how to get rid of your savings so you can get council tax benifits

bobthedambuilder

Money_Saving_Dude wrote: »

Consider this. Build lots (*lots*) more houses on those green fields around our towns and cities. This achieves several things. First, it increases the housing stock. By the principles of supply and demand this will help to reduce house prices. Lower house prices will have a knock-on effect on rents. That will make BTL less attractive, and thus increase real home ownership.

VT82 wrote: »

Interesting idea - it would just need to be very well targeted. There was mass home building in Ireland before the credit crunch - but in the cold light of reality it was established that they were being built where there were no jobs and hence no one wanted to live in them. There are now whole swathes of estates where no one lives and you could pretty much buy one of the houses with your modest credit card limit. Ditto the ghost estates around Las Vegas.

You can't just say 'fill the houses with all the builders who will suddenly be in work' - that's like saying 'if you want to boost tax receipts, just employ more people in the public sector'.

Still not on thread, but an interesting diversion.

1. Green belts are there for a reason, and we would lose them at our peril.

2. We live in a capitalist society. Builders regulate the amount of new housing to safeguard their business (and to balance supply against availability of mortgages). Flooding the market and reducing prices is not in their interest, so they wouldn't do it. The State can't afford to do it.

3. As VT82 says, Ireland is a prime example of unconstrained development by foolhardy property developers ignoring the sensible business approach, which has nearly caused (and might yet do so) total collapse of the Irish economy.

4. Any significant reduction in property values will put many more people into negative equity, and IMO many more defaults. Result: toxic loans, banking crisis Number Two.

brasso

Money_Saving_Dude wrote: »

Sorry, but this statement is rubbish. If there are no jobs how you can come off benefit? If there are no jobs paying more than the minimum wage, again what is the incentive? There is lots that can be done, but politically it won't happen because of too many vested interests.

Consider this. Build lots (*lots*) more houses on those green fields around our towns and cities. This achieves several things. First, it increases the housing stock. By the principles of supply and demand this will help to reduce house prices. Lower house prices will have a knock-on effect on rents. That will make BTL less attractive, and thus increase real home ownership.

The net effect of all this is to provide more disposable income to flow into the wider economy. Of course the down side to this is that house prices will fall, thus upsetting those current home owners who (wrongly) believe they are rich because their house has a high *potential* selling price.

The building of new houses will create demand in the building industry, thus creating jobs and stimulating the wider economy. In the longer term there will be more jobs created. Note that this must happen across the country, so those areas -- such as the North of England -- that are currently struggling will have their economy rejuvenated.

Having too much money locked up in property is part of the problem in our economy. We need to free that capital. We need to generate the economy outside the SE. (LVT -- Land Value Tax -- is another very effective means to help with this, but again vested interests block its implementation.)

Solving the problem of people not working and not wanting to work will take years. After all it has taken 30 years to get here -- and we are all to blame for this, so we are *all* have a responsibility to find a solution.

So I say again, this is rubbish:

The better question is to ask what you are going to do to help these people? And 'I'm all right Jack' is NOT the answer.

These aren't realistic solutions.

I don't buy the "no jobs" argument, but most people are not sufficiently aware of how to get them, or educated/self-confident enough. There still seems to be a large majority of people who think the only jobs going are advertised in the local paper or in the JobCentre. With that mentality, it's no surprise people think there are no jobs available.

As for your housing panacea, you need to consider all sides of the argument -- and I see no awareness of the interests of people who might not be happy with continuing to pay a £200K mortgage on a £100K house.

Likewise, the build-on-green-spaces suggestion. A bit of trollery I suspect.

As for a drop in unemployment if we build more houses, I suspect that most of the labour will be Polish/Eastern European as has been the trend on new UK building projects over the past few years.

brasso

talexuser wrote: »

A majority. Half of MPs stood down at the last election because of the a) embarassment and b) the future change in rules of the gravy train.

As far as I'm aware, only a handful committed crimes. Most seemed to just follow the rules and conventions set out for them (e.g. the John Lewis list). As has been widely discussed, the laxity of the rules was largely regarded as a back-door salary increase because the electorate wouldn't stomach paying MPs a reasonable salary. In that sense, we are partly to blame.

talexuser

brasso wrote: »

just follow the rules and conventions set out for them

The rules were not set out for them, they invented the rules to suit themselves, and then tried every trick in the book to prevent the truth getting out, including wasting huge amounts of taxpayers money on legal bills trying to keep it all secret.

brasso

talexuser wrote: »

The rules were not set out for them, they invented the rules to suit themselves, and then tried every trick in the book to prevent the truth getting out, including wasting huge amounts of taxpayers money on legal bills trying to keep it all secret.

I would have done exactly the same. I know this because massaging expenses is endemic in every job I've ever done, whether private or public sector -- and especially in jobs where people feel chronically underpaid and undervalued. I'm thinking in particular of a Civil Service job I had when I lived in Manchester, years ago. Everyone in the office was delighted to have to go to meetings or training courses in London as we were entitled to the standard train fare and hotel room expenses, for which no receipt was required. We would go down by bus instead and pocket the difference. People with friends or relatives in London could stay with them and still be paid the standard hotel expenses.

So it would be hypocritical of me to criticise those MPs who followed the rules, but took advantage of the loopholes. (This Nelsonian eye doesn't extend to the plain criminality of claiming fantasy mortgage payments etc.) I also think it's very sad that many good MPs were wrongly blamed for the excesses of others.

I have to take your word for it that in their shoes you would have been outraged, and been the whistleblower.

In this respect at least, you're a better man than me.

newcastleneil

I bet she wishes she never asked the question after reading all these replies

Ha Ha

talexuser

brasso wrote: »

In this respect at least, you're a better man than me.

Maybe, but my and I assume your perks never amounted to tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money by outright lies about my main home etc etc. And this whole thread is about defrauding the taxpayer... exactly what MPs did.

margaretclare

brasso wrote: »

These aren't realistic solutions.

I don't buy the "no jobs" argument, but most people are not sufficiently aware of how to get them, or educated/self-confident enough. There still seems to be a large majority of people who think the only jobs going are advertised in the local paper or in the JobCentre. With that mentality, it's no surprise people think there are no jobs available.

As for your housing panacea, you need to consider all sides of the argument -- and I see no awareness of the interests of people who might not be happy with continuing to pay a £200K mortgage on a £100K house.

Likewise, the build-on-green-spaces suggestion. A bit of trollery I suspect.

As for a drop in unemployment if we build more houses, I suspect that most of the labour will be Polish/Eastern European as has been the trend on new UK building projects over the past few years.

I agree with all of this.

There are people who seriously do think that we have a lot of spare land in England and that it should be built on. Added to which, all local authorities have been *told* by central government that they *have to* build a certain number of houses in the next few years. This is happening everywhere. I'm almost glad I didn't get elected to the council when I stood as an English Democrats candidate 3 years ago. I could not bear having to make those kinds of decisions and I don't envy those who do. For example, our local council has decided, by majority decision, to allow an application to build 600 houses on a piece of agricultural land. This land has been described by old farm workers as 'so fertile, you could grow anything on it'. They didn't mean grow houses!! We do also need open spaces and we need to grow more food.

I listened to a BBC news broadcast recently which stated that unemployment had risen (they gave numbers and percentages) but also, that there were more people in work. Being the BBC, they didn't make the obvious connection between those 2 - apparently contradictory - statements!

About fiddling expenses, yes, this has gone on for decades if not longer. I remember this when I was a very junior civil servant way back in the 1950s. My OH relates how he went to Brighton to the TUC Conference in the mid-50s as a junior delegate. He was an apprentice then and made an impassioned speech about young national servicemen getting killed in foreign conflicts. He tells how he went to Brighton on the 'Brighton Belle' and stayed in the Grand Hotel, first time he'd ever experienced such luxury, whereas his fellow delegates stayed in cheap B&Bs and spent the rest of their expenses on beer.

However, I do feel very, very sorry for the young folks. The people who think there are 'no jobs available' will be the same type who formerly did the jobs on their doorstep, when there were jobs on your doorstep - the local pit, the bike factory, the mill, the steelworks. It does make me wonder how others are willing to travel thousands of miles and manage to find a job whereas those who believe jobs should be on their own doorstep are destined to be disappointed.

I did not vote for a lot of the things that have happened in recent years, many of the decisions that were made in high places are not endorsed by many of the people I'm in contact with.

alanwsg

Families hide their wealth to avoid care home costs.

From the BBC .....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17147047

margaretclare

alanwsg wrote: »

Families hide their wealth to avoid care home costs.

From the BBC .....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17147047

But this is not about care home costs. This present discussion is about claiming means-tested benefits i.e. council tax benefit specifically.

I have been 'gobsmacked' this morning - over on the 50+ savers board Newly Retired is asking about re-investing and is saying that one of the things being saved for is 'care costs, and a legacy for the children if any left'. This is absolutely the first time I've ever encountered such an idea - saving and investing against the possibility of care costs. The very antithesis of the present discussion.