Debate House Prices
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R.Peston blog on inflation flooded with those disenchanted with housing
Comments
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Thrugelmir wrote: »Rights don't resolve the fundamental issues.
I agree people should have the opportunity to earn a living wage. However people need to do something towards it themselves. Whether it be vocational training, an apprenticeship, etc. Paying someone a living wage to wash dishes doesn't do anything for the wider economy. The UK needs people with skills.
The flip side of this is why bother getting that skill when the end job is increasingly low pay?
While potential employees need to look to reward employers with skills, employers need to reward with half decent wages.
Look at nursing. Highly skilled job. Plenty want to train to do the job. But there is a crisis right now because the reward offered once you have those skils is so pitiful. Add on unsociable hours and it becomes less and less worthwhile.
You may aswell do your 21 hours a week working in a shop and then sit back on tax credits. You'll "earn" nearly as much as the basic nurse.
I was behind a bus just the other day with jobs as a bus driver advertised. £8.64 an hour. It's a skilled job, you can't just go and do it. And then look at the shifts and the hassle you may get from the peope you ferry about.0 -
presumably by 'affordable' housing you mean housing heavily subsidised by other people?
presumably the heavily subsidised housing will be allocated by need (or perhaps in Scotland by membership of the SNP )?
so if you are poor and unemployed you would be entitled to a better house than say a young teacher or utility worker.
it sounds like a good system.
the question to ask is why is new housing in scotland so low?
what stops more housing being built ?
Well, according to the SNP it's a "great effort". And perhaps it is compared to England.
It's kind of allocated by need, so if you are unintentionally homeless (e.g. the landlord wants the flat back to sell it) and you haven't been able to secure other private accommodation, then you fast track to the head of the queue. But for housing association homes, which are the vast majority of new builds, you apply via Key to Choice, but the low income working people get houses ahead of the unemployed.
If you're employed in essential services and have a household income less than £32k per annum you're pretty much at the top of the queue. They get offered deals like Rent to Buy. So in the Highlands, for instance, you can rent a new home for up to five years and then use the rent as a deposit to buy it. But you have to qualify. And the main people targeted for this kind of help are young people working in essential services.
I suspect therefore that number of houses being built is low because the government is only targetting quite a narrow group of people.0 -
Graham_Devon wrote: »We've gone through 3 years of recovery. Recovery that many on here have been very pleased with.
In that same timeframe, foodbank usage has risen several hundred percent.
I'm not denying that things are (still) tough for a lot of people, but e.g.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/10517718/Food-banks-the-unpalatable-truth.html
'The narrative that usually accompanies food-bank stories should be treated with caution. Statistics that claim to prove unprecedented and increasing food poverty need to be un-picked to understand a wider picture. Furthermore, the food-bank movement should be wary of being co-opted by an economic narrative with a political edge.
It would be foolish to deny that there are more people on the breadline today than at the height of the Great Boom of the early Noughties. How could it be otherwise? People have lost jobs, their pay has been cut, the benefits system is not so generous as used to be. Naturally, more people today are feeling pinched and the household food budget is under strain.
But gauging the real level of food poverty – a cant phrase that claims, wrongly in my view, that there is a special type of poverty which relates solely to food – is far from straightforward.
The first complicating factor is the sheer increase in the number of food banks. Ten years ago, there were hardly any; today there are more than 400 and new ones open every couple of days. So the figures about increasing demand – the Trussell Trust says that usage has trebled in the past year – must reflect, in part at least, the increasing availability of food banks.
To put it another way, a new service is being offered to more and more communities – and, naturally, people are using it. What is more, the sustained media interest in food banks has acted as a kind of giant pro bono advertising campaign; suddenly everybody knows about them.'0 -
Thrugelmir wrote: »Rights don't resolve the fundamental issues.
I agree people should have the opportunity to earn a living wage. However people need to do something towards it themselves. Whether it be vocational training, an apprenticeship, etc. Paying someone a living wage to wash dishes doesn't do anything for the wider economy. The UK needs people with skills.
So instead of investing in education we instead should subsidise the private employer who needs his dishes washed via the benefits system?
It makes no sense. If the business owner can't be bothered to work 80 hours a week and wash his own dishes, why should he instead get to employ someone at a discount, a discount funded by other taxpayers?0 -
I'm not denying that things are (still) tough for a lot of people, but e.g.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/10517718/Food-banks-the-unpalatable-truth.html
'The narrative that usually accompanies food-bank stories should be treated with caution. Statistics that claim to prove unprecedented and increasing food poverty need to be un-picked to understand a wider picture. Furthermore, the food-bank movement should be wary of being co-opted by an economic narrative with a political edge.
It would be foolish to deny that there are more people on the breadline today than at the height of the Great Boom of the early Noughties. How could it be otherwise? People have lost jobs, their pay has been cut, the benefits system is not so generous as used to be. Naturally, more people today are feeling pinched and the household food budget is under strain.
But gauging the real level of food poverty – a cant phrase that claims, wrongly in my view, that there is a special type of poverty which relates solely to food – is far from straightforward.
The first complicating factor is the sheer increase in the number of food banks. Ten years ago, there were hardly any; today there are more than 400 and new ones open every couple of days. So the figures about increasing demand – the Trussell Trust says that usage has trebled in the past year – must reflect, in part at least, the increasing availability of food banks.
To put it another way, a new service is being offered to more and more communities – and, naturally, people are using it. What is more, the sustained media interest in food banks has acted as a kind of giant pro bono advertising campaign; suddenly everybody knows about them.'
Agree with all of that. However, put the food bank stuff alongside the other stats and it seems to stack up.
The other puzzle is why productivity is so low / static if we are employing so many more people.
We all use individual stats on this forum to back up our points, but looking at several statistics next to each other usually make up for a bigger picture.
One good one is full time hours. The government suggests that most jobs are full time hours. However, when you look at how the ONS measure it, it's any job of 30 hours or more. If you look at the stats, the government claim more people are in full time jobs, but the hours worked are dropping every single year.
Yet nearly every other statistic uses 35 hours or more as the benchmark for full time.
The average wage is up 0.7% for a full time worker, according to the ONS. But the average weekly wage is up 0.1% over the same period. (November ONS release) Very slightly different metholodgies lead to a very large difference.
Anyway, I have digressed! My point was that if you look at several measure instead of just one, a better picture can be painted....IMHO.0 -
Graham_Devon wrote: »The flip side of this is why bother getting that skill when the end job is increasingly low pay?
While potential employees need to look to reward employers with skills, employers need to reward with half decent wages.
Look at nursing. Highly skilled job. Plenty want to train to do the job. But there is a crisis right now because the reward offered once you have those skils is so pitiful. Add on unsociable hours and it becomes less and less worthwhile.
You may aswell do your 21 hours a week working in a shop and then sit back on tax credits. You'll "earn" nearly as much as the basic nurse.
I was behind a bus just the other day with jobs as a bus driver advertised. £8.64 an hour. It's a skilled job, you can't just go and do it. And then look at the shifts and the hassle you may get from the peope you ferry about.
The pay level for a registered nurse in England starts at £21,478 pa. and in Scotland £21,602 p.a. (Source; http://www.rcn.org.uk/support/pay_and_conditions/pay_rates_2014-15)
I wouldn't call £11 an hour or thereabouts pitiful pay.0 -
Graham_Devon wrote: »Agree with all of that. However, put the food bank stuff alongside the other stats and it seems to stack up.
I don't necessarily disagree. I was only questioning the statement about foodbanks.
I've heard that point about foodbanks mentioned a lot (including on the Cameron V Miliband thing last night) and I think it is being misused, or at least being used without thinking it through properly.0 -
Oh, and another stat which doesn't seem to chime with the recovery being good for the lower paid..... unsecured credit.
It's just passed it's 2007 peak again.
Now, some may suggest this is sign that people are feeling more secure. Ineed, that is exactly what happened when an economist opened his mouth!
However, the actual credit figures themselves show that the credit is being used increasingly for everyday expenses such as utility bills and food shopping. So what does it really say? People feel more secure and ready to splash out? Or people are finding they need to pay their bills with credit?0 -
The pay level for a registered nurse in England starts at £21,478 pa. and in Scotland £21,602 p.a. (Source; http://www.rcn.org.uk/support/pay_and_conditions/pay_rates_2014-15)
I wouldn't call £11 an hour or thereabouts pitiful pay.
Maybe.
But look at it this way...
If you don't bother with all the qualifications, training and the expense of said training, and instead, go work in a shop on £7.00 an hour...
You will actually receive £6,780 in tax credits, £110 council tax credit, an £4,000 in housing benefits.
You'll also receive £7,644 in income. (tax free).
Total: £18,544
Just 3k less than the nurse. On the flip side, you have an extra 15 hours a week of your own time.
Put it another way, and that nurse will work an extra 700 hours over the year to be just £3k better off than someone working in a shop on minimum wage.
(You'd need one child for the above to work, mind...though if you have 2, the income will simply be greater). The nurse in this case would also get some tax credits, but will also be paying tax in the first place (and possibly a loans from student days), more possible childcare for all those extra hours, so swings and roundabouts.
The benefit system masks huge issues. It also makes many jobs (and the training and unsociablity of them) pretty pointless if you are of that frame of mind. And many are.0 -
Graham_Devon wrote: »The flip side of this is why bother getting that skill when the end job is increasingly low pay?
Then the UK will continue to lose the skill base in certain industrial sectors. The jobs on offer in the UK will get dumber in nature.
While potential employees need to look to reward employers with skills, employers need to reward with half decent wages.
To pay good wages companies need to make profits and there employees also to be productive. Companies on the whole will pay good wages to those employers they wish to retain.
Look at nursing. Highly skilled job. Plenty want to train to do the job. But there is a crisis right now because the reward offered once you have those skils is so pitiful. Add on unsociable hours and it becomes less and less worthwhile.
A low grade nurse working night shifts earns more than a matron supervising 100+staff. There's actually a shortage of nurses in the UK. The NHS runs recruitment days in Eire to interview perspective candidates. Many nurses now want the job to fit around their personal lives not to fit the requirements of the job. Different mindset to 20 years ago.
You may aswell do your 21 hours a week working in a shop and then sit back on tax credits. You'll "earn" nearly as much as the basic nurse.
Unfortunately yes. Mr Browns redistribution of wealth via the welfare system wasn't the greatest of concepts. Will take time to unravel the mess.
I was behind a bus just the other day with jobs as a bus driver advertised. £8.64 an hour. It's a skilled job, you can't just go and do it. And then look at the shifts and the hassle you may get from the peope you ferry about.
That's more than a lot of people earn. HGV drivers probably fare no better wage wise. Trouble is £18k a year is far higher than a lot of people earn in Europe right now. So there's no shortage of people willing to work for that amount of money. The world has become global in the past 25 years. Yet in the UK we seem to have retained the inward looking island mentality. Believing that we have "rights" to things rather than actually working for them.
:beer::beer::beer::beer::beer::beer::beer::beer::beer:0
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