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£26,000 Benefit Cap


Guest Barry Fish
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It's quite scary how close you can get to being homeless, and I bet once you're on the streets it's pretty near impossible to get yourself sorted again.

barry - if you're childless and fall on hard times, you could be in a real mess if you lose your home. At least if you have children the council are duty bound to help, I'm not sure how much help you'd get without children.

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Even the help to families is not wonderful. A couple of years after moving to Manchester we had to move because we were getting evicted because our landlord was upping the rent and also wanted to sell. We were in one of the cheapest houses we could find in the area but is was stil around £600 pm. We looked and looked but could not find anything we could afford. Once the landlord got the eviction notice that is when the council said they would step in, they would not help until that was done, so that was stressful as hell. Then they told us they would offer us one place and one place alone. They found a real shit hole for us miles from the area we are. The kids would have had to be split up into different schools, I have 5 kids, and the house was terrible. The first thing I did was check the mail when we viewed it and there were loads of different names, which means the house probably has had a number of tenants over a short spell. Well the inside was full of graffiti and then we heard the effing from the neighbour next door with his 2 pit bulls in the garden, fences kicked in blah blah blah. We had lived on enough estates so we knew the score.

So armed with this we went back to the estate office to give back the keys. I remeber acutely the look on the housing officers face when I said that I was not willing to pay £75 a week to live there. She sneered "What do you mean, you will be on Housing Benefit". I explained we were both students and worked part time so would be paying everything ourself. Anyway when I got home I rang our advisor to ask what we could do. She said the council is statute bound to only provide one offer if we are homeless. If we reject the offer we are making ourself homeless and all they have to do is provide temporary accommodation for 28 days and the case refered to Social Services. That would have meant my wife and kids in one hostel and me on the streets as they did not have space for us all.

Luckily the next day we were walking past an estate agents and we saw the house I am presently in. The rent was £85 a week and had just been put in that day. We went in and luckily had enough just for the deposit and gave them it there and then. We were unable to view it, and in fact the first time we got to see the inside was the day we moved in. Now we were very lucky in that we had a few hundred quid to pay for a deposit there and then, but people on the dole would not have that luxury.

Also there is the issue of the council declaring you are "Intentionally Homeless". If you end up getting kicked out for rent or mortgage the council will make an assessment to see if you could have afforded to keep up with payments. As it stands if they decide that you could afford to pay the rent you will be classed as "Intentionally Homeless" and there is no obligation to rehouse you. I have known people fit into this category with families because they did not make the shortfall on rent payments, with one it was £35 a week and the council said it was reasonable that they could afford that from their benefits.

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An example we need to stop... Its a fucking joke...

Did you see Newsnight last night? The guy who is reponsible for collecting student loan repayments has been granted a tax fiddle by ministers which allows him to avoid paying tax to an amount of more than mosat people earn. He's just one example of millions.

But let;s go after the people that are fucked over by the robbing c**ts in govt and their cronies, who puts the likes of him in that position in the first place, eh? That's where the real problems are. :rolleyes:

The standard tory plan of divide the poor and set them against each other is still working well with those unable to engage their brains I see.

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No Neil... Lets go after all of them....

Fair enough.

But if the aim is to reduce expenditure/increase income for the govt, then the sensible thing is to go for the biggest targets first - and those getting more than £26k a year in benefits are small fry (the saving projected by the DWP is just £127M) and that's more than negated by the extra costs that councils will bear anyway (according to that well-known leftist Eric Pickles).

It's just another example of us not being in it all together after all. The tories have put an extra £2Bn into chasing benefit fraud (estimated cost p.a. is £5Bn), but have put less than £1Bn into chasing tax fraud (estimated cost p.a. is £25-50Bn).

The tories say that economics is everything, and you've bought into that. I have no problem with that *IF* it's actually their motivation and they actually follow that motivation. The facts get to prove that it's not.

And so that makes you a sucker to their lies who has been turned against those that should be your allies in the fight for fairness that you want to believe is behind you supporting this benefit cap. ;)

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I saw that.. quite funny it being on newsnight as paxman does the same thing, what they didn't mention is that the student loans guy and paxman should both be nailed on ir35.. but for some reason the taxman only seems to chase it people

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I am not a sucker... If I ran the world we really world go after the ones at the top first...

and if we went after the ones at the top, the ones at the bottom would be able to earn more from a job than they'd get on benefits and then the problem of needing to cap benefits wouldn't exist.

You're being diverted into attacking what is unnecessary to attack if you were to attack the right target instead.

So you are a sucker. ;)

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Well if you want to continue to look down at people forever then that is your choice...

The need for a cap would not go away... You would still have people as described in the link who just looking for an excuse not to work... You would still want to cap benefits at the average working pay level.

OK, so you don't get economics. Why not just say so?

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You clearly don't get economics... Well outside of your own dogma fuelled version of it...

People choose not to work and take benefits instead because they get more on benefits. If the rich weren't stealing all the money then there wouldn't be the anomily where benefits pay more.

The reason why benefits pay more is because of high rents/housing costs, not because people on benefits are pocketing loads of spending money. And rents are high because the rich have stolen all the money to bring that about - there's too much competition and spare money amongst the rich which has pushed up house prices and so pushed up rents and so pushed up the costs of benefits.

If the rich are stopped from stealing all the money, they don't have the money to cause high rents and so high benefit payments - and the likes of you could have a better house than you do.

You're actually working against your own financial interests by believing that the problems that exist right now include high benefit payments.

Nothing changes unless we attack the cause, rather than the effect.

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This minority of people will be there no matter what system we operate.

In which case all economic theory is wrong. And in which case nothing will be changed by these changes, other than penalising those in genuine need. :rolleyes:

Everyone should be pulling together... No one should be getting a free ride...

there's HUGELY more getting a free ride at the top end of things than the bottom. :rolleyes:

There's just 67,000 who will be effected by this benefit cap. How many of those do you think are the sorts of leeches you're talking about? A very tiny proportion of them.

You have your agenda... but it really does stop you seeing the wood from the trees... I am in agreement with most of what you are saying. Something else you can't / won't see...

You're in agreement with every part except the part that will actually bring about the change you want to see in regard to benefits. :lol:

There's more to economics than the effect at the end of the chain. Making the poor poorer only succeeds in making the rich even richer which increases the anomily which has caused the whole situation in the first place. It's the most basic of proven economic theory.

You're working the proven-as-failed Thatcherite version of economics in believing that cracking down on the poor will change things, and that making the rich richer benefits the poor via a trickle-down effect. It's that very economic idea which has got us here in the first place. :rolleyes:

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Take the blinkers off Neil...

No matter what system we operate there will be people who will just try to get something for nothing... It s a fact... One you won't address or admit to...

We either sit back and allow it or we tackle it...

Yep, there will be - at both ends of the scale.

Your objection is some getting something for nothing - something you were celebrating for yourself not so long ago (tho it turned out that your celebration was premature :lol:).

So you are the very proof of what you say - but you don't wish to be the target of your own venom so instead you pick on the weakest and get to pick off just a handful of real beneficaries along the way.

The thing driving your view is your wish to maintain your priviledged position. It's got fuck all to do with economics, and you're even too stupid to realise (or a big enough c**t to only wish to exorcise power over others ;)) that your view works against your own economic interests.

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everyone's got different things they require as essential though.. the guy in the link is clearing the equivalent of 41k gross and his rent is just over 300 quid a month.. I could live well on that but then I don't smoke, try not to drink more than 3 or 4 pints a week now and I cook in bulk then freeze stuff, at the same time I've had friends on 100k plus who are skint a week before payday

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I can very much ensure you that I pay more tax into the system than I get back from the system... So this idea I get anything for nothing is laughable.

sorry, a bad choice of words by me.

Your objection is some people getting a benefit payment that they don't (in your view) deserve - something which you DO get, and those that have to pay it to you aren't laughing.

Nothing about tax systems is anything to do with whether individuals do or don't get back more than they pay in, but the fact that you mention that suggests to me that you believe you're entitled to something back because you do pay in. That's the only laughable thing I'm seeing here.

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the ones who have no fucking interest other than to screw the system and get themselves a lifestyle out of it (the minority).

This minority of people will be there no matter what system we operate. So this argument / issue supersedes discussions on how much the rich might be screwing everyone. Because you will still have some of the poor screwing over the poor as well. Or at least just taking the piss.

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