Poor forced from the city's centre!

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Am i alone in seeing if housing benefit is cut, and the poor are forced out of the cities, buy to let homes will go up for sale then the double dip recession (actually the third dip by my counting) will kill our housing market even more.

People act like only those who are out of work get housing benefit, and also that the poor or out of work don't deserve to have nice things and like like other human beings, getting really sick of it actually!

No need to Erm, I don't understand how council tax benefit works. The unemployed must be getting council tax paid for them, no?

Yes the council tax will be paid in full along with £400 a week maximum, not saying everyone is getting that much if unemployed but at the moment some are getting more than £20,000 in benefits to sit on their arses all day and watch the commuters pass by their windows on the way to work. I wonder if they ever give them a little wave.

Not outside Kensington or other 'posh' areas anyway. I thought the LHA was brought in to 'cap' the housing benefit bill? £218/week LHA for a 4-bed that costs £300/wk to rent is bad enough if you are unemployed and have to find an £82/week top-up (yeah right!). If you are working your top-up is even more. We currently (on rent of £250/wk) get £56/ wk HB. Finding an eye-watering top-up of £194 a week is great fun I can tell you. Although having looked at entitledto.com, I have a sneaky suspicion that they aren't paying anywhere near the amount of our rent that they should be...

Loudlass do you really not see that this will help you ? The rents will come down, they will and then you will not have to find as much money. Or maybe be able to buy your own place.

Loudlass how is it that 2 of your family have disabilities but no disability benefits? Is there really nothing you can do about this? I understand if you don't want to say on here, of course.

The 30th centile of local rents would be taken on the rents in the area with no decent public transport to where the jobs are...you do that, then anyone getting HB especially those that are working, will have to move to that area and not be able to continue with their job...not incredibly sensible if you want people to work...

hahaha to being able to buy our own place. Average price in our area for a 3-bed - £230K. DP's wage £16K. Will YOU give us a mortgage that's 16 times our income?? Won't go down much because of the secondary school catchment, hasn't over the last few years, Only Secondary that offers decent SEN help, only Secondary in the town that's rated outstanding.

DD has numerous 'little' disabilities that combine to make it a big problem. But without one SET big disability, no DLA/carers allowance. Same for DS2. DP has LD's limiting his earning potential - no disability benefits. I have epilepsy, got DLA until my renewal in July when they tightened up the criteria. You now have to have an average of 104 seizures a year to qualify. Used to be 52 a year. I don't meet the new criteria, therefore no DLA. Doesn't mean it's economically viable for an employer to employ me when I could still have up to 52 seizures a year, needing a) time off work, and b) often hospital treatment.

I think if house prices were lowered so that we could buy a house for £48K we might be able to get a mortgage...I also think that pigs will fly over a blue moon when hell has frozen over before house prices drop that low!

Remember that the 3rd decile is not 3/5 of the average.

There is no question that LHA deciles underpin rents to some extent. That does not mean that there are no consequences to these changes other than a reduction in rents, however.

So again, looking at your profile, you had a baby at 17, you don't work or work part time and yet you expect access to the best secondary schools, you are living in cloud cuckoo land lady.

NOPE - I don't expect access to the best Secondary schools, I expect access to one that gives DD the 11 hrs a week SEN help she needs, when the others can only fund 45 minutes a week. It's also the only school with a decent SEN DEPT!!!!

If one of the schools that was good/ satisfactory were willing to offer the same amount of SEN help to enable DD to get somewhere in life, then I would be happy to move her! Or is she not allowed the help she needs to reach her potential because her parents are poor?

AND if we moved area then DP wouldn't be able to get to bloody WORK.

And despite having a baby young, I went and trained in a fairly good profession, where I started on £29K, and by now 7 yrs later would be on £38-£40K pa. But got barred from that profession BY LAW DUE TO MY DISABILITY WHICH WASN'T DIAGNOSED UNTIL 6YRS AGO!!!

Of course, I should have checked my crystal ball to know before I trained that I would be diagnosed at a later date with a disability that precludes me from working in my chosen field....Mystic fucking Meg, I am!

mamatomany, just what did you mean by your last post? I think thats way out of line.

Mamatomany, you are being vile. Have you not heard of Marx's phrase: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." No probably not - it would mean you'd have some empathy, humanity and intelligence.

lol @ the quote from Marx! He might well subscribe to that as he scrounged most of his life odff his mate Engels, who made his money as a factory owner - nice example of hypocrisy.

Sorry but LOL @ channeling Marx. His system didn't work, if anyone needs to be reminded. It was a lovely fantasy, that is all.

Loudlass is right, though - her situation does appear impossible.

Oh yes, that's it - capitalism is all - indeed this particularly vicious one of neoliberalism. There is no alternative! I forgot. Jeez.

Erm marxism has never been implemented to my knowledge. If you could name me somewhere which has implemented marxism please let me know as I would be interested to visit such a unique country.

It's not going to force rents down, it's going to make properties smaller and probably net the landlords more money not less,

at the moment in London a Landlord can advertise a single room with a sink, fridge, hot plate and shared bathroom at around £400 a month, £600 if it has a toilet/shower room.

all that will happen is more houses get converted for the workers in such a way as the landlord can cram as many in as possible, you are looking at £500 a month each for good sized a 3 bed shared property at the moment.

it's not going to affect rent prices, it's going to affect the kind of properties they offer, single workers will end up worse off and families will be forced out entirely.

Marx never explained how exactly his ideals were to be implemented so nobody can say whether Soviet system implemented "Marxism". However, his ideas, and especially "From each according to ability and to each according to need" were one of the cornerstones of communist system, as was the very Marxist idea of communal/central ownership of means of production.

As I said, it didn't work too well. Maybe some on this thread were not around at the time of Soviet Russia and its satellites, but there are books they can read from to see how horribly ineffectual the Marxist-Leninist system was.

Although we've never seen a purely marxist system we've seen many systems that incorporated the majority of his principles and they have been shown to be a total failure.

Cote it was a Stalinist interpretation and nothing like a Marxist Leninist state.

As for communism there are some who think that what we have now in those countries is no better and that the so called democratic alternative is very little more than another type of tyranny.

It was of course an interpretation but was very much like a Marxist-Leninist state but that is the subject of another thread.

The point is that it is daft to bring up Marx's principles here as if (1) UK is a Marxist state (it isn't), and (2) Previous states in history built on Marxist principles worked oh so well (they didn't).

There are no previous states in history which was my point.

And my point was desperately searching for some ethical principles - as they appear to be entirely lacking amongst the capitalist-lovers on this thread.