Correct! Now given private landlords require proof of a reliable income can you now take the final step on your journey to enlightenment and realise that given zero hours contracts don't give any such proof they also prevent people taking the "only option" as you put it?



If you think IDS's and the rest of the governments various screw ups in this area aren't affecting you, you must a take a very narrow view. For example if changes to housing benefits and things like the bedroom tax force tenants into rent arrears the cost of (probably futile attempts at) recovery has to be paid for by someone and that will be the tax payer both in terms of council tax or reduced local services and income tax. I presume that includes you?

Its already affecting you. The cost to the tax payer for ESA and PIP appeals and tribunals is actually more than if they assessed fairly in the first place. Disabled people who have had homes specially adapted which costs hundreds if not thousands of tax payers money are now having to move into smaller homes which then need to be adapted which costs the tax payer a second time, hundreds if not thousands of pounds, not forgetting the cost to the tax payer to put the first house back to a "normal" house.

Oh yes, its already affecting you, if you care to look.

Is it impossible to get accomodation if you work a zero hour contract?


My council tax went up continually until recently and has now been frozen for 2/3 years. My income tax has also reduced.

When my tax goes up, you may have a point. Right now, I get taxed and that money gets spent on lots of things. What that proportion is doesn't really matter.

So you don't mind then that your income tax is going to be used to give childcare vouchers to parents with an income upto £300,000 pa but not to stay at home mothers who will receive nothing? I'd be hopping mad.

I'd rather it wasn't spent on sending our soldiers to far off places to die.

3 questions.

How many have incomes of £300k?

You want to give childcare vouchers to parents who stay at home? You want to PAY people to look after their own kids?

One Answer, I want it to be[i fair[/i but the Tories wouldn't know fair if it slapped them in the face with a wet haddock.

The Daily Mail is hopping mad about this too. But it seems to me the government's logic is very simple - why do mum's who look after their own children at home need childcare vouchers!!!?

And why do households who have an income of £300,000 need vouchers?

Well there won't be that many - just like the number of benefits "scroungers" living in £10 million houses, etc.

Means testing would be pointlessly expensive.

It is better for all to maintain the universailty of benefits where possible - otherwise the well-off start saying, "why should I pay if I get nothing back?"

No, what you want is what you class as fair.

Still, you want to pay people to look after their own children? There's a Chris Rock sketch in there somewhere.

I live in a world where capitalism, in a particularly rampant way, is everywhere and really rather difficult to avoid. It is particularly difficult to avoid when your trade means that you have little choice but to use certain technologies, and where the 'choice' is technologies that are produced in a similarly ethically dubious manner.

I make efforts to mitigate some of that, but to pretend it is entirely possible would be stupid.

You, on the other hand, freely admit to not caring about anything that does not directly impact on you. Thus your comments about sweatshop/child labour are nothing other than crocodile tears.

Now, I've cleaned this thread up.

Let's cut the extremes of abuse – and if you don't feel that you can do that, then simply don't feed the troll.

Aah, the 'I have to use it for my job, everyone's doing it', defence. Get a new job that doesn't use child labour to make those oh so pretty laptops. What I don't do is bleat about how hard up the average worker is and the exploitations that befall them, while tippy tappying on a keyboard built by exploited workers. It makes any point being tried to be made redundant. But, yes, they're very, very pretty things.

Ah, there you go again, he doesn't agree with whatever I say, TROOOOLLLL!