As has been pointed out to you many times before, the problem with polls is twofold, firstly in the aim and intention of the poll (in case you didn't realise it almost every poll has a pre-determined intention), and secondly in its interpretation and reporting.

If you ask the question "Do you support measures to stop benefits claimants from claiming for things they ar enot entitled to" then you will get a big majority of the population to agree with your poll, if you then publish your findings under the headline "Big majority of the population support welfare cuts" then most of the population will believe that it must be true, without further investigation.

Its a simple enough example, but with this term of government we've seen that they are no longer trying to hide or deflect blame from their decisions, they are now brazen with it and my first and instant reaction to any poll is now "Show me the actual poll and the results and then let me see the reporting before I decide for myself".

Ultimately the only poll that will count will be in 2015, or if Cameron gets challenged by his own party.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23122369 Well done, IDS, you've managed to create homes standing empty whilst still having a shortage of homes. That takes a special sort of talent for vindictiveness.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23122369 Well done, IDS, you've managed to create homes standing empty whilst still having a shortage of homes. That takes a special sort of talent for vindictiveness.

The word "vindictive" is particularly applicable to this specific piece of legislation as its based on nothing less than an opportunity to cut costs from a welfare budget for no other reason than a strange preoccupation with the sleeping arrangements of those in social housing and on benefits.

You can just tell even without asking the question that this cruel law came straight from a suggestions box during the first phase of government when heads of departments were told to go away and think up ANY reason to cut their budgets ANYHOW - this was probably put in the suggestion box for a laugh and its author probably never believed in a million years that it would be enacted but bizarrely we now find its upon us and causing absolute havoc amongst a group of people who are least able to cope - vindictive indeed.

What with soaring rent arrears, the cost of chasing those arrears, houses now standing empty, more being spent on B & B because the empty houses are "too big", councils and housing associations having to find staff to deal with the bedroom tax ... the whole bloody fiasco must be costing more than it saves ... but hey, it's not coming out of IDS's budget ... so it must be a success. www.insidehousing.co.uk/tenancie ... 47.article ... and this goon thinks that it's necessary in order to keep interest rates low. You couldn't make it up !

What with soaring rent arrears, the cost of chasing those arrears, houses now standing empty, more being spent on B & B because the empty houses are "too big", councils and housing associations having to find staff to deal with the bedroom tax ... the whole bloody fiasco must be costing more than it saves ... but hey, it's not coming out of IDS's budget ... so it must be a success. www.insidehousing.co.uk/tenancie ... 47.article ... and this goon thinks that it's necessary in order to keep interest rates low. You couldn't make it up !

Quote ="El Barbudo"What with soaring rent arrears, the cost of chasing those arrears, houses now standing empty, more being spent on B & B because the empty houses are "too big", councils and housing associations having to find staff to deal with the bedroom tax ... the whole bloody fiasco must be costing more than it saves ... but hey, it's not coming out of IDS's budget ... so it must be a success. www.insidehousing.co.uk/tenancie ... 47.article ... and this goon thinks that it's necessary in order to keep interest rates low. You couldn't make it up !'" It's okay – IDS is a Christian. So it must be good.

Quote ="El Barbudo"What with soaring rent arrears, the cost of chasing those arrears, houses now standing empty, more being spent on B & B because the empty houses are "too big", councils and housing associations having to find staff to deal with the bedroom tax ... the whole bloody fiasco must be costing more than it saves ... but hey, it's not coming out of IDS's budget ... so it must be a success. www.insidehousing.co.uk/tenancie ... 47.article ... and this goon thinks that it's necessary in order to keep interest rates low. You couldn't make it up !'" It's okay – IDS is a Christian. So it must be good.

TORIES - Putting the 'N' in CUTS

"Going to church makes you as much a Christian as standing in a garage makes you a mechanic..."

I do hope our resident tory nut-jobs take the opportunity to watch last night's Newsnight on iPlayer.

Reporting from Coventry, it presents real-world experiences, not the bull[is[/ihit rhetoric from IDS and his cronies, especially the crap coming from the mouth of the heartless harpy Harriet Baldwin MP - she obviously drew the DWP short straw

[url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/revealed-big-lie-behind-the-bedroom-tax-as-families-trapped-with-nowhere-to-move-so-cannot-avoid-new-penalty-for-having-spare-room-8745597.htmlThe big lie of the bedroom tax[/url

Some councils have only sufficient 1 or 2 bed properties to re-home 3% of those hit by the bedroom tax

There are some excellent quotes in that article, but the most pertinent one is this ...

[iA spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: “This ignores the fact that people may move to housing in the private sector and not all tenants will have to downsize because they could make up any shortfall through getting a job or increasing their working hours. These reforms will save the taxpayer £1bn over the next two years and help to ensure a better use of our housing stock when in England alone there are nearly two million households on the social housing waiting list, and over a quarter of a million tenants are living in overcrowded homes.”[/i


And there you have it, the basis of this whole tax on the poor, the unemployed and the under-employed, if you don't like it, if you can't afford to pay the tax, then either get a job, work more hours or rent from a private landlord instead of a council or housing association.

Even Thatcher wasn't this cruel.

The workhouse is the next logical step, in fact a DWP commissioned report even suggests such a solution for those who, through disability (mental or physical) may struggle to find suitable employment that would allow them to live independently. Board & lodgings in return for labour.

Arbeit macht frei

Nah, all these empty shops could be houses ... and never mind local preferences. www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... t-planning

Nah, all these empty shops could be houses ... and never mind local preferences. www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... t-planning

Are MPs still getting taxpayer assistance to buy secnd homes and homes that are not kept in public ownership? Are they allowed more than one bedroom flats?

Wigan and Leigh Housing are having to consider demolishing some 2/3 bedroom properties as people don't want them as the potential new tennants would be hit by the bedroom tax. Currently 14% of people hit by the bedroom tax are in rent arrears compared to 2% of those who are not affected by this ludicrous piece of legislation.

If arrears seem bad now, just wait until Universal Benefit (including Housing Benefits) is rolled out. Instead of housing benefit beind paid diretly to the landlord, it will be paid to the claimant on a monthly (in arrears) basis. Quite apart from landlords demanding that rents be paid in advance, what does the DWP seriously think will happen when claimants have gone a whole month without money and then suddenly find a large amount of moolah has appeared in their account at the end of the month? Rolling all benefits into a single payment may be a good way to encourage claimants to budget responsibly but there was a simple reason that HB was paid directly to the landlord - many claimants are simply incapable fo budgeting. The plan is typical of something dreamed up by a policy wonk or civil servant who has no experience in the area.

Evictions will increase rapidly, ever more landlords will refuse to accept "DSS" tenants, we'll be back to the cardboard cities of the 1980s. Government are well aware of the consequences, it beggars belief that they will simply plough ahead, ignoring all the warnings

[urlhttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/12/universal-credit-less-pay[/url

Sounds like a fairly typical civil service dogs dinner of an idea, will they plough ahead with it - of course they will, look at who is in charge of the project, he'll simply "believe" the facts up for a compliant press to report on.

The tax credit system that Gordon Brown dreamed up was a complicated system, so complicated that its staff did not understand how it worked or who it applied to, or even how much to pay you - I have direct experience of this, have been given wrong advice in the past, was overpaid to the tune of several thousand pounds by virtue of a civil servant ticking one box incorrectly during a phone interview and am now having to pay back that money - I involved my MP and he got the head of the Tax Credits office in Preston to correspond with me but the result was unequivocal - its up to you to confirm that all the details are correct, in other words its up to you to know the forms and systems better than the people who work there and its up to you to correct their errors and omissions.

I'm only glad that that was my one and only time for claiming anything from the benefits system, my heart bleeds for anyone who has to do it on a permanent basis.

I have just read that link.
Once again, we see that what IDS says is the opposite of the truth.
The simple truth is that he is cutting benefits for people whether out of work or in work.
He can dress it up as "incentivising people into work" all he likes but the fact remains, he's lying.

When is some hack going to have the balls to ask him the obvious bleedin' question: 'what work?'? And then go further and point out to him not only the actual unemployed figure, but the increasing public knowledge of underemployment, plus the paucity of actual jobs being advertised.

I have recently been involved in a social housing project where part way through the build, what were to be 4 and 5 bedroom houses were reduced to 3 and 4 bedroom houses by demolishing a wall because of the bedroom tax which is causing the housing association in question real problems. The cost implication of demolishing the walls will cost more than absorbing the tax for probably 10 years. The reason the housing association instructed us to do the extra work is because the work is funded by the government through grants, etc. There is now a family of 9 living in a 4 bedroom house to avoid the tax.

The government really showed those work-shy scroungers!

Why don't the f***ing useless Labour Party and its even more f***ing useless leader explain that then? Or are they in it together too?

As the Times has reprted, successive governments have been bailed out by the supermarket and retail industry employing people especially those with few qualifications who prevuiously went into manufacturing. The problem is technology is now atarting to massively reduce jobs in that sector (saelf-checkouts, online, etc) which currently employs 3 million people (increasingly on a part-time basis). The future does not look good.

I have just read it as well and what struck me was this:

'[iThis reversal is a direct result of benefit cuts, not counted into early universal credit plans. Instead, ministers continue to make claims they must surely know to be false. Here's Lord Freud again: "As people move into work and work more hours, they will know that universal credit will be on their side and will mean they are better off from working. This is because universal credit will be withdrawn at a consistent and predictable rate as their earnings increase." Freud and Iain Duncan Smith know this is not true – [ubut they have devised a remedy[/u. Is it to restore the cuts causing this, or to soften the taper so universal credit is withdrawn more slowly? No, there are no new carrots, only their new stick. For the first time people in part-time work [uwill be sanctioned with benefit stoppages if they don't prove they are looking for more hours[/u: "in-work conditionality" is the phrase. Many part-timers desperately want more work but can't find it. Couples who couldn't find 24 hours of work last year had their benefits cut by a huge £4,000, leaving people frantic for extra work. The hidden under-employed are now to be punished as skivers.[/i'

So yes they can claim the more hours they work the better off they are but only because benefits are stopped not because work has suddenly started paying! You can bet your life that won't stop them making the claim as technically it's correct.

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.

And that is the simple solution that all heartless tories will suggest

Hardly heartless is it asking people to learn a new skill? A skill which will benefit that person for the rest of their lives.