My Heart Just Breaks...

[Rosylee1976]

I am in debt upto my eyeballs through very poor decision making but just about manage to pay the bills, albeit that I have to go into the overdraft every month to do it.

But, my heart just breaks from some of the real difficulties people are experiencing which make mine seem so insignificant. I know I have much to be grateful for. I just want to send hugs to you all who are experiencing real fear and distress because of money worries.

It is so wrong for people to be in the situation where there is no money for food or the basics. I really think that we should withdraw from events such the Olympics and all the money that has and will be spent should be redistributed to people with real hardship. I know that many people will disagree with me, but really what is a sporting event compared to people below the breadline. I know that some people might have been able to get work because of it, but does it all make sense. I am not a money fundi and don't understand it all, but it seems plain to me.

How does quantitive easing not help people. If the government printed some money for people, and gave it to them and not themselves, won't that make sense. I mean, if I was given 10k i would pay my debts and my salary would be able to provide for the things we need. The bank and creditors would get their money and so would I.

Anyway, a bit of a ramble from my original point. Just know that positive thoughts are being sent your way

duch, as with your responses to the other poster above, yours to mine don't appear to support what I said. Who suggested work houses? I said I support the welfare state and am happy my taxes to go those who need food and housing.

I mentioned the £70 weekly payment for the 25 years + unemployed who also get their rent paid. I don't think that's work houses and it's not going to make people starve. I accept it's not a huge sum on which to live as a single person particularly if you cannot live with family members of a partner but it's still a good cushion.

There are lots of state spending areas many of us have views on. We have a system where we elect politicians who decide. Any one of us can stand for Parliament and all of us thankfully have free speech and the right to lobby for our own political positions. We are lucky to live in a country where most of us still support a welfare state even though some parts of it have got out of hand. All political parties are commited to improving it and getting better value for money.

There was something on radio 4 yesterday on PM about food banks in Japan where poverty is embarrassing and people hide it away in a way we don't quite do here as it is a different culture. We are in one of the worst recessions for many year and I know most of us are sympathetic to that but there are plenty of lies peddled often by the left about the "cause" of the crash.

In the 90s I used to go on a soup run at midnight with some nuns in London. There was plenty of extreme poverty hidden away, most of it shameful. It's just becoming more widespread and mainstream now.

And what I am suggesting is not that you were saying bring back workhouses, but that the logical extension of cutting back on the welfare bill the way it's being done at the moment is that people will end up on welfare. Or people like the entirely blameless people in my hamlet will end up in their mid 50s having to move into a flat share situation. Moving a bunch of strangers in with each other for no other reason than poverty is really just a poor hospital by another appellation.

I think the flatshare rules apply to people of a particular age.

I really don't see why people likem ym daughtesr who work extremely hard and pay a lot of tax in their 20s and may flat sxhare, rent a single room as that's all they can afford should have to shell out tax so unemployed 20 stomethings get a whole flat to themselves! There needs to be some incentive for people to work otherwise we might as well all give up work and go on benefits. Our household would get a 4 bed place and £18k of rent paid for if I gave up work - I checked the other day plus of course various benefits. I think that is amazingly generous.

"Under new government regulations that will come into effect in April 2012, the age threshold for people to claim housing has increased from the age of 25 up to 35. This will consequently mean that up to 260,000 people will no longer qualify for their own flat or house and will therefore be required to share an accommodation instead. It is estimated that the overall changes and new legislations will increase the flat-share market by 10% over the next couple of years."

God, no, completely agree! No reason why unattached young people shouldn't flat-share like everyone else. I'm just thinking that the way hb is going, everyone on it is going to be forced into multiple occupancy before long. Although capping will bring rental prices down which can only be a good thing, in the short to medium term it is raining down misery on already downtrodden people in a rental that is no longer covered by the HB. (the case with both family 1 and family 2). Family 1 is in a private rental that is quite cheap because the house hasn't really been modernised (no CH for example). Family 2 is in a national trust property that is in a dire state (damp, mouldy, needs total refit) for which the price keeps going every year despite no improvements.

?No one is on the brink of starvation?

Er, try telling that to my client who was left with no income for ages after failing to attend his ESA (sickness benefit) medical assessment because he was too sick to get there, and who ended up being hospitalised with malnutrition, before being referred to us for advice. And to countless others in that position, like the various cases in the news of people who have killed themselves because of similar situations.

?I really don't see why people likem ym daughtesr who work extremely hard and pay a lot of tax in their 20s and may flat sxhare, rent a single room as that's all they can afford should have to shell out tax so unemployed 20 stomethings get a whole flat to themselves!?

Contrary to various myths, Housing Benefit eligibility depends on income, rent level and family size, not on whether or not a person works. Working people can claim HB too. And it is already capped according to the lowest 30th percentile of local rent levels and according to how many rooms are needed.

?Our household would get a 4 bed place and £18k of rent paid for if I gave up work - I checked the other day plus of course various benefits?

Just try it, or rather don't! You'd find you would be considered intentionally unemployed, intentionally homeless and get absolutely nothing! And that would be the same if you got the sack through no fault of your own, unless you could prove otherwise. And even if you became unemployed for reasons they accepted, if you had any property other than where you live, savings or investments, you'd be required to cash them in first and would only get benefits once they were practically gone.

?Any one of us can stand for Parliament and all of us thankfully have free speech and the right to lobby for our own political positions?

Of course we can in theory, legally. But are you really suggesting that we all have equal intelligence and capability and resources to do this? It is as legal for a poor person as a rich person to stay in the Ritz, and it is as legal for a rich person as a poor person to sleep under a bridge. Doesn't make it at all likely.

?emigrate if you don't like it?

How, exactly, would anyone living in poverty be able to do that? It would cost a huge amount of money to emigrate, and what country would let them in anyway with no job to go to, or offer any state support once they were there? That comment reminds me of 'Let them eat cake'!