Social Justice and the Housing Benefit Cap
The Labour left and the Guardian are getting very worked up about the perfectly reasonable housing benefit cap proposal
“for example Louise Ryan, 41, who lives with her husband and two children in Islington, north London, will see the £438-a-week benefit, which covers the rent, reduced to £340 under the changes to housing benefit introduced this month.”
To just afford that £438 rent those of us who work would have to earn as below:
| Yearly | Monthly | Weekly | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gross Income | £30,000.00 | £2,500.00 | £576.92 | |
| Pension Deductions | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | |
| Taxable Income | £22,525.00 | £1,877.08 | £433.17 | |
| Tax | £4,505.00 | £375.42 | £86.63 | |
| National Insurance | £2,733.00 | £227.75 | £52.56 | |
| Student Loan | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | |
| Take Home | £22,762.00 | £1,896.83 | £437.73 |
That rent alone is higher than median wages. It takes the taxes of four people on median wages to cover Louise’s rent. Add on her other benefits and Louise has a household income equivalent to a working family with a household income of over £40,000. Where is the social justice in paying welfare benefits to people that are higher than the majority of the tax paying working people’s take home pay? This simply cannot continue.
To be fair the Labour shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne recognises this, so the Labour left have begun excoriating him as “a reactionary”. The ubiquitous Owen Jones, author of “Chavs“, is representative of the Labour left. He thinks it is “progressive” to pay out to welfare recipients more in benefits than the majority of working people earn:
"Labour says it supports the principle of the benefit cap" – sorry, what? guardian.co.uk/society/2012/j… That's it – Liam Byrne has to go.—
Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) January 02, 2012
The Guardian reckons thousand of benefit recipients will have to move out of Kensington and Chelsea. Doesn’t your heart bleed? Guido really hopes that Owen Jones succeeds in getting the Labour Party to go into the election with a manifesto commitment to reverse the cap. It will be a huge electoral liability on the doorstep…
Nothing is free.
Let them learn that the only people who should live in these big houses are the ones than can afford and not paid for by the state.
…can’t argue at all with Guido’s maths or logic here…good to see the Tory/News International/Liberal Coalition Govt using their right hands for something other than tossing off bankers or each other…
Feel the pain. Buy a council house for next to nothing, rent it back to the council for £104,000 a year.
No, really.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16384346?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Can you given example of where I can rent a property should I have one… To the government for £104,000.
STOP BLAMING THOSE UNFORTUNATE ENOUGH TO HAVE TO RELY ON BENEFITS AND DIRECT IT AT THOSE THAT HAVE CAUSED THE PROBLEM AND ARE STILL GAINING FROM IT .
@Failblog
Are you new here?
I am pefecly happy in my bed sit at $175 pw and the counsel does not mind paying part of it because I gives good service at the depot and nothing has been knickered for ages
@fake Billy
Lame.
“STOP BLAMING THOSE UNFORTUNATE ENOUGH TO HAVE TO RELY ON BENEFITS”
Those ‘unfortunate’ enough to rely on benefits enjoyed a state education costing (at least) £120,000. That’s what a state education costs, per pupil.
If, after that £120,000 has been splurged all over the ‘unfortunate’, the ‘unfortunate’ freak still can’t get a fucking job, well, excuse me while I laugh my fucking tits off, that ‘unfortunate’ parasite was just mean to die.
Nature’s like that; nature hates the weak. And so do I.
Tessa, can you direct me to the source of £120k as cost per pupil please.
Prison cost £40k/annum.
Thank you.
To Fairblog Get a job you ars*hole and pay your own way.
THE REAL problem is the absurd cost of housing, encouraged by property speculators. No-one, employed or not, should have to pay such absurd sums for a roof over their heads.
Fortunately the bubble has burst and there is a price crash underway.
Lets also not forget the subsidies being paid and taxes being avoided across the UK with:-http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13335602
Owen Jones is a prize knob!
Tax avoidence is entirely legal and more so, a moral obligation to your family. Any idiot who pays too much tax to the grasping government, is incompetent as well as foolish.
Let’s make sure there are no indigenous English left in London bar the city boys.
Happy Days in international Slave City State number 2!
Brilliant analysis Guido. Spot on.
Good piece on Archbishop Cranmer about Dr Leigh getting a knighthood from Cameron for services to enlarge the EU. Recommended by Francis Maude. Hardly the actions of a Eurosceptic. Oh dear, Cameron is once again wanting. When will the Eurosceptics have the courage to get rid of him?
Get rid of Cameron? When he fucks up in Brussels next time, I should think!
Sky news carried item concerning family in London being paid £2k a week to cover their rent. Cheaper surely to offer them £100k in a lump sum to move elsewhere (i.e. Tuck off ) or even give them a house and let them get with their lives… This system is mad!
The family get nothing, this is just a bung to prop up the BTL market (of which the political classes are massive speculators in).
Unless of course, you just happen to be renting off a relative who bought the property cheap from the council before inviting you to claim asylum in the UK.
o.h. you reveal the big elephant in the room
ACI, at least someone realises what is going on here. Families on housing allowance don’t see any of that allowance, the BTL brigade (Cameroon’s cronies) do.
Owen Jones has a point I love working to pay for housing people in homes I could never afford myself.
This article should be required reading on PPE courses.
Regards,
Tom
Thith ith outwageouth.
Where ith the bandwagon?
Personally I find Owen Jones a mouthy little twat who talks utter pish. But hey thats just my opinion. Whats yours?
Sums up the state of affairs when Labour are looking to wet-behind the-ears Owen Jones for policy direction: I mean he is only straight out of Oxford with nothing but a naff book to show for it, yet the BBC and Guardian are giving him a platform to regurgitate the same old BS on a daily basis
I’d rather hear the political views of Ian and Jeanette Krankie than this tosser and Penny Red. Just who do the BBC and Guardian these kiddies are ffs?
I would like to kick Owen Jones in the spuds. Extremely hard. Repeatedly.
This man child is a complete throbber.
The law of supply and demand will happen. As people move out will there be others to take their place I seriously doubt it, so landlords will either have to sell (in this market?) or drop their rents. If you’re a land lord renting at the moment at just above the cap, you’ve go a decision to make do you drop the rent and keep the tenant, ask the tenant to make up the difference, work out what you’ll have to do to compete or sell the property.
I for one see there being a distinct banding happening in rents as there will be little point in having rents at 401 – 450 per week, in a similar way that you don’t find house’s priced at 251k (they’re 249995 or 260K) as you get the extra stamp duty at 250K
I don’t think the BBC got the message that sky high rent for those on benefits paid for by those in work is unacceptable. The coalition seem to be pandering to the union bosses on £100,000+ in not kicking them out of council property, that was supposed to be for poor people, not those that can buy the place outright in one cheque.
Sublet…er’s should refund the council. Clearly the size of the house provided is excessive. If they paid the council back 50% of the sublet rent, it would be pragmatic but not moral enough?
Subletting is fraud.
Labour wanting a builder of homes as a minister
shame labour can’t build a decent set of policies .
Prasident Christian Wulff of Germany (CDU = conservative) tries to suppress the truth as to how he financed his house, they are all at it:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,806665,00.html
Judith Hart? I said, Oh no no. The very idea that dear Judith could be a Soviet mole was quite preposterous! After all, she was only overseas aid minister, not much for the Soviets, there!! Ehm….whats his name agreed and we both laughed it off. This would have been in about…ehm…1968, yes, yes, iwas only a junior minister at the time and, eh…whats his name was Defence secretary.
It is about time the German media forgot their kid gloved attitude to the political elite and put on boxing gloves instead. Herr Wulff comes up with a slightly new version of the facts weekly….and he is weakly trying to get off the hook. Reminds me of the Mandygate loan.
Boxing gloves are to protect the hands, Mr Easterby. Please get your references right.
The problem has to be tackled head on. This sort of nenefits generosity is a major part of Italy’s economic problems………… let alone the other PIGS………
Solution is Capitalism
Ground-rents are a still more proper subject of taxation than the rent of houses. A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground. More or less can be got for it according as the competitors happen to be richer or poorer, or can afford to gratify their fancy for a particular spot of ground at a greater or smaller expense. In every country the greatest number of rich competitors is in the capital, and it is there accordingly that the highest ground-rents are always to be found. As the wealth of those competitors would in no respect be increased by a tax upon ground-rents, they would not probably be disposed to pay more for the use of the ground. Whether the tax was to be advanced by the inhabitant, or by the owner of the ground, would be of little importance. The more the inhabitant was obliged to pay for the tax, the less he would incline to pay for the ground; so that the final payment of the tax would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent.
— Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 2, Article I: Taxes upon the Rent of Houses
so as a mortgage company has first charge over most freeholds and consequently ground rents will they pay the tax?
They’d just pass it on through higher interest rates, so it really doesn’t matter, as long as it’s paid.
Yes, like bankers at bailed-out banks, MPs and Russian gangsters.
That was mainly during the Reign of Terror 1997-2010, wasn’t it ? That was when Gordon bailed out all the banks which we ‘omitted’ to regulate; when the MPs expenses scandal blew up under the system introduced by Liebour and when so many Russian oligarchs flocked into London during the same timeframe.
Nothing to do with Labour. It was all Thatcher’s fault. And America’s. And Ashcroft’s.
Even if it was a rehypothecation problem at an AIG office in London…
Is this article the sort of thing you mean?
I found it a fantastic horror story which made claims about ‘it all starting in America’ more than slightly disingenuous. The article talks about assets starting their journey in America but continuing a journey into deepest la-la land right here, under UK jurisdiction.
In fact, “Under the U.S. Federal Reserve Board’s Regulation T and SEC Rule 15c3-3, a prime broker may re-hypothecate assets to the value of 140% of the client’s liability to the prime broker. For example, assume a customer has deposited $500 in securities and has a debt deficit of $200, resulting in net equity of $300. The broker-dealer can re-hypothecate up to $280 (140 per cent. x $200) of these assets.
But in the UK, there is absolutely no statutory limit on the amount that can be re-hypothecated. In fact, brokers are free to re-hypothecate all and even more than the assets deposited by clients. Instead it is up to clients to negotiate a limit or prohibition on re-hypothecation.”
Ouch!
Well if many benefit recipients have to move out of central London where will they be able to move to? Properties for rent won’t simply appear out of nowhere.
Oh yes they will. There’s thousands of unsold newbuild flats outside of the capital (where it is much cheaper to live) just waiting for buy-to-let landlords who in turn are just waiting for tenants.
If true, that would rely on lots of buy to let landlords suddenly popping up from somewhere. In the current economic climate that is not a certainty.
Plenty of empty new flats in Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester !!
Oh do behave. It would quite literally be cheaper for the Government to purchase every single private house currently up for sale, get mortgages on them all, and put the housing benefit recipients in those. How much house would you get for the new maximum housing benefit of £340 A WEEK. My monthly mortgage does not cost much more than that.
It’s not a bad idea. Government becomes the Landlord, charges reasonable rent, and benefits from any increase in the value of the property.
BUT it musn’t sell at a loss to the tenant. This strikes me as Thatcher’s silliest idea- and I’m generally an admirer.
How long will landlords suffer voids before they adjust to the new floor anyway. Housing Benefit increases the average housing costs for every last one of us, unless we have a few to spare or our next move is to down size.
800,000 voids? I doubt it somehow.
My thoughts too. If the state was not paying the rents, then what floor would there be to house prices in big cities? £340 a week is over generous.
The cap could be somewhere round the £250 mark per household without causing a great deal of social dislocation, though a small fund to assist people with the costs of moving chattels, pets and buying new uniforms for their childrens’ new schools would be politic.
A small rise in wages for low paid essential workers in Central London may result, but that would be no bad thing.
If all government admin, business, commerce and industry was spread more evenly across the country, we wouldn’t have the absurd nonsense of all the South East effects on property, transport, congestion, pollution, etc.
Fail. They have already done this with hmrc, dvla etc. The problem lies with the same pay nationwide for the same role even though the welsh are spags and Geordies incomprehensible. The state crowds out local enterprise in shitholes so there is no private sector. Hence most well paid people gravitate to the south east where there is enterprise and the potential to do better than your parents did. In the rest of the country doing better than. Your parents mean having more than one kid before your eleven.
Can I have Bob Crow’s cahncil ahse when he moves out ? I’d like to sub-let it.
No. His family have first shout. Really. no doubt they will exercise the option to buy and all without a penny of capital gains tax. Enjoy
http://www.blottr.com/columnist/old-holborn/englishmans-castle
Can I have Frank Dobson’s £1m flat !!
I can do you a flat in central London fora knock down price. Of course I will expect a few favours in return Im not a fucking chatity you know.
Don’t forget Maxwell’s old flat that Gordon Brown bought for peanuts from the liquidators. Easy money!
A quick search on just one of the property websites found 6 properties in the Islington area with 3 bedrooms for less than £340 per week.
If the properties are available at the rent they will receive, why are they having to move out of the area?
Did any of those lets stipulate no housing benefit claimants? A lot of London lets do.
And for good reason
The best way to reduce rents in London is to reduce the benefits paid,let the market decide
Socialism is all about wasting other peoples money. I’d like to see the t*rds at the guardian survive on £300 a week.
It costs me that just to get my favourite wine delivered from France to my villa in Tuscany each week.
Never forget, Labour allowed benefit claimants to have up to £2,000 a week for their rent.
It was their ‘uman right to live in Notting Hill, innit.
It is obviously very progressive to let those living at the expense of the tax payer to allow these poor people live in accommodation that the donor (taxpayer) could not afford to live in himself.
Yes let them all live in B&B accommodation in Hastings or Hearne Bay (or some other place I never intend to go near unless it unexpectedly becomes a place to be seen – like Whitstable). If they can’t organise it to get tax breaks and float their wealth off-shore too bloody bad. Let’s buy the lot up as investments and put in people who can subsidise our perfectly reasonable affluent life styles – whingeing bloody lefties. Let the market prevail and f*** the lot of them. This is a perfectly reasonable stance which any considered libertarian couldn’t possibly disagree with.
Libertarianism = Selling out your own people for money.
It’s funny because it’s true.
So telling people who have never worked and are happy to leech from society that they need to start pulling their weight is selling them out is it?
What a quaint little world you live in.
These people don’t want to work? Prove it. Lickspittle.
http://www.breitbart.tv/occupydc-protesters-turn-down-job-offers/
Oh do fuck off you arsehole.
No wonder Guido’s blog has a world-wide reputation for closely- reasoned argument spiced with sparkling wit.
This was a load of bollocks courtesy of the Looney Left, who as a sub-set of society learn nothing and forget nothing.
Removing a subsidy makes houses MORE affordable you complete and utter dolt.
Can someone please explain to me where twats like Owen Jones come from? I dont know anyone that stupid……………
Somewhere different from your origins perhaps? But as most of us are probably one or two generations removed from a council house there’s no saying is there…
speak for yourself loser. Daddy did quite well in north london
Don’t know where he comes from, but the BBC are happy to put him on the TV and radio week in week out as their new trendy voice of the right-on Left. He ticks all their boxes, you see.
He might tick all the boxes, but he definitely gets on my tits! Whining Lancashire wanker!
People with children should NOT be given any benefits. Why bring a child into the world if you can’t put a roof over your own head or pay the bills? I am astonished that people who live like parasites at the taxpayer’s expense keep producing offspring…they should be sterilised.
They should sterliesd
Eugenics?
Back to the 30′s.
Why not just harvest the organs of the children? They’re clearly fertile enough to make more.
You’re a day late and a dollar short.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
Ah. You agree they should “kidnap” their own children?
“Pay up or the child gets harmed!”
Lame
Housing benefit to rent a place in Islington at £1900 a month? ON YOUR BIKE
Taxpayers should not be funding people in luxury loft designer flats (£420 a week – http://www.findaproperty.com/to-rent/property-9822446)
Anyone wanting a housing subsidy has a duty to find the cheapest accommodation possible given the burden they are placing on everyone else.
+++ What you said.
you is racialist init?
“..24hr concierge, private gym, sauna, steam room..”
Oh come now, why shouldn’t scroungers have such amenities at everyone else’s expense!
Although, landlords of this type of property, won’t DSS them. But it show’s what a scam DSS landlords have with their local council contacts.
An investigation into rigging DSS rents so high (especially in London), is called for, but it won’t happen becuause too many ethnically challenged people would be publicly embarassed and the political class could never do that!
Tsk. ‘shows’, ‘because’, ‘ethically’, ‘embarrassed’.
Six out of ten – could do better if paid more attention to detail.
Well said Guido.
The cap is still far too high and in my opinion should not exceed the equivalent of a week’s minImum wage (ie £242.40).
What’s more those on benefit in my opinion should still pay 20% council tax and at least 20% rent otherwise we will never make work pay.
And just in case those great men Pickles and Shapps are reading here’s another idea.
As well as the state paying money to cover 100% housing and council tax benefits to some claimants most also get service charges for cleaning etc paid too.
Could this not also be reviewed?
Pickles is a blowhard, all mouth and no trousers. Has he actually done anything yet
He’s done worse than nothing, he appears to have colluded with some very dodgy planning outcomes by refusing to intervene when requested by quite reputable parties.
From where I am sitting he or whichever official is advising him looks almost bent, but that is just an oppinion and I do not invite anyone to follow it without looking into the Essex Wharf/Lea Valley Park scandal for themselves.
WTF! I’m a professional engineer working in aerospace and defence – specifically in the high tech world of composites design, and that rent is more than my entire take home pay!!
My old Dad once told me – when learning what my salary was after years of education – “They’re taking you for a c***” and this wise observation seems true of so many British workers like yourself. Just grin and bear it whilst lashing out at the f***ing underclass who are dragging us all down with them – whilst those above look down upon us with reasoned and soft hearted understanding.
Or, alternatively, we could get this utter madness stopped. And I’m not lashing out at the underclass, I’m lashing out at the morons who put this system in place
HOW do we get this madness stopped? Vote for politicians who would take a determined line? Where are they?
And given the squeals that arise whenever there is anger against the benefits culture, would they be voted in?
I see no solution to the whole madness short of an anarchic collapse of all order and the entire economy, and we would all suffer, sensible, hard-working taxpayers along with the dross.
I’m 27 and have been in constant employment since leaving school at sixteen (from apprentice to senior ATA panel beater in an independant vw shop) and i take home about £320 a week, yet i’m living at home because i earn too much to claim anything off the state, but not enough to pay a mortgage! The sad thing is i’ve got a lot of mates in the same position. No wonder this country is on the f*ckin’ rocks, most of the hardworkers of my generation have got a trade and are using it to emigrate, leaving behind only the t*ssers that sponge and vote liebour.
There are a thousand upmarket car restoration works in the US who’d be crying out for you, not to mention the dealerships!
Shocking, isn’t it. Both the person living in the house AND the owner of the house are taking us all for a ride.
I’m “lucky” in that I live in a not-very-desirable town so I could afford to buy a house and pay for it quite quickly.
I did a bit of adding up recently and I reckon I spent about £6k last year (I actually paid more than that in tax), and don’t want for very much. So what are these people doing with my money?
Stop picking on me
Leave me alone too
Owen Jones is about 20 years old, and has never done a day’s work in his short precocious life. He knows nothing, he just thinks he knows everything — like every other spoiled, teenage brat.
He knows fuck all about work. He knows fuck all about benefits. He knows fuck all about anything other than BBC/Guardian luncheons.
It’s kind of a shame we don’t have mines these days, Jones would be a perfect candidate to be sent down one.
Or sent to defuse one….
I guess Owen Jones “84″ is 27.
If thats true we’re the same age, i’ve paid tax and N.I for nearly twelve years (how many student loans and handouts has he had i wonder) and never claimed a penny off the gov. so i think my opinion is more relevent than this than this smug c*cksuckers.
Following the logic even further….
* HB Claimant moves somewhere cheaper, which leads to….
* an empty home in an expensive area, as well as….
* an occupied home somewhere cheaper which means….
* the minted Landlord as to reduce the rent on his property and…..
* The HB claimant lives a perfectly happy existance in a cheaper home
Result
Rents are cheaper for everyone
Tax is lower for everyone
Parasite landlords are leeching less money from the productive
etc etc etc etc……
Housing is more affordable.
Less privately collected tax.
More money spent in productive economy.
Ability to cut taxes on incomes.
More jobs.
Ah yes, taxes going down, like the erm ….. erm ….. No I just can’t bring a tax that went down to mind.
Or it could be a type of social cleansing of course!
How can it be ‘social cleansing’ to ask someone to move where his fellow citizens call home?
This is fair and by definition worth campaigning on.
Thanks to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the obscene benefits culture and the bbc and their fellow travellers, this country is no a longer fit or proper place for the responsible working man.
What a squalid little cesspit this country has become, with so many seeing it as their right to live off my back thereby ending up better off than I and my family! Enough is enough!!!
There was a Bishop on Radio 5 Labour last night absolutely foaming at the mouth as he read out the Guardian headlines about this. Classic. If he’s so concerned about the homeless why doesn’t he let them come and live with him in the nice big house I bet he lives in rent-free? You would have thought that the Conservative Party were the devil’s representatives on earth to hear him. I suppose if you mentioned the words ‘mass immigration’ in his presence he would accuse you of being a racist – that’s how blinkered and simplistic his attitude was.
Do you know what bishops get paid?
No, I thought not.
Thirty-odd years ago I lived in the City and was shocked to find I, as a fairly junior executive, got paid more than the Archbishop of Canterbury. My vicar got a rent-free house, courtesy of the Corporation of London but the service charge levied by one of their bureaucrats exceeded his stipend (net of tax) – he could only eat because his wife was a university professor.
So if you don’t know what you are talking about, try shutting up about allegedly rent-free houses which just mean that the vicar has no rights over the house in which he/she lives.
I see you don’t actually say what the figure is. As a junior executive you did did not get subsidised food at the House of Lords or an allowance on top of your salary, did you?
Just in case you don’t know, this is a libertarian free speech blog and everyone is entitled to their opinion, even you. PS I do know how much a Bishop earns and the example you give is very rare in the Co of E. I should know I’m a vicar!
They all applied for the job knowing the terms of employment. Nobody is ever forced to become a professional god-botherer. You reap what you sow.
That would be the celebrated Bishop Stephen Lowe. He’s the resident, breast-beating Radio Bloke cleric. Never let’s a bogus “cause” bandwagon trundle by without clambering aboard!
Me too. Perhaps Guido could help launch the English Liberation Army to set us free from all this madness in which we live.
off you go then…adios!
Owen Jones is right up there with Polly Toynbee and Will Hutton as the most blinkered and stupid of the left wing commentariat.
A genuine cnut.
Add the former stripper Laurie Penny to that list.
And Cory Doctorow- the smug, poisonous leftie twat.
Rarely do I come across such reasoned argument – even on a bank holiday. This is quite remarkable stuff. Quite possibly worthy of consideration as cutting edge political satire. Keep it up. Let’s get really cross, work ourselves into a complete lather and then beat the wife and kids…. or have you done that already? I know I have so that’s why I’m sharing these heart felt views with you – all alone whilst she’s off with f***ing Derek and the kids don’t want to see me. He reads the f***ing Guardian as well so that makes it a worthy target for my welling-up feelings of rage and hatred….. oh have I said too much?
Hey Percy, you really are vile person.
Tony – it’s recognition like this which is so affirming to a right wing libertarian bigot like myself and many of my reasonable and patriotic friends who express their genuine concerns for this wonderful country in these frank and fearless debates. We risk our health by harbouring all this anger and ruminating alone on our lap-tops. I’m on blood pressure tablets but it doesn’t stop me from boiling like a work shy scrounger’s kettle – always on the brew.
Do you have a job? I mean, do you pay taxes? Or are you a tax-dodger like the people at the Guardian?
I don’t know if you’re just trolling trying to get a reaction – in which case just grow the hell up, or if you really are believing the stuff you’re writing is an accurate description of people on the right that you are trying to parody. In which case you really are quite far off the mark with your prejudices. You imply that we’re bigots whilst displaying, seemingly unaware, a fine level of bigotry yourself. Your implications that we’re all secret wife beaters is disgusting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
Percy – it is way more reasoned than that moronic tweet from Owen Jones above.
yop
So where does this leave the royal family?
Just askin?
The Royal Family not only pay their own way, but a sizeable proportion of the Queen’s gross income is paid directly into the Treasury, from which the Privy Purse is funded. Get some facts before you sound off, Billy.
Billy is a professional idiot. He’s just practising here.
He needs no more practice.
i was asking not sounding off.
There are some dark forces at work on this blog.
The royal family repents something, as does every single individual in this country. You may not like what it is…but we cannot change who we are…we can just try and get different aspects of us to live in harmony….I guess.
Yayy.
You are all twats – it was clear that I was just askin do whats the problemo
Owen Jones is living proof that re-incarnation exists.
It is impossible to become that stupid during only one lifetim!
Must be a taffy with that name surely? Says a lot.
Taffy is a Welshman
Taffy is a twit
Taffy went on Twitter
To tweet a load of shit
Taffy is a Welshman
Taffy is a queen
Taffy should just sod off
and not be heard or seen
Taffy is a Welshman
Taffy is a prat
Taffy’s an example
Of what is called “moonbat”
If the benefit is cut and all these people can no longer afford the rent, they’ll have to move out. If the landlord then can’t find anyone else to move in, because none of those looking can afford the rent then either he sells the property or reduces the rent to the level that people can afford.
There will be a painful period while all this happens, but perhaps enlightened landlords (are there any?) will pre-empt this and reduce their rent in line with the new housing benefit. If it takes a month to get a new tenant in, that’s over £1600 lost, plus any agent or legal fees, which they could spread over 16 months by reducing the rent by £100.
Well I’m glad some people think that cap is reasonable because I’m afraid I don’t.
Why should we the taxpayer pay so much money for unemployable people’s housing benefit when cheaper housing is available elsewhere?
It isn’t acceptable.
Owen Jones went to Oxford, I believe.
Strikes me as the type who has never worked a shit job, for a shit wage, and had to make a tenner last till the end of the month. Probably made a stack of cash out of cosmopolitan lefties with that ‘Chavs’ book.
I fucking hate these patronising little gits, “working on behalf of the poor and vulnerable”, yeah right. I’m one of the poor and vulnerable and they can suck my dick. Piss off and get a life Jones, you pretentious tosser.
There are just too many piss takers playing at fake socialism. Jones, Toynbee, Sarwotka, Crowe, Harman, Miliband…………the list goes on and on.
Judging by Owen’s ‘Jimmy Somerville’ look, he’d probably love a bit of sucky, and a bit of reciprocation too.
There’s no need to beat around the bush. now is there. Just tell us what you really think!!
I am not sure if I heard this correctly this morning (it was early morning ) the powers that be were saying that people on £100,000 or more would not be eligable to have council houses, surely anyone on that salary is quite capable of obtaining a house and mortgage or renting in the private sector. Anyone on that salary should not be in a council house anyway.
I think Bob Crowe begs to differ comrade.
Up the workers & all that.
Bob Crowe is a scumbag. How many of his union members have similar housing benefits. None I would bet, yet they blindly follow this do as I say not as I do parasite. He is taking the piss out of you comrades, wake up, hello!
That other parasite Sarwotka also takes the piss.
Why do people blindly follow Crowe and Sarwotka? Are people that stupid?
In a word,yes.
Have you read Cif on the subject? Most amusing.
I’ts wonderful so many bleeding hearts want to give all their earnings away in tax to BTL landlords,Somalians just arrived with six children or Crowe leeches.
> I’ts wonderful so many bleeding hearts want to give all their earnings
That would be OK… However they want to give away OTHER PEOPLES earnings on things that would harm them!
Somali immigrants clearing in excess of 37k on benefits
Yes!
You heard correctly. It was not a New Years party hangover thing. If that helps.
I hate crime me…. let’s all go to India to apologise?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081038/Anuj-Bidve-shooting-Man-charged-murder-Indian-student.html
A new low for the British Police
It is time for high politics… Olympics year after all.
It is time for Britain to win gold at self-abasement?
Would the police have jetted over to say Australia or Canada to reassure the parents?
I’ve every sympathy for them (the parents) but methinks racism is evident here, racism being the treating of people in a different way because of their race.
If only someone could have foreseen that depleting social housing stock would send the HB bill through the roof. Who knew?
Still I’m sure the government’s exciting new idea to shift the unemployed to the parts of the country with fewest vacancies will really kick start the recovery.
British jobs for British workers!
Fuck off that’s my line!
OK. I abolished boom and bust!
No you abolished jobs and control of the (w)bankers and Liebours options in telling the people what you will do when you ever get back in for another reign of terror, remember the Lisbon treaty thing, which you took to the courts, we do.
Actually the bankers did EXACTLY what Gordo wanted/regulated, which is to create as much credit as possible to pretend the economy wasn’t FUBARed.
I am not prudent. I admit it.
What? Houses have vanished? What’s happened is subsidised immigration, nimby planning controls and a PM with a love of credit (and a stupid population who think falls in the affordability of shelter is wealth).
If they can’t find work in Islington then they are clearly unemployable, Move the fuckers to Liverpool.
Fuck that one off, we have spent years telling people it is a shit hole to keep the housing prices down, people out and maintain a decent lifestyle, and you want to cock it up by sending people here again.
On yer bike!
They are only being asked to move about three or four stops (eg 20 minutes away) along the Victoria line or Picadilly lines. Anyone would think that they were being sent back to Mogadishu.
You might want to read the article.
Sorry, forgot where i was for a moment.
Did someone say depleting housing stock? That was my idea we practiced this policy for 13 years so don’t you go claiming it Jimbo.
Owen Jones should fund a “benefit” family directly from his own income. Then we would hear the little shit bleat.
Owen Jones is a c.u.n.t.
+99
Owen Jones, is he that Mr pro-multicultural mass immigration BBC luvvie pinko marxist anti-free speech commie bastard?
Oh yes I remember him.
Chop off ‘is knob, the knob !
Off with his head!
What ever happened to David Starkey? Never, ever saw him on the Beeb after that.
He still makes History programs for the BBC.
Just a bit more…diversified and accessible to the kids.
Check it out bro’.
“Yoh, you youth
You wanna listen to me
I know ’bout Hen-ree
And Anne B.
Ho, give her cherry
On Henry’s bone,
So he broke with Rome
And set off
The Reformation
Of the nation
Caused damnation
Raised taxation.
Hear my narration.
I’m ‘em sea,
Starkee”
…
The Pope said
‘Mary is now successor,
Henry was Lord Protector.
Now he’s a defector.
“I’m no Conscientious Objector
I’m gonna put a crossbow bolt in his ass.’
Henry wasn’t timid,
He was livid
So he dissolved the Monasteries
Listen to my commentaries.”
Dr Dave.
Starkee M.C.
All those sham-pain socialists in Islington and Chelsea can come to live in Luton or Leicester, they’ll really appreciate the great diversity and the appearance of being in Islamabad.
I prefer Tower Hamlets, no, I really do. I’m learning Bangla and saving up for a Burka for the wife.
tower hamlets the place where bliar’s bosom pal uddin troughed her £millions out of the taxpayer!!
No mention of the people who are actually living off housing benefit – the landlords. We used to have rent officers and rent tribunals who kept rents under control. Always better to blame the tenants.
Didn’t notice any tenant blaming going on, the system is fucked. Capping benefits will reduce rents for everyone.
But please do have pity on all the local councillors who will suffer in corrupted Waltham Forest Council if the system was fixed.
http://archipelago-of-truth.blog.co.uk/2011/06/19/top-hats-and-cigars-all-round-11343787/
Interesting blog, with some interesting facts about Labour councillors.
Capping is essential..we need for our money to work harder.
It’s not like this is a new problem either!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo
Nothing to do with the tenants, its the people distributing taxpayers money allowing tenants to live beyond their station.
Ed Miliband got a mention on Charlie Brooker’s review of 2011.
“He’s like a boy, who’s won a competition to lead a political party, but he always looks a bit worried. Like he thinks someone’s gonna throw his satchel on the roof..”
Here’s the rest.
The fact that this gormless c*nt is Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is profoundly depressing.
More depressing is the State Media’s support for massive incomes paid by the taxpayer to the undeserving.
No wonder the UK is target No. 1 for scroungers from around the world.
When is Cameron going to get a grip.
He’s not.
Point taken but they bleed their social wringing of hands in the first person. I take from that they would like to pay the costs.
However logic does not go hand in hand with the wringing thereof I guess.
That ^ was a reply to AC1.
Looks a bit of a loony post all on its own.
Looks fine to me.
That’s because you’re dyslexic Billy.
Which one? They got numbers but the quoting the posts’ time is best.
In other news…
On it’s 10th anniversary this weekend the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said there was a 99% chance that the Euro would not survive the next 10 years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8987886/Eurozone-collapse-starts-this-year-says-CEBR.html
I predict there is a 99% chance that the coalition won’t last for 10 years.
That Obama won’t still be President in 10 years time and that the price of stamps will be higher in 2021 than it is now.
Oh..and a hundred other 50 guaranteed things too.
Misprint.
10 months.
Does that mean we have to throw money at it for the next ten years (Via IMF contributions) of course ?
So that’s another 10 years of negative growth an recession !
Marvelous !
Nigel ! He speaka my language !
Ve vill crush ze undemocratic voice of Russia Today in 2012
How ironic is it that the best and informed source of news information available to anyone in the west comes from Russia.
You couldn’t fucking make it up, could you?
And for more news go to Freeview Channel 89
Liam Byrne “There’s no money left”
Now you know why you dopey twat !
Attempts to address the problems of “maldistribution” of housing often are a cure worse than the disease:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american-murder-mystery/6872/4/?single_page=true
One would think the more “progressive” among us, like Owen Jones, would adopt a John Rawls do-no-harm approach to dealing with the inequalities in society. I purposely chose an American example, as Mr Jones, according to his wikipedia entry, is an American History scholar. (And to paraphrase Lady Bracknell, we all know how reliable that is, but what else can you go by?)
I used to do work for letting agents up here in the north west !
Who managed 27,000 properties whilst out driving the other day i passed several that i used to work on all had “For sale by auction” boards outside
That to me seems a clear indication that the owners know the bubble has burst
I wonder who would win the next election with Liebore promising to abolish the housing benefit cap and the Tories promising to cut it, even more, to the level of the minimum wage.
Go for it Ed
The Labour party has voted to be a party perpetually out of government.
It should be banned by law by now, as harmful to the health and well being of the nation; what’s left of it.
Why leave out fatty Pickles?
Of course Labour thinks this rent cap is a bad idea! Why? Because every lowlife modern-day Peter Rachman wannabe keeps the local Labour councils sweet, to ensure that the rents they charge for their hovels are unrealistically high and that little notice is taken of the lack of maintenance of the properties that they own.
In some boroughs, Peter Rachman is on the council and has his relatives working in the housinf department. Kerching.
Ah, fatty fatty fat-fuck Pickles. We used to hear so much from him, in the early days when Camoron had barely beaten Brown. But now.. nothing.
Who can forget the videos of wobbly old fatty fat fuck Pickles, wobbling away, oh-so-smugly?
Is the useless fat fuck still alive? Still plotting (and no doubt wheezing and wobbling) to bury Britain under concrete?
How ironic, because that’s where useless fatty fat fuck Pickles should be buried. Under concrete. Alive.
Fat – ist !
I was just pondering about homes being traded as investment/scam trading units.
Perhaps it really did start in America with Clinton’s insistence that banks gave mortgages to people who did not have a hope in hell of repayment. Of course what happened over the pond soon swam here & with McGormless at the helm….
With the 125% mortgages & the lying self certification ones,the low interest BTLs it could only really end in tears for many.
That’s why there’s supposed to be some supervision and regulation.
Brown, Balls and Red Ed went into navel-gazing trances only to be awoken when Northern Rock and the Royal Bank of Scotland literally ran out of cash.
Only a small AIG office in London enabled it to happen.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/why-uk-trail-mf-global-collapse-may-have-apocalyptic-consequences-eurozone-canadian-banks-jeffe
FFS! I’ve never read that before.
Thanks for that. Interesting & very frightening stuff.
The hidden cost of this is also the lost tax/NI for that “virtual” £30K salary .. so in addition to £30,000 to pay for it, there is another £7300 of lost tax from the employee, and a further £3000 tax from the employer a total cost to the public purse of £40,300. And remember to actually have the money to pay this £40,300 needs people and companies to have paid the tax on their profits & earnings … at a (very) rough rate of 24% across the board, this means profts/earnings of £168,000
That means to pay this ONE household the initial rate of £438 per week equates to other tax payers having annual profits of £168,000 .. and this is just ONE household …
Don’t forget VAT.
if we could stop the lazy huhnes from havin children then the problem would go away to a grate extent. Is there no medical way to stop it whilst they are on benefits – no stop sex just stop gettin pregant. I would campain for that.
Lame.
Rajiv ghandi’s younger brother tried it once, india. He did not last very long. Authoritarian Singapore and controlling china have tried it too,with more success.
Stop all child benefits and charge a modest amount for edjookatioon. This would reduce the breeding pretty rapidly, I suspect. Even if it didn’t, it would save a hell of a lot of money.
Whenever the £400 a week cap is reached, after 3 months it should automatically reduce by £50 each month until it reaches £250 a week – that way, the tenant gets over a year’s progressive notice to find somewhere cheaper or start earning some money to pay the rent themselves.
It’s a Countdown Benefit Clock.
Or, a simpler method, anyone claiming benefits for more than 6 months should be shot in the head, dumped in a pit and covered in quicklime.
Along with all of their family.
It’s a “clean-up the DNA pool thing”. It’ll work.
I tried that once and it didn’t go down to well.
“Shot in the head…with…their family.” Seems to me I’ve heard something like that somewhere recently, in a different context. Who could have said it, I wonder?
an electrician i understand
Housing benefit goes to working people. In London it mostly goes to working people. How do you think the people who clean shiny office floors in central London afford to live?
Ideal? No. A better solution would be to hike council tax on empty properties, and second homes, compulsorily purchase long-term used brownfield sites for ordinary housing, reduce taxes on property building and improvement whilst taxing the hell out of speculation. Then we might have property prices at a rate normal working people can afford.
If you wan’t to get your office cleaned pay up. Simps
Google Ricardo’s law of Rent and become a Georgist.
Remove the market distortion to remove the speculation. Fix the cause not the symptom.
Why should the state subsidise the living quarters of the servants employed by the better off? A lack of credit control on the one hand (thanks Gordon!) plus excessive government involvement in the domestic housing market is what caused the mess in the first place.
Do what Labour politicians and leading lefty journalists do! Just employ people at below the minimum wage or for no pay at all and then… ah. That’s Labour for you.
I have long thought that very high house prices are at bottom of every problem in this castle. Think about their effects, for a start, it makes a home unaffordable for the low paid. The pernicious effects just keep going on.
During Labour, Brown fuelled the housing bubble, prices trebled in their 13 years. So you could argue that the housing support paid by the taxpayer, could have been 2/3rd lower than it is now, if Brown had not been allowed for his political motives to get the false housing price boom started.
He didn’t help by boosting the population with imported foreign labour. Outside the Metropolis there are towns in rural areas of England where vegetable pickers are packed six to a room in any place they can get.
Now if the locals took those jobs instead and they were paid a half decent wage we would have to pay a bit more for our food but some of the problems you discuss here wouldn’t exist, would they?
politics of envy showing
The price of building a house did not change, the Land Cost went up five fold.
Rent seeking is a privately collected tax.
I’ve just been catching up with today’s news. It’s dominated by a series of murders and massacres. What the fuck?
Sterilise her.
Jacqui Smith on Sky paper review. Richard must be home watching College Sluts IV.
Can I still get Jaqui to claim for these ??
I will use the Guardian’s hypocritical outrage to remind everyone that I am an opportunistic sniveling little shit.
Enough self-aggrandising.
Owen Jones is a fucking prick. I’d love to kick him in the face.
It’s difficult to determine whether he is stupid or just dishonest, although I am suspecting he is mainly dishonest.
If I ever see that smug sanctimonious twat I’ll drag the skinny little mouthy c’unt outside and smash his fuckin’ spine in and hang him from traitors’ gate for all to see.
Fak off you toffs, I needz ma benefits.
We never stop ‘rubbing the Right’s nose in it’.
http://www.labourdiversityfund.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/careers/why-join-us/diversity
So government’s off on a great crusade
Fighting injustice in benefits paid
Well, bless their little cotton socks!
But then you think outside the box
Wherever they meddle, things get worse
Parliament’s no blessing. It’s a curse
They intend to spread to the countryside
The paradise they’ve nurtured citywide
so they’re capping housing benefit at £500 per week. More than most people will ever pay in mortgage!!
And labour don’t think that’s enough . Or rather labour think they need to demand more than that to get them votes to get militwit into no.10.
And
£500 a week? Christ, that’s about double what I get in pay every week, before stoppages!
I point the article and quote on guido blog yesterday from the guardian. I am glad he has used it.
“for example Louise Ryan, 41, who lives with her husband and two children in Islington, north London, will see the £438-a-week benefit, which covers the rent, reduced to £340 under the changes to housing benefit introduced this month.”
Most of this maximum benefit will only apply to london, do not believe organisations such as the national housing federation as they are a lobby group with an agenda.
Mind you he has not quoted the quote of ethnic cleansing quoted by polly toynbee. According to her you would think that families will be herded at gunpoint out of london.
We’ll all be herded out of London at gunpoint soon. A bit more 3rd world immigration should do it.
Housing Benefit , ‘Social Housing ‘and all manner of government incentives serve only to prop up unrealistic rents and property prices. The house price bubble is the other side of the coin to this, and represent a significant barrier to productive investment, the mobility of labour and social mobility per se. Only private sector spivs selling debt (mortgages) and socialist poverty pimps with an interest in keeping the poor poor really benefit from the current arrangements.
By unrealistic I mean rents and house prices that are simply unaffordable when taken against ordinary workers’ take home pay. If a more or less free market were in place in the domestic housing market the market would adjust downwards to what people can afford to pay out of their own wages whether buying or renting.
None of the mainstream political parties will do much about this (i.e. get the government out of pricing decisions in the domestic housing market) because the economy is based fools gold which has the added benefit of making debt burdened proles think they are rich.
Seconded
+1000
Labour voters should look to 2012 with optimism and not despair – despite the operation to fix my hemorrhoids, I am still an opportunistic sniveling little shit.
george-osborne-is-not-a-wanker-hes-a-genius/
http://tompride.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/george-osborne-is-not-a-wanker-hes-a-genius/
Try being a single white male with a job trying to get a council house.
Yeah thats right, non existent in this country.
Laughed the fuck out of the Council Office and down the street.
But if your some unemployed drug dealing Ni99er shagging every woman in sight with four kids by different women you and a baby mama can walk straight into a house the next week after filling out the forms.
++one million &counting
Heresy! Heresy! Recant! Recant!
Or be crucified for such wicked rant
Accept Dave as your one true saviour
And sin no more in your behaviour
Follow the path of the LibLabCon holy
Be always righteous. And meek. And lowly
In some ways the housing bubble started when double incomes were taken into account in determining the level of the borrowing limit.
This meant that very rapidly, single people could forget about buying property- they were priced out of the market.
But then, who gives a shit for single people? They’re are just a workforce waiting to be taxed and taxed and taxed to pay for “hard-working families”.
Labour 2010 manifesto (http://www.labour.org.uk/uploads/TheLabourPartyManifesto-2010.pdf):
“Our goal is to make responsibility the cornerstone of our welfare state. Housing
Benefit will be reformed to ensure that we do not subsidise people to live in the private sector on rents that other ordinary working families could not afford.” -Page 2:3
Alas, Boris Johnson is (was?) against the Gov on this, describing it as “social cleansing”. Idiot.
The problem with the well-heeled urban elite of whatever party is that they have a comfortable life-style which is not really affected by the disgrace of the workshy living better than those who contribute taxes to pay for them.
The real anger is felt by those who have to pay taxes and yet cannot afford the sort of housing that their taxes provide for others. It’s an abomination, and it’s demoralising- and it’s unjust.
She won’t have time to help as she is too busy taking her son to his private school and back.
Exactly who is paying the fees
Have you ever wondered why a politico from the ethnic minorities with an Oxbridge degree couldn’t get a place in Blair/Brown’s governements !! Is she really that stupid.
Some years ago, probably in about 2005, I had a couple come to see me to see if they could get a mortgage to buy a house. He earned about £19,000 including overtime and they had six children. She did no taxable work. One or more of the eldest doughters worked for cash as hairdressers. When I looked at it, and grossed up the real value of all their benefits, his gross equivalent income was £60,000 p.a., plus whatever cash income came in from daughters and wife. They were not bad people at all. But the system just showered all this largesse on them.
Guido your comments are usually better considered than your current gutter press anylysis. The Chartered Institute of Housing have put together the results of a survey into the effect of the housing benefit/LHA limits. Specifically the survey looks at how many private properties in each area will cease to be affordable through housing benefit, how many housing benefit claimants there are in each area and, where available, how many properties remain affordable.
The headline is that just shy of 800,000 properties nationally (including Scotland) will cease to be affordable, though there is considerable variation across areas and even across London boroughs.
Some of the results are very disturbing. Westminster has a projected shortfall of some 5,300 properties, Newham some 6,300 and Enfield some 12,000. Merseyside is short of 9,000 affordable properties and Birmingham 11,500.
Not sure how being priced out of the London Borough of Enfield has the same ring as being priced out of Chelsea!
I live in the North, am well educated and thrifty. I work hard in a responsible profession. But I would be priced out of Enfield, too. It’s difficult to get too worked up about those who do not contribute also getting priced out of an absurdly overpriced part of the world.
I blame the biased BBC for savage Tory cuts on housing benefit!
“those of US who work”?
When was the last time you did a day’s work?
“That rent alone is higher than median wages.”
If only we stopped all the fucking foreigners coming here and driving up housing costs.
if Labour party could have their way the uk would be turned into north korea. people need money to live on if you tax 0 you get 0 but Labour are not on the side of indigneous people of the uk when they are overloading uk with 10 million immigrants. Politicians are the cause of suffering poverty misery surge in crime all thats wrong with the world=wars etc and inequality plus broken lives.