Emma Kingsbury’s children are being driven into ‘child poverty’ by heartless Tory policies. From tomorrow, her housing benefit will be reduced by £15 a week – the so called ‘bedroom tax’.

Emma tells us that ‘she never needed or wanted’ a three bedroom flat, and has not been offered a two bedroom flat so feels it is unfair that ‘her children’ will be penalised by this new regulation.

Sky helpfully allowed us a tour of Emma’s three bedroom flat to show us what life is like ‘on the brink’ of child poverty. I managed to snatch this shot of her two children enjoying their last day before being plunged into penury.

As you can see, the third bedroom appears to be an outpost of Hamley’s Christmas toy display. I do wonder how many people in employment, paying a mortgage, can afford to stuff a spare bedroom with quite so many toys to amuse their little rug rats.

Emma was perhaps not the wisest choice for Sky to use as an example of the hardships faced by those on benefits…

I do commend anyone reading this to ALSO read Billy Bowden’s excellent post on the same subject. Seems that Labour were never opposed to a ‘bedroom tax’ when it involved private tenants…

Furor Teutonicus
April 2, 2013 at 11:38

How big is a “room”?

Here we got similar about four years ago. But it goes on Meters². Two
people = 60M²

You can have twenty rooms in that space if you wish. But they all must add
up to 60M², or smaller.

Anything above that, your rent will not be paid.

There is also an upper limit even then. (Reasonable rent for the area)

You live in Kreuzberg, 60 M² will probaly cost about €500 per month. That
they will pay.

On Ku’damm, you would be lucky to get a bloody hot bedded shop doorway for
that much! AND they would NOT pay it.

rabbitaway April 1, 2013 at 13:27

Let’s go back to how the housing ‘crisis’ started shall we ? No, it wasn’t
a labour government but Thatcher (there’s no such thing as society) when right
to buy was introduced. Suddenly, ordinary folk who’d lived quite happily in
their modest homes had the chance to be ‘part’ of it and many took advantage
of the oppotunity to buy a house for £3000, live in it for the requisite time
and then sell or leave it to their sprogs who now became ‘middle class’. Two
or three generations later these modest abodes are worth substantially more
having been pocketed by the greedy buy to letters who now charge and receive
housing benefit on rents fixed by the market and vastly greater than local
authority/housing association tariff. The irony of it all ! Sell off govt
housing stock in order to save money then have to pay more in housing benefit
to private interests who get richer, buy up more ……….
It will be very hard
on older people who’ve kids have gone and they now have to find 2 lots of
bedroom tax especially if they are alone and under retirement age. Do not
believe all the crap on the telly about benefits. Some people are genuinely
very poor living on £71 per week out of which they have to find t least £25 to
heat their bloody homes ! You do not hear about these people – they are the
invisible ones. If, such a person does have to shift, she/he will end up
homeless, in a hostel again charging £300 per week rather than the poxy £80 or
so she/he currently ‘pays’ !

Matt Wardman
April 1, 2013 at 20:45

Isn’t there this thing called the Rent a Room scheme that allows you to
raise up to £4250 tax free.

Use your unused rooms to help solve the single person’s housing
crisis.

binao April 1, 2013 at 11:55

The whole thinking seems odd.
If a council, or more often a housing
association, faces demand greater than supply, it makes sense to actively make
the best use of available housing stock.
I’m also sure the present
arrangements for housing benefit have a pernicious effect on local wages and
private landlord rents, and that housing benefit costs need controlling. The
benefit reduction seems a logical part of that.
It just seems too easy to
mix up benefits with assumptions about the feckless and workshy with their
broods of feral children who aren’t deserving of our taxes. Sure there are
people like that, and some seriously troublesome tenants too, but a benefit
system can’t be based on the assumption that it’s recipients are all
undeserving.
So sort out the baddies as individual cases, without all the
usual councilweaselspeak about victims.
Apply the new arrangements to new
tenants, and, for now, to existing only after a grace period, because
circumstances do change and because it’s reasonable to do so.
It’s not the
principle, it’s the implementation.
We might also think about the
subsidised occupancy of social housing by those that could well afford to pay
a full economic rent; not necessarily the same as a market rent.

Ho Hum April 1, 2013 at 10:53

I’m may be getting to old for my own good, I suppose, but, leaving aside
the rights or wrongs of the ‘Bedroom Tax’, and whether or not someone of any
political shade of grey will next suggest that the government screw us all per
bonk next, does anyone here really know how they came to select this
particular family for the article? That would be really interesting to
know

And as for the toys, they don’t really look ‘Hamleys’, do they? More like
cheap Pound Store equivalents, and some of the stuff, the figures, for
instance, well, you can find loads of those at 10p each down the local boot
sale.

Just saying……

miss mildred
April 1, 2013 at 10:48

My experience of 33 years as a community midwife tells me there are very
few 3 bedroom flats in most London boroughs. One bedroom ones are a waste of
building materials. They are usually in housing for older people. Even the
second bedroom in most 2 bedders are sometimes very pokey indeed. All the 33
years I worked in the community there was games playing with housing on both
sides. Even to torching the one you are in to get out to a better area or
flat. At one time many many years ago when being a single parent became
fashionable, the council got desperate and started to put 2 mums in a 2
bedders to share. On a night call out to a crying baby, to a large 3 bed
terraced modern house, I was told that there was a 3 person allocation to this
house that a work colleague had previously occupied. A midwife and an
aneasthetist!! They were Irish and had just gone back to Ireland for a GP
practice post with housing provided….so immigrants had left UK! After that the
council tower blocks started to fly up in an attempt to keep up with
insatiable demand, even when the birth rate falling. Now the birth rate has
shot up; so it goes on and on. Gamesmanship on both sides. Like going to Spain
and renting out your council house. Until someone rats on you! I could not
work on a housing advice desk at an advice centre. It is where the most
shouting and swearing starts and the security personel gather and hover. We
had cardboard cities in London until steps were taken to remedy and they
vanished. Recently Our council has Prescotted every single bit of land they
can for, presumably, 2 bed private. Then the ‘buy to letters’ ponce off these
builds so youngsters cannot buy. Housing the nation is a never ending
frustrating, nonsensical farago of gamesmanship and social events/inflation
overtaking good intentions.

Ho Hum April 1, 2013 at 10:57

Can I please say just how much I enjoyed reading that? So apt, so
true!

I love the BBC
April 1, 2013 at 00:01

AndrewM its clear you have no idea do you? Or was it an attempt at humour?
The silly cow should just move a bed? The point is the regs say her children
must share a room from now on. Therefore the third is surplus. The fact is
there are not enough smaller units available in any case.

AndrewM April 1, 2013 at 00:28

Why doesn’t she just move the bed you idiot? Then, that way, every room
is occupied.

Come on. Think this through. Are you honestly so stupid that when
confronted by the “spare bedroom” rule, and you have children sharing, that
you don’t have ability to think to drag a bed three metres?

The regulations simply say that each bedroom must be occupied, and that
is it. How hard is it for her to do that?

Paul April 1, 2013 at 09:17

Do you really think the authorities are going to be bamboozled by the
simple 5 minute act of moving a piece of furniture? Hilarious. Read the
regulations. She is told her children must share a room. She may not
implement this but that won’t circumvent what the authorities have told
her. Whether or not the room is actually slept in, the view is that it is
surplus and that’s their view not hers – or yours.

Imagine side-stepping various rules by simple acts like this and the
authorities being stumped. That’s implying the gov’t are completely dumb –
which might be the case in very many areas but, as my mother has often
said (not about the gov’t though) – they’re daft the right way. It would
also be a continuation of the endless blags that claimants have employed
to (seemingly and one has to say successfully) bamboozle those
authorities, to the chagrin of the honourable who would be shamed to
employ such tactics. Well now, the authorities aren’t going to be
hoodwinked any more. Good – is what I say …… except this regulation is
petty and ill-thought out. It’s too late anyway, as I have said and there
is no contingency plan.

carol42 March 31, 2013 at 23:42

Am I correct in thinking that the last Labour Government brought in strict
housing benefit controls for the private rented sector in that benefit was
limited to what you actually needed not what you wanted. I can see problems
with people having to move but I really get annoyed at what ‘they’, whose jobs
and income depend on it, call poverty. They don’t know what poverty is, should
have been around in the 1950s when there was real poverty, a friend of mine
was brought up with 11 siblings in a two bedroom slum in the Gorbals and every
one of these kids did very well in life, few benefits then but parents who
pushed them to do their very best,

JuliaM April 1,
2013 at 05:38

You are indeed correct!

ivan March 31, 2013 at 23:14

All of the foregoing would be canceled if the government really wanted to
do benefit reform. They could cut the cost to the taxpayer by a third to a
half if the changed everyone to a negative income tax system. Those paying tax
would possibly see some of their tax reduced while those on benefits would be
encouraged to go out and do some work, if only to get the luxuries and bling
they desire.

The biggest savings would be made by reducing the multitude of agencies
that are at the moment administrating welfare payments. They would be reduced
to one add on section of HMRC.

There would be no more applying to multiple departments because everyone
would be given the basic amount. What they did with it would be up to them.
With it they would have to pay for housing, food and everything else they
wanted, once it was spent, tough until next month. You want more you go out
and earn some money, if what you earn is below the limit you keep most of it
depending on the reduction factor.

The idea of NIT has been about from the 60s and has had several trials but
because of Keynesian economics has never been put into practice even though
the trials showed ti would work.

Mewsical March 31,
2013 at 22:31

But in the meantime, the British public are being distracted by pointless
media and police hunts for celebrity pedophiles, instead of focusing on this
real and impending crisis.

Jonathan Mason
March 31, 2013 at 22:54

Come on, Mewsical, the great British public have always enjoyed a good
public flogging and just because Dave Lee Travis managed to get away with
jiggling a woman’s breasts for 40 years does not mean that he should not be
hung now pour encourager les autres. I am thinking that maybe
Bertrand Russell will be the next to be exhumed as I remember a woman
writing about an encounter with him in a taxi.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/interview-honour-bound-to-fight-geraldine-bedell-on-the-peer-with-principles-who-stood-by-his-student-accused-of-rape-1512808.html

Paul March 31, 2013 at 20:25

There are a lot of points being missed here, both by the gov’t and by all
kinds of people. Everyone (or lots) sees their own side of it but fail to see
any other. Not because they’re dumb or heartless but because it’s bewildering
to see the whole picture and the possible outcome. I can only see bits of it
and imagine some scenarios. There’s doubtless even more than I will relate
here.

We need to cut benefits, absolutely so. Definitely because they are, in
very many cases, a sop to the entitlement culture. But more so because the
country is bleeding bankrupt and it can’t go on no matter who likes it or who
doesn’t. This is the bottom line and unavoidable. These cuts have come far,
far too late. There is no contingency plan.

We know claimants aren’t really poor, not in the way of Tanzania or Chad,
or 19th century working-class areas but poverty within a community is
relative. It will do absolutely no good to remind people they aren’t really
poor when they are marauding round the streets and don’t wish to hear it. They
will look around and not care a jot about other countries. And to some degree
why should they? They will see the ones who haven’t thus far been penalised
and very quickly become resentful – even when these people are broadly their
own kind. As far as anyone working and unaffected by benefit cuts ……. they’ll
come for you (and me) even quicker. It won’t do you any good to attempt even
good arguments, let alone dismissive comments. We will be identified as just
like the upper classes and they will want our blood. Reason and patient
explanation will be worthless. Your house and car can go up in flames in
minutes and your life be ended even swifter. What value educated argument
then?

There are NO JOBS out there. Not meaningful ones, that have definite
longevity and that create real wealth for the country. The mines have gone and
so have the mills. No more ships built. Engineering all but decimated.
Military trimmed to the bone. And etc. Plenty of call centres and diversity
officers and bloated administrations in every public institution though.
Triffic eh?

Cut off peoples’ money because they do no work for it by all means …. in an
ideal world. But if there is no alternative source of income then it’s a
recipe for disaster. Turf them out on the streets then and tell them that if
it wasn’t for their propensity for McDonalds and Sky, they would still be
sitting pretty. Rather you than me. You can’t fight everyone, and certainly
not a mob.

There are very few one-bedroom properties anywhere I would confidently
guess. Anywhere in the world that is. The default position of Mankind is/was
to cojoin (well until recently) and produce children. It follows that nearly
all housing development takes this into account without really thinking about
it. If we had built millions of single bedroom homes throughout the long ages
how many would have been ultimately unwanted? They’re only suitable for old
people, and those starting out and the few singletons (though see below re the
latter). There would have been an outcry down through those ages that people
don’t have the space to live adequately. The market demand would in any case
have precluded any such policy. It’s obvious that the vast majority of homes
have been built with the family in mind. It’s no doubt far more economical
anyway with regard to space to build 2 or 3 bedrooms in a house than to build
two or three separate homes with just one bedroom each. In fact, in the UK it
would have been near impossible.

There are now a lot of singletons. Not just the feckless mothers who have
admittedly been induced into that status by over-generous benefits – to name
but one reason, with other reasons, far more pernicious being feminism itself,
and a gradual cultural acceptance that this is now the done thing – by at
least going on half the population anyway. But there are a hell of a lot of
singleton men too. Very many of them have been dispossessed by the very people
who once professed ‘love’ for them. They have been marginalised (truly) by
society and successive gov’ts. They have been cleaned out and all but
abandoned in very many cases. Many of them now occupy social housing, home
alone and morose and bitter – and yet still capable of mischief. They will
almost all have ‘too many bedrooms’. What do we do with all these people? No
cushion of ‘but I have children’ for them. Even mention of the children is
likely to be painful for them. There are very few jobs for them. Manufacturing
and trade has been all but wiped out as mentioned. There are even less jobs
for the females, even should they want them and ignoring all the children.
Unless we count those endless civil service positions, call centres and all
the other nonsense that produces no wealth at all for a nation. The young men
are doomed. The young women are doomed even more. Pity the children
indeed.

All this should have happened ages ago. Unquestioned handouts should never
even have begun in fact. But it’s now far too late. Very many people are
likely to become homeless very soon. Yes, yes, if only they gave up the fags
and booze. But you must know that in lots of cases this isn’t the whole
picture and is often just a convenient soundbite, as convenient as the
opposite ones made by the left. If we, and the gov’t, stick to our guns (if
only) and say it’s their own fault and they will just have to get on with it,
then all well and good ………. until the country goes up in flames again – but
worse. There are millions of them. There are even more millions who will
support them even though they aren’t personally quite in the same situation.
An overwhelming force they will be.

Here’s a conspiracy theory for you: Imagine over the course of the next few
months that thousands of people do get evicted from their homes. It’s no good
saying that local authorities will damned well have a right to re-home them.
No they don’t and no they won’t. Where will they put them all anyway? If they
can survive a few months (they won’t without riots) what will be the situation
at the end of the year when the alleged tens of thousands more Europeans
arrive here? At least there won’t be a shortage of homes for the newcomers.
There will be loads of empty council homes. Homes from which embittered Brits
have been recently evicted from. Then what’s going to happen? Don’t rely on
the Bedroom Tax penalising the immigrants as well. They will arrive with loads
of kids and thus quite naturally need all those spare bedrooms. And the
authorities will agree – and pay them in full. Disaster looms. It’s almost
like this population-replacement theory that certain people mention. Ethnic
cleansing almost.

This can’t possibly happen though can it? Not in Britain. No? Really?

I heard that Dave said this last week that he’s going to get tough on
benefits for immigrants …… but only AFTER six months has elapsed. TOO LATE
DAVE – again. The proper course would be to rule that newcomers don’t get
benefits FOR 6 months (or more). If they survive that long ploughing their own
furrow then they are more likely to continue and won’t need benefits anyway.
Paying them on arrival and then suddenly cutting it off just as they get used
to this glorious new life is yet more disaster.

Flames and blood are ahead. That’s what I think, though I do hope that I am
hopelessly wrong.

Ed P March 31, 2013 at 20:51

Please stop referring to a reduction in benefits as a tax

Paul March 31, 2013 at 20:59

It’s a colloquial statement. We know it’s not really a tax. It was
probably the gov’t opposition or the media who first coined the phrase
anyway.

Jonathan
Mason March 31, 2013 at 22:40

I think you have made a lot of good points. I have been away from
England for many, many years, so not sure if I completely understand the
whole thing, but what is the macroeconomic argument for this? Is it that
people will be forced to spend less on booze and cigarettes, or that
they will be forced to move to smaller accommodations or cheaper
locations? How would each of these alternatives affect the overall
economy, benefit disbursements, tax revenues, and the distribution of
the population? Would it lead to a rash of contruction of single bedroom
homes or old-fashioned Anglo Saxon halls from the era of Beowulf with
communal sleeping rooms? (One assumes not.)

I must say that it seems very uneconomical to maintain families in
London where the cost of any kind of rental is very high unless at least
one member of the family is holding down a job in London. Otherwise, if
unemployed, they might just as well be relocated somewhere cheaper like
Liverpool, Accrington, or Blackburn so that more housing in London is
available for those who are working or studying there (or both) and the
displaced cockneys can enjoy relative proximity to the joys of
Blackpool’s beaches and the refreshing breezes of the Lake District if
they can afford a bus ticket and a packet of sandwiches.

ivan March 31, 2013 at 22:50

Paul, you have several good points but you also miss things like all the
green taxes that are being paid for twice by the taxpaying public – once
directly and a second time via the welfare handouts to those that chose not
to work. I say chose not to work because most of them are getting more in
benefits than they would get by working. There are jobs out there, it is
just that most of the welfare recipients seem to think that such work is
beneath them.
Also as Ed P says welfare reduction is not and never will
be a tax.

JuliaM April
1, 2013 at 05:37

“We will be identified as just like the upper classes and they will
want our blood. Reason and patient explanation will be worthless. Your
house and car can go up in flames in minutes and your life be ended even
swifter. What value educated argument then?”

So we must go on paying the benefits to appease the mob? Right. Great
idea.

Paul April 1, 2013 at 08:46

Well you could construe it that way but that’s not exactly or wholly
what I said. You’ve just leapt in with another soundbite but fail to add
anything sensible as a solution. How many people are you employing? What
job do you do? You’re quite possibly a baby-boomer, or their offspring
who did well whilst the going was good and now sit there bitter because
others aren’t doing the same. But your world (if that is the case) has
gone and another has arrived but you fail to see how or why. You don’t
like it, naturally, but don’t offer any solution bar ranting and raving.
Start a business and employ some people. What a patriot you would be.
Good luck too – in spades.

Throwing up your hands in outrage without any idea of the economic
reality is meaningless. My post was meant as a warning, Ignore it if you
will or quote out of context. Do you really want to see tent-cities in
the UK? Serve em all right n all that? Brilliant.

Paul April 1, 2013 at 08:29

I disagree that there are lots of jobs out there. Not any more. There
certainly aren’t round here. Places are shutting down almost weekly. There
are but a fraction of the small businesses now compared to even the 1980s.
A fraction of the pubs. No mines at all, no mills at all. The building
trade is depressed beyond anything I’ve ever seen. It’s another country
almost compared to a generation or two ago. In the local town there are,
on the main street alone, a mere 150 yds or so, twenty-seven places where
one can obtain ready-to-eat food. Not counting the supermarkets who also
provide the same. Virtually all of them are run by non-English. Few of
them open during the day. It’s a ghost town almost in the hours of
daylight, one long stretch of aluminium-shuttered windows. In the evenings
all these take-aways roll up their shutters, turn on their garish lights
and their high intensity cookers and (with several staff – all foreign
looking) stand there more or less idle. That begs the question of how the
businesses are surviving. I’ll leave it to the readers to work that one
out. These places aren’t drawing enough customers to even pay half the
staff at minimum wage, let alone all the other costs. The gas and electric
they must use, at today’s prices demands a thriving trade. Crippling
business rates alone would prevent you or I considering such a venture
worthwhile. Still they remain. But no traditional shops. They’ve all gone
bust. Apart from about 3 charity shops – all staffed by well-meaning
volunteers. Dozens of small businesses that used to be in the streets off
the town centre have gone. They all employed at least one person – the
proprietor, and probably one or two more, no doubt family members. What
was once a hive of activity, even in the 80s and 90s is now a desolate
wilderness almost. Trust me, there are hardly any jobs at all and the odd
one that does become available has literall hundreds of applicants.
Different parts of the land maybe different though I can’t imagine it’s
that prominent. They must be tiny islands in a stormy sea.

Jonathan
Mason April 1, 2013 at 12:09

These places aren’t drawing enough customers to even pay half the
staff at minimum wage, let alone all the other costs.

Probably the staff are family members or relatives.

Paul April 1, 2013 at 09:24

I didn’t aim (or claim) to cover all the points. No doubt there are
dozens of others. I don’t quite follow your line that paying out for
welfare is another ‘green’ tax. But thanks anyway.

Short one here – no time to go into it fully – but isn’t unemployment
an eventual default status of any modern society? Ever since the first
Stone-Ager came up with the idea of something called a wheel and realised
his work burden would be drastically cut thereon. And so on.

Furor
Teutonicus April 2, 2013 at 11:24

XX There are jobs out there, it is just that most of the welfare
recipients seem to think that such work is beneath them. XX

I will work for scummy East European wages when my landlord, and the
local Tesco start charging scummy East European prices.

Twig March 31, 2013 at 20:07

There are lots of new arrivals with larger families that need the extra
rooms, so the room blockers will have to shove over or pay up to upgrade the
newcomers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2301874/Bushra-al-Rahimi-Jobless-Iraqi-benefit-queen-sublets-taxpayer-funded-2m-flat-4-000-week.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

Len Ticular March 31, 2013 at 19:58

The idea of “taxing” unused space has some supporters…..

“Let’s take the housing fight to {mumble mumble} with empty spare
rooms
The hidden truth about our housing crisis is that it is driven by
under-occupation”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/04/take-housing-fight-wealthy

Ian R Thorpe March
31, 2013 at 19:56

A lot of people are indulging in anti – Tory Orwellian “Two Minutes Hate”
sessions over this. While not wanting to defend the Conservatives in any way I
remind people that it was not Cammers and Gideon who drew up the details of
this act but the civil servants, the same civil servants as drafted Labour’s
equally hopeless and ufair attempts to control the deficit. And in spite of
what Mr. Bollocks says, if Labour had stayed in power and carried on with
their borrow and spend loonytoons economics we would have been ever further up
shit Greek.

There ought to be no need to cut housing benefit, all we have to do is cut
town hall waste.

ivan March 31, 2013 at 22:34

Ian, why are the taxpayers being forced to pay for the housing of able
bodied people that refuse to work and see having children as an income
stream?

I do agree that councils should get rid of all the diversity coordinators
and such and stop translating every paper they produce into multiple
languages. It would also help if they got back to providing services like
garbage collection and road maintenance and leave decisions to the elected
councilors rather than paying exorbitant sums to a few individuals to,
supposedly, make the decisions for them. Unfortunately I can’t see anything
like that happening in the near future because the political trend is
towards a larger public service, not a smaller one.

JuliaM April
1, 2013 at 05:35

“There ought to be no need to cut housing benefit, all we have to do
is cut town hall waste.”

Strange that you seem to see that as an ‘either/or’ dilemma, Ian…

AndrewM March 31, 2013 at 19:40

All that this dumb cow needs to do is move one of her children’s beds next
door. Then she’s not paying the spare room tax, if she is actually paying it
at all.

The real scandal around this article is how this news article is a fit up
by Sky Television in respect to benefit bashing, designed to imply that
children in council accommodation should basically be expected to share
bedrooms, throughout their time in a council house. Presumably until one of
them takes the hint and moves out….After a few weeks of sofa surfing, she goes
off and has a baby of her own to get a flat. That arguably happens anyway, but
one strong reason for young people wanting to move out is a lack of personal
space at home…Especially once puberty kicks in, and your little brother starts
to become a serious irritation to your urge to masturbate.

That is why older children, in particular, need space of their own.

I think rabbit hutching children will lead to more teenage pregnancies as a
result of the incentives that unmarried mothers currently have. So it’s a
false economy if you think about it hard enough.

Notice how they REALLY made a point of showing you the massive fuck-off toy
collection that her kids have.

Because They Knew It Would Push Your Buttons, Libertarians.

“She says she doesn’t need the space. Why didn’t she offer to move to
smaller flat then?”
Because she’s a fucking idiot. She’s quite entitled to
have a three bedroom flat if she’s got two children.

Mewsical March 31,
2013 at 18:24

My niece and her daughter are having to move, due to Cameron’s cuts. She
hasn’t been very clear what’s happened, counts herself lucky to be able to
stay in London, and says that others are being relocated as far away as
Southend. Far as I know, she has a two-bedroom. In Maida Vale. Been there for
at least six years.

davidb March 31, 2013 at 18:09

A friend of mines got a council house some years ago. It was a dump. He had
to spend lots of money fixing it up to make it habitable. If you own a
property you can downsize by selling it, but you won’t fetch a high price if
you don’t maintain it. If the guvment deems that you are to be shifted to
accommodation willy nilly that suits your family size, what incentive is there
to invest your own time and money in maintaining your present home?

The biggest issues with social housing that strike me, are firstly that we
don’t seem to build it any more, and secondly that we have a rising population
and thus demand, fuelled by mass immigration. I can see the downside and the
high cost of landlord subsidy to the taxpayers, but I would also wonder if the
savings in this great new scheme will massively outweigh the costs. I do
strongly support the limits on maximum payments of welfare benefits and
landlord subsidy.

With interest rates are as low as they are, why are private rents not
falling anyway?

Cascadian March 31, 2013 at 20:02

Because the council taxes are too high. Insurance, utilities are about to
go hyper-inflationary and risk premium of people skipping the rent is
horrendous.

miss mildred
March 31, 2013 at 18:01

Surely they are using the extra bedroom as a playroom!!!Lots of lovely toys
to play with in the playroom. Was she or is she supposed to have another child
to legitimise her presence in a 3 bed flat? It is supposed to be a rule that a
tenant cannot have more bedrooms than needed on application for housing. Or
more housing benefit for a private let than current family circs permit.
Circumstances change, sometimes for tragic reasons…like the death of a child
from something nasty. This is difficult to keep tabs on too…as pointed out.
There can be a lot of movement in social/rented housing anyway….from one place
to another, usually locally by friends and a van. Moving around in private
housing is horrendously expensive. I feel the whole idea is stupid, a la poll
tax, and a golden opportunity for those who delight in slagging off those evil
Tory Toffs for maltreating the ‘downtrodden poor’. Why not just reduce these
benefits slowly over time?. So that eventually the pickings for those who
deliberately choose to live off the backs of tax payers push benefits
scroungers to do some work to get by.

JuliaM March 31,
2013 at 19:04

“Was she or is she supposed to have another child to legitimise her
presence in a 3 bed flat?”

I predict that that will be the obvious ‘solution’ that springs to her
mind.. :/

Fidel March 31, 2013 at 17:32

Michael, for the sake of my sanity I have to assume that comment was made
in jest.

Michael March 31, 2013 at 17:22

The thing is, this woman may well end up having to leave her home (with all
the associated costs), and move her children to a new school. She probably
will end up having to rent privately, as the social housing stock is so low.
Ironically, her housing benefit claim for a privately rented 2 bedroom flat
will almost certainly be higher than a 3 bed council property. There’s a
potential massive human cost involved in all of this, for what might turn out
to be very little gain. Whilst I agree that it’s important to reduce the
benefit bill, I find myself somewhat sympathetic to those who are going to be
hit by this.

Elena ‘andcart
March 31, 2013 at 16:25

It makes perfect sense to move a middle aged couple from a three bedroomed
flat or house if their children have left. But it makes no sense whatsoever to
move a woman with two children, or to penalise her.
How do they know she
isn’t using the third bedroom as such? Have they been round to check on her? I
don’t think so somehow.
So The Media are making things up again.

ivan March 31, 2013 at 16:51

You could ask if that third bedroom is being rented out to a couple of
illegal immigrants with the rent not being declared as earnings.

Most of those complaining are getting more in benefits than you or I are
ever likely to see as pension.

Elena
‘andcart March 31, 2013 at 17:02

I am trying to be logical about this. She could be renting out two
bedrooms for all I know. But my point is that there is no way in which The
Councils are physically checking on these people, and if the family fits
the number of bedrooms that there are then these people will not be
penalised.
So why are The Media trying to make out that the bread is
being snatched from the mouths of babes and sucklings?
Personally, I
think it is an ill thought out policy that has little chance of success,
but there is no need to make it worse than it is.
Me? I would put them
all in tents if fifteen quid of the tax payers money is going to so
discommode them, but I don’t suppose that this idea would go down all that
well.

ivan March 31, 2013 at 22:17

Elena, the big question is why are people living in public (read
council) housing getting housing benefits at all?

The whole welfare handout culture is very much over rated. There was
an article in the Mail a few days ago in which a mother said there was
no way she was going back to work because she was doing very nicely on
the benefits she was being paid. In my day, and I expect yours, our
parents were expected to look after us without the help of the state. If
we wanted anything we saved up for it or did odd jobs, we got nothing
for nothing but they do today and hence they don’t know the value of
anything and expect the state to support their every whim.

As you say, maybe they should have to live in tents with no money
from the taxpayer to support them, then they would know what real
poverty was.

Ted Treen
April 1, 2013 at 16:56

Part of the problem (and a very large part at that) is that from
birth upwards, many youngsters, be they little angels or little
scrotes, are taught by feckless parents, and later by left-ish
teachers, left-ish Beeb etc., of all of their “rights”.

None of these of course, mention the other concomitant “r” word –
“responsibilities”.

I’m viewed at work as being a cross between Genghis Khan and a
Victorian Workhouse Manager for stating my belief that beyond the most
fundamental, there should not be any such thing as “rights”.

What we call “rights” these days were originally (and should still
be) privileges gained by being a member of society – these privileges
were earned by adhering to the society’s rules, and being a
contributing (not necessarily financially) member of that society.

But our wise rulers’ “bread & circuses” policies – paid for by
us – have removed all thoughts of responsibility from too many.

Fidel March 31, 2013 at 16:19

£15.00 a week … a whole fifteen pounds! Now let’s see, that’s almost two
packets of fags – or one visit for the three of them at McDonalds. Much as we
all feel her pain it’s really not the onset of penury the some would have us
believe now, is it?

Mudplugger March 31, 2013 at 15:35

The ‘spare room surcharge’ (aka ‘bedroom tax’) is another case of a
reasonable idea, badly implemented – shades of the 1980s Community Charge
(Poll Tax) again. On the surface, it makes sense, but you could guarantee that
out of the woodwork would quickly appear dozens of ‘special cases’, each one
gaining far more publicity that its proportionate worth. (Future hint – the
same thing will happen with the IDS ‘Universal Credit’ – the winners will keep
schtum, the losers will scream).

What the government should have done was to apply the surcharge only in
those cases where the tenant had been offered, and declined, a suitable
alternative home. Then it’s the tenant’s fault, not the government’s or the
local council’s, and it would achieve the same level of financial savings too.
That would have taken all the pressure off those councils who genuinely don’t
have enough 1 or 2 bedroom properties immediately available, but those same
authorities could have been incentivised by grant-retention to achieve a
target overall occupancy-rate to keep them focussed on it. Or is that too
simple ? Maybe that’s why I’m not in government……..yet.

Joe Public March 31, 2013 at 13:29

Was there a Mr Kingsbury on hand to give his views?

Why two children is she was on the brink of financial hardship?

Joe Public
March 31, 2013 at 13:50

My typo: Why two children if she was on the brink of financial
hardship?

ivan March 31, 2013 at 16:44

I doubt it because it looks as if the children have different
fathers.

Elena ‘andcart
March 31, 2013 at 12:51

Why do the children not have a bedroom each? Some people are complaining
because their children have to share a bedroom, even when they have children
of the same sex. Or perhaps she doesn’t want their mountainous pile of toys
cluttering up her living room like the rest of us did. Not to mention keeping
the room warm in Winter. Or keeping a permanent eagle eye on what the little
darlings are up.
Sorry, I don’t believe her story for a minute.

Edna Fletcher
March 31, 2013 at 12:48

Emma may be the ‘no win situation’. If she has not enough toys social
workers will deem her children to be as severe risk of emotional harm through
lack of sufficient stimulation, if she has a small ‘Hamley’s’ she will be
subject to questions by the likes of us who have worked our socks off to have
enough not to be emotionally deprived.

Britain is a increasingly run as country which makes little sense to many
of us. All groups now know how to play the system for their own ends- hence
although elders with amassed savings will cry they cannot claim any benefits
they will not cry their children are robbing them of comfort in old age by
seeking an inheritance for themselves, having ‘not earned it’ by looking after
them! The only winners are the rich and powerful- beyond reach mostly of the
state.

‘Damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ and damned if you do not jump to
the tune of those in power, however perverse and corrupt they may be.

JuliaM March 31,
2013 at 19:00

“Britain is a increasingly run as country which makes little sense to
many of us. “

Amen!

Martin April 1, 2013 at 12:18

Having just read a piece about that poor PC who tripped over a kerb and
has now decided to sue the garage-owner, I can only concur with these
sentiments!

Frankie March 31, 2013 at 22:50

I feel that the whole idea of reducing benefits, based upon the fact that
someone has an additional bedroom (or two) is morally repugnant. I am quite
sure that Emma never even considered that she would one day be penalised for
accepting a flat with an extra bedroom. I cannot see that this measure,
alone, will make the slightest bit of difference to reducing the massive
deficit.

The Government needs to reduce its welfare bill, as well as reduce
spending elsewhere and it is apparent, according to the ‘meeedia’ that there
are thousands of feckless workshy layabouts, whole families of them, who
have never lifted a finger to help themselves or earn a crust, who should be
‘encouraged’ to get off their collective a&$£s and do something, but
this is not the way.

Perhaps these kids have a lot of toys, but that is the fashion these
days. By contrast, I have my mother’s childhood toy (wartime) – a clockwork
tinplate motorcycle. That, apparently, was about it for Mum as far as toys
were concerned. Second hand cast of shoes, rationing, Germans dropping bombs
was normal everyday life.

We have come a long way from then.