Council tenants to get £1,000 a year DIY budget

JOHNNY_LOVES_JAZZ

ILW wrote: »

It is obviously not being enforced judging by the state of some places on council estates.

Totally agree but when you look at the state of some council estates would you want to be the one to enforce anything :rotfl:.

chewmylegoff

in theory i suppose this might save time and money in some circumstances, as long as noone abuses or cheats the system of course. stupidly naive of the tories to even get to the stage of discussing such a nuts idea in public. since the system would be entirely dependent upon trust, you would have thought that at least one tory MP could look at it and say "hang on a minute, i think i've heard of another expenses-related scheme which was entirely based on trust, and i seem to remember it went a bit wrong...oh yes, it was our expenses scheme which we all defrauded".

of course i'm not suggesting that social tenants would be as dishonest as MPs, just as dishonest as normal human beings, which would ensure that the scheme was abused to the hilt.

Jimmy_31

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Council tenants will soon be getting a £1,000 a year DIY budget.

The tenants will each have an account with a manager. They will be able to carry out neccesary repairs from this budget, and keep any money they save.

Questions were asked, and obviously council tenants thought this was a great idea, with one tenant already flicking through brochures for a new shower as the council wouldn't supply one.

The system will be based on receipts. So one council tenant asked what was to stop him going and buying a variety of goods from B&Q, sending the receipts in, and then placing the items on ebay.

Lots of "errr, erm, right, errm".

The average repair bills for all houses works out around £1,000. However, under this scheme, larger bills won't be included and paid for seperately. Therefore, hasn't this just put the budget for repairs up a fair bit?

I thought these sorts of ideas came from the labour camp. Unfortunately...this comes from Grant Shapps I believe.

Lets hope he doesnt have any more bright ideas

B_Blank

Grant shapps is the biigest idiot to be in government since gordon brown (ok not that long but brown was such an idiot).

Lets look at the worst possible cabinet ever:

PM - "Worst man in history" Balls
Chancellor - "End of boom and bust" Brown
Home sec - "Not a clue" Shapps
foreign Sec - "Stab my own brother in the back" Miliband

With smaller cabinet posts for Pickles, "Men are awful" Harrmann and the 4 labour MP's who berated the tories for not looking after the poor for years and are now in jail for stealing public money.

B_Blank

chucky wrote: »

i thought that we didn't have any money?

well that's what Osborne says anyway.

No there is plenty of money for those who are "vulnerable". But if you have tried hard in life and arent lazy and/or stupid then you are basically a cash machine for the government to tap into all the time.

Because they think as long as they protect "the poor" they will be hero's

chewmylegoff

B_Blank wrote: »

Grant shapps is the biigest idiot to be in government since gordon brown (ok not that long but brown was such an idiot).

Lets look at the worst possible cabinet ever:

PM - "Worst man in history" Balls
Chancellor - "End of boom and bust" Brown
Home sec - "Not a clue" Shapps
foreign Sec - "Stab my own brother in the back" Miliband

With smaller cabinet posts for Pickles, "Men are awful" Harrmann and the 4 labour MP's who berated the tories for not looking after the poor for years and are now in jail for stealing public money.

I can trump this.

I would clone Ed Balls and appoint him as PM and also to every post but one in the cabinet.

The one remaining post would be "Minister for white middle class men", which would obviously go to Harperson.

All of the backbenchers would be Jordan, Kerry Katona and/or Jodie Marsh.

B_Blank

chewmylegoff wrote: »

I can trump this.

I would clone Ed Balls and appoint him as PM and also to every post but one in the cabinet.

The one remaining post would be "Minister for white middle class men", which would obviously go to Harperson.

All of the backbenchers would be Jordan, Kerry Katona and/or Jodie Marsh.

Wow, cloned Ed Balls?!?!? That could be a horror movie.

PasturesNew

Outrageous. Doing some "back of fag packet" sums, if you assume that half the cost of a proper job is the materials and half is the little man, this would mean a simple council road of 40 houses could employ a full-time "little man who does" on £20k/year with £20k of materials.

Is there currently a maintenance person per 40-50 or so houses? No.

I suspect in the Council the costs come from the layers and layers of "other bods" that don't actually contribute. Like the person who wanted some lines painting outside his house for a disabled parking bay .... with all the decision-making that went on it ended up costing about £9,000 before the man could turn up with a pot of paint and paint the lines.... and as a result of that the council advised there'd be no more disabled bays that financial year as they'd run out of money.

Loughton_Monkey

I have a suspicion that some Council Houses will be haveing their house repairs carried out pretty promptly at the moment!

Slightly off-topic, but I noticed something......

Weather being good at the weekend, I decided to de-clutter my garage and filled my car with lots of old appliances, boxes, junk, etc. and took it to the local council tip. Drove round the back as usual, where all the skips are. Simply couldn't believe my eyes! About 8 guys all in their clean Orange Boiler Suits, every single one of them sweeping up, helping the visitors, squashing down the skips, generally tidying up....

On a normal day, all you see is a couple of them having a smoke, reading the Sun, sitting in the back of an old container, emerging only to go and shout at someone "Not in there, guv.... put that in the skip right up the end...."

And then today, I saw, for the first time ever, one of those little buggies with big rotating brushes on the front actually driving down our road, sweeping all the stones and crap from the gutters......

It's a clear sign, I think, that some of these council workers have started to hear the 'crinkle' of P45's being prepared, and this is their way of saying "Not me, guv...."

SingleSue

B_Blank wrote: »

No there is plenty of money for those who are "vulnerable". But if you have tried hard in life and arent lazy and/or stupid then you are basically a cash machine for the government to tap into all the time.

Because they think as long as they protect "the poor" they will be hero's

There are those who have tried hard in life and who are not stupid or lazy but also find themselves in social housing on benefits.