News The Bedroom Tax Uk

[saffy]

I know they seem to be going very hard on all welfare benefits at the moment. I have written to my local MP about it and it has been passed to someone higher apparently, in the housing reform department. I will be interested in what he has to say. I also urge everyone I know who might be affected to write to theirs too.

It seems to me that this is about showing conservative followers that welfare claimants got it too easy with the last government so they are going to come down hard on them to prove a point. This has been raised a few times. On one political talk show the conservative MP got very defensive when someone brought this up. mmmmmm.

This bedroom tax is certainly not going to help anyone.

Best wishes
Saffy

 

[saffy]

Yes they seem to be coming down hard on all welfare benefits. It is definately going to cost the economy more with some off their policies. This one including. I have written to my local MP and they have sent it to someone higher in the housing reform department. Wonder what he has to say about it all. I also urge anyone else affected to write to theirs.

It seems to me that the government is showing conservative followers that they are coming down hard on welfare claimants after a so called easy ride with the last government just to prove a point. On one Political chat show on Tv the tory MP got very defensive when someone else suggested this too. mmmm.

This bedroom tax is not going to help anyone.

best wishes
Saffy:)

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

Amnesty International are investigating the UK government for its treatment to disabled people on welfare, including claims that ATOS are disability deniers and therefore unfit for the purpose of assessing disability and the rise of hate-crimes against the disabled and the use of propaganda terms such as lazy, entitled, feckless, scroungers, work-shy, handouts and now so are the UN. Britain should be ashamed under .7% (most people believe that it's between 25 and 70% according to various different articles I've read) of claimants are doing so wrongly and by proportion there is far more than that who won't claim benefits because of the stigma or because they will get such a small amount and can afford to pass it by, or who genuinely believe they're not entitled to benefits because they've been lied to. It's made worse by the fact that mental illnesses are treated with even further scepticism and shame. *Sigh*

 

[anthony]

It comes down to possibly the bigger picture... which is that the UK is broke! They don't have the money to support the system, so they're undoing themselves in the process now by neglecting disabled instead of simply removing many welfare systems or such that they can't afford, and concentrating on those they can afford, to do them well.

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

Oh yes, very apparently! But that doesn't mean I have to like it :p

 

[Padfoot]

I heard about this, it was talked about in Australia as well but not sure if it's in place or not. Trouble is, in Aus at least, they are not allowing people to swap homes and move to one with fewer rooms. A single mum with 1 child is likely to be given a 3 brm house due to the lack of availability of other houses, yet they will not put another person in to share with that single mother and her child, instead opting to charge her the extra. That's how it was, it may not have gone through here yet. Rediculous! I'm happy for y taxes to assist with housing. Having a roof over one's head is a right, not a privilege.

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

Unfortunately that's just it, there are far, far too few one bedroom properties available, meaning that people are being required to give up there homes or pay but there's no where for them to go if they do give their house up. Other than that rather large point there are three main other problems as well.

The first is specially converted homes for disabled people - so the government has spent £70,000 making adaptations to a property for a disabled person and it has a spare room, no, they're still charged, one example of this was for a wheelchair bound woman with many other problems amongst which she has dwarfism, the house is adapted to have a half height interior - now she's losing her house or facing taxation. Another way this is happening is by people who for example don't use their spare bedroom for a person but for their healthcare equipment, in some cases this can be an enormous quantity that can't be stored anywhere else.

The second is room sharing - normally a couple are expected to share a room, as are children under ten in pairs. There are two problems with this one, say a family with two children have a three bedroom house, they are taxed or asked to move, even one of the children is going to be ten in a few months. The second is for a disabled couple or indeed children, where by the nature of their disability means they need to sleep separately - would you ask a 3 year old and an 8 year old profoundly autistic boy to share a room. How about a couple who one or both of them has not only mental conditions, but for example severe physical problems for which they both need not only seperate beds but separate rooms. They are taxed and left broke, have to split up, or have to move in together in a one bedroom property forgoing there physical and mental health.

The third is for any person who has someone living with them for part of the week whether they stay two nights or six examples include separated parents children (able or disabled in any sense) and partial live-in carers.

What with that and obvious injustices happening on the ATOS front; 45% of those with Parkinsons told they'll get better; the discrimination against mental health; the fact that the medical board has decided finally that the Work-Capability Test is not fit for purpose; the number of doctors who do work for ATOS are having their licenses revoked, or the fact that many ATOS staff are not medically trained; the 11,000+ people who have died via suicide or from their disability/sickness after being labelled fit for work;, the sharp rise in hate crime against disabled and Remploy factories closing (for those who don't know they provided safe and reliable jobs for people with all sorts of disabilities). I'm quite frankly not surprised that an external force has got involved sooner.

 

[Padfoot]

It's not a very well thought out plan :(

"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity, nothing exceeds the criticisms made of the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed." - Herman Melville

 

[twopenny]

It's a preposterous, and badly thought out proposition.

It's also the case that the UK isn't actually as broke (nothing close to it) as the government likes to make out. It's not plain sailing, and we have a huge national debt, but Cameron and co like to scare people into thinking the picture is a lot bleaker than it actually is.

The bedroom tax is particularly bad, because firstly, the smaller properties just don't exist in many areas for people to move in to - but no quarter is given for those in the position of being willing to move, but unable to for that reason, and secondly, it makes the assumption that only wealthy people have the right to have a home (as distinct from a house).

The main problem with our government - and most of our current political parties in general - posh boys in suits, with no real clue about the real world, or the cost of a loaf of bread.

 

[Lucycat]

I have read that some local councils - that do not agree with the bedroom tax have 're-assessed' some of their properties. Bedrooms are being re-classified as storage space or whatever, so it can be reflected in a new tenancy agreement. I like thier bottle to do this - but - it has further divided society.

Yet another 'postcode lottery'. Where you live will determine whether this new tax will impact on you or not.

 

[anthony]

Bedrooms are being re-classified as storage space or whatever

The problem with that is when it comes time to selling, they will either get hit for a large back-tax when they try and sell their 3 bedroom house, OR, they won't be able to sell it as a 3 bedroom house, thus property prices will drop / be affected as a result of a council decision.

It's not plain sailing, and we have a huge national debt, but Cameron and co like to scare people into thinking the picture is a lot bleaker than it actually is.

You may want to do some fact checking on that one... because the UK is broke and Cameron isn't painting anything worse. You have to first be able to meet your interest obligations, then pay-off the principle sum as well, then meet all your bills (all Government schemes and commitments).

The UK can't currently do the above, and if they were a business they would be put into receivership.

The US had this issue long ago... and again, if they were a business they would have gone into receivership a decade or more ago. As a result the Government has a 0% interest rate, lowered credit rating and still their debt is climbing.

Lucky that Governments are exempt from such things... ha? But as a result the populous suffers from such stupidity made at Government level. At some point, hard decisions must be made for the overall benefit of the country to get out of debt and be able to meet its actual obligations and commitments it promises. If it can't meet them, it needs to rethink them / scrap them entirely.

This is one reason many Australians don't understand why our country shifted towards a mixture of the US / UK health systems, because neither were good by themselves, but when you use both together you get a much better system. We had a completely free system with optional paid private healthcare, though now we have a more forced paid healthcare system for anyone who earns over x amount, otherwise you pay increasingly more for it over x age as well, so you can't wrought the system as you age and need more healthcare needs. With private cover comes disability and trauma pay-outs and such, thus less burden on the Government and populous overall. Yet for those under the income threshold they can have a free system where for life-threatening illness everyone is treated equal, but for everything else, they may have to wait weeks or months for non-life threatening surgeries versus private health cover will get you ahead of the rest because you're contributing towards lowering the Governments burden for medical costs.

The US relies nearly solely on health insurance, thus the Government burden is little... though they have a lot of medical issues as a result with low income persons. The UK puts too much into their NHS and thus the issues experienced are a direct result of that, especially when financial times aren't all that good, being at present. The UK have a lot of hard decisions yet to be made IMHO...

We here in Australia are facing our own issues due to Labor borrowing excessive amounts and putting our national debt around $250bn at present. That doesn't sound like much compared to other countries, but it is significant for this country with a land mass just shy of the US, yet we have less than 25 million populous compared to the US at around 330 million. People get excited when our Government gets us into surplus for a year (we saved some money beyond paying the bills), but they forget that we need about 20 years of surplus, which means 20 years of suffering some hard decisions and going without in order to get national debt under control.

Countries globally are borrowing money that they simply can't afford to pay back, and then wonder why systems are collapsing within countries. Why bedroom taxes are becoming a requirement and other such issues. The UK has a different issue, with 65 million people in an area the size of the state I live in now, Victoria, Australia, a single state, and our third smallest in the country. That is a scary thought for room to move, let alone if we have our own countries populous in the size of just one small state of our country.

There are huge issues going on... and people with their hand out is not going to fix any of them in these times. That may be harsh, but it doesn't make it any less true.

 

[Padfoot]

It only applies to government housing, so the people living in them won't be later selling, right? That's how it was meant to be in Australia.