Bedroom Tax

It's a shame when people have worked hard all their lives and through illness, redundancy, no fault of their own, are having their lives upset. But then there are those who have shirked all their lives and are shouting 'unfair'.
Surely someone can differentiate between the two and stop lumping them all together?

Easier said than done I guess orca.
mamacaz it certainly does sound like a farce. The pie tax revisited on a grand scale. Oh and then there was the "all the foreign students in metropolitan university must turn round and go home" last September. I could go on.
I'm not sure if the civil servants fail to think things through or whether the ministers, once they have a nice sparkly new bit between their teeth insist on galloping off, shaking their heads and neighing, while the civil servants, having failed with the "yes minister but if we do that ..." line are just standing back and shaking their heads waiting for the fall at the first fence.
You would not think it would take a genius to work out the consequences of some of these ideas - just a few individuals with a modicum of practical sense sitting down for a meeting for a couple of hours and saying "If we do this, what are the consequences... just lets write them on a flip chart and then discuss the risks
I am told that ministers have the attention span of a gnat and won't listen to arguments against their ideas. It would appear to be true.

That's why nothing ever gets sorted in this country JessM. No one grasps that particular nettle. Granted not easy, but no one even tries, and so we go on, and on, and on.

Jess - I agree. It's time we had a third chamber - of Gransnetters.

Exactement, Orca.

The Right : it's all their fault so we refuse to do anything....

The Left : it's all their fault, and even more so... so we refuse to blablabla

and back again, and round and round.

Where one earth does that lead us ?

You're right, granjura, and those who don't lean strongly either to the left or the right tend to get irritated and frustrated by the entrenched views of those who do. If a compromise is put forward it's immediately shot down by one or the other...

How refreshing.

Surely a large part of the problem with government decisions – and the frequent U-turns – is that some chap is put in charge of, say, the Department of Health, without having a clue about hospitals, doctors, nurses, general practice, dentistry, pharmacology, general health workers, community care, medical training, etc. etc. and feels obliged to make changes and make his (usually his) mark. Furthermore, most of them are London-centred where things are not always done in a way that is appropriate for the rest of the country. Then after off-loading the bee in the bonnet, said chap then moves on to a completely different department and makes his mark there.

No one takes the rap for bad decisions and the long-suffering public is left with the cost/inefficiency/bad service/no service – whatever – before another set of radical changes is introduced by another equally ignorant chap in charge.

OK, we all agree that we could run the country better, so how? What would you do about the housing problem and how would you fund it?

How about - move Parliament and maybe the stock exchange to say Manchester - or Leeds. Change the centre of gravity for the country. London house prices would drop. Population would move and even out. And there'd be no need for this silly new high speed train.

Movedalot , just picked up on your post of 19/3, 14.01 as I have been pretty tucked up for the last couple of days .
Snap , perhaps she just got browned off with too much captiousness .

Nonu, I'm afraid I misread a word in your post at first....[shocked]
Thought it was out of character!

absent so true. You hear london-centric stuff like "parents should have choice of secondary schools" which is easy in London, less so in other cities and completely impossible if you live in a small town in the middle of somewhere like Shropshire.

Ana , you little sausage !

The fact that ministers don't listen to advice when they have a bee in their bonnet is so true.
This was obvious when when the then minister devised DLA to replace AA. He was convinced everybody would tell the truth about their needs.
The bill went through the roof and government wondered why.