DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

The Tories SNP were probably high-fiving each other throughout Miliband's speech.

£72 a week, but if you get sanctioned for the most minor thing, you get £42 as a hardship payment and that can be over 3 months.

£72 seemed quite high to me at first, cos 10 years ago I was on the dole for a year and got £53 a week, but turns out according to an inflation calculator it's actually less in real terms (not by very much, but still, I wasn't expecting inflation to have made that much difference).

(when I say quite high, I mean relative to how much I got, not that it's a lot to live on or anything like that, but I wonder if there's a psychological effect there that makes people think benefit claimants are better off than they actually are)

I wonder if there's a psychological effect there that makes people think benefit claimants are better off than they actually are

Other than stupidity and malice?

There's def. something irrational that kicks in when times are hard, it's how you end up with Nazis et al.

Would maybe say ignorance rather than stupidity, but that's a minor quibble

Basically imagine you're a 'hardworking' person with an income of £400 a week. Your outgoings are £300 a week, leaving £100 for groceries, petrol/transport, entertainment. You mistakenly think the person on £72/week benefits to cover EVERYTHING that isn't rent or council tax is somehow at level pegging to you, and they're even more outraged by their crazy neighbour getting £106/week for being ill. So, filled with the self-righteousness of someone who's never had to claim, they blame the poor doley/sick person rather than downward pressure on wages from rich people who whine they can't afford to give you a raise *and* pay the mortgage on their third home. It's an amazing shell game, isn't it?

The benefit cap and the removal of universal child benefit etc are all part of a shitty recent phenomenon of opposition parties pledging to stick to the spending plans of the current government* for x years and refusing to see any policy or law as being reversible.

Parties? It's only Labour really, isn't it? I can't remember Osborne pledging to stick with the plans of the death throes of Brown's government.

I did read somewhere that Osborne also endorsed that idea, not sure where though.

They did it in previous elections they lost to Blair and in 2010 they pledged immediate cuts then backtracked a fair bit in the run-up to the election.

xp

as is often the case, suzy : otm.

the problem aint benefits, its the the fucked up "pay" for those on the lower scales (i.e for example : my mum), who cant even pay for the basics after a weeks work.

the difference between working and claiming are so marginal that its easy to fall into the 'f*ck'em all' trap. as has my old ma ..

(and dont get me started on the whole apprenticeships piss take that is happening. companies are using apprens. for free labour for weekend/overtime as opposed to those on 'proper' contracts as apprens are basically free)

solution : the living wage as a min. for all irrespective of the status/hours.

the so called minimum wage is a fucking joke in 2013.

Does the 72 cover housing etc

No, rent is paid via housing benefit. For the £72 (£312/month), you've got to pay all the household bills (newly including a fraction of council tax), feed yourself, replace toiletries and go to job interviews/your shitty Workfare placement. Ask yourself if on this basis you could make a grand last three months?

Oh i know well its a bullshit amount, professional curiosity is all.

"(and dont get me started on the whole apprenticeships piss take that is happening. companies are using apprens. for free labour"

I have seen it at an electrical company I worked at. Kids getting paid £3ph and getting tasks like crawling through voids under buildings with asbestos risks. I used to tell them to get the fuck back into college.

bcz of the hours requirement for a level 2 gnvq the apprenticeship is becoming part of of the college course iirc

a lot of these are run in conjunction with colleges as far as i'm aware

When I said 'get back to college' I meant get out of this job, before it is too late.

i know, college tragically is ceasing to be the answer

If it is a competition between being an unemployable qualified electrician vs an unemployable student. I wish I had gone for the latter really.

No, rent is paid via housing benefit.

Even this isn't guaranteed to cover all of your rent, and is only going to get worse with bedroom tax, caps etc. I had to pay £5 a week rent out of my £53 a week JSA.

People are having to pay a lot more than £5 a week now. Doesn't help that rents are insanely high but God forbid the Labour Party should (seriously) do anything to counter that.

I have a council flat and my service charges run to about £13 a week (this includes caretaking, central heating, Freeview reception and hot water). If I were signing on, I'd have to pay them out of benefits because HB has only ever covered the basic rent charge. A friend living in an HA flat (single parent, gets DLA, not working because child is too young) is having to find £33/week out of her benefits to pay her service charges, which I consider unreasonable, because she's being charged a few quid a week for things like 'lift depreciation' and a whole panoply of items that council tenants are never asked to cover. The difference between my charges and hers sucks up the £20/week she receives in child benefit. This year, she's also had to find about £20/month for council tax. Until her kid starts a full school day, she really can't try for a job and the anxiety of having to live on much less than last year and the endless letters saying 'Surprise! We're going to chisel you in this new way!' are affecting her mental and physical health.

The government really isn't considering that it would be cheaper in the long run to make sure she has a reasonable standard of living during her child's early years. The knock-on effect of the cuts mean huge costs elsewhere, eg needing more health care. I know she spends every spare penny she has on getting her kid to library groups, nursery, and the like, just to make sure she isn't at a loss compared to the posh kids, because she deliberately chose a flat in a good school catchment. She makes nothing but good choices with the funds she does have, and it pisses me off to see people like her used as whipping boys by people who will never want for anything and don't actually give a shit about anyone else's children.

This might be a very thick sounding question so forgive me...but do governments have any sway over rent prices? Can they enforce a cap or anything?

JSA doesn't cover rent because that's what HB covers but when I was last unemployed and moved back in with my parents they cut my JSA in half because I wasn't paying rent

(not complaining since I was doing a lot better than most of the stories itt, just shrugging at the logic)

No, and you can thank the rotting corpse of Thatcher for that.

xpost

This might be a very thick sounding question so forgive me...but do governments have any sway over rent prices? Can they enforce a cap or anything?

The Tories de-regulated in 1989. So says Wiki. Don't know how it worked before that.

it pisses me off to see people like her used as whipping boys by people who will never want for anything and don't actually give a shit about anyone else's children.

Well that's Ed Miliband's Labour Party for you.

I met the Director of Policy for the Labour Party at a wedding last year and greatly regret not taking the opportunity to shake him repeatedly by his lapels and maybe slap him a few times.

Got an idea for a pic to put here, but probably too soon with emotions still running high.

My parents have a private rental agreement dating back to the early eighties and are covered by Registered Fair Rent legislation. Their rent can only be increased "fairly" by agreement with a council board, i think. It doesn't go up in line with the insane market rates . They pay about half as much for a gorgeous two bed flat in Highbury as i would for a shoebox in Finsbury Park.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/jun/01/fair-rent-tenants-sitting-comfortably

Abolishing that was almost as much of a social disaster as selling off the social housing stock.

Unfortunately the property market has over-inflated since then to such an extent that any attempt to bring in rent controls would be pretty nominal - even the amount required to cover a mortgage and nothing else would still be very high, especially in the SE.

My friend's kid is actually at nursery with some mini Milibands - she's very old Labour and her parents were refugee Communists (oh, the irony). Like most of us, she has the feeling Ed isn't blind to poverty and access issues, but is choosing to fellate the Tories out of a misguided idea of electability. There's more voters who turned away from Labour because of Iraq and the Blairite tendency than will ever swing Labour's way from the middle ground, but I suppose they're not in the constituencies that need to swing. And all parties are in thrall to neoliberalism, where the market is free but individuals no longer are.

Renters used to have assured tenancies similar to the ones still given to council tenants, and there was no council tax, only rates for property owners. I still believe private renters should not pay council tax, because it's based on the value of your landlord's asset (and you'll already be paying a fuckton to live in a really nice flat that belongs to someone else). With social housing, the rents are smaller so I'm more receptive to paying CT because my rent plus that is still far cheaper than a rented room in most parts of London, and I'm living somewhere that belongs to everyone, including me.

Her HA loudly trumpets their current rent freeze, but they just raise the service charges to compensate.

"Normal citizens" have nothing to fear from UK intelligence gathering, says UK Foreign Sec @WilliamJHague after GCHQ spying claims #MarrShow

This fucking guy...

Abnormal citizens will have to buck their ideas up, though..

If that's his thesis, Hague must be shitting himself, really.

The document, prepared by Rothschild investment bank, was submitted to the business department in November 2011, but is understood to still be under active review. It has never been made public, or been seen by higher education professionals.

Any move to increase the interest rates on loans already taken out could add extra years of repayments even for those who left university long ago.

In the report, dubbed Project Hero, the authors suggest a script for ministers to persuade graduates to accept the worsening of their conditions. "We all live in difficult times," they suggest ministers argue. "You have a deal which is so much better than your younger siblings (they will incur up to £9,000 tuition fees and up to RPI+3% interest rates)".

A statement from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills confirmed that ministers were still looking at how to privatise the pre-2012 student loan book. It noted: "The government has not made any changes to the pre-2012 loans interest rate terms … Work on the feasibility of selling the pre-2012 student loan book is ongoing."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/jun/13/raise-interest-rate-student-loans-secret-report

These fuckin guys

These fucking guys mostly went to university for FREE.

Project Hero

^

Probably stands for something daft like Higher Education Refinancing Order. There is actually an education service provider called Project Hero. Imagine they are thrilled rn.

I won't pretend to really know how student finance (or mathematics, for that matter, works) but my back-of-a-napkin calculations suggest that if you borrowed £9,000 a year to cover fees and £2,000 per term to cover your overpriced UNITE housing, books, etc, at 3% you'd have to be earning something like £32,000 a year before you started meeting your interest payments. Might not be correct, though.

But the debt gets written off, anyway, after, um, how many years is it?

current situation: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-repay

see the table "When are outstanding loans wiped?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsW9MlYu31g

George Osborne was the victim of an unlikely case of mistaken identity at this week’s G8 summit, after US President Barack Obama confused the chancellor with a black soul singer.

The chancellor’s attempts to explain the complexities of tax avoidance to G8 leaders were thrown off course when Mr Obama interjected on three occasions to indicate that he agreed fully with “Jeffrey”.

...

Mr Obama explained that he knew who Mr Osborne was, adding: “I’m sorry, man. I must have confused you with my favourite R&B singer.”
It is unlikely the chancellor has previously been confused with Jeffrey Osborne, a well-known R&B and soul singer from Rhode Island who has had countless hit singles and albums in his illustrious career.

100% real. Article is gold. http://t.co/HPo4TB6Usc

Mr Osborne said: 'Those first seven days should be spent looking for work and not looking to sign on.'

I don't know how much I can take of these cunts