Spare room tax

[RJ Fan club]

The CAB near our place has lost 18 of its 50 staff due to cuts in legal aid' date=' it will no longer be able to do complex benefits or employment work. Astounding.[/quote']

 

The CAB has an office at one end of the Town Hall I work in. I have never seen them as busy as the last year. Fucking tragic stuff.

[Chairman Meow]

Rico how do you know when it's a council property with a caravan outside it and not a privately owned ex council house?

[Rico1304]

Rico how do you know when it's a council property with a caravan outside it and not a privately owned ex council house?

 

Usually because it looks exactly the same as it's neighbours. Privately owned Council houses look different as they usually have new windows, roofs, front doors that aren't replaced on the same cycle as the council repairs.

[dickie mint]

I'm back at a keyboard now so can answer some questions (although that'll probably get me in trouble)

 

Vlad - apologies, I thought you had 4 people working that house so the household income would be pretty high even if the indivduals didn't make loads. I'm pretty sure that the situation does arises thousands of times which I'll summarise as;

- Young family are awarded a house on the basis of need

- Over time their circumstances change and they become wealthier

- They chose not to move out of subsidised council property and are never means tested

- That house remains out of reach for people with genuine need

 

Melons - the caravan comment wasn't aimed at you, but it does wind me up when I see a council property with an expensive car and caravan outside. The tenants (again benifitting from cheap rent and occupying a house that could be used by those in need) obviously don't need the help if they've got £60k of assets sitting on the drive.

 

The comments about bankers - I get annoyed when people excuse their own grabbing behaviour by referring to the bankers. People are naturally greedy cunts and if you are the type of person who doesn't pay tax on your earnings as a plumber I bet if you were earning £3m a year as a banker then you'd do everything possible to earn £5 or £6m by taking risks. Probably more likely as you are taking the risk of going to prison as a plumber but just fucking with other people's money as a banker.

 

My main gripe? I'm in the squeezed middle and I'm paying for the rich ones above me who avoid tax and the cheeky cunts below me who play the system and have no intention of ever getting off their arses. I'm 40 years old and have never claimed a penny in my life, I've worked my way up from answering the phones in a callcentre to a decent job. My tax is taken at source and I pay 40%, I have a car and get fucking hammered on everything to do with it. We've just had a baby and I won't get any family allowance, it's unlikely we'll be able to afford another baby yet I've been asked by friends who've never worked why we aren't planning on a football team like them. My TV is 5 years old and it's unlikely I'll go abroad for a few years til we get back on our feet. I've moved house recently, I've paid over £15k in stamp duty for the privilige so when I see cunts in subsidised housing with fucking Merc and caravan it drives me mental.

 

The rich moan about the poor scrounging and the poor moan about the rich avoiding tax. BUt you can bet your life if they switched they'd do exactly the same thing. I'd go after both lots, they aren't mutually exclusive.

 

there, rant over. I might even move it to the Have a Rant Thread.

 

 

A top car like a Merc is essential to pull the Caravan a shitty fiesta isn't gonna be any good so stop being jealous and leave the people to live there lives.

[Bellflower]

How the fuck will that help. I can just see the fuckers now, wanting compo and the state to pay for coffins and headstones and a full church burial for some cunt whose only link to the church is that they've broken the 10 commandments.

And they nicked the lead off the roof..........................

[melons]

I'm back at a keyboard now so can answer some questions (although that'll probably get me in trouble)

 

Vlad - apologies, I thought you had 4 people working that house so the household income would be pretty high even if the indivduals didn't make loads. I'm pretty sure that the situation does arises thousands of times which I'll summarise as;

- Young family are awarded a house on the basis of need

- Over time their circumstances change and they become wealthier

- They chose not to move out of subsidised council property and are never means tested

- That house remains out of reach for people with genuine need

 

Melons - the caravan comment wasn't aimed at you, but it does wind me up when I see a council property with an expensive car and caravan outside. The tenants (again benifitting from cheap rent and occupying a house that could be used by those in need) obviously don't need the help if they've got £60k of assets sitting on the drive.

 

The comments about bankers - I get annoyed when people excuse their own grabbing behaviour by referring to the bankers. People are naturally greedy cunts and if you are the type of person who doesn't pay tax on your earnings as a plumber I bet if you were earning £3m a year as a banker then you'd do everything possible to earn £5 or £6m by taking risks. Probably more likely as you are taking the risk of going to prison as a plumber but just fucking with other people's money as a banker.

 

My main gripe? I'm in the squeezed middle and I'm paying for the rich ones above me who avoid tax and the cheeky cunts below me who play the system and have no intention of ever getting off their arses. I'm 40 years old and have never claimed a penny in my life, I've worked my way up from answering the phones in a callcentre to a decent job. My tax is taken at source and I pay 40%, I have a car and get fucking hammered on everything to do with it. We've just had a baby and I won't get any family allowance, it's unlikely we'll be able to afford another baby yet I've been asked by friends who've never worked why we aren't planning on a football team like them. My TV is 5 years old and it's unlikely I'll go abroad for a few years til we get back on our feet. I've moved house recently, I've paid over £15k in stamp duty for the privilige so when I see cunts in subsidised housing with fucking Merc and caravan it drives me mental.

 

The rich moan about the poor scrounging and the poor moan about the rich avoiding tax. BUt you can bet your life if they switched they'd do exactly the same thing. I'd go after both lots, they aren't mutually exclusive.

 

there, rant over. I might even move it to the Have a Rant Thread.

 

I appreciate where you're coming from, i do, but things are not always as they seem.

 

I survive on student finance, tax credits and child maintenance, i live in social housing. From an outside view - I have a 4k car on the drive, the camping gear, a 40" tv. I go 'abroad' twice a year. We go to 2 festivals each year, I pretty much spend most of the summer on holiday. I could go on, it looks like i have a sweet life, and to all intents and purposes, i do. However look at it from the inside... My car i bought from my brother in law and paid in installments. My camping gear has all been bought on sale and quite often is ex display or a 'slight second'. My TV was given to me broken, the boyfriend fixed it. This year i shall be going to France twice and then to Holland in October, i'll be spending 24 days as a family of 7 in the above countries for less than £800. Festivals, i pay in installments and book early bird student tickets, It was a squeeze this year for the festivals as the kids moved up an age bracket, we'll find an alternative next year.

 

It looks like i live the life of Riley so to speak, I choose to live on this shit hole estate so my children are afforded the what some consider as luxuries mentioned above. It could be argued you didn't have to move up the property ladder and that by choosing a cheaper house you wouldn't find it such a struggle. After all, I'm struggling with the concept of needing to live in a house worth £500,000 at the cost of having more children? (if my maths is right, 15K on stamp duty would put the house at half a million?)

 

 

As it happens me and Mr Melons are looking at buying a place together, my only stipulation is that we don't end up in a position where we're working to pay the mortgage and nothing else. If it means living in a smaller house or a less well to do area, i'm not really arsed.

[Section_31]

Rico, if it's a new car it's more than likely a Motorbility car.

 

With regards the bankers, the plumber fiddling his tax isn't likely to destroy the worldwide economic system, put your street lights out or your neighbours on the street.

 

People weren't always money grabbing cunts, it's been actively encouraged. Banking was once seen as a traditional quite 'upstanding' career (think Mary Poppins's employer and Captain Mainwearing) it was only in the 80s that the wideboy culture was unleashed, the 'fuck you, fuck the consequences, let's make some money' attitude. It mushroomed into what it eventually came and still remains.

 

These kinds of tales are always filled with examples like 'I once saw a woman in the post office queue collecting her Giro and she had a Blackberry', this then gives the observer carte blanche to make a judgment about the entire welfare state.

 

The 'underclass' is the working class with no work left to do. They were all sold out years ago and the jobs they would have done are being done in shanghai and mumbai, so what 'we're' left with is unusable, essentially useless and burdonsome people. So we demonise them.

 

But what happened to them will happen to you next, the middle class will be eroded and already is being eroded until all you'll be doing is surviving, at best. Then people will be pointing the finger at you.

[Rico1304]

Melons - I got my numbers wrong, it was a bit less than that. But our thoughts were get a decent house in a decent area with decent schools. We wanted to give 1 kid the best start poss rather than compromise. We got stiffed on Maternity Pay by my wife' company but that's another story. In a year or so we'll be ok and it won't be a prison. You never know someone may die and leave us a load of money!!!

 

Section - I'm basing this on what I've seen and experienced over the years. As I've bored people on the running thread when I work away I pound the streets and I see the scenario I've painted in every town I go to (Coventry being the worst offender). They aren't brand new cars and more likely to be 'status' cars - can you get an Impreza on motability (genuine question)? Plus I've lived in Stockport most my life and see these people on a daily basis. as for the bankers we were all fucking happy to take the cash when it was going ok, no-one questioned then. We were all happy to see the FTSE go up, watch Blair toadying up to the bankers and loving making loads on our houses. As for being middleclass, fuck me, my mum was from Brinnington and dad lived in a 2 up 2 down cottage in Compstall. Who'll point at me mate, because I'm paying for every fucker out there.

 

You know what, life is fucking tough - some are lucky and others aren't. There are loads of times in my life where things have gone in my favour and others when it's bitten me on the arse. But I've never expected anyone else to get me out of it. There is a sense of entitlement today that is disgraceful, no-one owes you anything. I work fucking hard, I've had 2 nights away from the wife and baby this week, spent over 15 hours in my car and that's because I want the best for my family. Look at that program about Harpurhey on BBC3, half the people there have no qualifications. Who's fault? Not mine but I pay for them.

[Section_31]

Section - I'm basing this on what I've seen and experienced over the years. As I've bored people on the running thread when I work away I pound the streets and I see the scenario I've painted in every town I go to (Coventry being the worst offender). They aren't brand new cars and more likely to be 'status' cars - can you get an Impreza on motability (genuine question)? Plus I've lived in Stockport most my life and see these people on a daily basis. as for the bankers we were all fucking happy to take the cash when it was going ok, no-one questioned then. We were all happy to see the FTSE go up, watch Blair toadying up to the bankers and loving making loads on our houses. As for being middleclass, fuck me, my mum was from Brinnington and dad lived in a 2 up 2 down cottage in Compstall. Who'll point at me mate, because I'm paying for every fucker out there.

 

You know what, life is fucking tough - some are lucky and others aren't. There are loads of times in my life where things have gone in my favour and others when it's bitten me on the arse. But I've never expected anyone else to get me out of it. There is a sense of entitlement today that is disgraceful, no-one owes you anything. I work fucking hard, I've had 2 nights away from the wife and baby this week, spent over 15 hours in my car and that's because I want the best for my family. Look at that program about Harpurhey on BBC3, half the people there have no qualifications. Who's fault? Not mine but I pay for them.

 

I've lived on council estates all my life mate and virtually all of my family claim benefits. My extended family are mostly benefit fraudsters, I don't bother with them because they're scum - but be under no illusions, they have absolutely no quality of life. The don't go on holidays, they don't have great cars (anyone you've seen who does is probably a dealer, I imagine) they don't live, they barely exist.

 

Council estates have always had a lot of people on them who work. Half of Speke used to work in Ford and my grandad biked it 10 miles each way every day to work as a guard on the railway until he was 55, there just wasn't access to affordable housing, and there still isn't.

 

Things come full circle. There's probably a few doctors and lawyers out there who adopt the notion that they shouldn't be paying the way of someone who can't work, but a generation ago that person's family may have been working down the docks, paying tax, and those taxes would have funded that doctor or lawyer's free university education. Now those working class jobs are gone their kids don't have the access to the kind of work their parents did, they're redundant - but are considered scroungers.

[Rico1304]

I've lived on council estates all my life mate and virtually all of my family claim benefits. My extended family are mostly benefit fraudsters, I don't bother with them because they're scum - but be under no illusions, they have absolutely no quality of life. The don't go on holidays, they don't have great cars (anyone you've seen who does is probably a dealer, I imagine) they don't live, they barely exist.

 

Council estates have always had a lot of people on them who work. Half of Speke used to work in Ford and my grandad biked it 10 miles each way every day to work as a guard on the railway until he was 55, there just wasn't access to affordable housing, and there still isn't.

 

Things come full circle. There's probably a few doctors and lawyers out there who adopt the notion that they shouldn't be paying the way of someone who can't work, but a generation ago that person's family may have been working down the docks, paying tax, and those taxes would have funded that doctor or lawyer's free university education. Now those working class jobs are gone their kids don't have the access to the kind of work their parents did, they're redundant - but are considered scroungers.

 

I appreciate workers on Council estates, it describes my family too - but should they be getting an easy ride? I know means testing is expensive but to me it's fundementally wrong that someone who can afford to pay more doesn't. I know a roofer that's always annoyed me because he lives in a council house and boasts about how much he earns - there are countless other examples. The scenario I put in my original rant tonight - is that fair?

[Section_31]

I appreciate workers on Council estates, it describes my family too - but should they be getting an easy ride? I know means testing is expensive but to me it's fundementally wrong that someone who can afford to pay more doesn't. I know a roofer that's always annoyed me because he lives in a council house and boasts about how much he earns - there are countless other examples. The scenario I put in my original rant tonight - is that fair?

 

Let's be honest here, this is the simple question - do you think anyone in their right mind would choose to live on a council estate if they didn't have to?

[Rico1304]

Let's be honest here, this is the simple question - do you think anyone in their right mind would choose to live on a council estate if they didn't have to?

 

Fucking dead right, if they can save £15k a year in mortgage payments.

[Bob]

Melons - I got my numbers wrong' date=' it was a bit less than that. But our thoughts were get a decent house in a decent area with decent schools. We wanted to give 1 kid the best start poss rather than compromise. We got stiffed on Maternity Pay by my wife' company but that's another story. In a year or so we'll be ok and it won't be a prison. You never know someone may die and leave us a load of money!!!

 

Section - I'm basing this on what I've seen and experienced over the years. As I've bored people on the running thread when I work away I pound the streets and I see the scenario I've painted in every town I go to (Coventry being the worst offender). They aren't brand new cars and more likely to be 'status' cars - can you get an Impreza on motability (genuine question)? Plus I've lived in Stockport most my life and see these people on a daily basis. as for the bankers we were all fucking happy to take the cash when it was going ok, no-one questioned then. We were all happy to see the FTSE go up, watch Blair toadying up to the bankers and loving making loads on our houses. As for being middleclass, fuck me, my mum was from Brinnington and dad lived in a 2 up 2 down cottage in Compstall. Who'll point at me mate, because I'm paying for every fucker out there.

 

You know what, life is fucking tough - some are lucky and others aren't. There are loads of times in my life where things have gone in my favour and others when it's bitten me on the arse. But I've never expected anyone else to get me out of it. There is a sense of entitlement today that is disgraceful, no-one owes you anything. I work fucking hard, I've had 2 nights away from the wife and baby this week, spent over 15 hours in my car and that's because I want the best for my family. Look at that program about Harpurhey on BBC3, half the people there have no qualifications. Who's fault? Not mine but I pay for them.[/quote']

 

Fucking hell, can I just check if you are actually me. Your last 2 posts are eerily similar to my experiences and I've just spend 2 nights away from the wife and baby this week.

[Bob]

 

I've lived on council estates all my life mate and virtually all of my family claim benefits. My extended family are mostly benefit fraudsters' date=' I don't bother with them because they're scum - but be under no illusions, they have absolutely no quality of life. The don't go on holidays, they don't have great cars (anyone you've seen who does is probably a dealer, I imagine) they don't live, they barely exist.

 

Council estates have always had a lot of people on them who work. Half of Speke used to work in Ford and my grandad biked it 10 miles each way every day to work as a guard on the railway until he was 55, there just wasn't access to affordable housing, and there still isn't.

 

Things come full circle. There's probably a few doctors and lawyers out there who adopt the notion that they shouldn't be paying the way of someone who can't work, but a generation ago that person's family may have been working down the docks, paying tax, and those taxes would have funded that doctor or lawyer's free university education. Now those working class jobs are gone their kids don't have the access to the kind of work their parents did, they're redundant - but are considered scroungers.[/quote']

 

What your saying certainly has a lot of truth, but we as a race must evolve. Those who worked down the docks only worked down the docks because there were docks to work down. Before the docks, what did their families do?

 

There are jobs. Not as many as everyone would like, not necessarily in the field you'd love to work in, and maybe not on the doorstep, but...

[Bob]

 

Let's be honest here' date=' this is the simple question - do you think anyone in their right mind would choose to live on a council estate if they didn't have to?[/quote']

 

Yep. I did. Not rented, but bought an ex council house.

 

Not because the estate was perfect, but because it was the best I could afford at the time reasonably close to where I wanted to be.

 

Still here now, and will be trying to sell again after next month, but I still made that choice 'in my right mind'

[dickie mint]

Fucking dead right, if they can save £15k a year in mortgage payments.

 

 

Poor disabled girl on daybreak today and her mam has to pay the £15 bedroom tax because the spare room is turned into a room where the girl play so it's not used as a bedroom so therefore is liable for the payment.so I hope this makes you feel better you jealous prick.

[dickie mint]

What your saying certainly has a lot of truth, but we as a race must evolve. Those who worked down the docks only worked down the docks because there were docks to work down. Before the docks, what did their families do?

 

There are jobs. Not as many as everyone would like, not necessarily in the field you'd love to work in, and maybe not on the doorstep, but...

 

 

 

The economy isn't going to grow if a tight twat like you moans when they spend £50 extra.

[Rico1304]

Poor disabled girl on daybreak today and her mam has to pay the £15 bedroom tax because the spare room is turned into a room where the girl play so it's not used as a bedroom so therefore is liable for the payment.so I hope this makes you feel better you jealous prick.

 

That's a bit harsh, but I've been called worse. I'm a bit baffled as to how I'm jealous though. Maybe if people stopped making fraudulent claims, stopped having kids they can't afford, stopped avoiding taxes, stopped taking risks with other people's money they wouldn't have to. Just to be clear, I've done none of the above, I've paid tax since I started my Saturday job at WH Smiths in 1988 and paid it ever since. I now pay a fucking fortune in tax - but I'm the prick? Ok.

[Bob]

 

The economy isn't going to grow if a tight twat like you moans when they spend £50 extra.

 

I spend a lot me than £50 though to be fair. That's just my working capital facility

[Paulie Dangerously]

Leave a rod of plutonium under the chairs on Jeremy Kyle to create an instant steriliser. Problem solved!!

[dickie mint]

;)

That's a bit harsh, but I've been called worse. I'm a bit baffled as to how I'm jealous though. Maybe if people stopped making fraudulent claims, stopped having kids they can't afford, stopped avoiding taxes, stopped taking risks with other people's money they wouldn't have to. Just to be clear, I've done none of the above, I've paid tax since I started my Saturday job at WH Smiths in 1988 and paid it ever since. I now pay a fucking fortune in tax - but I'm the prick? Ok.

 

 

 

You're the one mentioning Mercs and Caravans up the paths on council estates so to me that sounds like your jealous,I couldn't give a fuck if someone on the dole has a swimming pool in there garden in fact good luck to them and I hope they screw the bollocks off the Tory cunts for diving board because what people have is there"s and no concern of mine as I have my own family and that's all that matters to me.

[Rico1304]

;)

 

 

 

You're the one mentioning Mercs and Caravans up the paths on council estates so to me that sounds like your jealous,I couldn't give a fuck if someone on the dole has a swimming pool in there garden in fact good luck to them and I hope they screw the bollocks off the Tory cunts for diving board because what people have is there"s and no concern of mine as I have my own family and that's all that matters to me.

 

That paragraph has confirmed you are stupid - well done, very efficient.

[Section_31]

What your saying certainly has a lot of truth, but we as a race must evolve. Those who worked down the docks only worked down the docks because there were docks to work down. Before the docks, what did their families do?

 

There are jobs. Not as many as everyone would like, not necessarily in the field you'd love to work in, and maybe not on the doorstep, but...

 

It's not like the traditional working class roles have dissapeared though, certainly automation has played a role, but work traditionally done by the British working class has been off shored, or uses the threat of off shoring to drive down benefits and wealth.

 

The firm The Bitch works for in Runcorn is a case in point. It used to be ICI, and not only did it employ a huge amount of people, it did so on good terms. It paid them well, gave them pensions and access to training, gave their kids apprenticships, builts sports clubs and pubs for them to socialise in, it underpinned a community. That community had less problems because people had 'some' money, they socialised together and they regulated themselves. They didn't need the police to sort out every other minor problem, they didn't need teachers to raise their kids, they didn't need childminders and nurses to help them raise their children and advise them on things like feeding, they had a community - a community built around hard, honest work, the kind of working class graft which turned this country into an industrial power house.

 

Now though, the site's new owners have moved its HQ to Swtzerland to save 100m a year in tax, and it's renowned for business pratcices such as ending pension schemes and lowering wages. This is what you're up against.

 

When the work breaks down, the community breaks down, and these working class people are now the underclass, they've been cast off and are essentially just taking up space - this irks the government, especially this government, so we demonise them and call them lazy cunts. No worth, no work, no wealth, no community, health problems, family breakdown - it's all an ugly picture, and it's one which affects all of our day to day lives as, even if it's not us, we deal with the fallout all the time, usually when we're a victim of crime.

 

It's not enough to have 'a job', people - especially people at the bottom - need money. This is the fundamental problem in the West, eveything else is just window dressing. THE problem is that essentially, nobody has got any money. It's been masked in the last few years with debt, as people tried to remain consumers in a consumer economy despite the fact that - even if they were working - most of the time they didn't have a pot to piss in. Where was all that money going? Shareholders, tax havens by and large.

 

This is not about people being lazy and feckless, this is about wealth looking for more wealth all the time, lucking to squeeze an extra buck or two. It was always going to happen because it's its nature - maybe the Cold War delayed it a bit, as it essentially kept the poorest half of the planet's workforce sealed off from our corporations' grubby little hands.

 

When you consider a city like detroit is about to be brought under state control because it's on its arse and people grow food in husks of old car plants, while an American firm like Apple - which supposedly has more liquid cash t han the US government - is building its wares in Chinese factories where conditions are so bad that people commit suicide so it can increase it's profits, it's just an absolute joke. Capitalism shouldn't just be about maximum profit, people MUST play a big part in it, we can't just be blase and shrug our shoulders and wonder why the house is falling down.

 

You have to just ask what kind of country you want to live in. If it's one filled with sink estates, closed shops and automated check outs then by all means, we can be blase about this. But be prepared to reap the whirlwhind.

 

 

Yep. I did. Not rented, but bought an ex council house.

 

Not because the estate was perfect, but because it was the best I could afford at the time reasonably close to where I wanted to be.

 

Still here now, and will be trying to sell again after next month, but I still made that choice 'in my right mind'

 

There are some nice council areas, I'm not denigrating them - I live on one, although I wouldn't quite call it 'nice', but I'm talking more about the notion that people would rather languish around all day doing nothing on poor estates out of choice, the idea that they're somehow living the highlights is crazy.

Edited March 8, 2013 by Section_31

[dickie mint]

That paragraph has confirmed you are stupid - well done, very efficient.

 

 

Stupid because I couldn't give a fuck what other people have got and where they get it from unlike you a nosey jealous prick.

[Rico1304]

Stupid because I couldn't give a fuck what other people have got and where they get it from unlike you a nosey jealous prick.

 

No, stupid because you seem to think only Tories pay tax. For the record I've got a Merc and it's shit, can't wait to get rid.