£26,000 Benefit Cap

[eFestivals]

I've a friend who does Leeds to London each day. That's another issue the rest of us have, if you work in a specialized area and loose your job, outside of London and the south east you have to be very lucky to find similar close by and either take on a horrific commute or move. His house is worth less than he bought it for and so does the former

Surely it would cost less for him to stay in London during the week than do that commute?

My missus travels 60 miles each way to work (for the next week, till she changes job), and it costs an absolute packet. The cost of travelling back and forwards from Leeds to London must cost much much more.

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

There's a bloke at our place who lives in France. Although he doesn't commute (fly) everyday, he is back and forth like a yo yo all the same. I've talked to him about it and he said there's a bunch of regulars on the plane all doing the same thing.

[russycarps]

I've commuted from Lincolnshire to London 4 days a week. I've also lived in London and travelled 40 minutes each way on the District line. I'd much rather do the longer commute - it meant I got to go home to the country every day...my quality of life was much higher and the cost of housing much much lower.

[lost]

Surely it would cost less for him to stay in London during the week than do that commute?

My missus travels 60 miles each way to work (for the next week, till she changes job), and it costs an absolute packet. The cost of travelling back and forwards from Leeds to London must cost much much more.

[russycarps]

Surely the kids would be in bed though ?

I have a friend who lives in Warrington and contracts down in London. Spends five days a week down there and comes back to see his wife and kids at the weekend. I couldn't do it. Well unless I REALLY had to. Its not worth the extra money he is pulling to miss out on your kids like that IMO.

[lost]

Surely the kids would be in bed though ?

I have a friend who lives in Warrington and contracts down in London. Spends five days a week down there and comes back to see his wife and kids at the weekend. I couldn't do it. Well unless I REALLY had to. Its not worth the extra money he is pulling to miss out on your kids like that IMO.

Edited May 2, 2012 by lost

[LondonTom]

In the city... Drinks after work are a daily activity (a lot of people in the City are away from Family etc)... Also the need to usually wine and dine with visitors and clients is a daily activity... I worked in the City for a while and it suits some but defo isn't for me. Rather clock off and spend time with the kids come home time.

[Ed209]

one of my best friends wife worked there... came home very often pissed and high on coke, sometimes didn't come home at all, it was horrible.

[russycarps]

This is hilarious.

The majority of people who work in The City aren't coke fiends or alcoholics you know.

Good grief

If you get a job there you don't get handed 10g of charlie along with your staff pass.

[Ed209]

This is hilarious.

The majority of people who work in The City aren't coke fiends or alcoholics you know.

Good grief

If you get a job there you don't get handed 10g of charlie along with your staff pass.

[LondonTom]

what's stopping you?

Edited May 2, 2012 by LondonTom

[russycarps]

oops...

Edited May 2, 2012 by russycarps

[abdoujaparov]

Was that really cost effective though? You must have been spending a fortune on train fares.

I could not cope with getting up at the crack of dawn and not getting home until 8 or 9pm at night. For me, that is no quality of life at all.

[Ed209]

the best ones are in shoreditch and called browns.

pound in the pot, £3.50 a pint of awful tetleys. Happy

days

edit: hey! you must have edited yours the second before I clicked quote. But I saw that, you dirty perv

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

I've been to such places twice here with both occasions being purely to get my hands on more alcohol. I'm really no saint but can't stand the places. I've drank in many a seedy venue but couldn't feel comfortable in a gentleman's club. On the first occasion I paid a lady £20 to get out of my face and leave me alone with my pint. On the second occasion I was with friends and couldn't deal with the place so walked out. There's just something creepy about it all. Then again I was brought up as a Roman Catholic so that may have influenced me somehow. Not enough to stay off xhamster mind!

[Rufus Gwertigan]

Just out of interest. Would someone on minimum wage be able to live in London in a 2 or 3 bedroom flat without claiming benefits? That would be 180 to 200 a week as a wage.

[thesecretingredientiscrime]

Just out of interest. Would someone on minimum wage be able to live in London in a 2 or 3 bedroom flat without claiming benefits? That would be 180 to 200 a week as a wage.

[kaosmark2]

In no way whatsoever. Maybe with added favours on top of the rent from them.

[Ed209]

A letter in the Guardian. Puts the cuts in some perspective

[lost]

A good start would be if Meacher cut the rents on his £4m property portfolio, maybe even could give a couple of hosues away to the homeless.

[lost]

http://www.spectator...ick-clegg.thtml

Interesting...

[eFestivals]

"Off the book" accounting is another annoying thing which doesn't get mentioned, if we include the banking bailout the graph in your link would put current net debt at £2311.6 billion or 147 per cent of GDP.

that's the very worst of it. A tory idea, taken up by Labour, slagged off by the tories at the time, and then done with renewed vigour by the tories (eg: the Dave Moron idea for raising private funds to pay for roads, another PFI project, bigger than anything we've done up til now! The UK living on tick it can't afford to pay).

It used to be the case that public borrowing was done to invest in infrastructure. Now, public borrowing is done to pay the weekly bills, while infrastructure projects are done via PFI which keeps that borrowing off the books.

Which of course means that the deficit is much much worse than any of the figures show, and PFI means that dealing with the public debts gets harder and harder into the future.

Not only that, but PFI means that public debt is costing waaaaay more than it needs to, because borrowing for PFI is hugely more expensive than 'normal' public sector borrowing - it's more of the same, the transfer of huge amounts of public money into the private sector.

Which of course gets to explain why the richest are getting richer, completely unaffected by the 'financial crisis'.

We're deeply in the shit, and getting ever deeper into the shit. And all of this comes back to ... yes, you've guessed it .... Thatcher and those who adhere to Thatcherite ideas.

Here's a thought: we pay interest on public borrowings because there's supposedly a risk of non-payment. It's time for the public to collect on what they've been paying for, while also defaulting on PFI deals.

Ultimately it's what's going to need to happen anyway. We can keep papering over the cracks and pretending that everything can be righted when it can't (which leads us onto these alternatives eventually, so it might as well be sooner), we can wipe the slate clean and start again, or we can come up with a sustainable economic system rather than one based on bullshit.

As the last isn't going to happen, we might as well do the second of those.

But instead we're still blindly following the economic ideas of the same fools who led us into this crisis but didn't see it coming. They didn't have a fucking clue then and they don't have a fucking clue now - apart from how to maintain their own position.

The economists who were ridiculed in the early 80s need to be rapidly rehabilitated - but they won't be. That would require 30+ years of politicians and experts to admit they got it spectacularly wrong.

And guess what? We're nearly at the point where capitalist economic analysis will have to admit that socialist economic systems are more productive, including that huge evil of the USSR. I wonder how those arch capitalists will swallow that bitter pill?

[Rufus Gwertigan]

So I am trying to help a friend find a new place to live. I have known him a few years from the alcohol unit we attended. He was married but lost that and his job through drink. He worked really hard to solve that problem and got himself a small 2 bedroom flat for him but also for his 2 kids to visit. He made sure he took it on when he was working so he could before it. It was unfurnished and a total shithole but cheap at 100 a week. A lot of hard work went into it to get it nice for his kids visiting. However his company cut hours a few months ago so he has had to start claiming housing benefit.

So we all think that they will only pay for a . Bedroom place for him (may of £115) so he should still have been safe. However he is only 33 so he is only entitled to the shared house rate which is 65 quid. Every one who is single and under 35 is only allowed the rate to be in a house share ar the Government have deemed that is what everyone else that is in this together game are in. The guy is going out of his head. He has even offered to get a 1 bed place ar he has all his belongings. So it looks like he will have to sell up then move in to a shared house only to start again in 2 years. The irony is benefits are saying that anything he sells for profit may be docked off his benefit. What a fucked up country.