'supporting each other through really tough times'

Nargleblast

Re the benefits cap news item....it's a shame the BBC showed a lady worrying about her cut in benefits and wearing several gold rings, a gold bracelet and a gold necklace all at once! I am not saying people on benefits should not own jewellery, just that she seemed to be wearing a lot more than most people, and I have to say my first thought on seeing that news item was "why doesn't she sell some of that gold?" The cynic in me says that the BBC deliberately chose to zoom in on the jewellery for its own purposes....

monnagran

Kidcat: I had to smile when I heard about the students being sent off for teaching practice after 4 weeks. They should be so lucky! We were sent out after only 2 weeks. Of course this was in the Dark Ages (1957) because our college reckoned that teachers were born not made. My room-mate was advised that she would be more suitable to some other career and she went off quite shattered. I kept in touch with her for a time and she admitted that the college were quite right, she had only gone into teaching due to parental pressure. She then had a blissfully happy career as a librarian. I'm not so sure that today Uni's have that much room for considerations like that.
As to the bike shed and wardrobe - well, it's a power game, isn't it? Well done for not playing the game and getting the wherewithal to finish the wardrobe. Pity you can't so the same with the bike shed.

Re: the lady who cannot manage on £500 a week. Wait till she's a pensioner and has that to manage on that a MONTH. I have a DIL, (married to the son I am distancing myself from) who doesn't see why she should ever work, and while she could manage comfortably on benefits they are always in debt and always pleading poverty. My other DS works like a navvy and his OH, while she wants to be a SAH mum until the little one is going to school, plays her part by being a really thrifty manager and great support to him. I know who is going to be disappointed when they get to read my Will!

I've started sorting out and re-filing all my papers. I'm sitting here surrounded by drifts of paper all over the floor and on every horizontal surface. We go on holiday in 3 weeks and I can't see myself being finished by then. Especially if I spend much more time on here!

x

Byatt

Just my two pennorth worth, and not knowing the lady's situation, the benefits that are included in the cap are housing benefits too, and I imagine rents in London are very high (I'm sure GQ could clarify). As I have said before private rents have always had the bedroom tax, and now CT benefit is also reduced so you pay 50% instead of 25% if single living alone.

Private renting is very high and I have a snowball's chance in hell of getting social housing which is heavily subsidised.

I do accept there are those that know how to work the system, my ex inlaws are very good at it. But as someone said on the news, more affordable housing is needed, and when the govt worked out what someone on benefits should get compared to someone working, they didn't include the other working benefits in the equation. (WTC etc)...

I am working but my income from the self employment is minimal, but I do claim WTC's as a result. My rent is over half my income, and I get a small amount of HB. If I was in social housing I would be better off even if I didn't get HB.

Skint but happy? Nope, I'm skint and worried to death. I don't need much, but if things continue to worsen I have no idea what I'll do. I've pretty much sold everything that is of any value, and even things that are not.

[Deleted User]

Hello BYATT it's always good to get different perspectives from folks at the chalk face, I think what staggered me most in the news item was the impression that the lady hadn't had to make the economies on electricity and gas and seemed to feel rather hard done by that the children wouldn't get the trips and holidays they had been getting previously and she sounded a little surprised at having to do it all now. I perhaps am wrong in this and misreading the interview. I just feel that we have all had to make sacrifices, you more than most of us because of the circumstances you find yourself in, and the thought that anyone recieving benefits hadn't thought to make ecomonies likewise is a little daunting. Hope no offence taken, certainly no offence intended. Cheers Lyn xxx.

kidcat

And thats where the benefit cap is going to hit hardest - rent payments, if we were living in a rented house smaller than this one our monthly rent would be £1250, however the same house in London would be over £2000.

There doesnt seem to be any differentiation to allow for local costing - currently housing benefit for private rent is LHA which is based upon market rents in the actual area, which is actually quite fair.

BUt of course the real aim of all these cuts are to divide and conquer - I fail to see any significant savings will ensue.

Nargleblast

Maybe there shold be legal limits to the amount of rent a landlord can charge? But then that would go against the principle of the free market economy. Back in the early 80s my then OH and I bought our council house, so we profited from that bit of legislation. If local councils had been allowed to spend the revenue from council house sales on repairing old housing stock and building new, then the social housing stock would have been maintained, and we would not be in the situation we are in today, with a shortage of affordable social housing. However, for whatever reason, councils were not allowed to use that money for that purpose. Was the government of that day trying to abolish council housing altogether and replace it with a society full of homeowners? Who knows?

kidcat

Nargleblast that is my understanding - there was a shift in policy to get people buying houses and remove housing stock out from social housing.

I know someone who was evicted from their home after becoming disabled, they had four children - two of whom were disabled, he had worked in a really well paid job - but four years later they had used up every penny they had saved.
It took three years of them all camping on the in laws front room to be offered a housing association house, and that was considered quick for this area. The fact is there is just too little stock and once people move in they often stay forever.
My friend lives in a road of 50ish houses - there are two newcomers (both lived there five years) the rest have been there thirty years plus.
They are all three and four bedroom family houses and mostly occupied by one single pensioner who cannot cope with a house that size - but there are no smaller properties at all in our area so they are trapped.

silvasava

So I wonder what happened to the money the councils got for the sales of council houses? My mum & dad had a council house after my dad came out the Navy - after they'd been there about 15 years they were able to buy it & only because of the reduction in price for existing tenants. It beats me why the councils wer'n't allowed to invest in new housing.

Nargleblast

Likewise, the same clever people who thought up that housing policy probably decided that it would be good for the country if everyone moved out of manufacturing into the financial and services industries?

The radical decisions of that time benefited some people but caused much suffering to others, with lasting effects as seen today.

(Must get off my soapbox, I despair of politicians of all shades!)

kidcat

That always confused me - if the money had been used to build new houses, it would have kept people in jobs too, it never made any sense not to spend the money that way.