Some ideas

From Deb W in the comments section of this Guardian article:

Is it really beyond the wit of the coalition to bring back fair rent reviews?

The slavish adherance to free market principles has led to a lot of landlords getting very rich whilst their tenants live in substandard housing for which the benefits system is paying through the nose!

Don't cut housing benefits by a tenner a month, cut rents by a tenner a month instead. And inspect all properties upon which rent is paid and not only set a fair rent for each but make the landlords bring them up to code.

This will create jobs ( because someone has to do the inspecting) and the costs will be offset by the savings in housing benefit which will now be paid on a fair rent basis.

Meanwhile get the economy moving by taking the money which we give to A4E and Serco for " welfare to work" schemes and putting it directly into contracts for construction and maintenance firms. Employ an army of builders, electricians, painters and decorators and plumbers and get the housing stock up to a decent standard. If a private landlord won't pay then invoke compulsory purchase orders... the legislation is already there and social housing firms could take over such properties.

Oh and build more homes! A variety of social housing but with emphasis on decent, affordable shared accomodation for young people and good quality sheltered accomodation for the elderly as this will reduce overcrowding and free up larger homes for families.

It isn't rocket science and will save a fortune in the long run on support services.

I could not agree more!

I would also add in the further taxation of second homes which take so many houses away from those who need them. Or go even further and use compulsory purchase orders to bring them under council control.

Homes are not just 'property', they should not be a commodity. They are homes, plain and simple. Places for people to live, to raise their families, to spend their lives in. Not just bricks and mortar to make money from those who can't afford them.

David Cameron's hypocrisy

He is sticking to a policy commitment he made before the economic crash when growth figures were still rosy. He said: "It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money and it's time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB – general wellbeing."

Speaking at the Google Zeitgeist Europe conference, he added: "Wellbeing can't be measured by money or traded in markets. It's about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture and, above all, the strength of our relationships. Improving our society's sense of wellbeing is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times."

He's kidding right? He wants to focus on wellbeing while slashing services and benefits that people rely on, forcing millions into poverty and misery. He and his enforcer Mr Osborne spend every day telling us the deficit is everything, that people should be in paid work, that earning is key, while then saying that there's more to life than money?

So Mr Prime minister, is you really believe this will you giving away your millions to ensure that the poor can stop focusing on money and just be happy? Somehow I suspect not.

Source

Another punishment?

As if cuts to IB, ESA and DLA weren't weren't enough, Mr Duncan-Smith is at it again. He plans to introduce an initiative called 'slivers of time', an ultra flexible way of working, aimed at disabled people and lone parents.

From the Guardian:

Slivers of time, a social enterprise founded by the former BBC producer Wingham Rowan, is designed to tap into the pool of people who cannot work the usual hours expected even of the average part-time employee. It is aimed at parents with young children, disabled people who may not be available for work for most of the week, people who care for a dependent adult or the long-term unemployed who want to ease slowly back into work.
Its proponents claim the reform would mean that a disabled or lone parent would be able to book a few hours of work a week on their terms.

Sounds good right? I mean, I'm sure that I would be capable of doing a few hours each week - so where's the problem?

The problem is that I don't know which hours I would be able to work. The hours would still have to be arranged - say, 2 hours on a Monday, 2 hours on a Wednesday. But what if I'm just not feeling up to it when those days arrive? Would I be able to change those hours? How am I supposed to know when to change them to? Would the employer let me do this all the time? I can't see any employer putting up with that. They need to know they have enough staff and when those staff are working, employing someone who won't know if they'll be able to work or not isn't likely to be high on their list.

Unless an employer is happy for their worker to turn up as and when they are able, I can't see how this will work at all.

And I know that many disabled people will worry that if they don't comply they will be sanctioned. After all, the ConDems seem determined to push people into work whether it is right for them or not, whether they have tried or not, so will we be punished if we can't do this?

And as for people who care for a dependent, are they supposed to know when said adult will be well enough to not need them for a few hours? Or perhaps the Government is expecting them to book a carer for a few set hours so they can work? This would seem a little, no, a lot, ridiculous.

Funnily enough none of these points have been addressed. I wonder if Ms Miller will question them on our behalf. Time will tell. But I'm not holding my breath

Cross posted here

Source

The Working class?

In an article posted today by Patrick Wintour in the Guardian, Douglas Alexander outlines Labours stance on welfare.

We already know that Labour will not stand up for the disabled. Shame on them. That's millions of votes they won't be getting.

But I also take extreme umbrage at this:

Labour has been criticised, including by its former party general secretary Peter Watt, for appearing to be siding with the feckless poor against the hard-working squeezed middle, so appearing less credible on how to tackle the deficit.

Is he trying to tell us that only the middle classes work hard? Has he completely lost touch with Labours roots? Where do they think the term 'working class' came from?

I'm fed up with all these comments making out as if the middle classes are the only ones who work hard.
The working class works just as hard, they just work in jobs that are low paid and often menial. Jobs that the middle class, and certainly not the upper class, look down their noses at. Can you see any of them working for minimum wage in a factory? Or standing behind a supermarket checkout?
No, I can't either.

Stop assuming that the poor working class are idle please, they work harder than you can imagine

Fawcett Society to take the Gov't to court

The Fawcett Society, which fights for equal rights for women, has filed an application for a judicial review of the budget for it's failure to give 'due regard' to the impact on women.

Former Labour chief secretary to the Treasury Yvette Cooper assessed the figures, even before the welfare cuts announced in the CSR, and was shocked by the answer she found.
72% of the burden of the budget cuts will be carried by women.
72% is enormous. And that doesn't take into account the cuts in welfare. How will those impact on women?
This is the 21st century and in one fell swoop, the Government has regressed.

From today's Guardian report:

The June budget and the predicted heavy cuts in this week's spending review created "a perfect storm", says Fawcett Society chief executive Ceri Goddard, confirming suspicions among many that 2010 was going to be a uniquely regressive moment in the history of sexism and the state.

The Government has also admitted that it failed to hold an Equality Impact Assessment for the June budget. So not only is it regressing us as a nation, it's failing to follow it's own rules.

Brilliant. A Britain we all can be proud of.

Read the rest of the article here