£500 Ben cap, not enough to live in London

The_White_Horse

Silverbull wrote: »

£500 wk cap is not enough for most families to pay rent/council tax and have enough to live on in London.

Even if they could find somewhere to live in London for less than £300 wk rent/council tax they would prefer to live far away from London where less than half of their £500wk cap would go on rent and council tax.

then maybe they should (a) get a job or (b) get out of London.

Kenny4315

The_White_Horse wrote: »

then maybe they should (a) get a job or (b) get out of London.

Foreign workers are leaving there homes and coming to work in England for a better standard of living. I don't see why these benefit dodgers expect the state to pay for them to stay put when other nationals are moving all over the world.

Many people move for jobs, promotions, new company, etc why should these lot be paid to stand-still. I'd have the maximum threshold set far lower than £26k (regardless of location), half that is still too much.

Orpheo

Kenny4315 wrote: »

Maybe you should in fact get YOUR facts right. If I post an event on here it will have happened, so don't accuse me of being a liar. :mad:

Don't let it get to you. I agree with the principle of what you are trying to get across, it just appeared that you may have made a snap judgment about someone because of their appearance and I felt the need to question this. I didn't accuse you of being a liar, I just raised it as a possibility. Wrongly so.

lostinrates

arby wrote: »

i know quite a few people in london in professional roles who earn £26k gross (~20k net) who manage to support themselves and a family. it's a real struggle of course but they manage, so why should people who don't work have it better than this?

edit: just to clarify 'professional roles': I'm talking of 2 chemists, an engineer, 4 physicists and a biologist, all with kids in west london.

I think thats pretty impressive of them tbh. Its interesting thinking about this with the thread about scientists and pay viva started. I'm guessing that this is supported with other things....CB, tax credits? childcare vouchers? even so...

Silverbull

ukcarper wrote: »

Do not know that that is relevant.

A more relevant question would be how many households are currently getting more than say 250wk housing benefit and council tax benefit all together.

It doesnt matter if they are working, retired, sick or disabled or unemployed.

I think the number is very high, all these will almost certainly have to move to cheaper areas away from London.

So to ask "what percentage of London's 7.5m odd people are actually living purely on benefits?" is not relevant.

Another relevant question would be how many rental properties are there in London higher than 250wk? Out of these how many rent to people paying out of their own pocket?

ukcarper

Silverbull wrote: »

Another relevant question would be how many rental properties are there in London higher than 250wk? Out of these how many rent to people paying out of their own pocket?

It would be nice if someone could give us a breakdown.

PasturesNew

Maybe the question is: can we afford London? If most people in London are needing a top up, or full benefits, are the rest of the country actually subsidising them?

We should stop.

drc

PasturesNew wrote: »

Maybe the question is: can we afford London? If most people in London are needing a top up, or full benefits, are the rest of the country actually subsidising them?

We should stop.

Isn't it actually the other way around - i.e. London tax receipts paying to subsidise the north (especially the public sector in the north)?

bendix

I'm sure I read somewhere that it's likely to affect around 50,000 households in London, but i could have got that wrong.

Interesting article in the Sunday Times this weekend, focusing on an Afghan refugee and her kids who is receiving over £12000 per month in housing benefit alone.

Nice.

FTBFun

PasturesNew wrote: »

Maybe the question is: can we afford London? If most people in London are needing a top up, or full benefits, are the rest of the country actually subsidising them?

We should stop.

Vastly outweight by the very rich paying substantial amounts of taxes, I think you'll find.