Bedroom tax, new thread !

[Diddy]

So the greedy folk bought council houses

So we need to build more so that

Greedy folk can stay in their homes that are too big forever, at no extra cost, are they not forward thinking enough to realise they are taking housing stock away from the generations that follow and making the future a bleak place

Class



Approx 20% of bought ex council houses are in private sector now, a lot are people who been evicted for non payment of mortgage, its then went to auction its usually where private landlords step in

I suppose they dont pay interest, maintenance money, employ people and tax either

They give a percentage back, just as building more houses would

If the economy grew rapidly and the country could make billions on exports it would probably be a good idea

But it doesnt, the country is funded on borrowed money, and a lot of british money goes overseas for food, clothes and electrical items. We do not really make anymore, we consume and we import. We need to consume more british made things made with british grown/ made parts and import less and export more goods.

Its not easy british goods tend to be more expensive so it costs the buyer more money catch 22 so buyer has even less cash to spend

If we can find a way that changes this, and provides "real" money to the UK, exports maybe new drugs and technologies and it sources more of its own resources instead of importing then maybe we can think about mass public funded projects and new infrastructures. Problem is you have all the developed world doing the same thing, you have to be the best. Bit like the Germans who are renowned for quality and reliability.

Too many cheap countries undercut us, china and korea are proving year on year their standards are improving, and you never know we may have to go full circle and be china's bitches in the future as they will face what we face one day

Their country will develop into a country that stops producing and consumes, it will move again to somewhere else where labour is cheaper, probably not in my lifetime but it will happen

Cameron mentioned this week there is no cash tree, tbh he is right its ok shotting money at everything but if you dont have the resources coming in to pay it back it then becomes very short sighted and the future, for the future generations will look much bleaker than now

Yes I believe those who took the housing stock out of the system were short sighted/selfish and greedy...if that don't sit well with some then so be it I am as entitled to my view as you or anyone else....opinions are like a-holes we ALL have them.

As for the rest of your post about what we need to do IE Make Stuff....wow we agree on something .
That's why I say short term build a load of housing - re-stock it if you like. Long term educate the current crop going through school to tackle both academic AND technical jobs. Reward technical ability in the same way as we reward academic ability.

Make stuff....governments around the world subsidise their home grown industries to enable them to become competitive and self sufficient. We have done this in the past but as a nation successive governments seem to give out these "grants" and we are talking billions here...without seemingly ANY guarantee that the company will stay there for X number of years. All too often you see a multi national come in take the grants - Have rent free factories pay little or no tax and then basically bugger off when it's time to start paying their way...
Would it be so difficult to subsidise UK companies so that they are encouraged to hire from the UK labour pool ?
Also if shit is really that bad then perhaps it is time we started to slap tax on imported goods...other countries do so again this makes the home grown goods more competitive.
Other things like tightening of offshore tax loopholes, Non Dom status ect ect. I keep hearing the cry "But they will leave and go elsewhere" - Where will they go - Amazon, Google, et al all rake in fortunes out of the UK in the form of the goods and services they sell but pay very little in UK tax's ....puts the little UK bookstore and the like at a complete disadvantage....they should be taxed the same as everyone else.
I am rambling on a bit here as my head is full of ideas that I feel if we put them forward over time then we "could" be a nation of workers once again.
Not everyone on benefits is a cheat, not everyone on the sick is faking it - Saints & Scroungers shows on average the very extremes which some people will go to....as far as I am aware they show approx what 5 cases per week during the run of programs....that is not a lot in the grand scale of things. These people are in no way descriptive of your "average" Brit...I keep hearing how lazy british people are...how much harder the polish work ect ect....Well tell that to the british guys i see on building sites that regularly put in 50-70 hours per week. I have been on many sites where these "hard working" polish (using them as I have experience of working along side them) stand about doing next to nothing and when they do work it is usually with a total disregard for the health and safety of themselves and their fellow workers.
I remember a site I was on in London a few years back where the non english speaking labourers were throwing stuff/rubbish out of the windows ****ing 5 stories up in the air....no regard for the poor sods working/walking below them...When I pointed it out to the site manager he shrugged and said "Can't do an H&S induction with them as they can't speak the lingo....."
Why am I mentioning all of this ? Because these guys were undercutting british guys who WANTED to work there. It is simply not a level playing field. It is in favour of the cheapest regardless of quality or even regardless of safety and final cost of putting right whatever shit they do.....
Sorry for going off topic but there are ways we can get the nation working again and I believe if that if the right choices were made we would be looking back in 20-30 years time wondering WTF all this nonsense about bedroom tax was all about.
Turfing poor people out on the street is not going to save anybody anything.

[Bulld0g]

Yes I believe those who took the housing stock out of the system were short sighted/selfish and greedy...if that don't sit well with some then so be it I am as entitled to my view as you or anyone else....opinions are like a-holes we ALL have them.

Don't forget it was Thatcher and the Tories, who brought in the right to buy. It was them who decided it was a good thing to sell off council houses. It was because of them we now don't have enough council houses to accommodate people.

[andy1967]

I take it your from the "Tory" part of Liverpool with an outlook that supports this absurdity m8.

I blame that Robbie Fowler

[thered]

if this policy is so fair why is it only effecting those who rent,
what about those with a mortgage, there interest is being paid, are they having to pay anything towards there housing benefit, of course not, because that will hit tory voters.

For a start people who pay mortgage only get the interest paid, nothing towards buying the house, its not paid for the first 3 months and its sopped after a year

Is that what you want all things being equal??

Housing benefit to stop after a year?

Not paid for first 3 months

[Diddy]

Don't forget it was Thatcher and the Tories, who brought in the right to buy. It was them who decided it was a good thing to sell off council houses. It was because of them we now don't have enough council houses to accommodate people.

Indeed it was - Bless her cotton socks -Can say with pride that "It was not me nor any of mine" who voted her and her party in to power. "They" will never ever get in up here in sunny Scotland . Not while we all have a hole in our @rse anyway .

[thered]

Yes I believe those who took the housing stock out of the system were short sighted/selfish and greedy...if that don't sit well with some then so be it I am as entitled to my view as you or anyone else....opinions are like a-holes we ALL have them.

Your right your entitled to your opinion, i must be greedy i pay for my own home and get no housing benefit to do so

and yes all them short sighted people do need to move out and stop being greedy. They are keeping houses away from people that actually need them. They are greedy because they dont want to pay the extra for the houses they want to keep. They want to keep it free

When most can afford the extra, that is greed

Don't forget it was Thatcher and the Tories, who brought in the right to buy. It was them who decided it was a good thing to sell off council houses. It was because of them we now don't have enough council houses to accommodate people.

Why?

Because they were getting too expensive to maintain and too many people lived on benefit

It was a drain on resources much better to sell them and let people look after them theirselves.

Labour never changed it in 15 years you can still do it now, so must be thatcher

My estate ( council) is half knocked down been like that for last 7 years

Houses less than 50 years old, nothing wrong with them all fields now and nobody living there

[thered]

As for the rest of your post about what we need to do IE Make Stuff....wow we agree on something .
That's why I say short term build a load of housing - re-stock it if you like. Long term educate the current crop going through school to tackle both academic AND technical jobs. Reward technical ability in the same way as we reward academic ability.

Make stuff....governments around the world subsidise their home grown industries to enable them to become competitive and self sufficient. We have done this in the past but as a nation successive governments seem to give out these "grants" and we are talking billions here...without seemingly ANY guarantee that the company will stay there for X number of years. All too often you see a multi national come in take the grants - Have rent free factories pay little or no tax and then basically bugger off when it's time to start paying their way...
Would it be so difficult to subsidise UK companies so that they are encouraged to hire from the UK labour pool ?
Also if shit is really that bad then perhaps it is time we started to slap tax on imported goods...other countries do so again this makes the home grown goods more competitive.
Other things like tightening of offshore tax loopholes, Non Dom status ect ect. I keep hearing the cry "But they will leave and go elsewhere" - Where will they go - Amazon, Google, et al all rake in fortunes out of the UK in the form of the goods and services they sell but pay very little in UK tax's ....puts the little UK bookstore and the like at a complete disadvantage....they should be taxed the same as everyone else.
I am rambling on a bit here as my head is full of ideas that I feel if we put them forward over time then we "could" be a nation of workers once again.
Not everyone on benefits is a cheat, not everyone on the sick is faking it - Saints & Scroungers shows on average the very extremes which some people will go to....as far as I am aware they show approx what 5 cases per week during the run of programs....that is not a lot in the grand scale of things. These people are in no way descriptive of your "average" Brit...I keep hearing how lazy british people are...how much harder the polish work ect ect....Well tell that to the british guys i see on building sites that regularly put in 50-70 hours per week. I have been on many sites where these "hard working" polish (using them as I have experience of working along side them) stand about doing next to nothing and when they do work it is usually with a total disregard for the health and safety of themselves and their fellow workers.
I remember a site I was on in London a few years back where the non english speaking labourers were throwing stuff/rubbish out of the windows ****ing 5 stories up in the air....no regard for the poor sods working/walking below them...When I pointed it out to the site manager he shrugged and said "Can't do an H&S induction with them as they can't speak the lingo....."
Why am I mentioning all of this ? Because these guys were undercutting british guys who WANTED to work there. It is simply not a level playing field. It is in favour of the cheapest regardless of quality or even regardless of safety and final cost of putting right whatever shit they do.....
Sorry for going off topic but there are ways we can get the nation working again and I believe if that if the right choices were made we would be looking back in 20-30 years time wondering WTF all this nonsense about bedroom tax was all about.
Turfing poor people out on the street is not going to save anybody anything.

I agree with most of this tbh. loopholes do need closing the likes of Amazon and eBay need closing if they want too operate in UK they need to register their UK operations here not in Luxembourg or wherever

Yes grants have been given for many years and are still given now in the hope they dont piss off elsewhere but its not guaranteed and its a waste of cash if they are only here for the grants and tax breaks

Building houses is the same short term boom, long long term cost, you are reliant that on completetion of houses they are rented to workers who are going to pay for them, but what will they do when its finished go back on the dole??

You then have more money to find to finance them

If the "tax" saves houses being made it saves a lot of money long term

[Diddy]

So you think buying a property that is/was the property of ALL of the UK at 30% of its true value is not a greedy thing to do ? You think that the cash raised from the "sale" of these houses helped anything ?
Good luck to you having bought a council house and even better luck if you got it at full discount - But I can still say I believe it was selfish/greedy/short sighted just a little bit of the "Im alright jack and F-U attitude that Thatcher brought to this country.
BTW that last lot that were in power were not labour - Not real labour in the traditional sense. You just need to look at their change in name/policies....the mere fact that Tony Blair was supported and applauded by lots of tories including Cameron himself.
These houses were built for the poor/needy/working classes. They were supposed to be passed on to the poor needy working classes when the current tenant had climbed the greasy pole far enough to buy a "Private" house.
I actually know not lots but quite a few people/families who did not buy their council house purely on the back of the fact that they did not believe in the sale of these assets at a paltry price - and their principals would not allow them to rob their fellow working man/tax payer.

[thered]

So you think buying a property that is/was the property of ALL of the UK at 30% of its true value is not a greedy thing to do ? You think that the cash raised from the "sale" of these houses helped anything ?
Good luck to you having bought a council house and even better luck if you got it at full discount - But I can still say I believe it was selfish/greedy/short sighted just a little bit of the "Im alright jack and F-U attitude that Thatcher brought to this country.
BTW that last lot that were in power were not labour - Not real labour in the traditional sense. You just need to look at their change in name/policies....the mere fact that Tony Blair was supported and applauded by lots of tories including Cameron himself.
These houses were built for the poor/needy/working classes. They were supposed to be passed on to the poor needy working classes when the current tenant had climbed the greasy pole far enough to buy a "Private" house.
I actually know not lots but quite a few people/families who did not buy their council house purely on the back of the fact that they did not believe in the sale of these assets at a paltry price - and their principals would not allow them to rob their fellow working man/tax payer.

Proved my point old labour

The people who thought it was best to keep everything in house and subsidise everything no matter how much it was a loss maker

The country was ****ed tbh


Very reason why "New" labour want to distance themselves from the past


It didnt work

[Diddy]

Proved my point old labour

The people who thought it was best to keep everything in house and subsidise everything no matter how much it was a loss maker

The country was ****ed tbh


Very reason why "New" labour want to distance themselves from the past


It didnt work

If John Smith hadn't died of a heart attack in 1994 we would have had a true labour government for the following X years. The economy was booming and I believe that a true labour party would have 1. built more council housing, 2.Not entered into pfi agreements 3. Not continued with the tory policy of selling all our assets to private entities, 4. not started the privatisation of the nhs, 5. Not introduced tuition fees...
That last lot that were in were "left wing tories" (IMHO). Who knows how we would have faired...but i belive the banking sector would have been more regulated and the financial sector would also have been regulated properly instead of the "Lets lend the whole country money that we all know they will never pay back"
It is all if's and buts but TBh we have not seen a true left wing government for well over 40 years now....And they would have defeated Major's government as they were dead in the water.

[Snowy79]

At least no Old Labour supporters bought their council houses. Aye right. Or just maybe it's human nature to want the best at the least effort. We all know its a shit thought out idea but no other party has come up with a solution to the benefits drain.

We keep hearing about the extreme cases used by those parties opposed to it but they forget to mention how the same people were shafted by them with direct cuts to their services.

If councils keep pumping the same money into housing they will just get the money back elsewhere. The only difference is they'll cut it from one area at a time. Just look at how many council workers lost their jobs, community centres and after school clubs were closed down to pay for Labours policies.

[jordigirl]

i think a bigger drain on our benefits system is immigration,

funny how they talk about trying to control it, but don't seem to be doing anything about it.

seems easier just to make the poorest in our society worse off

[thered]

If John Smith hadn't died of a heart attack in 1994 we would have had a true labour government for the following X years. The economy was booming and I believe that a true labour party would have 1. built more council housing, 2.Not entered into pfi agreements 3. Not continued with the tory policy of selling all our assets to private entities, 4. not started the privatisation of the nhs, 5. Not introduced tuition fees...
That last lot that were in were "left wing tories" (IMHO). Who knows how we would have faired...but i belive the banking sector would have been more regulated and the financial sector would also have been regulated properly instead of the "Lets lend the whole country money that we all know they will never pay back"
It is all if's and buts but TBh we have not seen a true left wing government for well over 40 years now....And they would have defeated Major's government as they were dead in the water.

Yes no doubt and the boom was funded by what??

Property and banks, people who bought their council houses and moved to better estates, people gettin on the property ladder buying their council homes as first time buyers and people buying their homes just to live in.

All of it mainly conservative policy that created the wealth labour enjoyed.

Would old labour stop the boom? and revert to old policy of course not

So in the boom years John Smith would have built more council houses, nobody would want to live in. Great idea nobody in their right mind wants to rent forever its dead money.

and when it collapsed what would John Smith do then with the extra houses made in which would be full of largely housing benefit?

i think a bigger drain on our benefits system is immigration,

funny how they talk about trying to control it, but don't seem to be doing anything about it.

seems easier just to make the poorest in our society worse off

Im not so sure in theory they cant just come here and claim benefit they have to work first. So if they can get work why cant the 2.5m unemployed?

[Saltire]

I haven't posted since my little outburst last week (Which is true btw I used to earn a fortune on government projects and hence pay a fortune in tax an NI - Also had a pretty bad drug problem....ALL behind me now but what I was trying to put across was that I have been there and have recieved the councilling and help of mental health professionals and even had the happy pills for about 2 years or so....As I say happily well away from all that now but feel I can at least say I have experienced the shit life that is the struggle of someone on benefits....Did not mean to make it sound as though taking drugs was big/hard/clever it most certainly is not.)
This tax won't effect me as 1. I earn too much to receive any benefit (Self Employed Electrician) and 2. My misses is my fathers carer and we all live in the same council house but anyway I still have to pay the rent due to household earnings ect on my dad's HB form.
I still maintain this is a tax on the poor. I have not seen or heard any reasoning that has convinced me differently.
I see mentioned that private rentals have had to do this for years ect - This is where I differ I suppose because private rentals should imho be restricted, There is a world of difference in tax payers paying the state rents to the state and hence just going back into the states coffers as opposed to the taxpayer paying to make some landlord richer and paying for their BTL mortgages ect ect.
I suppose I am a leftie idealist but there ya go I happily admit to such.
This was all caused by the greedy folk who took up the option to buy council housing,To be fair they didn't have the forward thinking to realise that what they were doing was creating a situation where they were taking housing stock off the market and making the future a bleak place for the generations to follow. The funny thing is in some cases these very same places are being rented to people on benefits paid for by the tax payer funding a landlords property empire....it all seems madness to me.
I believe that more council housing should be built...even if it is a short term fix as has been stated before on this thread so many times....at least its a fix that may just carry us through another decade or even 20 years.....maybe by that time the economy may be able to sustain more workers all in the private sector that everyone is so obsessed with. And surely we will be better placed for the future with all the employment that a building boom would create....people with trades/skills/work ethics.....as I said short term fix maybe but with at least a shot at a long term view.
How to pay for it without borrowing a penny more ? Scrap building trident (the new one). There you go solved in the stroke of one pen....would be enough to sort the whole council housing shortage out.....if I am wrong then cut overseas aid for a few years too....**** me we might even have enough ? left to give the millionaires another % or 2 off their tax bill.

only problem mate with "private lets etc" is that you can be booted out really anyteam unless your best of friends with the person letting it and its going to be more or less for life, plus the fact your still going to have to come up with even more money than the bedroom tax as private lets, well a 1 bedroom in a decent area in my area your talking about approx ?600 a month or more depending on the exact house and location.

No way anyones going to want to give up what they have now to live in a council tip, and saying that, as I keep saying, there isnt even any council garbage 1 bedroom house available anyway, I would guess thats the same for most of the UK.

Cheers mate

p.s
thats why I am trying to keep this whole discussion realted to council only rather than even talk about the private houses etc as thats just a no go-er.

[Saltire]

My thoughts on this make logic really.

People on very low or just low benefits should not need to pay any tax's at all, no council tax, no bedroom tax, no tv licence, nothing.

Afterall, as I keep saying, if they cant afford to even EAT or HEAT then how the hell can they pay all these taxes and things like the tv licence etc, they cant, simple as that.

Ive seen it first hand with hundreds of people over the years, sitting there with either no food or no heating etc just because they have to pay all this garbage from the government.

Thats my honest feelings on the matter.

p.s
and that goes for very low paid working families too, they should have a very good deal that helps them out too as they cant afford to HEAT or EAT either.

The Tories should be forced to hand over all the tax they screw us for for things like petrol etc, whats that right now, something like 90% of every gallon of petrol sold goes straight in the back pocket of the english government not to mention everything else they are raping us for ! Then we would have a nice place to live and people wouldnt complain, cause this country is an absolute dump man, no wonder everyone wants out of it, I'm just glad I have dual nationality and am seriously thinking about going back to my family in the USA again where life is so so so so so much better and cheaper for most things, dont get me wrong, a lot of things are more expensive, but in general its far better, well where my family live anyway, laid back area.