Is anyone going to the bedroom tax demos on Saturday?

tiredofwhiners

kieranb wrote:

Not impressed at all with this tax, doesn't currently affect me but can see the problems it will cause to many ordinary people.

But presumably you are oblivious to those in the waiting queue for housing who could have a house if families moved into smaller houses more appropriate to their size ? How strange.

kieranb wrote:

The vunerable make an easy target, all you need is a few cliched examples of welfare spongers to justify it.

For a lot of vulnerable people, its the answer to their problems. Space will be made by smaller families moving out of larger ones. More people can get into houses that are the right size for them. Whats wrong with that ?

ooermissus

A lot of people will probably end up moving to smaller, but more expensive, properties. Surprised this policy isn't being phased in so the housing market has more time to adjust.

fast as fupp

tiredofwhiners wrote:

kieranb wrote:

Not impressed at all with this tax, doesn't currently affect me but can see the problems it will cause to many ordinary people.

But presumably you are oblivious to those in the waiting queue for housing who could have a house if families moved into smaller houses more appropriate to their size ? How strange.

kieranb wrote:

The vunerable make an easy target, all you need is a few cliched examples of welfare spongers to justify it.

For a lot of vulnerable people, its the answer to their problems. Space will be made by smaller families moving out of larger ones. More people can get into houses that are the right size for them. Whats wrong with that ?

the problem being the extreme shortage of one bedroomed properties available in the social housing sector. where would you have these people decanted to? camps? workhouses?

also old people tend to fade away and die when they are uprooted from their communities. perhaps you may think this is a good thing? after all its just money to our tory friends-people dont matter especially the poor ones!

pip! pip!

ooermissus

Said this about three times - but, unless I have this wrong, old people are exempt. Obviously if you think who they vote for.

And as for the rest, I expect they'll move to more expensive but smaller properties in the private sector, rather than to the park.

Cleat Eastwood

fast as fupp wrote:

the problem being the extreme shortage of one bedroomed properties available in the social housing sector. where would you have these people decanted to? camps? workhouses?

also old people tend to fade away and die when they are uprooted from their communities. perhaps you may think this is a good thing? after all its just money to our tory friends-people dont matter especially the poor ones!

pip! pip!

Thats the point thats just been made on russia today - the choice to some will either be keep the roof over your head or go without food.

Just to add, this isnt about giviing allowances to the elderly or what you consider your core voters - the seeds of the bedroom tax began with labour. Its not party political, it's the class war writ large - to me the moral choice is clear, either you defend the poor or you attack them - sadly all 3 parties seem to want to put the boot in.

mybreakfastconsisted

The protest's national organiser, Dr Èoin Clarke, said: "This is a cruel policy that primarily hits single parents, and the adult disabled.

"Even children deemed disabled but not 'severely' so, are affected.

"Carers, the terminally ill, battered wives and husbands are all affected.

"Soldiers living in single accommodation or indeed foster parents with more than one foster child are hit, despite the government's talk of a U-turn.

"There are times in history when people must stand together in defence of common decency - that time has come."

Iain Duncan Smith confirmed that foster carers and members of the Armed Forces will not be subjected to the government's controversial so-called "bedroom tax" earlier this week. However campaigners say the U-turn has not gone far enough.

Asked by ITV News whether his policy was unravelling, Duncan Smith replied there were "no climb-downs at all".

Gregor Cubie a journalism student from Glasgow, wrote in blog for the Huffington Post UK that "the hurt, frustration and anger provoked by 'bedroom tax' is causing rumblings in Glasgow's underbelly which could unleash the kind of wave of civil unrest that has defined the city's politics over the last century."

He goes on to explain why bedroom tax provokes such anger saying Glasgow is "a city in which a reported 90,000 people receive housing benefit, many of whom live in houses with unoccupied bedrooms. The lack of single-bed social housing means that few will be able to downsize and avoid the 14%-25% penalty for 'under-occupancy'. The added fact that 60-70% of those penalised are disabled has stoked the outrage of the working class and the political left to the point of combustion."

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03 ... _hp_ref=uk

tiredofwhiners

Cleat Eastwood wrote:

to me the moral choice is clear, either you defend the poor or you attack them - sadly all 3 parties seem to want to put the boot in.

Welcome to a democratic society. Its so inconvenient isn't it ?

Thats your opinion however there are many who feel that this is not about 'the poor' as thats pretty a condescending attitude. Everyone who is given handouts is affected - not just the poor whomever they may be. Its your emotional style of attack that makes the case for help much worse. Tugging at heartstrings with patently false statements just makes you sound like an idiot and denigrates their cause. How can I take the cause seriously when you are prepared to distort facts in the optimistic hope that logic and common sense will be ignored ?

Each according to their needs - not their 'wants' and not their 'desires'. Suggesting that others morals are at fault, when your own morals are deficient.

finchy

tiredofwhiners wrote:

Tugging at heartstrings with patently false statements just makes you sound like an idiot and denigrates their cause. How can I take the cause seriously when you are prepared to distort facts in the optimistic hope that logic and common sense will be ignored ?

napoleond

I'd be happy to pay abut of extra tax and get a spare room, as a bigger house round my way is a freaking huge leap up in cost...

cornerblock

Well I missed the demo as I overslept sleeping in the back bedroom. Or was it the front bedroom? Not sure, I was soundo.

mamba80

Unless im mistaken, any monies earned by thoses effected will come straight off one benefit or another, so taking a job/lodger unless its particualrly well paid, wont make a jot of difference.
Moving to a smaller but more expensive property, will just mean they ll end up getting more in housing benefit.

this new system also effects spare bedrooms for kids of divorced familes and foster carrers.

Reminds me of the window tax, which just resulted in windows being blocked over.

I think a bank savings tax of say 10% would bring in far more money and if set at savings over 100k would prove a vote winner.

daviesee

mamba80 wrote:

I think a bank savings tax of say 10% would bring in far more money and if set at savings over 100k would prove a vote winner.

Would just mean those with over 100k cash transferring from cash to other investments. Or abroad.

ooermissus

daviesee wrote:

mamba80 wrote:

I think a bank savings tax of say 10% would bring in far more money and if set at savings over 100k would prove a vote winner.

Would just mean those with over 100k cash transferring from cash to other investments. Or abroad.

...leading to the immediate and total collapse of the banking system.

VTech

The answer is obvious, allow everyone to keep their council homes, even the people with 2 or 3 spare rooms, keep the newer needy people in hostels and let the working people pay for it all.

Ill add a few just so people know im not serious as I dont wish to cause another row.

How can this issue be fixed ? in 4 pages there still isnt a single answer that would work ?
For every sad story of people having to pay a tax for a spare room in a free house there are at least ten stories of needy families with no rooms !
There will always be losers in cases like this but something needs to be done as I doubt many of you want to pay the true tax of 32% to fix the problems we are all in.

MisterMuncher

From whence does the 32% "true" figure derive?

I've said it before: Housing Benefit currently acts more as a subsidy for BtL income than it does as a benefit for the poor. It is only by reducing naked profiteering in this sector than the housing benefit bill can be meaningfully decreased.
Take rent charged over and above a fair and independently assessed value out of housing benefit. When there is no-one willing or able to pay the extortionate rents, landlords will either have to reassess their demands or do without.
Make a sensible investment in replenishing social housing stock. Consider it the construction industry getting the bailout that the banks got, with the advantage that the capital investment would directly increase jobs. Indirectly, this could help move people out of benefits, and off housing benefit. Better to spend big once than spend small in perpetuity.
Make a reasonable effort to move dormant properties, "ghost estates" et al into social housing stock. A particular effort should be made to secure the smaller properties that currently simply aren't in the social sector. It's all well and good saying people should move to smaller houses, but applications for smaller accomodations are many times oversubscribed.

tiredofwhiners

mamba80 wrote:

I think a bank savings tax of say 10% would bring in far more money and if set at savings over 100k would prove a vote winner.

Your statement is directly contradicted by the first two words your typed. You clearly do not. You open your mouth and talk sh*te. "Vote for me - I'll take 10% of everything you save to give it to people who do not'. Yeah, a real vote winner. Every pension holder will vote no, every house opwner will vote no, every saver will vote no, every person with a brain will vote no but you'll vote yes.

What you mean is to steal from those who save, to give to those who do not. So remind me why people should save in the future if half-wits decide to take away their savings ?

Socialist Workers Party your choice of reading ?

PS If you have a nice set of wheels you've saved up for then don't worry, someone will be around next week to reallocate them to someone else who hasn't got a nice set and isn't prepared to save for them.

VTech

MisterMuncher wrote:

From whence does the 32% "true" figure derive?

I've said it before: Housing Benefit currently acts more as a subsidy for BtL income than it does as a benefit for the poor. It is only by reducing naked profiteering in this sector than the housing benefit bill can be meaningfully decreased.
Take rent charged over and above a fair and independently assessed value out of housing benefit. When there is no-one willing or able to pay the extortionate rents, landlords will either have to reassess their demands or do without.
Make a sensible investment in replenishing social housing stock. Consider it the construction industry getting the bailout that the banks got, with the advantage that the capital investment would directly increase jobs. Indirectly, this could help move people out of benefits, and off housing benefit. Better to spend big once than spend small in perpetuity.
Make a reasonable effort to move dormant properties, "ghost estates" et al into social housing stock. A particular effort should be made to secure the smaller properties that currently simply aren't in the social sector. It's all well and good saying people should move to smaller houses, but applications for smaller accomodations are many times oversubscribed.

32% is the national VAT needed to get us out of the mess which I have read although I don't truly believe that would be anywhere near enough.
Also, I'm not sure where you get your info on rich landlords overpricing for buy to let homes. The council pay a fair rent and for a 3 bed property in bewdley they pay a maximum of £324 on a home worth £400k and private rents reaching around £800-£1100 PCM.

I think a lot of people are blinded by this urban myth of local councils paying x2 or x3 average rents to the private sector. It's not the case I'm afraid.

MisterMuncher

Then where do the endless newspaper stories of 1 and 2 million pound houses for those on benefits come from?

The problem isn't that the councils are paying multiples of the average rent. It's that the average rent is too bloody high to begin with, a situation we've arrived in through idiocy and greed, a slavish devotion to rising property prices that was never, could never be sustainable. Housing benefit has scaled up to meet this utter craziness, and is continuing to subsidise catastrophic stupidity by investors and speculators.

Also, I'd really like a source for the 32% figure. A link, if possible.

ooermissus

VTech wrote:

The answer is obvious, allow everyone to keep their council homes, even the people with 2 or 3 spare rooms, keep the newer needy people in hostels and let the working people pay for it all.

The answer is probably to phase on the policy over time - rather than assume that people can suddenly be living in different sized houses overnight.

d87francis

tiredofwhiners wrote:

PS If you have a nice set of wheels you've saved up for then don't worry, someone will be around next week to reallocate them to someone else who hasn't got a nice set and isn't prepared to save for them.

The individual wealth of any one of the top 10 wealthiest people in the UK could buy everyone in the UK a nice new set of wheels.
I think you fail to grasp the concept of what wealth reallocation through the abolition of private property is really concerned about.

daviesee

d87francis wrote:

tiredofwhiners wrote:

PS If you have a nice set of wheels you've saved up for then don't worry, someone will be around next week to reallocate them to someone else who hasn't got a nice set and isn't prepared to save for them.

The individual wealth of any one of the top 10 wealthiest people in the UK could buy everyone in the UK a nice new set of wheels.
I think you fail to grasp the concept of what wealth reallocation through the abolition of private property is really concerned about.

It is complete bollocks.
I started with nothing and have worked hard to get what I have.
Try taking it off me to give to some layabout and I am outta here.
Socialist nonsense.

the playing mantis

yawn, so much left wing BS on here its painful. this isnt even a tax, its on the whole a sensible idea.

someone quoting the independent to back up the arguement, yep thats an unbiased source! why are so many so keen on penalising those who have worked hard and saved and maybe had a bit of luck??? sure i am jealous of multi millionaires, and can feel resentful of them, but do i begrudge them of it, no, do i think there wealth should be taken away disproportiantely to the rest of us and redistributed? no.

look we will soon see how the left will deal with our problems when the glorious drip milipede gets elected next time round as the electorate is so short sighted and suffers from collective amnesia, and Dave has f88ked up completely by trying to steal the middle.

just vote ukip they will sort it out, at least having farage as PM would be good value.

ShutUpLegs

the playing mantis wrote:

just vote ukip they will sort it out, at least having farage as PM would be good value.

UKIP don't have, and will never have an MP.

ilm_zero7

tiredofwhiners wrote:

Its not a tax.

A tax is what gets taken off that which you earn.

Not being given so much because you want more than you need, isn't a tax. Its not about laziness but is practical terms, its about telling folks in the free food queue that they can only take one plate per person and not bring a few spares to fill up, leaving those later in the queue, unfed.

I agree however that the disabled and military families should be exempt. If you want more space in 'your' house, then get a job and pay for it yourself, or get out and let someone who can use all the rooms have it.

100%

rhext

It's not a tax, it's a deduction in benefit. Which will provide an incentive for people living in social houses with spare rooms to find something smaller. An incentive that is currently completely lacking.

There are two sides to this issue: for every sob story trotted out about how someone is going to find it impossible to downsize, there's another one (that doesn't get told) about a family living in accommodation which is substantially undersized. For every single parent who is going to struggle to keep a spare room for the kids when they want to come to stay for the weekend, there's a couple with three children sharing a single room every day of the week!

So what I'd like to understand, before I take the opposition seriously, is what they'd do instead. Doing nothing (as they did for the entire duration of the last parliament) doesn't work for me because that leaves the misery caused by overcrowding unresolved. Their only contribution to the discussion so far has been to complain that some people will find it difficult and blatantly to misuse housing vacancy statistics to lie to us about how unfair it is.

MaxwellBygraves

I'm only poking fun here, before anyone takes this too seriously, but some of you guys on here remind me of the Old Economy Steven memes

the playing mantis

farage would have won in eastleigh had he the balls to run. i think they will end up with an mp, long term they will only get more popular as this countries problems are compunded. at the moment they need a basket case constituency to elect them, much like brighton did with that ridiculous green woman, and they will be in parliament, doing f all. currently they are just splitting the tory vote, which has, and will continue to ruin the tories hopes of outright power.

fast as fupp

the playing mantis wrote:

farage would have won in eastleigh had he the balls to run. i think they will end up with an mp, long term they will only get more popular as this countries problems are compunded. at the moment they need a basket case constituency to elect them, much like brighton did with that ridiculous green woman, and they will be in parliament, doing f all. currently they are just splitting the tory vote, which has, and will continue to ruin the tories hopes of outright power.

not all bad news then! 3 cheers for farage and his 'bnp in blazers'!

the playing mantis

thats just ignorant. why is anyone who wants to restrict immigration branded BNP/racist???

likewise, maybe some of there other policies merit consideration?

ooermissus

I really like the UKIP proposal to slash taxes and eliminate the deficit. At the same time. Can really see that working.