Re: The Bigger, Badder, Even More Serious Thread [3]

[Pettytyrant101]

Well I havent seen life of pi yet but I was varied between underwhelmed and amazed it looked so bad watching TH, so I am not surprised it lost out- only Gollum seemed up to scratch for me and the lighting in that scene helped a lot in that it wasnt garishly pink tinted!

[Pettytyrant101]

[Eldorion]

Wait, what? The UK government is actually setting regulations for how and where people are supposed to sleep in their own houses? I feel like there has to be more to this because as it is that sounds completely absurd.

[Pettytyrant101]

Welfare reforms will cut the amount of benefit that people can get if they are deemed to have a spare bedroom in their council or housing association home. This measure will apply from April 2013 to tenants of working age.
The power to do this is contained in the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and is commonly referred to as the bedroom tax, size criteria or under-occupation penalty.
All claimants who are deemed to have at least one spare bedroom will be affected. This includes:

Separated parents who share the care of their children and who may have been allocated an extra bedroom to reflect this. Benefit rules mean that there must be a designated ‘main carer’ for children (who receives the extra benefit)
Couples who use their ‘spare’ bedroom when recovering from an illness or operation
Foster carers because foster children are not counted as part of the household for benefit purposes
Parents whose children visit but are not part of the household
Families with disabled children
Disabled people including people living in adapted or specially designed properties.

The proposal will affect an estimated 660,000 working-age social tenants – 31% of existing working-age housing benefit claimants in the social sector. The majority of these people have only one extra bedroom.- NAtional Housing Federation


It applies to what we call council housing- and which I think in the US would be social housing.
Essentially anyone in receipt of housing benefit (and you might be working on minimum awage and still be on housing benefit) and who lives in a council house and has a spare room will lose benefit money for each room they have spare.

The idea is to free up larger homes for families and move out people who dont need as big a house into single room accomodation.
There are lots of unfortunate problems though- a person who lived in the house all their life and raised a family there would lose their famiy home if they could not afford the rent once the family has grown up and left home.
More improtanlty, in Scotland at least we have a long tradition of only building family sized homes- there arent enough 1 bedroom flats or houses to rent.
Not to mention all the other problems relating to disabled folk using rooms for equipment storage, overnight carers, foster carers ect
If Cameron persists in this I think it might be his poll tax- wait till bailiffs are evicting the disabled for not bing able to pay their rent and we shall see trouble.

[Eldorion]

Ah, I didn't realize earlier that it only applied to council housing. In the US we'd call that "public housing", or more commonly "housing projects". I can sort of understand where Cameron and the Tories are coming from in light of this, but it still seems bound to cause a huge mess.

[halfwise]

always are problems with publicly provided housing, life is just too complicated to easily make things fair, so the regulations become increasingly complex to reflect that.

[halfwise]

One would think you just dole out money based on the family statistics, but that means that poorer families would be consigned to slum areas. New York has fabulously complex rent control rules that allow a variety of incomes to live in places like Manhattan. It's saved New York from being taken over completely by the yuppies, but comes at a price. Fortunately the regulations were set up a couple generations ago and have become rather ingrained in the culture so it's not too much of a problem.

[Pettytyrant101]

I suspect the perception of such housing may differ Eldo.

Up until the 1980's the vast bulk of the UK population lived in council housing- its still a very high percentage.
In the housing scheme I grew up in there were families in council housing who were in the third generation living there- they are peoples homes, not just somehing you lease for a bit.

In the the 1980's Thatcher came up with a plan to raise cash- sell council homes to the tennants- and the longer you had been in one, the better the discount.
People found they could buy their home for 12,000 and sell it at 30 next day. Council houses were snapped up- and the government, and subsequent ones, didn't build any new ones to replace them.

Fast forward to today and we have a huge crunch on housing- there simply are no longer enough council houses to meet demand. This in turn has led to a massive increase in private lets instead.

But people on benefits get their rent paid, and as there is no cap on how much a private landlord can charge they go for what they can get away with- in my area that starts at about £400 a month for a one room bedsit, and I live in a small rural town you need to go on a very long drive or get a ferry to reach, with high unemployment.

The result of this is a massive increase in the benfit bill for rent.
The bedroom tax is the Tory answer to this to reduce the bill.

The obvious thing to do would be to cap private rent as its responsile for the bulk of the increase, and set it area by area according to the housing market- but the Tories wont interfere with private enterprise, plus they are all landlords and own loads of property.
So instead they take it off those already at the bottom, the most vulnerable and most in need- those on benefits.

Problem with Cameron is he preaches the 'Big Society' but it was selling the housing stock which shattered community- ater the destruction of steel, coal and ship bulding indistries it was the final nail in the coffin.
And now he is punishing those who still have their family council house, and if they cant pay the difference then they are evicted.
How is this good for the 'Big Society'?

And of course its unfair as the post above highlights- not just on individuals in most need like the disabled, but in that government ministers get 'grace and favour' houses along with the jobs, with many bedrooms, payed for by the taxpayer.
They of course are exempt from the bedroom tax.

And if you are rich you can have not only afford to buy as big a house as you like, with no one it, without a tax levied on you, but you can have holiday homes too lying empty most of the year all round the country.
Not only taking up housing, but artificially pushing up housing prices in picturesque rural areas so that locals born there eventually cannot afford to stay there any more and have to move out, breaking up communities even further.

[azriel]

Wheres Guy Fawkes when you need him ? But,If he succeeded who would be the next uncaring bastard that would get in ? Im struggling to see a long term solution to it, or a ray of bright light at the end of a very long,dark tunnel.

[Pettytyrant101]

Freedom!!! (I actually think our independence would be good for England in the long term- it would have to finally figure out what it means to be English in the modern world. As looking in from the outside it doesnt really seem that the English know who they are any more).

[Amarië]

I thought this was an interesting read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/feb/25/norwegian-prison-inmates-treated-like-people

[Annette O Fish]

Shouldn't prisoners be treated as people?

[halfwise]

Sadly most prison systems don't operate that way. Even though the term 'correctional facility' is in use in the USA, retraining and resocialization is not treated as a priority. Mainly a holding tank.

[azriel]

I do hang my head, not necessarily in shame,but,certainly in embarrassment about our Prison "service" here in the UK. There is a spate of prison docu-drama's on TV at the moment. Wardens are seen as tough,take no nonsense "step outa line & we'll beat u bad", while the inmates are portrayed as "F**k you, Il knife you in your sleep" dont give a shit kinda guys. I do believe people should atone somehow for what crime theyve done, with murder,rape,child & aged abuse,high on the list,(plus,for my beliefs,animal cruelty)but the attitude this country has,it;lt'l never make a dint. People on the street dont trust the police, they see them as just as crooked as the criminals, & the feeling is,that lesser crimes & weaker or vunerable people are being used as scape-goats, while more deadly gangs & criminals are passed over, & the rich can sweeten their way out of most problems ! (if you know the right ear to tweak or the right solicitor to "click" with !)

[Norc]

so if caught.. may it be in Norway.

[azriel]

yep !

[chris63]

[azriel]

I SO agree Chris !

[Mrs Figg]

yup its sad but oh so true.

[Eldorion]

Ministry launches 'Palestinians only' buses - Ynetnews

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4351368,00.html

Racial segregation or transportation mitigation? The Transportation Ministry announced that starting Sunday it will begin operating designated lines for Palestinians in the West Bank.

The bus lines in question are meant, according to the ministry, to transport Palestinian workers from the West Bank to central Israel. The ministry alleges that the move is meant to ease the congestion felt on bus lines used by Jews in the same areas, but several bus drivers told Ynet that Palestinians who will choose to travel on the so-called "mixed" lines, will be asked to leave them.

While officially the new lines are considered "general bus lines," Ynet learned Saturday that their existence has been made public only in Palestinian villages in the West Bank, via flyers in Arabic urging Palestinians to arrive at Eyal crossing and use the designated lines.

The Transportation Ministry defended the plan, saying it was the result of reports and complaints saying that the buses traveling in the area were overcrowded and rife with tensions between the Jewish and Arab passengers.

A ministry source said that many complaints expressed concern that the Palestinian passengers may pose a security risk, while other complaints said that the overcrowded buses cause the drivers to skip stations.

The ministry has also gotten reports of scuffles between Jews and Arab passengers, as well as between Palestinians and drivers who refused to allow them to board their bus.

The ministry reportedly considered several alternatives before deciding to opt for designated lines – knowing that the issue of so-called "Palestinian lines" would be highly controversial.

More at the link. The Transportation Ministry's official position on this is quite different from the drivers apparently interviewed by Ynet. I'm only marginally familiar with Ynet and its parent newspaper so I don't know how reliable they tend to be.

[David H]

Jimmy Carter didn't mince words. It's called Apartheid.

[chris63]

Tears flow freely as US lab chimps see sky for the first time

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/travel/world/tears-flow-freely-as-us-lab-chimps-see-sky-for-the-first-time/story-e6frfqai-1226596457655#ixzz2NOjVhPo9

[chris63]

They remind me of old war veterans who'v been through hell

[Pettytyrant101]

More ridiculousness on the bedroom tax.

Now even the governments own advisers are saying it could be problamatic.

'The government will need to react quickly if a benefit cut for social housing tenants leads to rises in rent arrears and homelessness, MPs say.
Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chair Margaret Hodge said it could have a "severe impact" on low-income families.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) expects 660,000 social housing tenants to be affected by the cut across Britain.
Ms Hodge said: "The DWP says it can't accurately predict the effects of its housing benefit changes either on individuals or on the housing supply.
"Instead it will rely on a 'wait and see' approach and monitor changes in homelessness, rent levels and arrears so that, where there is a need, it can intervene and respond."
The committee said this placed "greater responsibility on the Department to react quickly when the changes are made".
Ms Hodge warned: "Even small reductions in housing benefit can have a severe impact on the finances of the poorest people."- BBC

And to make matters worse local councils dont have enough one and two bedroom houses for people to move into.

'With the vast majority of affected tenants expected to try to find the extra rental money themselves, housing associations raised concerns including:

Increased financial difficulty for tenants
Tenants running up rent arrears
Increased costs to housing associations of rent collection and evictions
A rise in doorstep lending
Damage to communities from increased turnover in social housing and less affordable, larger homes remaining empty

They also warned that people who responded to the benefit cut by leaving social housing could end up claiming more housing benefit in the costlier private sector.'- BBC


So taking the Tory plan as a whole- they are going to take rent money from the poorest in society who happen to have a council house with a spare room (more spare rooms, more you lose)- but there is nowhere near enough smaller houses to move into- but they will still have to pay their rent whilst they look, and that means finding the difference yourself when you have no other income.
On top of that figures show most people are going to stay put and try to manage it somehow- so its not going to free up many houses anyway- and most of those who do have to leave will have to find a new home in the private sector- where rent is considerably more expensive- so the tax payer, who will still be paying their rent benefit will in fact be paying more for someone to live in a smaller house than they were for them in a larger one.
And the government dept in charge of the policy doesnt even know what the likely result of this legislation will be on either the poor or the housing stock!

Is any single part of this legislation been thought out at all? It is an atroctious bill from any angle.
And of course those making the bill all live in huge houses or have grace and favour houses with multiple bedrooms- you guessed it, all payed for by the tax payer, but the law exempts them as those houses are not under local authority housing control.

All in it together Dave. Go F*** yourself!

[Mrs Figg]

thats just plain lunacy. what the heck are they thinking? I remember when Maggie shafted the poor and vulnerable, I thought those days were gone? why is it the poorest get shafted before the well off?