Learn to quote FFS.

Please learn to use the quote function. It isn't difficult, but not using it correctly makes coherent discussion more difficult.

Therefore, at present, I'll respond only to your final point:



I look forward to your comments on the subsidies that the taxpayer makes to the profits of large companies by way of in-work benefits to employees. They don't "need" them. Then again, most companies who get tax breaks don't "need" them either – for fracking, for instance.

I'll pick this post of yours to quote from because if everyone continued quoting as you do then it would only be a matter of minutes before one reply filled the whole page, in any case you're only repeating yourself in each one...

Clearly there is a shortage of suitable two or one bedroom council housing because THAT is the simplest solution, if there were hundreds of smaller units available within each council area then there would be no problem for the council would simply have to offer the smaller dwelling or the reduction in benefit and the choice would be the tenants own - and no sympathy would given if they chose to stay in the larger house.

Clearly though that is not the issue and there have been plenty of reports in the press from various councils and housing associations to suggest that the availability of smaller dwellings is miniscule compared to the numbers of tenants who require them after applying the bedroom tax - this even led to Leeds City Council reclassifying hundreds of their own houses as two bed instead of three where the third bedroom was the typical "box room", a nett loss to the council but a problem solved in the long run for them with no legal costs or debt collection involved - ultimately it angered the local Tory councillors as its not quite how they envisaged the solution to work, I believe it was one of these councillors that Mintball emailed to ask if, given his quoted comment in the press, he was aware that most housing benefit recipients were IN work, he skulked off at that point and was clearly annoyed that anyone should doubt his word or question his knowledge.

Its not an under investment issue from LA's and HA's over the past couple of decades - its non-investment in social housing from all shades of government, but its only this current coalition that has highlighted this as a claw-back exercise that will do them no damage politically,

Thanks for that insightful contribution. Must have taken you a while to come up with it.

A legacy of liberalisation and under regulation of financial markets across the world.


Who says we can't afford the spending? Borrowing rates are at about the lowest rate for decades.


A 25% reduction in the deficit. Attained by making thousands of police, armed forces personnel, doctors & nurses, admin staff, civil servants etc redundant or not hiring necessary replacements from natural wastage. Leading to reductions in capability of the police, fire service & armed forces. The cancellation/non procurement of armed forces equipment for the future. And of course the understaffing of hospitals, especially A&E departments.


Since 2008:
UK GDP -13%
US GDP +12%

By a fiscal stimulus


Via a fiscal stimulus to temporarily fill the demand gap.

My response to you is very simple to follow. Your points are one shade, mine are another. I'll take it that you haven't actually got any responses once your over emotive, cliché ridden musings are challenged?

Give me an example of an in work benefit that isn't needed & requires the government to give companies money.

be careful to note the difference between not taking money & giving it.

What tax breaks do fracking companies get? How does it compare to the feed in tariffs Labour introduced?

Not me.


What's your point here and why is it relevant?



Not a big "If" at all.
Nowadays, the greatest problem with housing is that supply is falling short of demand, leading to higher purchase prices and higher rents ... social housing eases this, but only to the extent to which it is allowed.
Also, since Thatcher swept away many tenancy rights in the private sector, social housing is more secure.
And now you want to boot out those who pay their rent themselves.



And how do you propose to rent them out?
If the owners of the empty private ones wanted to rent them out, wouldn't most of them be rented-out already?



It's the DWP who says it costs more in benefits when the recipients are in the private sector, see earlier post and link.
Adding profit onto the costs must increase the rent, it's very simple.

That and the fact that not all private landlords accept DWP Benefits claimants, in or especially out of work, and especially not now that the Housing Benefit payments are rolled into Universal Benefits and paid directly to the claimant - its only served to make the matter worse (not thought through policy rears its head again).

At least it helped to make the thread readable.

Your modus operandi is to question everything and answer nothing.
Must have taken you a while to come up with that.

Do you understand what a subsidy is?

Where is supply falling short of demand? Higher purchase prices & rents? Relative to when? I think you'll find the house price boom is a thing of the past.

Took a while, but she's finally made it into the discourse.

Boot them out? Why should there be social housing apart from the most needy in society? Why should anyone who can afford not to be subsidised by the state be so?

The benefits paid out [imay[/i be higher, but there's no capital outlay & ongoing capital costs. You seem to be missing this point.

Still no one has said why money circulating between government departments is better than it stimulating the economy. e.g people need homes to rent/buy, developers will build them.

No answer to the question then?

Do you, it appears not.

This has always been the case, nothing new here.

Of course there were absolutely no instances of the system being screwed by thousands of bogus hosuing benefit claims from unscrupulous landlords were there?

Why is paying benefit to the claimant an ill thought out policy? Are you saying that because someone is in receipt of benefit, they are completely incapable of knowing they have to pay their rent?

Can benefit claimants not be trusted?

How many of you that are against the spare room subsidy being applied to social housing think it should be repealed in regard to private rented housing? Give reasons.

So are you in agreement that the best administrators of social housing are local authorities and housing associations who can also offer unbiased and free advice via their housing offices to claimants regarding the claiming and payment of such benefits as may be available ?

The case is slightly different with regard to private landlords but the overall ruling can still be penury - the private market that caters for benefits claimants (and its by no means the whole of the sector that do) is quicker to adapt to the requirements of its clients, so in a district that requires accommodation for couples, or students or single people you will within a short space of time find dwellings split to offer just that - or alternatively if 3 or more beds are required, no private landlord wants their property standing empty and they tend to be very savvy about what is currently letting well in their district.

Local Authorities have been stymied for decades and their inability to invest in their own housing stock means that they simply cannot adapt to trending housing requirements - back int he 70s when I was involved in construction we built lots of council properties (and I mean thousands) and the majority of those were "family" homes, two and a half or three bed properties - its those very properties that are causing the problems now as those families have either dispersed leaving the parents, or the new incoming tenants are singles or couples.

If the country needs full employment (and its generally been seen as a target to achieve) and that full employment is created on the alter of NMW and non-committal contracts, then housing benefit will be required and housing to match the claimants needs will be required - you can't screw those people twice.

Yes, that old chestnut.
Do you dispute it?
If so, give reasons.






That's the level of borrowing not the yield rate.
Jeez.


The US has had rising GDP growth for the last fourteen successive quarters, all of which were greater increases in growth than ANY that the UK has had since the recession.
e.g. Obama lent huge amounts to the US car industry, saving hundreds of thousands of jobs, the industry has restructured and has now almost completely paid back those loans.
It is not a case of kicking the debt down the road ... the greater the number of people that are employed, the greater the tax take (obviously!) to pay down debt ... and the greater the GDP (obviously!).


Who mentioned the boom?
Take a look at the house-price-to-earnings ratio which currently stands at about 5.5 ... that is to say that the average house costs around 5.5. times the average salary.
Averaged-out since 1981 the ratio has been around 4.0
Just before the banking crisis it was about 6.5 times.
It's come down since to 5.5 but is still high.
Considering that for decades up to the late 1980's the level was about 3.0, it is still nearly twice as high.
Greater supply would bring the price down in terms of multiples of annual earnings (obviously!).


Untrue, look at the stats, Darling's stimulus brought GDP from minus 6.8 to plus 0.5 and still rising ... until the election, two quarters later it went down again.
This government cancelled the greater part of all capital investment in infrastructure etc, immediately depressing GDP.
Cuts were needed, Labour said they'd halve the deficit in one parliament ... Tories said they'd eliminate it entirely in one parliament but every year over the last four years, that estimate has moved by another year ... it's still five years away, so they say, so they have failed miserably in their own past estimation.


Have you not read my reply?
Who said they can afford it? Look at the earnings to price ratio.


No, it is you who is missing the point that capital outlay and ongoing capital costs don't vanish just because they are in the private sector, they are recouped via rents, hence the higher benefits required to pay for them.
Christ, this is like pulling teeth.

Do you think the Labour government's actions caused Lehmann Brothers to fail? If not then maybe that "old chestnut" is true? Labour are at fault for not regulating our economy, so are multiple, successive governments in multiple countries.


That has nothing to do with affordability of borrowing.
You need to look at the bond yield rates and maturation.

They show that in 2012 UK bond yields hit a record low of 1.5%. A low not seen in the 300+ year history of the BoE. Borrowing has literally never been so cheap. Taking inflation into account lenders were effectively paying HMG to borrow money from them. Bizarre then that dear old Osborne was so intent on lowering borrowing rather than taking advantage of that record low.
The rate has edged up slightly since then, but still lower than at any time (excluding the record low) in the last half century.


Public Sector employment fell by 300,000 from 2010 to 2012, or 5% of the workforce.
To reach 1.2m by 2018.

6,800 fewer police. Is that accurately reflecting what's needed? I mean there's just nothing for all these police to do!


The US model worked. Higher growth, lower unemployment. Not all hunky-dory but significantly better than the Tory way. The US spent big at the right time and can now reduce their spending because they filled at least some of the demand gap when it was most needed. Kept people in jobs, improved infrastructure, saved industries. So those people and industries can now spend and let the private sector recover.


The cut in VAT did increase growth, led unemployment to fall and helped the deficit come in lower than projected by £21bn.
Sadly, the current government went and increased this regressive tax.
However the VAT cut should have been accompanied by a large investment in youth training and infrastructure.

I'll take it you're not as new here as you pretend. And I suggest, right now, that if you wish to continue in this place, you don't launch a new ID one day and try to throw your weight around instantly.

I hope that's quite clear.

Local authorities are clearly not good administrators of housing. The allocative inefficiency highlighted is proof of this.

Local authorities are not unbiased. Nor are housing associations.

So because you have been torn apart in a discussion, you have to resort to making false accusations and thinly veiled threats. How utterly juvenile.

There is no difference.

You say on one hand that the private sector is quicker to react to demand. The spare room subsidy had no bearing on this ability. On the other hand you don't want this change that will force local authorities to react to that demand.

There is no problem with those houses. The demand is there for them. The problem is that fixed resources have not been efficiently allocated. Why should a two/three bedroomed house be provided to a couple who no longer have children living at home?

The housing benefit rules prevent this in the private sector, why not in social housing? If there isn't capacity in the social sector, the private sector can take up the slack.