Goodbye Spongers!

I cannot wait for the spongers to be booted out out of high cost westminster houses....costing 5000 per month rent...sounds extremely good to me.

Yes, and the ridiculously cheap rents but no jobs soon becomes not so cheap when you have to run at least one car and drive miles and miles to get to work or to access the most basic of services.

I grew up in a small town in the Highlands that is ridiculously cheap to live. However, there are no jobs and I would say 70% of people who now live there are pensioners.

amothersplaceisinthewrong, love your idea of a maximum wage. After all, if you're having a benefits cap, why not a salaries cap? Will bring in so much more money.

IT is perfectly possible for a full time worker with children in the SE to be getting more than £25k in benefits. Coming out of exactly the same pots as those who aren't working get.

I'm not totally convinced by the 50,000 people affected. I suspect it will be more - and worst of all I fear it will hit working low income families harder than it will hit those not working.

'they have a piece about how thousands of families will have to move out of london and other expensive cities.'

And then have no job.

Yes sancti I was thinking about PND earlier and how this will impact (removal of support networks) and potentially the knock on effect this might have on the children.

And re your other comment about voting. I don't know whether it was deliberate but on the news/newsnight yesterday they have a piece about how thousands of families will have to move out of london and other expensive cities. Then straight after they had a failed tory candidate saying that he hadn't won the seat because (i kid you not) Labour had "moved lots of people on benefits into the area and obviously they vote Labour".

That gave me pause for thought. Apart from the preposterous idea that Labour made people on benefits live in cities , it is true that cities are generally red and countryside blue. Now they want to move people around.... Hmmmmmmmm.

OP is so vile and silly that it's not really worth responding to that, but absolutely agree with chibi and others that the disparity between wages and house prices is a major part of the problem. And that the beneficiaries of housing benefit are not the tenants but the landlords. They are the ones having their mortgages paid by the state, and often all their maintenance and rental managed by the state too, so it really is unearned income. Yet somehow it is not them but their tenants that are inevitably labelled "spongers".

You know, when people go into care and the cost falls to the state, it can easily (and often tops) cost the state £2k a week (based on a figure for ASD that is several years old, I do have a ref somewhere although will only look if people demand).

Usually care is carried out in house by friends, family, neighbours.

On Mum's estate at least 7/10 houses has an eledrly eprson in it.

How much, I wonder, will actually be saved?

(PS people relaise that many on HB are pensioners yes? Pensioners perhaps like my aprents who lost both pensions in pensiosn scandals, dad is working PT past retirementa ge but finding it too hard ehalth wise and will ahev to claim HB only becuase of said pension collapse)

feckless so and so. How dare he pay into pensions for decades, eh?

isnt your post is pretty much the thesis of a book by lysnsey hanley , it is called 'estates' (has a long subtitle which i have forgotten'

v v v good

read it and get angry

IASNT I said similar on the other thread

Take people from their community and you ahve to fund state care, you egt mor MH from isolationa nd mroe marriage break ups which then + less employability; kids who either move schools or get transported in- at cost (eg if schools full or thee is SN).

Silly idea that might well up the % of Tory voters in certain boroughs (what? who said that? Me? nooo...) but can't savce very much money and will cause untol human pain.

I mean, een Boris dislikes it.

I am very concerned about this cap on benefits - the £500 a week thing.

I have read that this policy will not save much money but will affect thousands and thousands of families, mainly living in london/south east. The govt are basically going to force people/families out of the areas where they live, to other parts of the country where rents are cheaper. Those places will presumably be places where there are not many opportunities. We're talking forcing poor families into ghettos in areas which already have high unemployment and problems.

What worries me about this:
breaking up communities
children having a lot of upheaval, being removed from schools etc
people losing their support networks eg grandparents down the road could do a bit of childcare when parent got a job, now that option is removed
affect on mental health of people being removed from support networks and family etc

Plus what's the impact going to be on the communities receiving these families? They demographic will change, are there plans for that?

The whole thing makes me feel sick TBH, I think it's disgusting. IME areas with a mix of people fare best all round. Putting the poor people in areas with no work - so they will never get out - is terrible. removing these people from the sight of the wealthier people so they don't have to think about them - well we all know where that idea's from. People fear the unfamiliar and that breeds all sorts of unpleasant emotions. Take the poor away and put them somewhere else, and the torys will be free to utterly clobber them, as they won't have to feel guilty, as they will be "other" people, a subclass, over there, brought it on themselves, deserve everything they get. Terrifying.

'Wrong in that say a hospital porter and a cashier with 2 kids can't hope to make ends meet without government help

I don't want to deny them their tax credits etc

But surely it is wrong that they need them

Perfect sense.

Pigeons do come home to roost. That's the only comment I have on the OP. Take that as you will.

But I've just shut down our small business. No money in it anymore. We can keep on trucking away, not earning anything, or we can turn the building into a house, sell it and earn a quarter of a million profit because every bugger wants to live in the south east In terms of income, I'd have to work for a fair few years to earn that much. So.......

That's pretty much my summation of the problem actually.

oh sancti

i just feel so much despair right now

I think they should all wait in the street whilst we empty our slops on their heads.

You know, my ten eyar odl with ASD effectively satrted work today: in that he sold off a large batch of jewllery he ahd made.

To buy more beads? Nah.
To buy toys?
Nope.

Becuase he saw me crying over the HB cap when I thought he was asleep adn wanted to help.

Fucking fuckity fuck.

Oh I applaud his initiative; clearly us feckless (Dh employed me a carer, officially to his mroe severe younger DS) so and so's have managed to get something right.

but it's terribly sad as well.

WRT to the OP- I don;t think they should be in a £12k PCM house but I think tehre should be LA property available for them to move into.

agree with other posters that cutting madly without making any attempt to fix the wage/housing problem is just going to throw people in to abject poverty

and it's all to come, really

i have this feeling of dread - i just want to know the worst now rather than being dripfed

'the more i think about it i think it must be a combination of artificially depressed wages (esp minimum wage) and housing costs - including rents'

And very high taxes. That's about the sum of it.

insanity after insanity

i was reading a newspaper which had a little 'how will you fare under the cuts' thingy with model families/situations

a single income family (two parent) earning 30 thousandish pounds gets substantial amounts of child tax credits and hb to make ends meet

the skintest working person i knew back home was a friend who had to pay full time childcare to go to a job earning not much over the minimum wage - they lived frugally but did not starve, were able to pay rent etc

this would be impossible here, you just could not do it without the topups

the more i think about it i think it must be a combination of artificially depressed wages (esp minimum wage) and housing costs - including rents

housing costs especially - i come from a country where a person on miniumum wage could rent a decent 1 bed flat (i know, i used to do it lol)

when i moved here and was going round to look at places to live i was thinking fuuuuck i'll just live in a hole i guess

Or the minimum wage needs to go up to be a living wage.

How about a maximum wage too - to be applied to bankers, politicians, footballers....

Chibi, i totally agree, DP works a 60 hour week just above minimum wage and we still need tax credits to get by, pathetic right, terrible state this country is in, surley the cost of living needs to come down so people can afford to live on the wages of a minimum wage job?!

I did watch the Westminster council person gloating the the unworthy folk would be kicked out of Central London, they did try that back in the day with the gerrymandering stuff that went on

HB I forgot to mention, has your husband got lead ears?