Mods permitting, open forum. I'm seeing loads in the media, Thoughts?
But we're going backwards more slowly now, so the debt goes back under the carpet. Until the bailiffs start knocking again.Accepting that some people get caught in the crossfire, what would you do? Forget the politics for a moment and assume that a £1.5 Trillion UK debt is actually not a problem. How would you distribute the money we don't actually have?
"It's the usual overkill with the emotive phrases of "hitting the shirkers" and "those who don't want to work" to make it a populist action."
"Most of the recent benefit changes have been ill thought out and implemented in a rush and so are proving to be big failures and resulting in many innocent people suffering and in the long term costing much more than they are saving."
The Latest example of this is the "Help To Work" programme that fully launches in 2 weeks time at a cost of £300 Million a year, despite having been trial by the DWP on 15,000 Long Term Unemployed JSA claimants and having been found to be little more than useless !!
Help to Work is a costly way of punishing the jobless | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian
Unfortunately, the way I see it is either out of the EU or nail the benefits down to EU levels?
Cant believe they saying the council will give housing benefit upto 260 quid a week! thats rediculous.
There should be a cap of minimum wage equivalent.
Those on minimum wage and/or low wage are entitled to housing benefit, particularly if they live in London where the rents are much higher.
There is often the arguement given "if you can't afford the housing then don't live there" but if that were to happen who would fill all of the low paid jobs there ?
I agree with this but what if you were born and bred in a London borough.
On my wage (working for Asda at the time) there was no way in earth I could afford to live in Dagenham. I lived with my mum. A And even then things were tight.
I moved to Hastings last year and on a lesser wage I now could afford to live comfortably in a one bed flat. I now work on busses so better off but even now. My flat is the same size as my sisters and pay 50% less in rent council tax and utilities then her.
The biggest problem we have is everything has inflated but the wages. And thus we rely more on tax relief and benifits.
In most cases you are better off claiming then working. And unfortunately it's become so bad that there isn't a way out other then making many people homeless or move them many miles away from where they know. Or work.
You shoud never bring standards down !!!
So only one solution !!!
I think my comment may have been misunderstood. What I meant was one of the fundamentals of EU membership is freedom of movement of its citizens. You can renegotiate the rules perhaps or leave if you don't like them. In the absence of either, benefits would have to reduce to match the stricter implementations abroad thus making the UK less attractive.
Housing costs, wages and inflation are different issues. Not that they're unimportant, it's just that membership of the EU is not really a contributory factor.
But the EU is a major factor, because without membership to it we would not need to have freedom of movement to here from the rest of the EU.
Reducing benefits to the level of some of the other EU countries is not an option unless you also lower the whole cost of living and living standards to that of those countries and as I said "You should never bring standards down".
So why not rule that those other countries have to pay similar benefit to the likes of Britain and Germany ? ............................. Raise the bar not lower it !
British and German Trade Unions fought hard to achieve a lot of the benefits in place and to get the working man a "Living Wage" that "Living Wage" has been eroded and Cheap Labour is becoming the norm, we are spiralling downwards towards becoming serfs and slaves, if something is not done the ordinary person in Britain will be working in the kind of conditions and for the same sort of wages as in India and Pakistan. It honestly feels like we are striving to become a third world country.
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