Are our views always entrenched?

Elegran "It is not a fact that while 1 in 6 are highly paid the other 5 are swinging the lead and being supported on benefits by those who have bought or are buying their houses. The vast majority of people in social housing (which is not a term I like because it sounds like charity) are somewhere between those two extremes.'"

Where on earth have I said that the other 5 are swinging the lead? The point made was that if people are earning a good wage, and 60.000 is a good wage, they should pay more for their council accommodation - and yes, Greatnan, to release cash to build many new homes which are desperately required.

Why make this personal by stating a relative? We are talking about basic 'principles' here- and in any case the council 'tax' does not apply to her as she is a pensioner. If you read my posts again, you will see that I have acknowledged again and again that if people with 'empty nests' and extra rooms are to be asked to relinquish too large homes it would have to a/acknowledge that suitable housing with 1 or 2 bedrooms is not currently available and that building is urgent - one of the reasons high earning council workers should pay more to release the necessary cash that b/ great care would have to be taken to move communities together, with support and proper infrastucture. But in the meantime one can also ask the question (without talking about who is responsible for lack of social housing - we all know who it was and there is little we can about it now, can we?) - who suffers most from living in totally unsuitable bedsits and b&bs? Families living 4-10 in one room - or singles with over large accom?
Of course nobody wants to set one group against another- and yet??? Nobody has answered this question.

Who wants to 'demonise' council tenants? Certainly not me - but priorities have to be drawn, abuse and fraud rid off, and current circumstances taken into account. As far as taking a lodger in on a VOLUNTEER basis as an option, why not? Our lodgers shared our TV room - and if we wanted to make a private call, or have a private discussion, we would go to the kitchen or our bedroom. The experience was certainly enriching and we've had dozens of lodgers, paying for our daughters' education and lodgings elsewhere. I think many older people with empty nest syndrome would truly benefit from having someone younger, and of course vetted and suitable, and with support, living in partly against services like help with shopping, garden, ironing, whatever. Just one possible solution - which would suit some but not all. Just one of the many examples of how to think outside the 'left/right' stupid divide.

Are Old Etonians responsible for having gone to Eton? Any more than others for having gone to c* schools - did they decide at 5 that they would be sent to boarding school. The sheer hatred shown to them because they went to one or another type of school is pathetic. Attack people for their policies, but not for the families they were born in and the schools attended - which is as ridiculous as some of the Tories I know who 'hate and despise' others for going to an inner city comprehensive. Prejudice is just as bad and despicable when applied to one group as an other. Where did Tony Benn go to school? REfusing to even listen to policies just because somebody went to Eton, or Sherborne or Charterhouse, or wherever, is just as daft as t'other way round in my book.

Article about the lack of small properties available:

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/08/bedroom-tax-shortage-small-homes

I think that the problem with thoughtlessly using one anecdotal example , e.g taxi driver, is that it creates the need to redress the balance of the argument. Sadly this is the example set by parliament!

I do not think anyone, left, right or claiming indifference, would support any fraudulent benefit claimants or tax avoiding bankers/businesses. Both undermine the countries resources. I do not know but I suspect that more revenue is lost through tax avoidance. But if anyone has clear figures on this am happy to learn.

What many people here on GN refute and resent is that one person's actions/behaviour being used as a sledgehammer to bash a group as if it was representative of all those in receipt of welfare benefits or those managing a successful business.

There are many private industrialists who have done many good works: e.g Cadbury etc (I know it was on the back of the slave trade!) but there was at least an avuncular role to care for ones employees and try to create a happy society! There are many people on benefits who make a huge contribution to society through voluntary work or through a long working life that for reasons beyond ther control has ended.
It is never a black/white situation.

I do think it is sad that because some people have had to rely on social housing to provide a home for their families they become 2nd class citizens as soon as their children leave home. Every group: renters/home owners have varying emotions when it comes to where they live but one group often has more control than another. There will be some, in both groups, who find moving very difficult..there needs to be empathy about that and not just 'tough'!

Why the capitals?? You can't possibly know all properties in all areas!!

How does anybody know if somebody else is claiming benefits?
In any event, nobody on Gransnet has ever suggested that they support fraudulent claimants - only that they are in the minority and should not be used as an example of how the system works.

I think I will have to put this in capitals! My apologies to those who have already appreciated the situation.
PEOPLE CANNOT MOVE BECAUSE THERE ARE NO SMALLER PROPERTIES IN THEIR AREA.

It does sound as if the man you mention, moved is working. Do you know if he is claiming disability benefits? If he is, it could be a fraudulent claim and when it comes to a PIP assessment, he could get a shock. However, there are benefits that someone working but not making a big enough income can claim. There are, for example, child and working tax credits which will eventually be subsumed into Universal Credit. If his income doesn't cover his rent, he could get some Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support. Oddly enough, although politicians often unscrupulously oppose the clichéed 'hard working families' with the benefit claimants hanging around the house watching daytime TV, the majority of claimants of tax credits are in fact those 'hard working families', many of them struggling to make do on minimum wages and often working part-time.

I am always puzzled by the assumption that one person whose children have left home need bedrooms to come back for visits. Do they not have inflatable beds and sleeping bags in other parts of the country? I have spare bedrooms and I own my house but I also have bed settees for when the whole tribe brought friends back. My DDs often had to shift out of rented housing in London when either it became unsuitable for their needs ie the owner came back early from their job abroad or one of their group was sent to NY to work and they needed to downsize. I am totally sympathetic to moving out and the horrors of moving house but it is social housing in this case and there should not be children in rented unsuitable accommodation when someone is hogging a too big house. I have said this on other threads and my view dismissed.

Not all disabilities or health problems that may stop someone from formally having a paid job are obvious to onlookers.

It sounds from what you say, moved, as if the man you mention is working. Perhaps he needs some benefits because he is not making a living wage on the work he does/is able to do.

There's no knowing really unless you know someone well enough to ask them. I'm not sure it's a good idea to make assumptions in any case.

Sounds like he needs reassessing as 'fit for', Moved. Presumably he will have his assessment in due course if it has not already been done. Don't some people with disabilties still get support to enable them to work, under the new system? Anno and Galen will know, I'm sure.

I feel it needs to be restated that there is nu suggestion that retired people have to leave their homes.

I see no reason why someone earning £60k should not pay a higher rent than someone living on benefits. Are social housing rents linked to local salaries? Would it cost more to rent a 2 bedroomed flat in London than in the north east? I don't know much about social housing as I have never worked in that sector.

Can someone explain to me why a disabled man who deals in second hand furniture, which he heaves in and out of his van, and also does a car boot sale every week should be receiving benefits and not working? He looks about 50 if that is relevant. Maybe there are some ailments which qualify him for this?

Welcome , littlelynne.
My purpose in this thread was to try to understand the views of other people, not to knock them own. I stated my own position and my reasons for holding my views and I hoped that people with different views would be willing to debate in a courteous and mature manner. Oh, well........

Hi littlelynne, I don't recognise your name, so welcome to G'net. I make no apology for expressing (very) left-of-centre views, and mostly I am in favour of 'live and let live' but if I perceive opposing views as being inimical to social justice, then I will attack them on those grounds.

Hi littlelynne have you just joined? If so, welcome. Don't remember seeing you on here before

i've never understood the need for some people to knock other people's political views. if you are so sure you're right why do you feel the need to justify it? do i detect a slight doubt in there somewher? i think you pointed it out "under the labour party ..."

For the purpose of clarity - nowhere have I said that I am against businesses, large or small - that is what I meant by saying my post had been misrepresented.

And you raise a good point that not all hard-working people are well paid.

Bags you raise a good point. There are streets of houses within the boundaries of several hospitals in Manchester, the majority of them empty or used to house workmen's tools. In the park where I live in what was a tied cottage, there is a delightful row of cottages within the horticultural centre - all empty. There are so many companies using converted mill warehouses that could give over whole floors to housing, and there are outbuildings that could be converted or knocked down to build accommodation for local workers.

Council tenants have aspirations, too. I have been in many a council property that has been turned into a palace and sympathised with tenants who have been told the kitchens they have upgraded themselves are to be ripped out because the whole road is being renovated.

My son and his girlfriend are mature nursing students on bursaries, working NHS Bank shifts on basic pay to top up their income, and they qualify for a small amount of housing benefit and council tax relief. Their rent uses up more than half of their joint monthly income, for a little 2-bed terrace. They will be in their forties before they can put a deposit on a house. Their political views shift further to the left on a weekly basis, and remind me of students in the 60s and early 70s, who have become so angry with the establishment, they would welcome a revolution.

One taxi driver - just the kind of spokesperson a right wing tabloid might find!
My sister is, I suppose, one of the undeserving poor. She has never worked outside the home and her only contribution to society has been to raise four sons, all of whom have contributed a good amount, and three of whom she supported whilst they did their degrees, allowing them to live at home and pay her very little in board and lodging. Her deceased husband was a business man, but lost everything when he developed lung cancer/brain cancer. He had failed to pay the mortgage for several months during his terminal illness and the house was repossessed, leaving her nothing but debts. She and the four boys were given a council house - not a generously sized one, but they managed by having bunk beds in both bedrooms. She slept in the tiny boxroom.

I am intrigued by the idea that she could be forced to move away (where? there are no smaller units anywhere in her area?) or take in a lodger. Her house which is now owned by a housing association, is a mid-terraced little box, with one open-plan living/dining/kitchen and a small hall downstairs, and the two bedrooms, neither of them large, and the boxroom upstairs. There is one bathroom/toilet. Because of her many health problems, she needs to use the toilet often, sometimes urgently. She is a very private person and easily embarrassed.
Where would this lodger spend their evenings? With her in the only living room, watching her TV and listening to her private phone calls? Or confined to their bedroom? What if they proved difficult, noisy, dirty...she is not well enough to deal with evicting somebody. And I am not sure that the Housing Association would allow sub-letting.
At the moment, she is allowed to stay in her home of 28 years because she is 76, but she lives in fear that yet another round of cuts might see this monstrous, cruel scheme extended.
Are only retired successful career women to be accorded privacy and respect?
It is not her fault that successive governments failed to build enough social housing or that Thatcher sold off so much of it.

Your last para voices my worry too – the worry of treating people like cattle to be shifted around as suits politicians with a problem to solve – a problem of the politicians' own making.

What happened to the old idea of employers building accommodatiion for their workers? I'm thinking of New Lanark, of farm estate cottages, of railway workers' cottages, and so on.

Well said, elegran.

Council tenants are being demonised again.

It is not a fact that while 1 in 6 are highly paid the other 5 are swinging the lead and being supported on benefits by those who have bought or are buying their houses. The vast majority of people in social housing (which is not a term I like because it sounds like charity) are somewhere between those two extremes.

They work at all kinds of jobs, at all kinds of pay, they come back from work to homes and gardens in varying states of neatness, some of their children are perfect angels who work hard in school and are polite at home and in the street, some are not.

Some tenants spend their spare time slouched in front of a telly with a canny, others play active sports, practise DIY, decorate and repair their own homes (they don't all wait for someone to come and change every lightbulb) and more than you would imagine run scouts and guides and sports clubs for the children around them.

Why should they not be proud of and attached to the home they have made and brought up their children in, and enjoy living among neighbours they have known for years. why should they leave because the children are now not living permanently at home? I say permanently because very often they are there temporarily, on visits or when they are without their own accommodation for one reason or another.

And what will be the social result of making people move from an area they know to one among strangers? It will cost more to provide people with the kind of support they had from friends and neighbours.

I think this point has been made before so I apologise for stating it again. House prices in the SE are not representative of the rest of the country. A salary of £50,000 in London won't go very far in paying for a mortgage. If you look at house prices around this country, you will see that in northern cities you can still buy a sound three bedroom house with a garden for under £100,000 (in some cases, for less than £80,000). Rents in these areas reflect the sale values. In my part of the country, £500,000 will get you a five bedroom solid Victorian or Edwardian pile in a very 'nice' area or a modern architect designed house on a small select development. Where one of my DS and his family live, £500,000 will get you a small terrace, probably needing some work. But there are more jobs in the SE so that's where a lot of people need to live. And, as several people have said, there just aren't the single bedroom flats and houses available for people in social housing to move into.

The point made by the news was not that those people should buy, but they should be charged a more realistic rent, so funds would be available to build 3000 news houses for families. But as said, the reaction was 'oh can't be bothered to work hard if I have to pay more rent' which is the kind of attitude that makes people like my daughter want to scream.

As far as the 'middle class' overbearing attitudes for school fairs/fetes - yes I can see that it may well happen. But I can also see that people who are very short of time and energy because their work so hard and have experience in organising, would want to choose to get things done quickly and efficiently, because they just do not have the time or energy to have 20 meetings. But I can see your point totally.