To think that MP's should have their wages capped at £500 a week?

[ValarMorghulis]

No access to expenses as that is a perfectly acceptable amount to live on apparently.

They are of course usually managing a hand span big enough to house fingers in pies elsewhere so have additional income anyway.

I just find it infuriating that they are pushing through the £26k limit to benefits despite knowing that it will push thousands into poverty and homelessness, yet they recently voted to award themselves £20k payrises.

In my city you can rent a really nice 2 bed flat for £650 pcm right in the town centre and 3 bed for £750 pcm. This is in a secure gated community with manicured lawns and BMWs parked outside. That is £9000 per year. Living on £26k a year and paying £9000 a year or less in rent would not be at all bad in my view. Not luxury but not degrading either.

I really do not get why people have to live in London who don't work. I used to live in London until me and DW lost our jobs and then we moved out and instantly cut our rent by 50%. We just didnt need to live in central London any more and neither do people on benefits so all this talk of not being able to afford to live is a nonsense.

Simple answer is you live somewhere expensive if you have a job to pay for it. Otherwise live somewhere cheaper. I have done it so i can't see why others can't.

Again with the idea that loads of people on benefits are living in central London...

They're not. With a few exceptions (that the DM makes sure everyone hears about) they're already living in the cheaper areas. So moving to a whole new city is not going to cut their rent by 50%.

I agree that most people can live on 26K. And in some cases moving is the answer, but not always. Otherwise, well, wouldn't you see more people moving? Why live in a crappy little flat on a Peckham estate when you can live in your fabulous gated community? There are any number of potential obstacles that, just because you didn't have to deal with them, doesn't mean they don't exist for others.

Those saying that landlords 'have' to charge a certain % over their mortgage payment under their contracts have missed the point slightly.

If your mortgage is so high you can hardly make a profit renting it out, perhaps you didn't have a large enough deposit to be a landlord? It seems that a lot of the people on here are bleating on about the problems they have letting their houses, when no-one forced them to purchase them with such a huge mortgage in the first place - they just thought they'd make some easy money. No such thing.

I support the cap, but it means a lot of BTL LLs are going to lose their property if they can't bleed the HB out of the gov anymore. Well, you shouldn't have borrowed so much to buy it. This was always going to come home to roost.

If you work and get the average wage you have to manage on 26k so I don't see why it should be any harder for those on benefits to manage on 26k. As they don't work they have more time to cook properly rather than using convenience foods etc. A person working on 26k after tax wouldn't move into some of the properties rented by benefit claimants because they'd look at the prices and see they couldn't afford them.
If benefits claimants want to have more money then they have to get a job and start contributing.

Did you actually bother to read anything, 2Rebecca?

people on 26K get CTC and CB on top of their earnings

Everyone gets CB. I think CTC is paid up until £44k, but I could be wrong. My sister gets some CTC but no WTC and her DH is on roughly £24k.

so the only people living on 26K would be those earning much less. Back when we had full time work CTC were what raised our income to close to 26K. That was with 4 kids.
Now 3 of them have left its a struggle. If we rented we'd get housing benefit.

I did read it. Many people in my area are on far less than 26k after tax, 20k before tax is more common. I think that in retrospect child tax credit was a bad move as it has encouraged people to have more children than they can afford to raise on their own incomes. We are an overpopulated planet. People having lots of kids but relying on other people to pay for their kids are not doing the rest of us a favour by having them.
I think there should be a safety net for those who can't work but that it should always be low enough to encourage you to work if you can.

So how did that woman (featured in, ahem, Daily Mail) manage to move into a big house in Maida Vale and have the rent paid by HB? Can anyone find themselves a property with a landlord willing to take HB and just move in? I don't understand why the council just picked up the tab (I think it was £8K a week). I suppose it's these sort of cases that have ended the party.