GreenNeedle
Member
YES I am assuming that. It is easy peasy to get a Council House but you have to join the line. Why should anyone be able to jump to the top when it suits them. If they really wanted one they would have been on the list before.
This is one problem with society where it is fact (and here I do not make the assumption the couple you are talking about has done this) on my street there are many many single mothers that have a few children. We are talking young twenties that have 3,4,5 children. This is done because as the rules were it gained them 'priority' status and therefore got them to the top of the list. Is that fair? Does that set a good example? Does it encourage recklessness? I'll not answer but that is why the rules changed. Also changed so that non UK born resident must live in the UK for 5 years before they are allowed to even register on the list apart from in exceptional circumstance.
The point I make here is if someone wants a council house thats fine. They can wait like the rest of us. What I would ask is how long have they lived privately? Did they register on the list prior to the pregnancy being known? Is it suddenly we want a council house where before they weren't interested?
This may advise a little though:
http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_advic ... cy_checker
This is all wrong. Council houses are given to those who want them. It doesn't matter if you earn £50k a year you have a right to apply for a Council house. Once applied for the applicant is assessed in terms of priority. However there isn't an option for Sorry you are not in need. It is a right of choice. You are one of those people. You live in the UK, are resident and have been for more than 5 years. Therefore unless you've been a naughty girl then you have the right to join the list just as I was when I was earning £15k a year and my wife £10k a year. Joint £25k. I have no idea why people seem to get this picture of council housing being only available to those below a certain level of income. This is not a benefit it is a UK citizen's right.
Councils don't necessarily need to build. The problem is the 'Opti Whites' are the ones like mine. Good Solid old houses. Well Built, strong, large gardens. The newly built (past 20 years) council homes are indeed Clearseals with thin plasterboard walls, boxy rooms, small gardens. These are typically (from advice of people in the know) the worst areas in Council Estates. These houses are absolute shells when people are evicted. Walls smashed to pieces etc.
What the councils would be better doing is buying up what is derelict and empty. Places with solid foundation and sturdy build already and then turning that into their 'needed' space. This not only regenerates but also reduces the amount of green and brownfield sites we are building on.
So join the list
Lisa. I am not suggesting people's personal choices are wrong, just that their argument is wrong.
I am suggesting that they complain about todays house prices in comparison to their parents generation whilst not comparing their cost of living like for like to their parents.
Yes you may need a car late at night in Southampton's roughest parts at night. Yes you may need broadband for your work, Do not ever agree with the car cost vs public transport statements but then I do baulk at paying £3 to go into the city when I can walk or bike it.
However when comparing you can't factor these into the argument as they are society problems they are to do with the living environment we as a collective nation have created via ourselves or via letting governments get away with letting it happen. The impatient. Our time is too important 24/7 non stop merry go round. Nothing to do with a like for like cost of living comparison.
What would our Parents generation say? Well how many worked from home back then? How many people used buses to get to work? How many people always used cars at night? Come to that how many people worked at night then compared to now?
So you see the cost of living cannot include these as they are created by the way we as a collective have let our nation become.
This isn't really politics, this is really economics with some social issues thrown in.
Real Politics is when the debater (politician) knows the whole loop, but then tries to persuade those who know a little part of the loop that they are helping them whilst upsetting as little of the rest of the loop as possible.
This is the problem. With so many factors in today's loop and so precious time etc people see less and less of the loop as time goes on. Politicians try to more and more take the middle ground rather than actually change things and therefore ways of letting everybody do what they want whilst sounding like changes are being brought in have been the way of the last decade.
The shift from calling people dole dossers to hiding them from the figures with the 'invalid benefit' section which then tars the legitimate claimants. Then the EU problem came in and the excuse blossomed into an unbelievable and often used 'They are mainly doing the jobs that the British people won't do' Aaargh
This sort of politics of show action yet please all, take middle ground, hide the problem makes me mad. What would the 'hated' Thatcher have done if she were Prime minister now and one of her ministers had said this statement? Not only would that minister be on the back benches within a week, Thatcher would be on a podium within a week and those that 'won't work would be shaking in their boots' because they would know they were in for a rough ride!!!
Action was taken in her day unlike now. That is why many hate her. Forget the middle ground, there is no point pleasing Joe Bloggs if he doesn't understand the whole loop, No point in taking chances with a country. Just do what is right and ignore Joe whilst telling him, Trust me.
Try to please Joe can mean doing things that are not going to help in the long run. Often Joe doesn't understand how the things he thinks are bad are actually feeding down to him and helping him. Yes there can be some mistakes etc but here we are being told it will take a generation to restore our country!!!
Took Thatcher a lot less and after only 5 years people were saying she was only looking after big business and the 'yuppies'. Guess what. It cleared up the near bankruptcy to making us pretty darn strong in the world again. Even then we were back in an great position to come out of the 90/91 recession as a world leader. A position of growth that ultimately led to a false sense of success for the 'prudent' Brown.
Weigh that up against 1978/79. the Winter of discontent. A 15 year period where red rule was only broken by a single blue term caused havoc. Union power became uncontrollable. Inflation reached 27% after the oil crisis and miners strikes in 1975. Strikes over pay rises were common. Labour governments sought to make 5% a maximum pay rise which only worked for a short while. Yes 5%. What a luxury, however the unions were powerful, car manufacturers and oil companies were having more and more good periods and pay rises of 20-40% were sought. When they were eventually granted the public sector were left well behind in pay with high inflation. This was a recession and we had to borrow billions from the IMF to bail us out and not become bankrupt. Not close to, actually bankrupt.
And these days we hear the Thatcher haters complaining about high inflation and interest rates in the eighties. Do they forget the decade prior or choose to ignore this to favour their argument and 'rose tinted' beliefs.
Its a dual edged coin. You want more pay because 'the cost of living' is high. You get more pay so great, you now have a little more to spend. Guess what. The manufacturer (or these days importer), and retailers (from drivers delivering to shelf stackers to till operators) give pay rises too and....................Yep Your £1 was worth more for all of a millisecond because the price of goods just went up to facilititate their pay rises in line with yours. You gained nothing!!! However overall because everybody got payrises inflation went up.
A very basic example - if everything was self sufficient on this island, no imports or exports, no seasonal variation or dependency on weather, no pay rises etc. a constant fluid supply of everything allied to need with no excess and no change in usage then costs would sstay the same and inflation would be zero.
However with supply and demand, other factors controlling good and bad years, dependency on imports and exports allied with the perceived 'need' for pay rises etc then inflation hits. Think about it next time you ask for a pay rise. If you get one, then others get one, then the country eventually all get one then everything rises in price too. You gain nothing. The shopping that cost you 25% of a weekly wage still costs 25% of your weekly wage. Just that you got a payrise which now means the 25% was £50 and now 25% is £53. What do we say. 'Price of foods' going up. lol I wonder if those working in the food industry say the same????
I did whilst I was packing eggs whilst getting 3% a year rises.Now look at a small example of my arguments of what has happened over the past 13 years. Prior to 1997 How many Police Cars/Ambulances/Fire Engines etc were non British made? By that I mean Ford, Vauxhall, bedford, Rover, Dennis etc. I would suggest almost zero. We could even add in here Nissan or Honda etc that have factories in the UK and employ UK workers.
The Police fleet seems now to be Skodas and Beemers, The Fire Engines seem to be Volvos, Ambulances all sorts of Mercedes and Renaults and so on. Why? These factories could have remained open, Huge government fleet contracts would have secured that. Goverment fleet contracts would get these vehicles at lower profit than we buy single vehicles at but a more attractive option to a manufacturer. Less admin and effort to sell 1000 cars than 1 car. Add to that more production to boot which brings down overheads. It did need streamlining anyway as the old Leyland was about 100 different plants from the amalgamation of all th old british manufacturers.
Why over the past 13 years were these very public organisations allowed to funnel money out of the British economy to overseas manufacturers? These manufacturers are now gone or much much smaller for no real reason. It was right to de-nationalise Leyland etc. The country cannot prop up failing business but it can support it through purchase of goods.
I am way way off the original topics now. l.ol
Just sends me mad to hear the usual 'Thatcher' moans whilst no mention of the decade prior with much worse consequence nor the acceptance of cultural or social issues altering the way we either feel or indeed in some cases have to spend our money. People need to see the whole loop and understand how it all links rather than complaining that their part fo the loop is not how they want it to be.
Lisa on the subject if Council housing I am the reverse really. I was brought up in a well to do area (from the age of 5 onward.) Not by rich parents but in an area where others were reasonably well off. Maybe this was good. All children I grew up with were spoilt whilst I was not.
However I grew up with a general snobbishness toward council estates. A general ignorance if you like.
I am a pretty grounded person and upon meeting my wife I was straight on the council housing register. this was a dual thing really. Firstly I knew it could take some time and if I wanted I could just refuse anything and remain at the bottom of the list. Also I had lived with my Parents until the age of 29 and at this point in my first flat, height of the market I could not believe the £450 a month price for a 2 bed flat (top notch area though.) After all my Parents had just completed their mortgage which was £180 a month for a 3 bed house in the same area.
This is 2004. I knew there would be another recession eventually I figured it would be before 2010. I had time to wait the 5 years average waiting until I could get the best areas on the council list. However in mid to late 2007, debts I had let grow coupled with the start of the 'credit crunch' meant I knew the recession was going to start a lot earlier than 2010. So I revised the plan. I had been on the list for 3½ years.
I decided to lower my target. Advice from my Dad (A retired house call benefits agency Officer) and from a couple of Police friends suggested some of these areas suffered from old reputations and although they weren't areas of angelic voices, WI and wine tasting meets, they were far from riotous ASBO infested areas of danger and squallor as many who don't live there tend to believe (including me at that time.) We drove up the street, saw the house saw no problems with the particular locality and bid for it.
Because I had been on that list 3½ years I got it. There wasn't much competition from anyone who had waited longer. I knew we couldn't wait the further 2 years to get the nicer area.
Now this is August 2007 and we are told it will take a couple of months before we can move in. Collapsed floor/Ceiling , wrecked rooms etc. Drugs and associated Paraphernalia to be cleaned out etc. House gutting, rewiring etc. This house was an absolute tip apparently. We only got to view it in mid September and although it was a disgrace what the previous people had done to it.
For £55 a week It has a 75ft long garden, nice sized rooms, Bigger than new builds ( >1980) nice thick old walls, well built etc. Comparison to the '80/90's new build' I had lived in for 7 months prior to this period was impossible. I will never live in a new build ever in my life. I can build things with cardboard myself.
So in between accepting and being allowed to move after work was completed in the last week of December 2007 (yes in Christmas week) I lost my job. Top timing. We would have been bankrupt on the former private house's rent coupled with the debts we had racked up foolishly. However we renegotiated the debts and here we are now.
So I understand you can't just get a council house just like that. why should you. Its not an option for when times are hard. I waited 3½ years. I foresaw problems and planned for them. Thats life. Next summer we will be debt free. Still with income of £800. We will have £100 of that left over each month plus the £700 of government handout. Happy days eh
We will have mortgage fund by the time we've been here for 5 years (been here now for nearly 3) of circa £10,000. The mortgage we will need for this house with the right to buy discount(on where I expect market prices to be in late 2012) will be circa £30,000. thats for a large 2 bedroomed, solid walled house, driveway and a massive garden.
My point is this. It goes to prove that those tax credits are unnecessary. They should not have been rolled out in the first place in the way they were. They were bribes for votes. Unneeded. To tackle that problem should have been done by targeted means not by deciding on a monetary line where poverty is.
However for those that then complain to me that child tax credit should be for the children. It is. Just as my grandparents bought their homes and then left them to their children when they passed away my Parents will too. More than likely I will pay this mortgage straight off with that and have some spare. Then I continue the process by leaving my property (this one or other if we move up) to my children and so on.
Its not a case of anything morbid. Thats just how it works. I do not hope my parents time comes at X date at all. If they live to be 110 I will be incredibly happy. If they outlive me that inheritance would pass over to my children. This is how it works. My mother describes her house as my (and my sisters) pension.
AC
