Tory welfare cuts will impoverish 200,000 children next year and more than 600,00 in 2020

pmsl, I have read through the whole thread and find some of the remarks so ridiculous that they are unbelievable. Glad I don't comment on this sort of thread now.

I presume others watched QT last night.
Here is the People's Assembly take on it.

www.thepeoplesassembly.org.uk/tax_credits_qt

No. Durham is Labour control, but as I said, other councils have already done it.
It is, however, about people on low pay losing money. That's why I put it on here.

I think it should have its own thread, or is Durham County Council under Tory control?

Nothing to do with drives.
I have just found out that Durham County Council is considering altering the pay and conditions of teaching assistants so that an assistant working thirty hours a week will lose £200 a month.

They are doing it by altering the holiday entitlement, saying that they are only entitled to 5 weeks holiday a year, so owe the council 8 weeks pay each year. Not sure how legal this is; definitely immoral. Some councils have done it already, apparently, including Cumbria.

What do GNs think of this?

So how do you define a drive? It was a question, not sarcasm. In Agatha Christie novels cars draw up with a swish of gravel in front of the Georgian facade, having negotiated the long tree-lined drive from the big gates, but not many houses these days boast such a thing, private or council.

The drive is the bit you drive onto on your way to the garage (which is usually full of other stuff, so the car is parked on the drive anyway) If you don't have a garage you can still have a drive, or you can call it the parking area if that is what you prefer.

I am sorry rosequartz but to me they are parking areas perhaps the area could be called a drive way but not a drive

Pity you had to stoop to sarcasm Elegran

Someone I know (I won't be specific in case I get shot down again) lives in a terrace of what used to be social housing (a couple of them still are) and although there are no 'drives' there is a road's width of parking space at the back of the properties.

How can you have a garage as part of or next to a house and the straight bit of tarmac leading to it across the front garden is not a drive?

What do you consider a drive, then? A big semicircular sweep up to a colonnaded front entrance with a butler waiting at the door? I would say a drive was a vehicular entrance preferably leading to a garage. Maybe a hard surface running past the side of a detached, semi or end-terraced house, wide enough to drive into and park.

[shakes head]
It was absolutely no trouble, took two minutes, you're welcome! I know some people love links, others may be interested too.

www.gumtree.com/p/home-swap/swap-exchange-council-house-in-birmingham-swap-with-london/1125789781 same again, but:

It looks like a drive to me, but what do I know! I'm sure there are more.
The only thing is, there is no 4x4 parked on it.

Ours is not a sweeping gravel one with in-out and a turning circle either!

Thank you both for going to so much trouble but I didn't say anything about garages, those houses do have a parking area but no way do I consider them drives sorry

And a garage!
www.gumtree.com/p/home-swap/swap-exchange-council-house-in-birmingham-swap-with-london/1125789781

Lots more too

www.gumtree.com/p/home-swap/council-house-exchange-want-a-4-bed-only/1137655246

Here is someone wanting to exchange a council house with a garage

They do exist.

Anniebach I lived with my parents in a council house with a drive and a garage.

I have just searched for it on Google maps in the hope of copying the page and showing it to you, but It seems to be locked against copying.

The pic would have shown two semis, both of which look as though they have now been bought over. The one next door has the original single garage, but our garage has clearly been demolished and a detached house squeezed into the space it once occupied and the corner garden beside it.

If you pm me, I can send you the reference so that you can find it for yourself.

I find it difficult to have a lot of sympathy for the woman on Question Time yesterday. She said she had voted Conservative for a "better chance for me and my children". Where did she think the cuts were going to fall? Presumably she thought it would be OK for unemployed, sick, or disabled people and their children, and the elderly frail to be hit, rather than herself.

Major cuts in public spending quite often affect many different - and often vulnerable - groups of people. Those people with the "I'll be all right Jack" mentality that this woman seemed to display, should perhaps bear in mind that, even if they don't care what happens to other people, cuts of this scale will, in the long run, affect all but the very wealthiest. Libraries, hospitals, police and justice, medical, public transport, domestic abuse, consumer protection, adult education and many other services are increasingly being reduced or cut completely.

rosequartz, would you tell me the county which has social housing with drives? I am curious having canvassed in every county in Wales from Montgomeryshire down to South and to West .

No idea what posh has to do with tv and benefits sorry

The effect on those working and receiving benefits is becoming very clear. The women mentioned in PMQs must be furious - I would be in her position although, no doubt, glad to have it highlighted to a mean spirited government.

On Question Time last night we had another women commenting on how it will affect her.

"I voted Conservatives originally, as I thought you were going to be the better chance for me and my children. You're about to cut tax credits after promising you wouldn't. I work bloody hard for my money; to provide for my children; to give them everything they've got; and you're going to take it away from me and them. I can hardly afford the rent I have to pay; I can hardly afford the bills I've got to do; and you're going to take more from me. Shame on you."

As far as I am aware the letters haven't gone out yet - I think we will here more of these stories when they do. So much for the Conservatives being the party of "labour" as DC tried to convince people.

www.jrf.org.uk/blog/rise-and-fall-never-worked-households

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-cameron-made-blood-boil-6637616

One of the people mentioned by Corbyn in this week's PMQs.

Just shows, roseq, that things haven't moved on. The names of the laws might have changed, but still the homeless are persecuted.
I wonder if they were asked to pay court fees in 1824.

Oh, right!

I was just trying to point out the similarities between the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Act in 1824 because of the soldiers and sailors on the streets and today with homeless soldiers (amongst others).

He was prosecuted under the anti-social behaviour act, roseq, not the vagrancy act.

I have signed quite a few petitions to stop councils from prosecuting the homeless sleeping rough in various places like Chester and York, where under this government they have to pay court charges when they have no money.
It said Dickensian in the article. They are right.

Here's another sign of Dickensian times.

theconversation.com/heres-what-we-learned-from-mapping-out-englands-inequalities-48562

These maps are quite appalling, showing where poverty is.

Until recently it was believed that the Vagrancy Act 1824 had largely withered away in England through lack of use. However, in recent years the number of homeless people sleeping out has risen, and the use of the Act has increased dramatically, especially in the Metropolitan Police district (most of Greater London). In 1988, in England and Wales, some 573 people were prosecuted and convicted under the Act. In May 1990, the National Association of Probation Officers carried out a survey of the prosecutions under the 1824 Act. That survey revealed that 1,250 prosecutions had been dealt with in 14 central London magistrates courts in that year, which represented an enormous leap in the number of prosecutions under the 1824 Act, especially in London.

^ a new law which allows the homeless to be prosecuted.^
So not a new Act at all.

and some of them will be ex-service personnel on the streets, even though one poster informed me that they receive a pension and accommodation (not so):
www.soldiersoffthestreet.org