Douglas Alexander Fails To Vote Against Bedroom Tax

[bluto]

Oh FFS, most of them are exempt from the "bedroom tax" Bluto. Stop with the bleeding heart shite.

You may know of one, who has had a loophole found for her. I know three, one close and personal with no such loopholes provided.

Stop with the right-wing, turning-a-blind-eye-to-reality dissemblance.

[Guest TPAFKATS]

Sorry, guys, but I don't see the relevance of those examples (distasteful as they may be) to those at the bottom of the heap, often disabled, who are now required to pay a Bedroom Tax?

A tiny, irrelevent % of council house tenants chose to stay there while refusing to buy. Most of them are also abstaining from the process due to principles which dont include removing council homes from the social environment and placing them in the private market. Fair enough IMO.

[Guest TPAFKATS]

Oh FFS, most of them are exempt from the "bedroom tax" Bluto. Stop with the bleeding heart shite.

I know a lady in her 50's who is deaf. I've known her all my life. She was my Dad's badminton partner and a close friend of the family. She's worked at various points in her life but has now been unemployed for the past 9 years. She's always lived on her own and thanks to the council she's landed up living in a two bedroom house in Castlemilk. Just after the news of the "bedroom tax" broke we were at a family night out which she had been invited along to. I spoke to her about it and she shrugged her shoulders. She said she had the option of moving to a one bedroom flat, or just making do with a tenner less. She said she loved her house so she'd just have to make do. In the end she managed to get an exemption from her housing association and she hasn't had her benefits reduced. She's only deaf Bluto - and whilst that is a real disability it doesn't affect the individuals ability to work. If she is exempt then so would the ones your heart bleeds for.

You've obviously never heard of Atos?

[bluto]

A tiny, irrelevent % of council house tenants chose to stay there while refusing to buy. Most of them are also abstaining from the process due to principles which dont include removing council homes from the social environment and placing them in the private market. Fair enough IMO.

I understand that attitude and actively support it, but those two posts I queried were grumbling about people because they had achieved more income than the posters deemed fit for council tenants.

What relevance has that to the bedroom tax debate?

[Guest TPAFKATS]

I understand that attitude and actively support it, but those two posts I queried were grumbling about people because they had achieved more income than the posters deemed fit for council tenants.

What relevance has that to the bedroom tax debate?

None.

I was agreeing with you, might have helped if I had quoted both their posts as opposed to yours, but I'm not smart enough to do that on a smart phone

[Guest TPAFKATS]

Would it be cynical to say that labour didnt want this vote to be successful the other night? They wouldn't have been able to have it in their manifesto for 2015 ...

[oaksoft]

Sorry, guys, but I don't see the relevance of those examples (distasteful as they may be) to those at the bottom of the heap, often disabled, who are now required to pay a Bedroom Tax?

It is related because the bedroom tax has been introduced to try and either cut back on housing benefit or force people to move out.

It's a stupid idea BUT the root problem is a lack of social housing.

What I was proposing was a solution. Rather than the bedroom tax, force people to move out when they reach a certain salary and can afford to go private. We simply don't have enough council housing.

That would help the people at the bottom.

Not having the bastard Tories in charge of the welfare state of our wee socialist country would help too of course.

Edited November 16, 2013 by oaksoft

[oaksoft]

See I could easily turn this around and say that I can't understand your logic either. A rental agreement is what it is. Someone entering into a rental agreement should understand that they will be expected to pay the rent to the owner for the period they intend to use the item they are renting without ever taking ownership. Even in the 50's and 60's this type of agreement would have been well understood as many people had experience of renting a radio set, TV, or even their telephone handset. You never owned the item you were renting, it was always going to have to be given back when you stopped paying for it.

In the 80's Thatcher's government, faced with a rapidly dilapidating housing stock that was desperately in need of large capital investment to bring those houses up to a modern day living standard took the decision to offer council tenants the opportunity to purchase their houses at a large discount. Many took the opportunity - and whilst I agree with the argument that the money raised should have been used to build new council houses for rent the fact is it wasn't and successive governments since have also failed to restart the house building process. Indeed if you watched last weeks This Week programme you would have seen Alan Johnston tell the viewer that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's governments had the money to build new council houses but they instead opted to spend vast sums of money on improving their existing housing by fitting new kitchens, bathrooms, roofing, doors and windows.

Those tenants that you are talking about will have enjoyed the free upgrades to their accommodation. They will have enjoyed the protection against having to pay for their own repairs. Many won't have paid the full market rental for their property over all the years of their tenancy, indeed most affected by the so called bedroom tax may NEVER have paid the going rate for their property. They will have been offered the opportunity to buy the house at substantial discount, there were even finance companies willing to lend at cheap rates to those on benefits who wanted to buy that meant their monthly payments would have been less than their rent. The opportunities have been afforded to them. Now, in the same way as I fail to see why a cleaner or a bus driver should be expected to pay for the university education for a politician, a GP, or for a solicitor - I also fail to see why anyone should have to subsidise a person living on benefits living in accommodation that is larger than he or she needs. Rather than my morality being in question it is the morality of those who have enjoyed use of a property that didn't belong to them and who now don't want to move on despite the property being too big for their needs when others are left in inappropriate living conditions for the size of their families and who can't move in to the right sized houses because those with extra rooms refuse to move on.

Your last bit is the problem.

What you are describing is a real problem and in theory it's hard to argue with it

In practice there's a catch.

Let's take an example.

Say I have a 3 bed council house.

I bring up my family in it.

Then they all move out and it's just me and my wife.

I only really need a 1 bedroom house now.

I may or may not WANT to move but that IMO is neither here nor there.

It is NOT my house, other people need that house and it's my moral duty IMO to move to something smaller.

BUT there are NO one bed or even two bed properties available unless I move perhaps hundreds of miles away.

And I'm perhaps on a pension and can't afford to go private.

So the choices are:-

1) "Punish" me over something which is not my fault (the lack of one and two bed council flats) by removing part of my housing benefit because I can't move.

2) "Punish" me by forcing me to move in my old age, hundreds of miles from everything and everyone I've ever known.

3) Fix the social housing problem by diverting money from say Trident, and building hundreds of thousands of new council houses OR by forcing the current crop of 3 MILLION second houses to be compulsory purchased.

Now unless you are a trolling bastard you can't find fault in the fact that this is a real problem for me.

The question is what is the fairest thing to do?

Or is there a fourth option?

[oaksoft]

She's only deaf Bluto - and whilst that is a real disability it doesn't affect the individuals ability to work.

It might if she was a sound engineer.

[stlucifer]

She's only deaf Bluto - and whilst that is a real disability it doesn't affect the individuals ability to work. If she is exempt then so would the ones your heart bleeds for.

It might if she was a sound engineer.

Or a bus driver.

Or an lorry driver.

Or a forklift driver.

Or even working in any position where it's important to actually use that particular sense to keep yourself and coworkers safe.

Now. I would say it definitely DID affect her ability to work by limitation.

[oaksoft]

Or a bus driver.

Or an lorry driver.

Or a forklift driver.

Or even working in any position where it's important to actually use that particular sense to keep yourself and coworkers safe.

Now. I would say it definitely DID affect her ability to work by limitation.

Or a musician (of course he'll bring up Beethoven because that's what all igorant trolling twats would do).

This is Dicko's problem. He is incapable ot putting himself in someone else's position and truly understanding their problems and so he sees everyone else as lazy, feckless or bogus in some way.

What a sad and frustrating way to live that must be.

[Bud Bundy]

Your last bit is the problem.

What you are describing is a real problem and in theory it's hard to argue with it

In practice there's a catch.

Let's take an example.

Say I have a 3 bed council house.

I bring up my family in it.

Then they all move out and it's just me and my wife.

I only really need a 1 bedroom house now.

I may or may not WANT to move but that IMO is neither here nor there.

It is NOT my house, other people need that house and it's my moral duty IMO to move to something smaller.

BUT there are NO one bed or even two bed properties available unless I move perhaps hundreds of miles away.

And I'm perhaps on a pension and can't afford to go private.

So the choices are:-

1) "Punish" me over something which is not my fault (the lack of one and two bed council flats) by removing part of my housing benefit because I can't move.

2) "Punish" me by forcing me to move in my old age, hundreds of miles from everything and everyone I've ever known.

3) Fix the social housing problem by diverting money from say Trident, and building hundreds of thousands of new council houses OR by forcing the current crop of 3 MILLION second houses to be compulsory purchased.

Now unless you are a trolling bastard you can't find fault in the fact that this is a real problem for me.

The question is what is the fairest thing to do?

Or is there a fourth option?

Good Stuff !

[Stuart Dickson]

 

 

Or a bus driver.

Or an lorry driver.

Or a forklift driver.

Or even working in any position where it's important to actually use that particular sense to keep yourself and coworkers safe.

Now. I would say it definitely DID affect her ability to work by limitation.

You are showing a disgusting level of prejudice here. Deaf people can drive, do drive and there are deaf lorry, bus and fork lift drivers all over the UK.

[salmonbuddie]

You are showing a disgusting level of prejudice here.

There's that Carlsberg/irony thing again.....

[Bud Bundy]

You are showing a disgusting level of prejudice here. Deaf people can drive, do drive and there are deaf lorry, bus and fork lift drivers all over the UK.

[stlucifer]

You are showing a disgusting level of prejudice here. Deaf people can drive, do drive and there are deaf lorry, bus and fork lift drivers all over the UK.

Profoundly deaf people would be a danger in those jobs and tend not to do them. It's not prejudice. It's common sense. I suppose it would be prejudicial to exclude blind people from those jobs too?

Edited November 17, 2013 by stlucifer

[Guest TPAFKATS]

Anas Sarwar also managed to miss the vote. Not sure where he was but he also missed a wee protest outside his office when he was due to have his surgery last week as well.

Rumour is he was in Pakistan lecturing about how to be a successful entrepreneur in that country.

The scottish meeja recently voted him politican of the year...

Edit for spelling

Edited November 18, 2013 by TPAFKATS

[Stuart Dickson]

Profoundly deaf people would be a danger in those jobs and tend not to do them. It's not prejudice. It's common sense. I suppose it would be prejudicial to exclude blind people from those jobs too?

You are wrong and completely ignorant - and sadly you are showing the kind of prejudice that deaf people fought to overcome in the 1950's. I could cite you a number of court rulings that prove you wrong, but you can do that yourself by simply searching on Google. A deaf person is no more prone to danger in these jobs that a truck driver who has his radio on, or a forklift truck driver wearing ear defenders. It is of course not the same thing as excluding blind people from driving - for obvious reasons.

Now hopefully you feel suitably educated to admit you are wrong.