Skint Britain: Friends without Benefits on C4

[amrscot]

Is anybody else watching this?

One of the couples take their dog out to hunt rabbits and squirrels that they can eat.

They've just shown him with a dead rabbit he has caught skinning it in the kitchen

Horrendous..

Let us see who wins the next election then

I think one thing we can all agree on is it is best never to rely on the state whether under Tory or Labour Governments.

Ha Ha, since when? The conservatives are there to make the rich, richer and the poor, poorer. That's why the mc vote for them.
None of the teachers or nurses I know vote conservative nor do the people I know of who don't work and receive benefits.
You have to be rich to vote conservative unless you want to cut off your nose to spite your face.

@SusannahL

I think it is the fact that if there were no, or very few private LL, then the price of house's would not be so high (supply and demand) so people could actually afford to buy there own home at a reasonable price.

I don't blame anyone for doing it though as it is the best and fastest way to make money as long as there is no crash.

The problem with housing here is that the Councils were not allowed to build any new house's when they started selling them off. Also we are over populated now.

The country is no overpopulated, certain areas are but not the whole country. For example Islington has 15,817 people per square kilometre but somewhere like Northumberland only has 63 people per square kilometre.

longtime houses start at 50k round here. Just how cheap do you think they should be exactly?

And where I live they are building social housing and have been for the last 10 years, every new estate built in our immediate area has had a percentage of properties given over to social housing. They're managed by a HA but advertised on the council website using the council's housing allocation policy.

Oh here we go again. Let's have a go at private landlords now.

If you insist.

We invested in property some years ago with a view to providing us with an income when we retire so that we would be self sufficient in old age and would not need to sponge off the State.

Interesting choice of words... 'sponge off the state' let's just call that the typical phrase "Tax payer money" and put a pin in it a second.

Now, years later we appear to be a hated breed despite the fact that we have been providing families with homes over the past years

No, wrong, you've been providing them with a house, not a home.
They've been providing you with mortgage payments, so who is better off with that deal?
The people living in your property Nd paying you over inflated amounts for the priveledge and at the end of it will have nothing?
Or you, who borrowed money from the bank and has had someone else pay their mortgage for them and will end up with a house they've neither bought nor earnt at the end of it?

Now let's return to "Sponging off the state'" shall we.

Person A is a low paid worker, let's say a supermarket worker.
Person B is a middle earner, let's say a manager of a supermarket.
Person C is a private landlord.

Person A has income of £10k a year, helped on with £5k of tax credits / UC (tax payer money)
Person B has income of £20k helped with £500 tax payer money

Person C rents 2 houses, one to A and one to Be

Person C would never dream of sponging off the state... Except.. it's tax payer money paying their mortgages on the houses they couldn't afford to buy without the bank.

Those 2 houses they bought with someone else's money, now being paid off with tax payer money, can't be bought by person A or person B because neither can afford it because person C charges higher rent because they know tax payer money helps renters out.

The solution is simple.
Ban buy to let mortgages on my property below £250k
This frees up cheaper rungs of the ladder for first time buyers and people like person A and person B.
Person C may miss out on tax payer money to pay the bank back their money, but they'd cope as they already have a good enough income to pay a mortgage on a home for themselves.

What makes you think its largely tax payers money that pays rent? Lots of people work and pay rent. Even round here where very cheap housing is available.

@BarbarianMum

I honestly don't know what the answer is, but calling people spongers and scroungers for recieving money from the state (I know you personally didn't) to keep a roof over their heads, but happily recieving this money to pay a mortgage and increase your own wealth is IMO, hypocritical.
We obviously need private LLs but they shouldn't take the money provided in one hand while pointing fingers at those claiming it with the other calling them scroungers and spongers.
And as for not dictating where your tax goes, well I don't get a choice of who I help and who I don't, no one does. Yes we vote for the party in power whose policies we most agree with but we still don't get to choose who we deem 'worthy' of our contribution, because if we did MPs would be first off my list - all of them! We also don't get to choose what anyone spends their money on. If someone is entitled to something, they get it, it's not like what they don't spend goes back into the pot is it? So regardless of what that money is spent on, it's gone, what the person spends it on isn't relevant logically because it makes no difference to the amount being given.

I can understand frustration at people who work hard and pay taxes and can't afford luxuries to see people who have never worked and have no intention of doing so, having those luxuries. I feel it myself sometimes, but then we don't always know the truth behind things. Years ago I was really on my arse, I worked but things were really tight for various reasons. I have family in Australia. They paid for me and DC to get passports and paid for all our travel for a two week trip out there. It didn't cost me a penny, annual leave from work as anyone gets, and in fact it saved me the usual expenses of living for two weeks.
I was called worse than shit though because I was a benefit scrounger getting something others couldn't afford. I couldn't afford it either, and didn't pay for it, but I was still hated.

@EwItsAHooman Sorry you are right. I am in London, it is very overpopulated, you are lucky to get a GP Apt within a month, School class sizes are massive etc etc. HA rent is much more than a Council rent. They have started to build now, but all the years they didn't have had a huge impact.

@BarbarianMum Where are you, I'm on my way A studio here starts at approx £200,000 for a complete shithole.

Housing is cheap enough round here, if you don't expect to start off with a 3 bed semi/ detached.
If you are willing to do some graft and start of with newt like we had to do, then the houses are cheap enough.
If you want to live in the south, you pay a premium for this, because you generally earn more than the North.

@WeeTinkerMonkey That is a great idea.

Abucab my cousin did one of those courses you spoke about in the early 00s (or maybe late 90s)as an adult. He did Web development, got a training job with a small company and now makes £££(really loads) as a contractor. He had been temping doing warehouse work before that.
There is no investment in people anymore, as in helping them to become self sufficient, or better their prospects.

It was very sad and uncomfortable viewing. That poor man with sight problems .

What makes you think its largely tax payers money that pays rent?

Oh I don't know... The many millions paid out in housing benefit / housing element of UC perhaps.

Would working tax credits for cops and nurses be needed if rent wasn't the crippling cost that it is?

Would child tax credits be necessary if rentals were fairer like they were in years gone by? Maybe..

Depressing as hell, as always. We don't work to subsidise others, well actually you do, that's part of the deal with tax, the nhs, education etc. In the same way that should the worst happen to you, then it'll be there for you too.
As for people dictating from their warm homes, with reasonably fed stomachs about how others should live their lives; go out and find out about it. Those on disability benefits are dying because of the governments changes to benefits. I bet what you don't know is that they are encouraging people with disabilities to apply for UC rather than ESA. Why? Because you get less with UC. No severe disability premium that way. 67 quid a week down. That's the heating gone, but you're not interested, or
you don't work to subsidise others, just to judge them...

Weeatinkermonkey I wish it was only millions paid to landlords like Barbarian Mum. In fact it's billions. £10.2 billion. Every year. To all of those non sponging self sufficient landlords.

Sorry I mean Susannahl not barbarianmum. Landlords as a class have had £100 billion off all of us over the last ten years.

Oh dont worry. Im one of those bastard landlords who doesnt rent to people on housing benfit.

Arnoldillo

Oh yes the selfless and humanitarian landlords that we should all bend over and let fuck us whilst the tax payers pay their mortgages.

At, least, as far as you know barbarian. I never told my landlord.

Oh dont worry. Im one of those bastard landlords who doesnt rent to people on housing benfit.

And there it is. The typical,
"Fuck you jack" attitude.

People with that attitude are low down pieces of human garbage. People say unemployed people on benefits are scum, they may be, but there's many different forms of scum in the pond, some float in the sun, others just feed off the bottom.

My sister (classed as vulnerable and sadly now deceased) was subject to a 100% sanction of her benefits for missing an appointment that she hadn't been made aware of. She lived alone and had no other source of income. It took months to sort this out and during that time I was able to send her money for food etc .... I'm not sure what she would have done otherwise. It is so unfair.

I don't think private landlords are to blame, for not renting to people on ss. Before, LLs got paid direct by HB. So they had their money. Now, UC pays housing to the claimant. Who sometimes don't pay their rent. It's a common and known issue. So If LLs know friends, acquaintances , or even themselves, have had tenants on ss who are now missing rent - why would they take the increased risk? They're trying to make a profit after all. Renting to people known to default on rent does not make good business sense

I'd be very surprised indeed if barbarian hasn't had a slice of that £100 billion. Maybe her tenants don't claim at the start of the tenancy, but unless she's inspecting their bank statements every month she will have no clue as to who has been made redundant/taken a pay cut/gone on long term sick etc since then. Most tenants won't tell their landlords, because after all who wants to be unemployed and homeless, but over 6 million households claim housing benefit, most on a top up basis. Barbarian would be very unusual indeed if none of her tenants have.