I do hope our resident tory nut-jobs take the opportunity to watch last night's Newsnight on iPlayer.

Reporting from Coventry, it presents real-world experiences, not the bull[is[/ihit rhetoric from IDS and his cronies, especially the crap coming from the mouth of the heartless harpy Harriet Baldwin MP - she obviously drew the DWP short straw

rlThe big lie of the bedroom taxrl

Some councils have only sufficient 1 or 2 bed properties to re-home 3% of those hit by the bedroom tax

There are some excellent quotes in that article, but the most pertinent one is this ...

[iA spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said


And there you have it, the basis of this whole tax on the poor, the unemployed and the under-employed, if you don't like it, if you can't afford to pay the tax, then either get a job, work more hours or rent from a private landlord instead of a council or housing association.

Even Thatcher wasn't this cruel.

The workhouse is the next logical step, in fact a DWP commissioned report even suggests such a solution for those who, through disability (mental or physical) may struggle to find suitable employment that would allow them to live independently. Board & lodgings in return for labour.

Arbeit macht frei

Nah, all these empty shops could be houses ... and never mind local preferences. www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... t-planning

Nah, all these empty shops could be houses ... and never mind local preferences. www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... t-planning

Are MPs still getting taxpayer assistance to buy secnd homes and homes that are not kept in public ownership? Are they allowed more than one bedroom flats?

Wigan and Leigh Housing are having to consider demolishing some 2/3 bedroom properties as people don't want them as the potential new tennants would be hit by the bedroom tax. Currently 14% of people hit by the bedroom tax are in rent arrears compared to 2% of those who are not affected by this ludicrous piece of legislation.

If arrears seem bad now, just wait until Universal Benefit (including Housing Benefits) is rolled out. Instead of housing benefit beind paid diretly to the landlord, it will be paid to the claimant on a monthly (in arrears) basis. Quite apart from landlords demanding that rents be paid in advance, what does the DWP seriously think will happen when claimants have gone a whole month without money and then suddenly find a large amount of moolah has appeared in their account at the end of the month? Rolling all benefits into a single payment may be a good way to encourage claimants to budget responsibly but there was a simple reason that HB was paid directly to the landlord - many claimants are simply incapable fo budgeting. The plan is typical of something dreamed up by a policy wonk or civil servant who has no experience in the area.

Evictions will increase rapidly, ever more landlords will refuse to accept "DSS" tenants, we'll be back to the cardboard cities of the 1980s. Government are well aware of the consequences, it beggars belief that they will simply plough ahead, ignoring all the warnings

rlhttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/12/universal-credit-less-payrl

Sounds like a fairly typical civil service dogs dinner of an idea, will they plough ahead with it - of course they will, look at who is in charge of the project, he'll simply "believe" the facts up for a compliant press to report on.

The tax credit system that Gordon Brown dreamed up was a complicated system, so complicated that its staff did not understand how it worked or who it applied to, or even how much to pay you - I have direct experience of this, have been given wrong advice in the past, was overpaid to the tune of several thousand pounds by virtue of a civil servant ticking one box incorrectly during a phone interview and am now having to pay back that money - I involved my MP and he got the head of the Tax Credits office in Preston to correspond with me but the result was unequivocal - its up to you to confirm that all the details are correct, in other words its up to you to know the forms and systems better than the people who work there and its up to you to correct their errors and omissions.

I'm only glad that that was my one and only time for claiming anything from the benefits system, my heart bleeds for anyone who has to do it on a permanent basis.

I have just read that link.
Once again, we see that what IDS says is the opposite of the truth.
The simple truth is that he is cutting benefits for people whether out of work or in work.
He can dress it up as "incentivising people into work" all he likes but the fact remains, he's lying.

When is some hack going to have the balls to ask him the obvious bleedin' question: 'what work?'? And then go further and point out to him not only the actual unemployed figure, but the increasing public knowledge of underemployment, plus the paucity of actual jobs being advertised.

I have recently been involved in a social housing project where part way through the build, what were to be 4 and 5 bedroom houses were reduced to 3 and 4 bedroom houses by demolishing a wall because of the bedroom tax which is causing the housing association in question real problems. The cost implication of demolishing the walls will cost more than absorbing the tax for probably 10 years. The reason the housing association instructed us to do the extra work is because the work is funded by the government through grants, etc. There is now a family of 9 living in a 4 bedroom house to avoid the tax.

The government really showed those work-shy scroungers!

Why don't the f***ing useless Labour Party and its even more f***ing useless leader explain that then? Or are they in it together too?

I have just read it as well and what struck me was thisThis reversal is a direct result of benefit cuts, not counted into early universal credit plans. Instead, ministers continue to make claims they must surely know to be false. Here's Lord Freud againbut they have devised a remedy. Is it to restore the cuts causing this, or to soften the taper so universal credit is withdrawn more slowly? No, there are no new carrots, only their new stick. For the first time people in part-time work will be sanctioned with benefit stoppages if they don't prove they are looking for more hours'

So yes they can claim the more hours they work the better off they are but only because benefits are stopped not because work has suddenly started paying! You can bet your life that won't stop them making the claim as technically it's correct.