Re: Bedroom Tax - A Solution ? : Wed Sep 11, 2013 7:20 pm  

Ajw71 wrote:

Loopy Brazilian Leftie

Spot on.

I'd rather be a Loopy Brazilian Leftie than a Tory

Re: Bedroom Tax - A Solution ? : Wed Sep 11, 2013 7:39 pm  

Hull White Star wrote:

I'd rather be a Loopy Brazilian Leftie than a Tory

Hmm not sure

How are you HWS?

Re: Bedroom Tax - A Solution ? : Wed Sep 11, 2013 7:46 pm  

Ajw71 wrote:

Hmm not sure

How are you HWS?

Ok thanks. If I was to tell you how I really am we'd need a separate thread and my hands would drop off with all the typing

Re: Bedroom Tax - A Solution ? : Sun Sep 15, 2013 11:58 pm  

Mintball wrote:

More than 80% (I cannot recall, off the top of my head, the exact figure over the 80) of all housing benefit payments are to people IN WORK.

People like that councillor are either seriously lacking in basic information or playing the IDS game of trying to use disinformation to play divide and rule.

If anyone's interested, he's on Twitter: @barryanderson19

I'd be interested to know where your 80& statistic comes from.

How relevant is that statistic to the issue of the spare room subsidy? That is, how many in work in receipt of housing benefit will be affected?

How does introducing the spare room subsidy into social housing differ from introducing into the private rental sector?

It's all taxpayers money being spent & surely resources should be matched according to need?

Re: Bedroom Tax - A Solution ? : Mon Sep 16, 2013 12:06 am  

cod'ead wrote: As predicted: Bedroom Tax costs more than it saves No one saw that coming did they? Well no one of a tory leaning saw it. Economic illiterates What reports are these figures drawn from? On what basis is the forecast made? There's nothing in that piece to support the claims.

cod'ead wrote: As predicted: Bedroom Tax costs more than it saves No one saw that coming did they? Well no one of a tory leaning saw it. Economic illiterates What reports are these figures drawn from? On what basis is the forecast made? There's nothing in that piece to support the claims.

Re: Bedroom Tax - A Solution ? : Mon Sep 16, 2013 12:15 am  

Mintball wrote:

And if your (already low) wages are going down long term and the cost of living is perpetually rising, it's next to near impossible – not least when a spanner is thrown into the works like a blown boiler, for instance.

You cannot budget for any and all eventualities when you've no room to move beyond roof over head, basic bills and food on the table.

We're not seeing a rise in food banks because nobody using them can budget. The same goes for Save the Children having to provide help in the UK. UNISON is seeing an increasing number of members (that's working people) needing help with school uniforms and winter fuel grants, plus debt counselling. I interviewed one such counsellor earlier this year – this isn't people spending way over their 'budgets' – it's people getting into a mess because their wages are too low for a very basic standard of living.

That's the reality of life in the UK in 2013 – and a reality that individuals such as Ajw71 either do not realise exists or prefer to pretend does not exist.

And 'budgeting' is frankly just a way of palming the ultimate responsibility for that toxic mix of rising cost of living and falling incomes onto those who are most on the receiving end of it.

Food banks were there in the boom times under the last government. So were the homelees & children in poor families.

Perhaps ask yourself why wages are too low. What is too low? Wages are reflected by the supply of & demand for labour. We have huge over supply so wages are low. Why do we have a huge over supply of labour?

Can you provide some referenced statistics on how much incomes have fallen & cost of living risen? How hard is it to cut back on non necessities & luxuries?

Re: Bedroom Tax - A Solution ? : Mon Sep 16, 2013 12:28 am  

Ajw71 wrote:

:roll:

Well maybe they should learn to take some personal responsibility for themselves.

Budgeting is a skill and if they can't do it, they should learn.

I really struggle to believe that, for example, someone does not have the intelligence to walk round a supermarket & buy the incredibly cheap food that is on sale.

It's all about prioritising what you do with the money you receive. If people can't bring themselves to cut out habitual unnecessary spending, that's their problem.

I've been out of work, I've been skint, but I've never blamed anyone else for me deciding to spend money wisely.

There really is an 'it's always someone else's fault or responsibility to sort this out for me' culture in this country.

Re: Bedroom Tax - A Solution ? : Mon Sep 16, 2013 6:08 am  

BiffasBoys wrote:

How does introducing the spare room subsidy into social housing differ from introducing into the private rental sector?

It's all taxpayers money being spent & surely resources should be matched according to need?

We don't ask for anything from Government other than fairness when applying taxation derived monies as Benefits for those in need, its the government themselves who set the boundaries at which the Benefits kick in, so if a family require support to find suitable housing because their earnings fall beneath a government set line then we should have no problem in sanctioning that.

The problem is of course that there is a critical shortage of "social" housing, that is housing provided by local authorities and housing associations on a social provision basis rather than a "for profit" basis and if properties of a certain size are all that is available in any given area then its surely better to have them occupied than empty and/or using private landlords instead who will always adjust their rents to suit market conditions regardless of social need (a human characteristic and completely understandable) ?

The bedroom tax (and long live its name despite the attempts to PR-soften it) is simply a cynical sledgehammer to recoup monies which have in the past been necessarily paid out because of successive governments failure to recognise that social housing is not an anathema but is an absolute necessity in every society.

You can't punish a person for living in social housing that has one too many bedrooms since their children moved out, if that is the only home that the local authority or housing association can provide - which is exactly the situation at the moment, even those who are willing to downsize find that they cannot, those people should not be taxed for the situation they have been placed in.

Re: Bedroom Tax - A Solution ? : Mon Sep 16, 2013 8:28 am  

BiffasBoys wrote: ... surely resources should be matched according to need? The resources in this case are the dwellings with a smaller number of bedrooms. Those dwellings are, largely, already allocated. It's pointless telling people to move to a smaller dwelling when those smaller dwellings are already allocated. Hence people who, by definition, don't have the money in the first place, can't move, have their housing benefit reduced and many will end up in arrears, evicted, become homeless and then the LA will have to house them because they are homeless. Or, they have to move into the more expensive private sector. The whole idea doesn't actually take the facts into account ... it is ill-thought-through and vindictive. BiffasBoys wrote: What reports are these figures drawn from? On what basis is the forecast made? There's nothing in that piece to support the claims. Does that mean the claims are wrong? As people are re-housed in the private sector, it costs more. Even the DWP admit that... "The growth in the cost of Housing Benefit in the private rental sector has been partly driven by higher rents feeding through to higher Housing Benefit" https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... wr2011.pdf You say you've been skint ... but your idea of budgeting is simply to buy cheap food and cut out luxuries. Many are already buying cheap food (to the detriment of their health in many cases) but can't afford the rent, or the gas bill or clothes for growing kids ... etc etc. You mention the (rather obvious) over-supply of labour as the cause of joblessness. No flies on you Sherlock. As the government is concentrating on austerity rather than growth, the jobs will remain hard to find ... isn't that also obvious?

BiffasBoys wrote: ... surely resources should be matched according to need? The resources in this case are the dwellings with a smaller number of bedrooms. Those dwellings are, largely, already allocated. It's pointless telling people to move to a smaller dwelling when those smaller dwellings are already allocated. Hence people who, by definition, don't have the money in the first place, can't move, have their housing benefit reduced and many will end up in arrears, evicted, become homeless and then the LA will have to house them because they are homeless. Or, they have to move into the more expensive private sector. The whole idea doesn't actually take the facts into account ... it is ill-thought-through and vindictive. BiffasBoys wrote: What reports are these figures drawn from? On what basis is the forecast made? There's nothing in that piece to support the claims. Does that mean the claims are wrong? As people are re-housed in the private sector, it costs more. Even the DWP admit that... "The growth in the cost of Housing Benefit in the private rental sector has been partly driven by higher rents feeding through to higher Housing Benefit" https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... wr2011.pdf You say you've been skint ... but your idea of budgeting is simply to buy cheap food and cut out luxuries. Many are already buying cheap food (to the detriment of their health in many cases) but can't afford the rent, or the gas bill or clothes for growing kids ... etc etc. You mention the (rather obvious) over-supply of labour as the cause of joblessness. No flies on you Sherlock. As the government is concentrating on austerity rather than growth, the jobs will remain hard to find ... isn't that also obvious?

Re: Bedroom Tax - A Solution ? : Mon Sep 16, 2013 9:43 am  

JerryChicken wrote:

We don't ask for anything from Government other than fairness when applying taxation derived monies as Benefits for those in need, its the government themselves who set the boundaries at which the Benefits kick in, so if a family require support to find suitable housing because their earnings fall beneath a government set line then we should have no problem in sanctioning that.

Who is we?. Fairness is being applied. .It's local authorities who allocate social housing & housing benefit. The discussion isn't about whether or not housing benefit should be awarded.

The problem is of course that there is a critical shortage of "social" housing, that is housing provided by local authorities and housing associations on a social provision basis rather than a "for profit" basis and if properties of a certain size are all that is available in any given area then its surely better to have them occupied than empty and/or using private landlords instead who will always adjust their rents to suit market conditions regardless of social need (a human characteristic and completely understandable) ?

Is there are critical shortage of social housing? On what basis do you reach this conclusion? Clearly the social provision basis is failing because of the level of allocative inefficiency. If all the claims of people having their benefits reduced due to being in larger than required properties are to be believed. There are I'm sure huge numbers of people in social housing who can afford to live without the rent subsidy they receive. If these people were moved into the private sector, plenty of social housing stock would be freed up, thereby addressing the critical shortage you say exists. How many social housing units were built under the last Labour government?

The bedroom tax (and long live its name despite the attempts to PR-soften it) is simply a cynical sledgehammer to recoup monies which have in the past been necessarily paid out because of successive governments failure to recognise that social housing is not an anathema but is an absolute necessity in every society.

How is a reduction in unearned income a tax? It's a reduction in taxpayer funded benefits. So when the last Labour government introduced the spare room subsidy into the private sector it cynically hammered those it failed to provide social housing for? Or was it simply trying to control the benefits bill?

You can't punish a person for living in social housing that has one too many bedrooms since their children moved out,

How is asking someone to pay a more equitable amount for what they are being provided a punishment?/

if that is the only home that the local authority or housing association can provide

You seem to think it's an impossibility for these people to use private housing provision. A market where there is plenty of variety & choice.

- which is exactly the situation at the moment, even those who are willing to downsize find that they cannot, those people should not be taxed for the situation they have been placed in.

No one has to move. No one is being taxed. Fairness is applying the same rule to everyone, be they in social or private housing. That's exactly what is happening.