I find this worrying

"A DWP spokesman said: "This is exactly why we have made £345 million available to councils to help vulnerable people. We understand the council have awarded a payment to make up a shortfall in rent."

So there you are, not so bad after all.

No more sarky comments Grannytwice please. Ana and others [including me] do not find anything amusing about a womens refuge being closed. At the same time it's crazy to make out IDS to be some sort of devil. Cuts have been made in all kinds of places, and until we know all the context behind any closures cannot make up our minds.

I'll make as many comments as I want sarcastic or otherwise. Or does it say somewhere in the guidelines that that is not allowed?

Oh. You are one of those.

rosesarered If you don't like sarky comments, perhaps you should refrain from making sarcastic, dismissive comments yourself:

"IDS 'laughing at something' [which we don't know what it is, could be ED Mill. pulling another funny face] could be anything actually.Are we actually wasting time with this?He must be tired, with all that grinding of the faces of the poor then, but still has some energy to laugh .."

The "context behind any closures" is the cuts to public services. Councils, especially those in poor areas, have lost funding from central government. As a result local councillors have had to cut their contribution to the voluntary sector, which includes women's refuges.

Our (Labour) council recently announced it will continue to fund our local women's refuge this year. Front line services are all to be cut even further, including social work teams. Social workers are often the people who support women and children living with domestic abuse. The cuts will impact on this area of work, and thresholds for intervention continue to go up.
That's the context of cuts - it's down to government decisions.

Central government will never quite get rid of Local Authorities. They are the too useful a scapegoat as the government can say 'we gave them the money (far short of what is required) to do x, y, z and it their (LAs) job to decide what to do with it.
Central government seriously hopes we forget their decisions to either reduce funding, ring fence a budget, set targets (with a financial reward attached) for one area but not another etc etc when any monies are devolved to local government.

Well, Eloethan we disagree on everything just about, so why not on this?My comments were lightly amusing not sarcastic and not aimed at somebody on here, as was G2's comments. That's the difference.

This 'demonising' of Ian Duncan Smith is not only ridiculous but childish and naive.Ministers have to sometimes make unpopular decisions that they would rather not have to make , it happens with ALL political parties at times.

And you vcan't really blame the government that public money is in short supply. Isn't that down to the bankers, and too-high-to-manage credit card debts?

In The I today: "Benefit reform by IDS has "wasted time and money".

The National Audit Office has just reported that, despite IDS's insistence that the Universal Credit Scheme is "on time and on budget" it will not be fully in place until 2019. The Public Accounts Committee said "The unacceptably poor management of this programme has wasted time and taxpayers' money, with a staggering £600 million spent in four years." That is the cost to date - there's another 5 years to go till 2019.

IDS's incompetence is well documented and has been referred to by several political commentators. He is very rarely seen on TV to answer all the criticisms against him so I feel that, rather than being "demonised", he's had a pretty easy ride of it. I hardly think a few comments on Gransnet will have him shaking in his shoes.

You can blame all governments for allowing soft touch banking regulation (the Tories wanted it to be even less regulated). Unsustainable private borrowing of all descriptions was encouraged because bankers made commission from it - and it is not they that had to pay the price when the whole thing fell apart - we did.

This is a more detailed assessment of universal credit by Margaret Hodge, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-accounts-committee/news/universal-credit-progress-update/

IDS is not demonised; he's just useless at his job and should have been sacked ages ago. The fact that Cameron did not do that just shows that nobody wanted to take over the mess he'd made of it.