Bedroom tax breaches human rights.

Reading through Sel's post with regard to London, I'm guessing like me that she may live on the outer edge of the capital so we are very aware of the problems. There simply isn't enough affordable housing where I am, about 12 miles out, and as for living in central London it's beyond the earning power of anyone on an average salary. Rents in London are probably a complete anomaly anyway, I imagine that larger cities in the UK don't have quite the problems we have here and this has been exacerbated by foreign investors buying in in droves, although more expensive homes it has to be said, it still has a knock on effect.

My step daughter who commutes into central London has bought a cottage on the Surrey/Hampshire borders and pays a stonking £4,000 plus for an annual season which will rise again by something like 6%, I think. Many workers cannot afford to live anywhere near the capital so they have no alternative to fork out huge sums on commuting. I do take Eloethan's point that low paid workers, who work unsociable hours need to live further in.

Nevertheless, I don't see why the tax payers should have to stump up vast sums of money to accommodate families, where there isn't actually anyone working and who don't have any association with the city other than rolling up seeing a large house and asking the relevant council to house them in sometimes enormous houses that are valued at several million. When did it become mandatory that siblings in large families must be given a separate bedroom each?

Bob Crowe and Baroness Uddin both have the benefit of social housing, Bob Crowe doesn't even have any children living with him, they both earn salaries that run into six figures so why is this allowed and why is the tax pay expected to subsidize them?

Having said all that I don't agree with the bedroom tax because I appreciate there are precious few smaller units for people to trade down into.

BAnanas - no doubt much of what you say is true, but this thread is about the bedroom tax. Nobody has explained how people are expected to find a smaller property when there are none available.

Jendurham - yes, I am familiar with the problems of East Hull - my daughter was Drug Action Officer before she emigrated. She had to liaise with the coroner on drug-related deaths and was often heart-broken by the tales of poverty and deprivation.

BAnanas do you really think it's that easy to get a council house. You can't just roll up, spot a house you fancy and ask the council for it.

Apart from London, where the rents are ridiculous, the 'taxpayer' isn't being asked to 'stump up large amounts of money'. My rent is £425 a month for a two up two down. I worked all my life until I became too ill. My husband only works part time because he cares for me (at no cost to the 'taxpayer'). Ideally I should never be left alone but that would send us under financially rather than us just struggling as we do now. However, because he works, it pushes us just over the income level that would get us full housing benefit (minus the £13) so we only get £121 a month towards it.

Please remember that a lot of people on housing benefit work and pay tax. We're not scroungers. We're just not as financially well off as other people.

Jendurham....what a small world it is. My eldest daughter lives off Dene Street and my youngest daughter lives off Stoneferry.

I used to go to Southcoates Lane school and had to walk past St Catherine's when it was a convent. That was in the days when the nuns wore penguin suits. They terrified me because I mixed up the words 'convent' and 'coven'. We all knew as children that witches wore black and floated over the ground rather than walk and of course the nuns wore long black habits which hid there feet and made them appear to glide around lol.

Was Holland Street included in the rebuilds that were planned before this government pulled the funding?

I think it may be hard for some people who have never known real poverty to imagine what it is like to be worried about how to buy food or pay the electricity bill.

Vampirequeen, I don't think it's easy to get a council house, virtually impossible these days I'd have thought. These houses aren't council houses they belong to private landlords. As I understand it,there are a number of families in and around London, one in particular who are possibly still living in a large house in West Hampstead value at a couple of million with no connection to that area and previously living in the West Midlands but wanted to come to London.

As I said there are some strange anomalies, particularly in London. I don't for one minute think that they are typical, but if they continue to exist they should be re evaluated. I do not think people on benefits are scroungers, everyone's case is different.

I think it is extremely hard for anyone to understand someone else's position unless you have shared it. Most of us probably feel as if our lives are the norm and those better off than us are rich and those less well off are poor.

I have know what it is to be hard up but not real poverty. I know what it is like to be comfortable and able to afford the things I need but I don't know how it feels to be able to buy anything I may just fancy.

The saying about walking a mile in someone's shoes comes to mind.

Yes, Vampirequeen, Holland Street was supposed to have every other terrace pulled down to give the houses left gardens instead of back Yards, and half the street was going to be completely demolished for new housing. The inhabitants were to be decamped and then given first option of whether they wanted to move back in.
They have organised a residents association and met councillors and MPs. They have now been told they can have their houses clad, and new fencing!
The association is regularly in the Hull Daily Mail.

The nuns are still there. In fact the Old People's Home has been closed, and it's only the older nuns living there.

When I was 4 my dad had a fruit shop on Holderness Road. I often had to run past the big house, I think it's Holderness House, opposite the end of Southcoates, and I was convinced that the wolf from Red Riding Hood was the other side of that long fence just waiting to jump over and eat me. I ran very fast then.

Moved, I'm not sure I want to be any poorer than we were when we were kids, but my best friend lived in a two up two down in the next street and there were five children and no bathroom, toilet in the yard. The father was an ambulance driver who worked nights, so he got a decent sleep during the day.

I got a scholarship to a private school (Tranby Croft, before you ask, Vampirequeen) and my father was then a bus driver; my mother was a nurse, working shifts part-time as I had two sisters younger than me.
They applied for a clothing allowance for uniform and were given enough to buy me a few pairs of school knickers, so they never applied again.
When I was in the 4th year, my English teacher called me out in front of the rest of the class and gave me a pair of her cast-off shoes, as she thought mine were not very good. They did actually let in the rain but I doubt if she knew that.

I have every sympathy for those who are caught up in this. Many, like vampirequeen are in this situation through no fault of their own, having worked and paid taxes all their lives.

As I said I am fortunate enough not to be affected but I can recall growing up when my parents only had enough money for my brother and I to have a cooked meal in the evenings, (my father was injured in an accident at work - this was before compensation claims - and as a result was disabled).

Hopefully, the policy will be put on hold until enough 1 or 2 bedroomed properties are available, but I still think the basic thinking that larger properties should be for families is right.

OMG Jendurham...my dad was a bus driver too.

East Yorkshire. He ended up driving tours.

Ah my dad was City Transport.

They still probably knew each other. East Yorkshire drivers used to use the City canteen. I used to have to go there and wait for my dad on payday, to take the money home to my mother if my dad was on late shift.

God yes I remember the canteen. Did you ever go to the children's Christmas parties at the Transport Club or was that just for City Transport children?

Was East Yorks like On The Buses because a lot of the things that happened at City Transport were lol?

Did you dad drive trollies before diesel buses? The connection used to come off the cable and the conductor had to jiggle it back with a long pole. One day my dad's conductor was out jiggling the pole and as he connected it an irate passenger rang the bell. Dad set off with his conductor running behind looking like a pole vaulter who had lost his uprights and crossbar lol.

Yes, we used to go to the Christmas Parties. We also used to go to the New Theatre to the pantomime every year because he was a bus driver.
I was once given a doll by Ronnie Hilton because my name was Jennifer!
I never played with dolls.
Trolleybuses were only for the City so my dad never drove those. But he did drive the school bus quite often, and was always asking if anyone knew me. So embarrassing. Even more embarrassing was the fact that I used to get travel sick on a bus, even going to Hornsea.
Our summer holidays used to be going over on the ferry to New Holland and sitting in a field having a picnic.
My parents both died in 2006, and their ashes were put in the Humber, near the Bridge, because we used take them to the Humber Bridge Park quite often after they retired. My dad drove a party of bigwigs to the Bridge opening ceremony.

Going to New Holland on the ferry and then on to Cleethorpes by train was the high spot of our year. We children thought we'd gone abroad because we'd been on a 'ship' and New Holland sounded like Holland lol.

My dad was one of the 'bigwigs' so, who knows, he might have been on your dad's bus lol.

My dad was always known as Lofty because he was tall.
I heard someone last week on the radio say that Hull was on the East Coast.
Ken's mother thought it was Holland that she could see over the other side of the Humber, but you would expect someone who worked for the BBC to know better.
So how was your dad a bigwig when originally he was a driver?

By the way, for anyone else who thinks we have hijacked this thread, we are showing you the poor backgrounds we have come from and therefore why we can have empathy with people who are being asked to move or have a reduction in benefits.

There but for the grace of whoever you believe in......

My dad was involved with the union when he was a bus driver as shop steward and branch secretary. He later became a full time officer for the fishermen and by the time the bridge opened he was the national officer for road transport so he got invited along.

Unfortunately my parents were typical working class Tories, those who believed that they too could end up rich if only they worked harder, so they would never have been union officials, although they were both in unions.
My mother used to send me articles from the Daily Mail through the post hoping to get me to change my political views. Her mother had been a headmistress in a village school in East Yorkshire, Bainton, and they lived in the schoolhouse.

This is amazing.
I have just been looking through some papers which are in my box of family history. When we moved back to Hull in 1987, we found an old Daily Mail in a cupboard. We folded it in a copy of the Hull Daily Mail. There is an ad for furniture in the Hull Daily Mail for a shop in Hull.
One of the coffee tables was called Karina, my youngest granddaughter's name.
However, the paper it was enclosing is the Daily Mail in which there is an article by an MP for Ashton under Lyne, Col. Sir Walter de Frece, for December 16th 1921.
The article states
"An improved standard of living has been one of the main planks of the Trade Union platform for many years now, and the organisers of the working man are insistent upon the impossibility of ever returning to the old prewar standard. Unfortunately they have set up as their model the unreal standard which obtained during the war and they are encouraged to do so by the example set them by people of different social standing.

It is easy to tell the working man that he must accept reduced wages if we are ever to hope for a revival of trade. But such a doctrine is not likely to be popular when he sees all around him signs of extravagance and carelessness on the part of those who in the accepted order of things, should be setting an example in economy, especially at a time when unemployment is the lot of about one-sixth of our able-bodied working population.."

Vampirequeen, on another thread you say your mother worked for the GPO. My sister, the one who lives in Holland Street, was on post office counters at Lowgate until it was closed, then at Jameson Street, until it was sold off and moved into the Prospect Centre.

Goes to show that some things never change. The poor are still being asked to make the sacrifices only this time it's called tightening our belts or relieving the load on the taxpayer.

Now you two, don't forget we are all in it together.

Oh yes ....does David pay anything for his flat that's just off Whitehall or the weekend pile in the country. If not, how much does it cost the taxpayer to keep him rent free (would that count as full housing benefit) in two properties?

That's okay, please join in and slag off whever it was that said that originally.
I might even be able to find another newspaper article to show that that sentence was not original. It could first have been said by Churchill in 1921 and supported by Bonnar Law!