Bedroom tax

[pompeyfaith]

Re: Bedroom tax

Your figure of £2000 a mth is not representative around the UK, yes London maybe but once you get out of that city they are lower and much lower in some areas.

[jon1965]

Re: Bedroom tax

Of course I bit , it is not exactly rocket science to get that to happen

As for the Popes, do not get me started on that one, I could go on all day about that.

Now we get on to the immigration issue, yes it is a mess and your example of going abroad, coming back married and bringing extended families...I am not saying it doesn't happen but I do suspect it is exaggerated although I do know of people who went to India and came back married, or in one case a girl who was taken on holiday for 2 weeks and was away for 3 months while they tried to get her to marry. She was Hindu and had a Muslim B/F. Another girl who was excited when Mrs Gandhi was killed.
To be honest in parts of Birmingham and leicester there is little integration but where I live and why my mother lives there are few if any Asian people. Of course they stand out because of the colour. My bus driver today was eastern european, I only know that because I heard him talking...he looked perfectly "normal" apart from that.

I know all about moving where the work was, my late wife was born in 1945 and her father was always moving to where there was work, Bury, Atherstone, Avon Dasset,various parts of leicestershire .
I also remember the local mental hospital where all the patients were not ill but disabled and had been dumped there, something we would not let happen today.

I doubt very much that you are anywhere near old enough to remember the workhouses.

My very middle-class grandparents rented their first marital home (Where Mum was born) until my great grandfather bought them a house in Chorlton-cum-hardy

[Spent2much]

Re: Bedroom tax

Well Jon you have bitten. The Popes have a lot to answer for don't they? In those days it was a case of many or none at all. It was just life and it was just life, without the frills and the food. Now there is sex education and IVF. Many children in care are better off physically than with their families at least they eat and have clothes, but they many are emotionally deficient. Besides those who foster often get bigger houses .

Need does not only mean financial need. It also implies safety on the Maslow scale, which is why more points are given to people with children or disabilities.

Social Housing was always for the impoverished. It was for those in need. My grandparents went from rented to bought on a regular footing at a similar monthly cost. They tried to live near work, but in some of the mill towns there was only rented accommodation, and elsewhere there wasn't. When a mill/mine closed people had to move, if they had no job and no money families went to the workhouse, and probably did not come out. If they were mentally ill they went to an asylum. No job, no food, no shelter men went to soup kitchens and slept in hedgerows. Hence so many wars as the soldiers were clothed and fed albeit badly.

Prior to LA housing there was the tied cottage or the workhouse for many if not most. They lived 10 to a house, they lived from hand to mouth and from week to week. The exception was almshouses and Peabody Trust type accommodation endowed by benefactors at low rents. I know many people that have spent years sleeping on somebody's floor because they can't find anything they can afford, and so they miss out on their own family life whereas others just have children and get a leg up.

If you can remember until the 1960s people had to get permission from their bosses in banks etc to get married as they could not afford a family until they had a career and in that way they were not tempted to steal. Most people were married before they had children.

In my area we have many council estates and other social housing as well as modest and expensive private houses, and many immigrants for both economic and asylum reasons as well as high flyers and academics. The local schools have 90% foreign born children including private schools. So it is not a case of the newcomers integrating with the current population but the reverse. All races and ethnicities are included, so how can any pretense of historical social values be maintained if they are unknown? I had work colleagues whose families went on holiday and came back married and then imported the in-laws, who are very pleasant people but don't have jobs but require accommodation and interpreters. Facts not opinions. This may be the only area upon which the Daily Mail reports.

Common sense is dead and political correctness killed it. Not everybody out of work is a layabout, but not everybody on benefits deserves them. Just like respect is earned and our elders do not necessarily know better. However, the meek will definitely not inherit the earth.

wow brilliant post

[julian]

Re: Bedroom tax

Until recently I worked in a very cosmopolitan firm that thought discrimination was only about colour. We had all nationalities and there are nations within nations, so it is just as difficult for people from Bangalore to go to Mumbai to live. Different religions, different languages, different customs,different food but many still had arranged marriages. That is not normally the case with Eastern Europeans. The first wave of which came in during WWII and are now fully integrated, apart from the names. As the majority were single men demobbed from the army, they married local girls and so their wives had some history in the country and taught them the ways and social graces and gave them a sense of belonging. Although the recently arrived youngsters are pleasant enough, they resemble in many cases Brits expats abroad and tend to clump together. They are not tied to the UK as the WWII guys were as Europe is now 'free'. They take what they want and then move on.

My grandparents thought Yorkshiremen or even people from Bury were foreign, because you just did not travel except to go to war. As you lived most of your life within walking distance of where you were born there was some respect for the place you lived in. You could not afford to go anywhere else so you had to comply with the norms.

People in the North cannot come down to London to look for work as they cannot afford the accommodation. Even students find it hard to be mobile now. People in the South East look at the cheaper accommodation in the North and fail to see that jobs pay far less. Many people in the North cannot take promotion if it means coming southwards, whereas the reverse is a double payrise if their job is secure.

However, refugees who have no ties in any part of the country rarely opt to go north if they have the opportunity to stay in the South East. Strange that.

My grandmother used to tell us about how when cleaning their gable attic windows they could see the the workhouses. They used to see people walking across the fields to the workhouse with a little bundle of belongings, women and children one way, men the other. And she used to cry even 70 years on she used to have tears in her eyes. She also told of men lining up for day work outside the factory gates and being in tears as they were turned away as they would not eat that day. If you haven't been told, you don't know. Catherine Cookson shows a true line of poverty if you watch Yesterday.

I am not dismissing the impact that the changes in the allocation of benefits has on peoples lives, and the potential disruption and pain.

Unfortunately, somebody has to lose out, and when your 59 year old single neighbour of 50 years is moved a bus ride away who do you want next door? Should it be your son or your daughter's family getting somewhere to live that is not damp and overrun with mice or that of Abu Hamza or that of your bus driver who arrived last week with his wife and four children?

Glad I don't have to choose.



.

[5corpio]

Re: Bedroom tax

Found about this from a friend :

DHP (Discretionary Housing Benefit), that the Government launched without telling you about the Bedroom Tax

[oscar]

Re: Bedroom tax

Found about this from a friend :

DHP (Discretionary Housing Benefit), that the Government launched without telling you about the Bedroom Tax

The discretionary fund is for hardship cases. The fund its self is fairly limited, and has very strict (and harsh) criteria. I expect a few people will apply, but not all will get the help as its going to be a lottery as such

[pompeyfaith]

Re: Bedroom tax

It is also limited to just a few weeks (cannot remember how many weeks of the top of my head) and then you have to apply again

[julian]

Re: Bedroom tax

That is no good if you have a family to house. It would take the life out of you having to apply constantly and not knowing what to do if not approved.