Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

sticky - please refer back to the question (36161) and try giving some thought and answers to that instead of going off on the usual tangent

========

in your own posts, you mention that councils have no obligation to charge market rental rates on their housing
quite so, and i certainly have no objection for those in genuine need - per a means test is one way to assess - but for those who can afford to pay the full whack - bob crow for example - why should they not?

and of course, but it's also a bit of a red herring, if council rental rates are set below true market, then of course the taxpayer is subsidising
if the full and proper rate was being charged, albeit only to a relatively small number, then that extra cash could be used to augment the local council tax rate take or similar


the peripheral bits about repairs etc are just red herrings

Turn it on its head Cyners me and you (well I am) are benefiting from Subsidised Housing benefit for landlords.

Thats why private rents have such a big differential from LA rents. Its not the tennants silly billy its the landlords.


I admit myself it was their so I took the opportunity.

As for Bob Crowe of course he can live in a council house. Why deny him whats their for everyone else. And he may have chosen it to further his working class appeal. Just think if he lived in one of those kensington £6 million flats, welll the press would really have been after him.

Its like my argument on winter fuel allowance and free Tv, prescriptions etc, if youve paid in finito YOU GET IT.

Friday, 31 January 2014


Old Holborn’s Agenda for Hope

http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-min=2014-01-01T00:00:00Z&updated-max=2015-01-01T00:00:00Z&max-results=2









This post is in response to Owen Jones “Agenda for Hope”




The alarm goes off. It’s dark outside, and single mum Mary wakes to get ready for work at the checkout of a local supermarket. Like most of Britain’s poor, she has a job that leaves her and her children trapped below the poverty line. She finds herself competing with colleagues for overtime, just to earn a few more pounds to spend on her kids. Her employer couldn’t care because he knows it is the taxpayer who has to step in and subsidise those poverty wages to give Mary a chance to pay the bills and feed her children.




Mary had a rough night’s sleep because it’s nearly time to pay the rent. She would love nothing more than a secure, affordable home for her family but, like 5 million others, she’s stuck on a council housing waiting list where the taxpayer will once again subsidise her lifestyle. Her beloved Government keeps her rent high by handing out billions to landlords in “housing benefit” safe in the knowledge they will recover it via the taxation system to once again “redistribute” to the “needy”.




On her way downstairs, 35 year old Mary knocks on the door of her 19-year-old son, Tyrone. He is one of nearly a million unemployed young people. Tyrone sends in biro scrawled CV after CV, to supermarkets and call centres, and often does not even get a response. The odds are that being unemployed at such a young age will leave him with a lower wage, and an increased risk of being out of work, for the rest of his life. Her beloved Government has spent trillions installing an “equal” education system that means he is just as qualified in media studies as the downs syndrome kid who spent all day disrupting the class and stopping anyone actually learning anything of value to an employer.




As she approaches the front door, Mary glimpses another reason for her sleepless night: an unopened energy bill lying on her kitchen table. As the bills have soared, so the hot meals she eats have declined in number. Her beloved Government has pumped billions into the banking sector to hold up corrupt and bankrupt banks via quantitative easing thus reducing the value of the Pound. No wonder everything costs more, the pound is worth less. And so Mary leaves for a grueling shift at the supermarket, working hard to earn her poverty.




Mary isn’t a real person, but there are millions of people in this country who share aspects of their lives with someone like her. We all have to pay, literally, as poverty-paying bosses, layabouts, scroungers and rip-off landlords milk our ridiculously bloated welfare state whilst politicians laugh in our faces.




The beloved Government and much of the media have answers for people like Mary. “Instead of being angry at your situation,” Mary is told, “be angry at unemployed people, immigrants, the EU.” It is an Agenda of Fear. The bankers who plunged Britain into disaster, the politicians in the pockets of the wealthiest bankers and Union leaders, the fat cat public servants and corporate lobbyists – all are let off the hook. The Agenda of Fear makes sure that the real solutions to the problems faced by someone like Mary – and the nation as a whole – are never even discussed.




It’s time for Old Holborn to step in. I give you:




Old Holborn’s Agenda for Hope.




1. Minimum wage has to go. Never mind a living wage, if your labour is not worth what some titled Lord in Westminster decides it should be, you’re on the scrap heap. Forever. If you are naturally too stupid to earn £7 an hour, you are denied the chance to earn £5. The state has to stop setting the price of labour – your labour, your market, your needs – not being forced by law to sit on the sofa on state benefits.




2. Scrap housing benefit – completely. The only reason rents are so high is that Landlords and councils know damn well that some Mandarin in Whitehall will send the housing benefit bill straight back to the taxpayers. If you can’t afford to live in Mayfair, don’t live in Mayfair. Don’t demand I pay your rent whilst the State inflates the housing market.




3. Income tax is barbaric. It is forced theft and the penalties for refusing pay are equally as abhorrent as anything the Mafia could come up with. Set it flat and simple at 10% for everyone, regardless of income and leave money where it belongs -in the pockets of those who earned it. We have up to 80% marginal tax rates in this country, purely so it can redistributed according to the whims of politicians who after 100 years of promises have still not lifted the poor out of poverty. As agents, the State is worse than useless merely creating more clients for its never ending schemes of poverty reduction whilst doing the exact opposite.




4. Slash corporation tax to 10%. Before you scream, please try to understand that every single penny paid in corporation tax to the State is taken from you – either by lower wages or higher prices. Corporations don’t print money, it comes from the consumer via profits or the employees via lower wages. Slash the tax on success and watch competition drive down prices and increase wages.




5. Let bad banks fail. I can’t say it enough. Just one bank failing would send the vital message that the magic money tree no longer exists and it is not the role of the State to prop up bad investments and corrupt practices.




6. Stop the vanity projects. HS2, huge airports, sports stadiums and all the rest are only possible because some poor sod on minimum wage is being forced to pay for it. If business wants it, business can build it. Worked for the railways and the canals, didn’t it? We have commuters traveling 100’s of miles a day to do jobs that can be done locally, whilst the taxpayer subsidises their rail tickets. Local enterprise zones and low taxation will bring jobs to where the people are, not the other way around.




7. The Welfare State. Where do I begin? The population is addicted to free handouts financed by the population via duplicious politicians – utter madness. Poverty inflicted through excess taxation sees working families going begging cap in hand to the very people who grabbed half their earnings in the first place. Scrap it, reform it, do whatever, but do something before we are all slaves to it.




8. Reduce the role of the State to upholding the law and protecting the borders. I see no reason for a State run health service, a state run education service or a state run Hip Hop dance troupe on a State run television service. Decentralise down to local communities with a local taxation for any extra services the community demands – the Swiss do. Any problems there and you go and slog it out with the mayor in a bar on Sunday mornings over a pint – not some gigantic quango in Glasgow with a call centre in Bombay and a chairman on a golden public sector pension payoff.




9. Just leave us alone. Stop meddling, legislating, interfering, measuring, regulating, monitoring, commentating, studying and spying on us. We are grown ups, not children. No one can better represent us than us and I’m amazed that in the 21st century we are still forced to rely on minority representatives to vote on our behalf. For crying out loud, we have the internet now!

sticky - using the same argument then, if it - the tax loophole - is there to be used then use it to your advantage ..... similar argument surely

btw, the young couple in my "cheap" property assuredly receive some benefits, but then i'ld certainly class them in the "needy" category - won't bore you with the detail
incidentally, the "maximum 16 hour work rule" also comes into play with them

Cyners I think housing benefit comes too easy to landlords. Hardly any regulation, just a starting agreement between you and the tenant plus an official rent book and then safety checks each year which Im told 80% dont bother with. Its dead easy to start up in.

This paying it every month and to the tenant is totaly barmy aswel.

IDS is looking for trouble and will get it in buckets.

You mark my words.

Economic forecasters call for measures to cool down London's property market

EY Item Club says combination of strong demand for luxury property in capital and lack of supply is leading to a worrying bubble



Rupert Neate


The Guardian, Sunday 2 February 2014 19.24 GMT


Wealthy foreign buyers' desire for high-end London property is creating a real risk of a housing bubble in the capital, a highly-regarded group of economic forecasters has warned as it calls for measures to cool down the market.

In a special report published on Monday into the impact of rising house prices, the EY Item Club said the influx of super wealthy buyers has created bubble-like conditions in London.

The EY Item Club's senior economic adviser, Andrew Goodwin, said: "House prices across most of the country remain well below their pre-crisis peaks and there seems little danger of a bubble developing.

"But London, which is suffering from a combination of strong demand and a lack of supply, is increasingly giving us cause for concern."

The Item Club's warning is important because it is the only independent economic group to use the same forecasting model as the Treasury. Item stands for Independent Treasury Economic Model.

Estate agents, politicians and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors have all raised fears that the UK is risking a repeat of the 2008 property crash.

The business secretary, Vince Cable, has repeatedly warned of the dangers of another housing bubble. Last week he said: "We cannot risk another property-linked boom-bust cycle which has done so much damage before, notably in the financial crash in 2008."

The Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, has played down fears of a bubble. He said that while prices are rising quickly the acceleration is "from quite a low level".

The Item Club study shows average UK house prices are rising at a rate of 8.4% this year, and predicted them to rise by 7.3% next year and about 5.5% a year thereafter.

Prices are growing even faster in London. Office for National Statistics data shows average prices in the capital increased by 11% in the year to November 2013. This increases dragged the national average up from 3.5% to 5.4%.



more: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/02/london-property-market-bubble-cool-down-ey-item-club

Boom and bust again?

sticky - are you an acolyte of fossy's for you too don't answer the questions posed :-)

Cyners your an hard man to follow......What tax loophole?????.

MAX,

Post 36179

Second half of post should appeal to the Fascist wing of the con party, UKIP and BNP.

Could be half the manifesto of those 3 groups and appeal to the little Englanders.

Things coming:






Hazy happy days are here again!

Should be quite a list to put into the manifestos at the time of the next election when some of the results are more apparent to the electorate.

Elections are lost not won and Miliband has to just sit back and watch the coalition implode blaming Cameron and Osborne for their weakness.

sticky - there are lots of tax loopholes which are utilised by the prudent or more sophisticated - you and others have been whinging regularly about this - but that's a secondary issue

try addressing the first!

.

Cynic, keep telling you my pro bodies which I subscribe to each year (white collar unions) would string me up by the balls if I did anything unpro and Im not prepared to risk it.

Id be kicked out.....simple as that.

Fred.

The super rich are not driving the average London property price hikes, they make up a tiny % (altho lots of money involved)


I suspect it's the "help to buy" thingy that's driving the market.

Mind you, it is capped at £600,000, so well within the average Londoners means.

THE MYTH OF THE DEFICIT................

Labour really must refute constant Tory canard that Labour’s profligate spending caused the recession
February 2nd, 2014

Once more in this last week Cameron and Osborne have been at it again saying all Britain’s current troubles come from ‘profligate’ expenditure by the last Labour government. It is a straightforward lie. In Labour’s years in office before the financial crash in 2008 the highest deficit in real terms was 3.3% of GDP in 2004-5. If this is supposed to be a mark of ‘profligate expenditure’, why on earth doesn’t Labour point out every time this is raised that by that measure Tory governments have been much more profligate than the Labour government ever was. During the Thatcher/Major Tory years the deficit actually exceeded 3.3% of GDP in 10 out of those 18 years! If this is the measure of economic competence, then Labour comes out incomparably better than the Tories. Moreover, whilst Thatcher/Major ran deficits in 16 years out of their 18 and produced minor surpluses in only 2 years, Blair/Brown produced 4 years of surpluses. Nor are these facts just an academic matter. The Tory lies, ignoring these facts, are part of a relentless propaganda campaign to persuade the electorate that Labour wrecked the economy and is therefore ultimately responsible for all the austerity being imposed on the British people. It is not too much to say that if this enormous canard isn’t forcefully refuted, Labour could lose the election on a lie.
So if Labour didn’t wreck the economy, what did? It is too readily assumed it was the bankers’ bailout. In fact the buying of stakes in the banks (to the tune of £68bn) did not directly have an impact on the revenue budget and the deficit. What did have a huge impact on these was the dramatic drop in public tax revenues which was a direct result of the global financial crash and the consequent recession. In the 5-6 years leading up to 2007-8 there was a remarkably consistent straight line trend in public revenues of about 6% a year, i.e. real growth plus inflation. That public income in 2007-8 was £549bn. Based on this trend, any reasonable forecast would have predicted further increases in income in the next 2 years, leading to a predicted income of about £620bn in 2009-10. But as a direct result of the global financial crash and the consequent recession, actual public income was only £512bn in 2009-10.
That massive loss of public tax revenues of around £110bn was the key cause of the deficit, not excessive expenditure. The Tory sound-bites about ‘profligate expenditure’ before the crash are just fanciful inventions designed to undermine Labour’e economic credibility. A simple examination of the deficit figures each year in the decade to 2007-8 exposes them for what they are – a Goebbels-sized lie which needs to be stamped on and eradicated by every Labour spokesman, especially Ed Balls.

HAYS HAYS HAYS.......argue against that then above.

Mind something Ive known for years.

gf
Those repairs are just the normal repairs that private Tennant's have. Long term private Tennant's also have building repairs, roof, repainting the structure with scaffolding. These are often via a sure of costs or service charge and usually both. Council Tennant's should be the same as long term leaseholders.

Britain cannot offer flood protection to both town and countryside from the kind of "extraordinary" weather it has endured in the past two months and so would have to choose between the two, the head of the Environment Agency has warned.


Lord Smith said some properties and land in low-lying rural areas would always be vulnerable to flooding, even if all the measures for which flood victims have been campaigning were implemented, including dredging rivers in the stricken Somerset Levels.


Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Smith defended the agency's "proud" record in defending more than 1m homes from flooding this winter. And he suggested it was right to prioritise "front rooms" over farmland after budget cuts to the agency.


Lord Smith, a former Labour cabinet minister, wrote: "Yes, agricultural land matters and we do whatever we can with what we have to make sure it is protected. Rules from successive governments give the highest priority to lives and homes; and I think most people would agree that this is the right approach.


"But this involves tricky issues of policy and priority: town or country, front rooms or farmland?"


He warned that resources for flood protection were limited. His agency is facing 1,400 job cuts after a 10% reduction to the budget of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in the last spending round.


"Flood defences cost money," Lord Smith wrote, "and how much should the taxpayer be prepared to spend on different places, communities and livelihoods – in Somerset, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, or East Anglia?


"There's no bottomless purse, and we need to make difficult but sensible choices about where and what we try to protect. We need to make difficult but sensible choices about where and what we try to protect."


Smith also repeated the agency's wary approach to dredging rivers in the Somerset Levels in the face of continued calls from marooned communities for better river maintenance. He said dredging would provide only "some benefit", adding that there were "no quick fixes in the face of this kind of extreme rainfall".