Are our views always entrenched?

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........

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?

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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'!

Article about the lack of small properties available:

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

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.

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

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????

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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?

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.

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.