Are our views always entrenched?

The answer to the allocation you mention is easy so long as the house is empty. As soon as someone is living in it, it's no longer easy.

Small point - no-one is given a council house. Unless their rent is being paid for them by benefits, they pay rent. And council tax and other taxes.

I meant about the choice

I'm not sure the human cost that you mention is comparable, jura. Old people have different difficulties to deal with from those of younger people – less adaptability and ease of adjusting to new thingspossibly being one. Then there is the having lived in a place for a long time thing and having to move away to where they know no-one. I don't think a solution that relieves the stresses of one problem only to cause new problems is really a solution.

In practice, I don't think the things you have suggested would be easy to implement without causing more social problems.

That's not the discussion granjura- a complete red herring.

Agreed Anno - and I've said many times that this is NOT the way to do it. But just digging heels and saying NO WE WON'T CONSIDER ANY CHANGES AND WHATEVER YOU DEVISE THE ANSWER IS STILL NO - is not the way to go forwards either.

Which is why I say we need to think out of the box, and certainly out of the left versus right box- divisive, destructive, non-sensical.

Imagine having a house with 3 bedrooms and a garden you have to allocate and in front of you 2 groups:

a person in their 50s, no children

a family with 3 children

who would you give it to? I really do not know of many who would say 'the 50 year old, no children' as much as you would feel sorry for them, the priorities would be clear.

granjura, you seem to think that the 'bedroom tax' has still to be implemented but in fact it has been with us for several months and is already causing a good deal of anxiety in those who have had their housing benefit reduced but have not been offered the option of moving.

Keeping families in bedsits, hotels and b&bs is HUGELY expensive, both in monetary terms and social/educational terms. How can trying to find humane solutions be seen as utopian - wouldn't you say that keeping older (not elderly) people, whose families have flown the nest and who find themselves with several spare rooms - in those homes, be seen as utopian indeed. When people were given council houses for their families to grow up, and quite rightly, surely they knew it as according to need?

Nobody, not one person - has replied to the point I made about the comparative human cost to keeping families with children in bedsits, as compared to older people being asked to move into smaller accom? (yes I know ... not sufficient of those, this has been agreed, again and again).

Flexibility of rent does sound like a good idea, but whenever this kind of flexibility is suggested for dealing with some other problem, it turns out after some research into the matter that organising and applying such flexibility is going to be more costly than not being flexible. And there will always be real and perceived unfairnesses in such a system because it cannot be made really fluid – there will be step jumps so that someone on £1 more than £X has to pay a great deal more rent than someone on £1 less than £X.

Well I gave the example given on the BBC news last night - charging market rate rents for council tenants who earn a good wage- of course should have some flexibility for different parts of the country - easy to do based on average property prices. That would release a lot of funds for a building programme.

Many towns have seen a huge private building programme of flat buildings - with so many sitting empty now. Why not make it a condition of building permit to set aside a % for older people (again we've already agree with are not talking about the elderly). Or as said before, match people with extra room with people who need said room - with some compensation extra.

In the current economic climate.

And who is going to do it? And where is the sensitivity going to come from? And the personal and community support?

All of which also has to be paid for.

Re your first paragraph, jura, yes, agreed. But how? Utopian ideals are all very well, but who is going to pay for it? The government doesn't seem to want to use our taxes for this.

Which is why I said, again and again, that urgent building of suitable accommodation has to be built - and before the so called bedroom tax comes into force- and that sensitivity and creativity, combined with personal and community support, combined with proper facilities and infrastructure in place. How many times do I have to repeat this?

Let's look at a different example: organ donation. Ideally, anyone in need of a vital organ should get one. But the reality is very different (and I feel we should urgently move to an opt out system- but this is for a different thread). Fact is, there are not enough organs to go round- partly because there are too few donors. So, when an organ becomes available, say a liver- the organ team will look on the computer to see how many matches there are. If there are several possible patients who are a match - a team will then meet to discuss the different cases to see which patient will receive the organ. And,quite rightly I feel, a young father, with young children and a life ahead of him would get priority over an older patient.

However it could get a lot more complicated. What if the young father is a heavy drinker and smoker who has made it known that he has no intention to stop - whereas the older patient is very fit with a very healthy lifestyle. Agonising at times for the donor teams - but they have strict guidelines for priorities. And same for accommodation.

Not one single person has come back to me and explained why an older person with 2 or more spare bedrooms and a garden should have priority of families living with several children in a bedsit? When families got their council house to bring up their families, surely they must have known that this was according to need, and not for life. Yes, it is totally unfair some would say, that those who were able to buy their own house have the luxury of choice - but as said, for many, there is no choice- they have to downsize, just like my parents had to. To feed themselves and as they cannot afford maintenance. Is that fair?

I think this has been said as well; there are a lot of studio flats and single bedroom flats in new developments in a lot of cities but the rents are aimed at single high-earners or high-earning couples.

The lack of small properties can be put down in part to family break-down. A wife (usually the wife) moves out of the family home and rents a smaller property. On social housing estates, small bungalows are purpose-built for senior citizens, the rest of the properties being mainly two and three bed family homes.

I think the capitals are there because it has been stated again and again that there just are not the small properties available for people to move into, so even if they would like to they are not able to. so they will be charged for something they cannot change.

If we are feeling like blaming yet another section of the community for the ills of another, we could surmise that the small properties are being filled by single parents, and young adults who have left home and want to be independent.

I am all for council tenants being charged rents in line with their income, though how to do it without the dreaded means test is a conundrum.

I even have experience of "economic rents", in 1949, when accommodation was scarce. My parents and I lived with my grandparents for a year (cramped into in their council house) when my father first came out of the army after 12 years service. My parents' name then came to the top of the council house waiting list, but the house they were offered was a flat in a large house which had been acquired and newly converted. The rent was set at £3.50 a week. My father was paying his in-laws rent for them, and continued to do so - £1 a week. He also took his turn with his brothers in paying his own parents' rent - another £1. His income was £9 a week. They took it, to have their own home.

I know that pensioners are not expected to move, but you do not have to be of pensionable age to want to remain in the house that you have made into a home. Human beings are not sheep to be moved regularly to different pasture, until they are ready for the abbatoir.

Presumbly it was 1 in 6 of the 25% of London's population in social housing that were asked..or have I misunderstood?

I have no problem in people in social housing being charged different rents according to their means, although means testing would be quite expensive.
The thing I don't like about the present cabinet is not particularly that they went to Eton, but that so many of them went to the same school. Cameron did have the choice to widen the range of his ministers. It hardly inspires confidence that they will understand the needs of the vast majority of citizens who did not attend private schools. The figures are that 7% of the UK population attend private schools - 53% if the cabinet did. This is not inverted snobbery - it is plain common sense.
I had the same problem with Blair, who appointed many of the people with whom he had shared chambers to positions of responsibility, without reference to their suitability.

granjura you will see that I agree with you that if is financially possible for someone to leave 'affordable' social housing and move to the private sector it would be the right thing to do.

My mother in law stayed in the family council flat until she died ages 98.

Whenim, thanks for the article. If you re-read my posts you will see that I have acknowledged, again and again, that this is the case.

nanaej I can see your point about using one example, the one of the taxi driver. He was very smug and his answer was 'if they put my rent up, then it would desinventivise me and i 'll just work less to bring salary down'. This example was cited because it was the one given in the news last night, the BBC news, not the gutter press. Had they given other examples from different professions, would it have really helped? They explained that they had interviewed many other tenants and that they all said the same.

1 in 6 of 25% of the London population is not a 'small and insignificant' sample, is it? I am not very good at maths, but maybe somebody could do the calculation. And it would indeed release enough money to build 100s or desperately needed new homes to house families in bedsits. How on earth can this be seen as demonising- when it is just plainly sensible and common sense - and a true solution. Why should people earning good money stay in social accommodation at a very low and totally unrepresentative rent? Can anyone really and truly say why this would be wrong????

Tony Benn went to Westminster then to Oxford. This shows clearly that despite ones private education one can make choices about how to use privilege