 'an investment' but do nothing with it....ours was always something to get halfway through paying off and then to use as a deposit somewhere cheaper in the UK, we're mid to late 30s and now have less than 75k of mortgage left on a house we're not going to move from....work until i'm 70?!...get stuffed, i'll be mortgage free and semi retired at 50....i'll leave the rat race to the sheep who cant seem to see a world beyond the M25.
re. house prices, as above people have been predicting the mother of crashes for decades...still hasnt happened. We live in a tiny island, with the population concentrated in certain areas and restrictive planning laws preventing building in the countryside that we do have....its supply and demand in its most basic form.
Demand is outstripping supply so prices stay as they are and often move up...artificial?...maybe but unless a government goes on a massive house building spree it will remain like this for some time yet.
Buy a house, pay a load of it off...now is as good a time as any with interest rates virtually non existent...then sell it and move somewhere cheaper, relax and enjoy semi retirement about 20 years sooner than you'd thought possible.
There was a good interview with Adair Turner on the issue of housing debt and the recovery in the Economist...
http://www.economist.com/multimedia
Like @deviant says good friends of our have sold their house in Hertforshire and retired early to Pembrokeshire. You can take a view on rising prices and simply get a mortgage and then sell up and retire whilst staying in Surrey, just like @Rockape says for example sell in family house in a Surrey town buy small 2/3 bed cottage in the Surrey Hills with the biking/walking trails on your doorstep.
if Blair is smart he'll only take the money when he's resident offshore sometime in the future
A cell block near The Hague is offshore.
http://www.icc-cpi.int/en_menus/icc/structure%20of%20the%20court/detention/Pages/detention.aspx
@OP, thanks, but salt and vinegar next time please.
& I trust you selflessly injected a few quid into our local economy at Cobbett's?