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Politics

Goodbye Spongers!

163 replies

ShakesPear · 04/10/2010 23:06

Anyone else thrilled that the family on benefits living in a £12,000 pcm in London house paid by us will no longer be getting that benefit?

In fact I wonder if the cap on unemployment benefit is to high!

OP posts:
nobodyisasomebody · 07/10/2010 14:24

nobodyisasomebody - so SAHMs are spongers?

Absolutely not. I just objected to the term "spongers" in the op and the reference to amount of tax paid as if meandmrsjones personally funded the welfare state.

The term "spongers" is a horrible one and not one I would use

SAHMs rock as far as I am concerned. I was having a go at the attitude of the poster wrt the amount of tax her partner, not her paid.

nobodyisasomebody · 07/10/2010 14:27

nd, as an official London scumlord (I like that term, I'll use it in my correspondence with my tenants) I actually charge under the maximum HB rate and the other owners I know think I'm mad as it's guaranteed cash in the bank. It's easy to criticize landlords, but if someone offers to pay you more rent, you have to have quite a good reason not to take it

Seems like a chicken and egg situation really. Which came first? High rents or the willingness to pay them.

Goes back to good old thatch selling off the social housing stock.

lucky1979 · 07/10/2010 14:36

"Which came first? High rents or the willingness to pay them."

AFAIK it was the willingness of local authorities to pay them. There is an online calculator where you can calculate the maximum LHA based on number of bedrooms and LA, and a lot of landlords worked out the maximum that the LA would pay with no arguments, then upped their rent to that.

nobodyisasomebody · 07/10/2010 14:42

The problem is the local authority has an obligation to house vulnerable people so what else can they do?

There isn't enough social housing stock to go round in some areas. When houses were sold to tenants they weren't replaced.

Personally I have found it impossible to secure accommodation whilst in reciept of housing benefit.

complimentary · 07/10/2010 20:47

meandmrsjones. Good luck to you! if you can afford to send your children to Eton, You are saving the tax payer a fortune by not using the state system. I admire someone like you who has abviously pulled herself up by the bootstraps and bettered herself. I was in the same position and we were extremely poor as children. I now lead a comfortable lifestyle, which I might add I had to acheive through hard work. I feel although that society must help those who are in genuine need, and in particular the children as they are the future generation.
Smile

MeAndMrJones · 07/10/2010 21:57

Thank you complimentary. I agree with looking after children which is why a complete overhaul is needed. Supermarket voucehrs instead of money so it cannot be spend on fags or booze - well maybe one bottle a week, I'm not totally mean. Clothes vouchers too and part of the benefit could already include a pre-paid bus pass. If my mum had this instead of cash she would have got a job as soon as she could have!

cinnamontoast · 07/10/2010 22:57

Jesus Christ - vouchers, ffs. And you're probably the kind of person who sounds off about the nanny state.

freefruit · 08/10/2010 22:27

nobodyI agree I was shicked to see my LA proudly trumpet the fact that it is about to restart selling off council properties again

thereagain it is very very tory

MoralDefective · 09/10/2010 10:44

Typical 'nasty party' op.......the caring,sharing face of conservatism.

freefruit · 09/10/2010 21:33

I was shocked actually!! Grin

ivanhoe · 10/10/2010 12:35

/////Goodbye Spongers////

Well if this attitude does'nt just about some up some of Britain's middle class attitude to Britain's unemployed, I dont know what does.

It was Thatcher who stated there is no such thing as society, just individuals, and it was New Labour who continued this mantra by way of their policies which were encompassed in embracing fundamental Thatcherism.

Singling our some unemployed, or all unemployed people as wasters and scroungers
is no different to Hitler demonising the jews and other ethnic minorities, it is still descrimination but on a lower scale.

In the right wing free market this country has had since the 80's, anybody at anytime can lose everything, irrespective of income, I wonder how many homeless people today, had good jobs and marriages before they lost everything ????

Complacency is the order of the day in Britain, and has been since ther 80's.

Short term arrogant bigoted thinking from many among Britain's middle classes seems to be the norm.

Descrimination is descrimination in any language.

ivanhoe · 10/10/2010 13:16

'TRADITIONAL' Labour were the party of higher income tax on the working pubic, so one thing is unavoidably correct and that is true Labour governments of the past have been tax-and-spend governments.

But after Thatcher and the rest of the Tories coined that 'tax-and-spend' mantra, for a time Labour became un-electable.

Tony Blair made Labour ? under the guise of New Labour ? electable again by dragging the party over to the right wing.

Both Blair and Gordon Brown then proceeded to continue to tax and spend by redesigning the taxation base away from direct taxation and on to stealth taxation.

After a while even this kind of taxation became not enough to finance all of the policies that they wanted to finance and that was when the borrow to spend policies got out of hand.

Whereas Margaret Thatcher's era began the underfunding of our vital services based on the Tory ethos of low income on the general public, and trickled down economic investment into our vital services.

Unfortunately Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in my view, literally wasted their 13 years in Government by keeping to the right-wing low income tax agenda of the Thatcher era, but they did invest more money into our vital services, and it is this investment that has helped rack up the deficit that Cameron and the Tories want to cut.

This deficit now gives the Tory leader a chance to go back to Tory roots and slash investment en masse, jobs will be lost and unemployment will soar as it did in the 80s and 90s, because all the cuts being announced now, are just a small per cent of the whole £160billion, there are five years to go before the next general election, so there is much more insecurity and uncertainty to come for the ordinary British public.

Let me make this clear, everything pursued by the former New Labour Government was initiated by Margaret Thatcher, because New Labour ditched their own core policies of fairness and equality when they came to power in 1997, in favour of Margaret Thatcher's low income tax deregulated, free market policies resulting in a mammoth rich and poor devide, that unfortunately New Labour made wider.

Now the Tories are back with a vengeance, to cut New Labour's built up deficit, hoping the public will back them.

Yet the public benefited in many ways under New Labour because New Labour would not increase income tax through their 13 years in office to do the things they wanted to do, they had a long term plan to reduce the deficit, while also protecting front line services and jobs.

The people of this country who voted Tory at the recent general election, again in my view, clearly had no idea what they were really doing, now they, their friends, families, and children, will suffer the consequences in one way or another over the next five years.

The suffering hasn't even begun yet ? a lot of tears will fall in the next few years as hundreds of thousands, if not millions, are thrown on the scrapheap and sacrificed on the altar of Tory political dogma, while the Lib-Dems will most likely be swallowed up, while losing millions of their supporters.

And while all this is happening, the one section of our society, of our country that have suffered the worse, are not the middle classes, it is the elderly, particularly those old enough to have fought for this country, they have and are continuing to be ignored by the politicians, and by the media.

Our pensioners are being made to live on a £97 a week state pension , and humiliating demeaning means tested handouts.

Britain's middle clsses dont know their living in this deeply self interested country of ours, while they argue about losing their "non" means tested Child Benefit.

Our pensioners remain being means tested for handouts from the State.

There is a deep disparity here in income between the elderly generations who have already spent their entire working lives paying taxes and NI conributions into the system, only to be basically thrown on the scrap heap by the system that has been in place since Thatcher.

Compared to today's middle classes who are by defination considerably better off in general, to today's pensioners.

Millions of whom are living in poverty, and who suffer hypotherima related illness, due to their income being so low, and means testing applied, which many elderly people feel humiliated by because they have pride having come through much harder times than us.

And no, im not a pensioner.

ivanhoe · 10/10/2010 13:35

//////meandmrsjones. Good luck to you! if you can afford to send your children to Eton, You are saving the tax payer a fortune by not using the state system. I admire someone like you who has abviously pulled herself up by the bootstraps and bettered herself//////

People who have pushed themselves upward, tend to look down on those who have'nt by describing those who havent as wasters and scroungers.

Personally I respect people who have a much wider and adult view of society, and the people in it.

The role of the State is demonised in Britain, because people have been brainwashed, much like Hitler brainwashed decent Germans into his descriminative way of thinking during World War two.

Descrimination is descriminstion wherever it's ugly head surfaces, but for some reason
many in today's Britain this past 30 years dont see it.

I think the Empire has much to do with this.

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