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.

My best mate is a former bank manager, now working in business finance. She can't budget to save her life but she has personal responsibility and has more skills than I can shake a stick at. She's been left home over 20 years and if she hasn't mastered the skill now she never will. My point is some people either never want to learn or try and learn and still find they're crap at it.

The other point that Ajw71 conveniently 'forgets' is that for many people on low and very low incomes it's nearly impossible to budget to start with, given both low incomes and the cost of living, and is rendered even more so by anything happening like, say, the boiler going.

But hey, it's a useful lifeskill that [ithey[/i should learn – [ithey[/i being an homogenised group that someone like Ajw71 feels able to look down on without actually bothering to engage his brain cell.

Nearly impossible? - more sensationalist rubbish. Any excuse just so benefit claimants cannot take some personal responsibility! Don't you want them to make a better life for themselves, don't you want them to improve their life chances?




"many claimants cannot budget" - Cod'ed.

Negative stereotyping hey.

Take yer blue spex off!! You're saying Coddys stereo typing but aren't you doing the same assuming its only benefit claimants who can't budget

I'm not one to defend Ajw71 but I can't see where he's said that.

Simple budgeting should be part of an all round education and is something that administrations of both hues have neglected.

You're too dumb to argue with anymore

Unless I'm reading it wrong and he hasn't made himself clear, he is suggesting that coddy is making excuses for the lower paid and it was Ajw who used the term benefit claimants (as above) and using the term[u them[/u (benefit claimants again?)

What on earth are you on about?!

If you are going to try and twist my words at least make a half decent attempt at it.

We shouldn't necessarily pick on the likes of Ajw71 for I have noticed these past couple of years that those of the 20 to 35 (ish) generation are broadly more supportive of the benefits cuts, I don't know if this will convert to Tory votes in 2015 but I have a few loose theories for the apparent lack of sympathy and empathy for the unemployed, disabled and benefit dependent low waged...

1. In that age group there is an opposition to the principle of paying tax, its of no apparent benefit to a young fit, healthy employee, eventual retirement is not on the agenda at all, the NHS is somewhere you go to when you've drunk too much on a Saturday night, your doctor is somewhere you go for birth control, there is no thought to what else goes into running a National Health Service, there is no knowledge of how things used to be for their grandparents before the NHS.

2. They have already been told that the NIS that is deducted at source every week/month is not for their benefit, its not for their pension and they won't have a pension when they retire, its to pay for their elder generation's pension and for a health service that sick, old people use - I'd feel resentful for that too.

3. Cynicism only comes with age and life experience, possibly they just don't understand that a member of government could actually be in the job for their own ideology and own financial benefit, and that when a member of government says that something is so and mentions in passing some random statistics, then maybe they just don't immediately think "prove it" but in stead think that it must be so and how lucky are we that they are doing something about it.

4. That undeveloped cynicism doesn't help them question the printed media either, there is still a big belief in the population at large that if a newspaper prints something then it must be true and that all newspapers are totally independent of government interference or spoon-feeding.

5. They have not yet lived through enough governments to understand that party politics are a destructive and wasteful past-time, that supporting a party regardless of its philosophy is not what government should be about and that the strong should, even in some small way, protect the weak in any civilisation - that it is as wrong to target the weak and poor as "shirkers" and in some way as leaches of your personal taxation as it would be to say the same thing about (for instance) black people (and that used to happen and was used by political parties too).


In short, when young you believe that you are far more invincible than at any other time of your life, you don't believe that your parents were ever young or that they have ever held any other viewpoint than the one they have now, if they tell you that they now have the experience to judge better you dismiss that as condescending - next time you have an opportunity to speak to a 20 or 30-something, just ask them what they think of the government benefit reforms, or of immigration, or the EU and see if you get a view more aligned with Cameron than not.

The only one twisting something is the Tories, the knife into the backs of low paid workers and benefit claimants.

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.

Of course it should but as you say, it has been ignored for decades.

How would you go about teaching budgeting to a recently-released smackhead?

We've been teaching maths and English for centuries, there is still a sizeable number of the population who struggle with either or both