Fantastic comment piece from the Times on the giveaway to mortgage holders

Really2

StevieJ wrote: »

Good fightback Carol

It's OK someone as proved her wrong.
Middle class women the strain on health care, shame on you Carol.:D

kennyboy66_2

StevieJ wrote: »

Equally a student from a public school is more likely to get into one of the top universites than a student from a poor backgroundwith equal grades.

I thought that Oxbridge got ticked off by the public schools for doing the opposite, I am not sure what happens now.

It just shows that Labour are not always the master of spin.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1544603/Public-schools-tighten-grip-on-Oxbridge.html

'Only' 48% of pupils at Oxford are from public or indepenent schools.

Research by The Independent shows that among the heads of 57 Oxford and Cambridge colleges recruiting undergraduates, 25 currently sit as governors of fee-paying schools or hold other roles that entail regular visits. Three more have relinquished similar posts in the past five years. (2000)

StevieJ

It is not just health, it is roads public sevices etc. I think it works on the basis of they that shout loudest :eek:

carolt

Really2 wrote: »

It's OK someone as proved her wrong.
Middle class women the strain on health care, shame on you Carol.:D

Who's proved me wrong?

Who are you (who has never met me and knows nothing about my origins) to 'claim' me as 'middle class'?

This obsession with 'me' is rather pointless. As you seem incapable of clicking on the link (or taking my advice and having a cup of tea), here is the direct quote from the excellent article I linked to:

"The peculiar case of middle-class benefits

So it's bad for mothers to stay at home on welfare but it's OK to get state aid for your big mortgage?

When is a scrounger not a scrounger? Answer: when his state benefits are helping to keep him in a nice house with a £400,000 mortgage. I have been trying to square the Government's tough new proposals on welfare reform, which will involve slashing housing benefit and forcing single mothers of one- year-old children out to work, with its announcement last week of a mortgage rescue plan to allow homebuyers to take a two-year holiday on their mortgage repayments if they suffer a loss of income.

But I am afraid I am not doing very well. Whichever way I look at it, it appears to me that a different standard is being applied to the middle classes than it is to the poor. Worse, I have a horrible feeling that this might be caused by a desire to seek middle-class votes.

It isn't, after all, just the Government that is minded to look more favourably on handouts for the middle classes than it is on those for the working class. Yesterday David Cameron declared that he will put an end to the “something for nothing culture” - a phenomenon which he linked with Karen Matthews and council house-dwellers like her. Yet last week the Tories didn't have a bad word to say about the Government's proposal to offer homebuyers something for nothing. Far from it, their main concern was that the mortgage rescue plan would not prove generous enough.

I am certainly not in favour of scrounging among the lower income groups, though I do wonder about the wisdom of forcing single mothers of one-year-olds out to work. It won't save money, as childcare will be subsidised: few single mums are likely to find a job that pays sufficiently to cover living costs as well as a nursery place. And in any case, is it really a good idea to send tired single mothers home from a hard day's shelf-stacking at the local supermarket to the sole care of their young children? Surely in this case a balance has to be struck between encouraging self-reliance and promoting good parenting.

As for the mortgage rescue plan, there is no balance to be struck: it is a thoroughly bad idea for every reason. Indeed, it is such a blatant bribe for middle England that I have a suspicion it can only have come from the mind of Lord Mandelson - whom older readers will remember once himself ended up in a spot of trouble with an over-large mortgage.

Firstly, there is the sheer cost of the scheme - which the Government estimates at £1 billion. Why, with a budget deficit heading towards £100 billion, is the Government handing out such a huge wad of money to what Margaret Beckett admits will only be a select 9,000 homeowners (compared with 75,000 expected to have their homes repossessed next year)? Underwriting 9,000 mortgages is hardly going to stave off recession; it will merely prolong economic misery through higher taxes.
I can see that in the case of a struggling homeowner in a modest, ex-local authority property it might make better sense for the state to keep them in the property - say, by a housing association buying the property and renting it back to them - than allowing them to be repossessed and having to rehouse them.

It makes no sense, on the other hand, to extend any kind of aid to a homeowner struggling with a £400,000 mortgage. Why shouldn't they downsize by buying or renting one of the many cheaper properties on the market? Trying to prop up house prices by letting over-stretched homeowners defer payments is cheating frustrated first-time buyers who sensibly refused to pay inflated prices. The Government now expects them to pay for others' irresponsibility twice over: once through their taxes and again by depriving them of the cheap properties that would flow on to the market if repossession is allowed to run its course.

Gordon Brown and Margaret Beckett both last week sought to paint struggling homeowners as mere victims of circumstance, who have come a cropper while trying to do the right thing. Moreover, they have tired to reassure taxpayers that the mortgage rescue plan will only be available for first homes, not second homes or buy-to-let properties. Yet many people have taken out large loans on their main homes because it is the easiest way to fund villas in Spain, buy-to-let portfolios, or through irresponsibly grand home improvements. Middle-class !!!!lessness derives from the same greed and impatience as does working-class !!!!lessness - it just comes in nicer, Farrow & Ball colours.

The Government is right that housing benefits need urgent reform - even though they were only “reformed” eight months ago. It is absurd - to quote one case uncovered last month in Edgware - that unemployed families are living in five-bedroom executive homes at public expense. In the housing benefit changes introduced last April the Government has encouraged financial irresponsibility by paying housing benefit to the claimant rather than the landlord - with the effect that reckless tenants can now spend the money on beer and fags instead.

But you don't right these wrongs by turning round and telling their executive neighbours: OK, why don't you have some state charity, too? Of course we should no longer tolerate dynasties of benefit claimants for whom scrounging on the state is a trade passed from father - or rather single mother - to son.

But if we are to end all that it is vital that the middle classes set an example by paying, and be seen to pay, their own way - even if that means the heartbreak of repossession."

SingleSue

catriona79 wrote: »

Just a quick message from a health professional in training, whose family consists of many health professionals:

The Black Report (1980) found that due to differences in spending those social groups and areas that need medical resources the most were least likely to receive them. Hart (1971) claims there is an inverse care law: ‘the availability of good medical care tends to vary inversely with the need of the population served’.

Social Class

·‘Postcode prescribing’ - certain treatments and drugs are often denied to working class areas.

·Cartwright and O’Brien (1976) have demonstrated that working class patients have shorter consultation times and have to wait longer to see a doctor than middle class patients.

Howlett & Ashley found that middle class patients were more likely to be admitted to university teaching hospitals than working class patients.


·The working class are less likely to use preventative health care such as antenatal clinics than the middle class.
·It has been found that when the working class do make use of health services they are less likely to make effective use of them. Boulton (1996) found working class patients were less likely to request further explanation or clarification about their conditions.

Reasons for lack of use/access

Cultural factors


·The working class are less knowledgeable about health & illness issues than the middle class.
·The working class are less likely to plan for future well being.
·Many working class people face communication difficulties with middle class doctors. Working class people are often socialised into a restricted language code and therefore lack the linguistic skills to communicate effectively with doctors who use an elaborated language code with specialist medical terminology.

Structural/material factors

·Difficulties gaining paid time off work.
·Face transport difficulties.
Unable to afford NHS charging services such as opticians and dentists.


I was taught (as was my husband too) that the middle classes (esp. women) make most use of the NHS.

Ah that settles it....I am middle class! :rotfl:

Or of course a question asking, clarification, medical knowing pain in the bottom working class person!:eek:

carolt

And I trust, Really2, that you, as a fervent supporter of the rights of the hard-done-by working classes against the greedy middle classes, as above, agree as I do with the main thrust of the article, (highlighted above for your assistance), that the mortgage cuts for the overstretched middle classes was a shocking waste of public money?

Really2

carolt wrote: »

Who's proved me wrong?

Who are you (who has never met me and knows nothing about my origins) to 'claim' me as 'middle class'?

This obsession with 'me' is rather pointless. As you seem incapable of clicking on the link (or taking my advice and having a cup of tea), here is the direct quote from the excellent article I linked to:

Well that joke went down well.:D

Really2

carolt wrote: »

And I trust, Really2, that you, as a fervent supporter of the rights of the hard-done-by working classes against the greedy middle classes, as above, agree as I do with the main thrust of the article, (highlighted above for your assistance), that the mortgage cuts for the overstretched middle classes was a shocking waste of public money?

Carol as much as they are for the middle class people who will get housing benefit in rented.

I am not one for trying to stick familys in tempory accomdation (also more expensive) rented or owner.

You just have a problem with home owners, middle class renters will get simlar help if not as spectacular to you.:rolleyes:

kennyboy66_2

carolt wrote: »

And I trust, Really2, that you, as a fervent supporter of the rights of the hard-done-by working classes against the greedy middle classes, as above, agree as I do with the main thrust of the article, (highlighted above for your assistance), that the mortgage cuts for the overstretched middle classes was a shocking waste of public money?

I think most people accept that its probably a waste of money (p*ssing in the wind might be a better description).

Clearly what upsets you most however is that it might just prop house prices up a bit.
You do seem to have a complete inability to accept that its clearly not the only area where middle class people benefit from the welfare state.

StevieJ

carolt wrote: »

And I trust, Really2, that you, as a fervent supporter of the rights of the hard-done-by working classes against the greedy middle classes, as above, agree as I do with the main thrust of the article, (highlighted above for your assistance), that the mortgage cuts for the overstretched middle classes was a shocking waste of public money?

And was pointed out by Kenny that the Arithmetic does not add up