"In February, he tweeted to two gambling tipsters, telling them: ‘Rough day today lads, gonna have to find your magic potion again soon.’ The month before he tweeted he had won an accumulator bet at odds of 28/1.
He also had accounts on poker websites and, in December, used part of an inheritance from his grandmother to gamble at the card game."
@Gin1138 Good to see your news, I hope the op goes well.
Thanks. It's only a minor op, so it should be OK.
It's just a shock knowing that your cells are beginning to go wrong, especially when you feel fine. But I'm getting towards middle age and I guess I haven't looked after myself like I should have done and this is the result.
At least it's not too bad and we still have time to deal with the problem.
'Given that the average worker is having to make do with 1pc increase in salary, is it really cruel to impose a 1pc rise to welfare payments? Especially after benefits rose three times faster that salaries last year? It’s no surprise that more a YouGov/Sunday Times poll found the 1pc rise to welfare enjoys a 10-point lead in support. Ironically, welfare reform is one of the most popular things this government is doing. And it’s never more popular than amongst those on low wages, who share housing estates with the welfare-dependent and can see the injustice. You need to look at Britain through the columns of a spreadsheet not to see the wider point of what’s going on.'
Being welfare-dependent is not the same as receiving welfare. The government's proposals hit many more people than the welfare dependent. And nowhere close to 40% of welfare recipients are welfare-dependent. It would be nice to hear Tory minsiters make those points every now and again.
Do you not see the connection between the amount of housing benefit paid and the fact that a small two bed house costs £700 a month to rent?
The last government let HB get totally out of control (and in fairness it was not in great shape when they started). The result is a massive public sector subsidy to private sector landlords. This created the buy to let boom and the consequential boom in house prices that put the cost of a house beyond so many first time buyers.
HB is the problem, not the solution. The government needs to find ways to deflate the bubble created with over £20bn of public money being pumped in each year. Building will help in the very long run and has other benefits but the solution must be to stop HB driving up rents at public expense. That is what the Coalition has been trying to do and the petty politics played by Labour on this is unbelievably dishonest.
He said he was asked onto Today after he left a message on the BBC’s website criticising welfare cuts. ‘I put a comment on saying David Cameron can stick his Big Society where the sun doesn’t shine, or words to that effect,’ he said. ‘As a result I was invited to go to Newcastle and be interviewed by John Humphrys.’
Did the BBC ever do this sort of stuff to the left of centre parties?
The UK needs to have millions of extra houses built, with the state becoming a major landlord again.
I agree with the first part, but why does the state need to become a landlord?
I don't think we will ever agree on this, as politically we are worlds apart. I believe that the state using its resources, should try to influence markets, where it is in their interest. If the government worked with private sector to build loads of extra housing, a sizeable chunk of this should be retained in public ownership, so the government can make available properties at lower rents. This should have an impact on private sector rents and hopefully some affect on housing benefit claimed amounts. The government would then have assets which may increase in value over a period and be receiving rent income.
' it's probably not good time for an Osborne fan to be wanting the state out of the housing market.'
And if Labour hadn't completely abandoned state housing for 13 years and had the worst social house building record since world war 2 we wouldn't be in this mess.
Whoever wins the election won't be able to carry on with Osbornes increase in benefit spending. And the injection of £130 Billion in subsidised sub prime is likely to push up rents and housing benefits even further.
But there was a gazillion unaffordable bits of spending that were ignored or even increased between 1997 and 2010.
This time it's different ? Nobody believes that of the Brownites
Just to let you know, Re my biopsy results, that I got them last week and I DON'T have cancer!
I do, however, have a pre cancerous condition so I'm now lined up for an operation at the end of the month, followed by years of on-going care and possibly more surgery, but given the alternative I don't think it's too bad an outcome.
Thanks to everyone who's shown concern and interest, especially NickP.
If the help for homebuyers is properly targeted at new build it will increase the supply of housing; it will reduce the number eligible for housing benefit and it will increase the number of our population who are living independently of the state.
There are risks, not least of which is that policies to reduce HB will exert downward pressure on the housing market increasing the risk of the state guarantees being called upon in the event of default. There are clearly also risks, as with every such system, of abuse at the edges and no doubt some will find a way to subsidise a second rented out house.
If we are to encourage new housebuilding by the private sector and seek to rebalance our housing market away from a base of public subsidy these are risks that need to be taken. It is vastly cheaper and more effective than the alternative which would be for the public sector itself to build in a large way. We simply do not have the money for that and such building in the past has been of very poor quality and relatively short life span.
Has David Milliband resigned from something today?
I have heard rumours that Paolo di Canio is about to resign from Sunderland because of Miliband's role in the last Labour government
If we had a "like" facility with Vanilla this would definetely have earned a like from me because it made me LOL and I haven't done much of that lately.
The UK needs to have millions of extra houses built, with the state becoming a major landlord again.
I agree with the first part, but why does the state need to become a landlord?
I don't think we will ever agree on this, as politically we are worlds apart. I believe that the state using its resources, should try to influence markets, where it is in their interest. If the government worked with private sector to build loads of extra housing, a sizeable chunk of this should be retained in public ownership, so the government can make available properties at lower rents. This should have an impact on private sector rents and hopefully some affect on housing benefit claimed amounts. The government would then have assets which may increase in value over a period and be receiving rent income.
So if the market rate of a two-bed is, say, £1000 a month. The government owned sector charges £800 a month. What happens when a man who starts off on a £15k salary gets a council house, and his salary then increases to £40k? What if there is a woman on a £16k salary throughout who doesn't get in? Do you continue to give the guy that £200 a pound subsidy? Or do you force him to move out?
What other profit-seeking enterprises should the government get involved in?
Has David Milliband resigned from something today?
The board of Sunderland football club, because their new manager is a fascist. I'm not sure if he's objecting to him being anti-democratic, or if he's assuming all fascists are racists and anti-semitic, and resigning because of that.
Assuming that Alex Salmond hasn't gone mad, this article will both come as no surprise to him and will not end the mutually beneficial co-operation between the Scottish Government and NI. The editorial coverage has been broadly neutral thus far, the columnists have been pretty clear in their individual preference. If you were reading between the lines you would probably detect a level of annoyance at the No campaign that suggests the paper would quite like to back the UK if they were not so bloody useless.
As James said, the 2011 endorsement of the SNP was quite clearly pro Salmond leading Scotland within the UK, but was not a pro-independence endorsement.
I can't see this being a blow to the SNP in any way. The blow would come if Darling and his team actually managed to move the Sun editorial away from broad neutrality. It would have greater clout after years of being on the fence than those papers that have been raging against the Salmond machine for many years.
Just to let you know, Re my biopsy results, that I got them last week and I DON'T have cancer!
I do, however, have a pre cancerous condition so I'm now lined up for an operation at the end of the month, followed by years of on-going care and possibly more surgery, but given the alternative I don't think it's too bad an outcome.
Thanks to everyone who's shown concern and interest, especially NickP.
If EdM wins in 2015, what exactly will change? Apart from a few cosmetic changes, like bashing the bankers, or increasing the tax rates on the rich (which will be popular, or adding a few non-jobs to the public purse, his room for manoeuvre is limited in a capitalist world.
The Trots have a remedy of course, but it's a non-starter.
There are a few committed voters and quite a few tribalists, but the ones who swing the elections are the floaters and they want to see what's in it for them. A poor second is bashing an unpopular group such as the "fops" but that's not enough on its own.
So what is EdM to do? If he introduces raw lefty policies (not in the manifesto), he'll lose all credibility and probably the markets. If he puts them in the manifesto. he'll poll fewer than UKIP.
All that's left is obscuration and that may not be enough .... We're really going to change things next time, but we can't spell it out until we see the books, but we're really different. No good as UKIP have patented that model already.
A dream is good, change is good, but EdM is old-politics, and that's not good.
Whoever would have thought it? The government manipulating the figures (fibbing, in fact) to paint a picture that is a total distortion of the reality. We have been told countless times on here that the Tories never do such things, but countless times we find that they do - especially when it involves painting vulnerable people as malingering scroungers. How charming.
If we can have a Khmer Rouge loving ex-communist as Chancellor, Alistair Darling, I'm not sure why Sunderland Football Club can't have a fascist manager.
Sunderland are known as 'the black cats'. Perhaps they'll be known as the black shirts.
By the way, what is all the fuss about the £53 per week discussion with IDS.
His response was "If I had to, I would" which is entirely reasonable and responsible: adjusting personal spending to the available resources. The alternatives are increasing income (not possible in this scenario) or a debt-funded lifestyle.
@tim, @Southam - Hang on, you're off message. The attack line is supposed to be that evil heartless Tory fitness-for-work tests (you know, those ones which are run in the same way and by the same company as the cuddly, caring, Labour fitness for-work-tests) are forcing deserving disabled people not to apply for benefits they need and are entitled to. Now you are claiming the opposite, on the basis of one incoherent blog post by a Labour Party member who calls himself 'Skwawkbox'. Hardly the most authoritative, independent source, is he, and in any case, which of the two attack lines are you supposed to be running this morning?
Grant Spiv the by election supreme of "$20,000 in 20 days or your money back" fame involved in a competition with IDS on who can produce the most ludicrous fake figures, what a surprise.
Of course the usual suspects on here fell for it, they always do
Sadly, it does seem to be becoming par for the course: manipulate statistics to paint a false picture of scrounging malingerers in order to justify cuts in servifes and help to the most vulnerable in society. Yuck, as some might say.
Good point Bev, it was automatically assigned and I haven't got round to updating it. We don't want the thought police investigating OGH do we?
Indeed. I did not like the avatar it assigned me either so I had come up with one of my own.
I would not be surprised if the comment attributed to UKIP was true because although I have been tempted to vote for them on occasion there has always been an undertone of nastiness that stopped me. I also do not trust Farage - something about him sets alarm bells ringing. The last politician who did that for me was Chris Huhne, so I will go with my intuition and stay away from UKIP.
I do not trust Salmond either. I feel that his agenda is more about him than Scotland and I do not believe that when it comes down to it Scots will vote to go it alone.
The fact that Murdoch is not backing Salmond does not mean that Salmond will lose, it means that Murdoch has already come to the conclusion that Salmond will never win. Murdoch likes to back winners.
@tim, @Southam - Hang on, you're off message. The attack line is supposed to be that evil heartless Tory fitness-for-work tests (you know, those ones which are run in the same way and by the same company as the cuddly, caring, Labour fitness for-work-tests) are forcing deserving disabled people not to apply for benefits they need and are entitled to. Now you are claiming the opposite, on the basis of one incoherent blog post by a Labour Party member who calls himself 'Skwawkbox'. Hardly the most authoritative, independent source, is he, and in any case, which of the two attack lines are you supposed to be running this morning?
If EdM wins in 2015, what exactly will change? Apart from a few cosmetic changes, like bashing the bankers, or increasing the tax rates on the rich (which will be popular, or adding a few non-jobs to the public purse, his room for manoeuvre is limited in a capitalist world.
........
A dream is good, change is good, but EdM is old-politics, and that's not good.
Good summary of the situation - rEd's benefit line is beginning to resemble Cristina Kirchner on the Falklands - all mouth and no trousers.
I don't imagine Mr Farage said such a thing - its shreaks Plebgate to me - however there are rather too many opinions expressed in the Kippergraph comments that feel a bit too similar for my liking.
Hence - I'd never vote UKIP even though I can see their point on several issues and they've stirred things up something chronic - and it needed to be done IMO.
RT @jason_manc: "Ed Miliband loves identifying hard choices. His big problem is that he isn’t prepared to actually take any of them." http://tinyurl.com/cbz4cka
RT @JananGanesh: (1/2) Part of the knack of politics is being able to sense when history is moving on. Fighting the welfare cuts will come to seem like...
RT @JananGanesh: (2/2)...fighting the privatisation of utilities. These benefits aren't coming back. We are near-bust and old welfare consensus is fraying.
Yup. And Labour is once again on the wrong side of the blanket.
The BBC appointed Sunderland manager Paolo Di Canio as a football columnist for seven months - despite it being widely known that he was a self-proclaimed fascist."
... on the basis of one incoherent blog post by a Labour Party member who calls himself 'Skwawkbox'. Hardly the most authoritative, independent source, is he, and in any case, which of the two attack lines are you supposed to be running this morning?
More authoritative, independent and with masses more integrity than Michael Green.
"His response was "If I had to, I would" which is entirely reasonable and responsible: adjusting personal spending to the available resources"
Quite so. I should imagine that there are a large number of working people up and down the land who, despite holding down full time jobs, have less than fifty quid a week for food and discretionary spending. Consequently there is a lot of support from the low paid who see neighbours with a similar or, sometimes even better standard of living, solely from benefits. For all the squawking welfare reform is a popular, as well as necessary, idea.
Surely most of us have had to live on 50 quid a week after bills and rent before? I certainly had feck all left after everything was paid for for ages after moving to London. That's what Tesco value and Wetherspoons were made for!
When I coined £6k a month - blowing £120 on three bottles of bubbly was nothing in an evening, or eating out 5 nights a week - then I got divorced and halved that, then did it again and again and again until £50 a month was the level, never mind £50 a week.
It's remarkable how one can adapt when its necessary if very unpleasant. Going from one end of the spectrum to another is highly instructive. They say one should try everything once! ;^ )
If we can have a Khmer Rouge loving ex-communist as Chancellor, Alistair Darling, I'm not sure why Sunderland Football Club can't have a fascist manager.
Because being a leftie mass-murderer is 'loveable' while the right represents evil beyond the pale.
My view as an ex-recruitment agency type is that the Minimum Wage has created a defacto standard - that drags the better hourly rates down much more than its upped the lowest.
I can't recall the last time I saw a fairly unskilled or low skilled job that wasn't MW rated. It's now the default.
Yup, when my son was born and Herself stopped work we had £20 a month left after the bills were paid (this was 1993). I had a posting in central London at the time and came very close to clouting the big issue seller who, reeking of booze and smoking a fag (neither of which I could afford), came asking me for money.
RT @JohnRentoul: Chancellor argues that bedroom subsidy rules have applied to private sector housing for nearly 20 years; merely equalising social housing
High wages have been magnificent for countries like Spain, Italy and Greece - look at all the people there that have been lifted out of means tested benefits.
Labour sees the switch from public to private sector employment and doesn't like it - the answer to try and control the private sector. We'll its doing pretty well without government "help"....
£53 a week. Hmm Even my low mortgage costs more than this and renting also did. I assume this figure is after rent/mortgage ? If its after rent then I could probably live off £53 a week...
It's coming to something on PB when BenM is one of the most coherent leftists given that he's some far out views on economics - he's also one of the few who EVER show any empathy with others for their personal plights re illness etc.
Other PBers could learn a lot from his humanity towards others who don't agree with him all the time.
But only when it applies to the social rented sector, not the private rented sector?
Correct; the previous changes had zero political impact, there simply aren't millions of people with inter generational emotional attachment to "family homes" in the private sector.
This should have been obvious to every one involved.
Why should we have to pay for people addicted to free family homes. People in the private sector whether they love their house or not live their based on their ability to pay , not because it has lots of spare rooms. The travesty is that these people have been given social houses at either zero or peppercorn rents for so long that they cannot now face reality and expect as their right that someone else pays for their spare rooms.
The BBC appointed Sunderland manager Paolo Di Canio as a football columnist for seven months - despite it being widely known that he was a self-proclaimed fascist."
May be Andrea can correct me, but I thought the fascists were legal (if unsavory) in Italy (e.g. MSI as was).
So, people are objecting to someone who espouses a legal political opinion having a job?
My question yesterday was where had all the people gone and why had such an alleged reduction in ESA not resulted in a major increase in unemployment.
The answer seems to be that the way at least one of these figures, the 873K, was being presented was extremely misleading. Firstly, it was a total over 4 years not a result of recent changes. Secondly, it largely seems to have represented churn before assessment rather than people choosing not to take the assessment. So no surge.
What about the second figure which, as I recall, was 837K who had allegedly failed the tests? Presumably that was a total since Labour introduced the tests in 2008 as well. Doesn't seem to be so many comments about this one but that is the only explanation for the "missing" people.
I really think Shapps should be ashamed of himself. This kind of dishonesty with figures is best left to the Labour party. Welfare reform is absolutely necessary and reform in this context means reductions in amounts and reductions in the numbers in receipt. There is no choice about this. Demonising those affected is not big and its not clever and I really don't want the party I support doing it.
£53 a week. Hmm Even my low mortgage costs more than this and renting also did. I assume this figure is after rent/mortgage ? If its after rent then I could probably live off £53 a week...
Apparently its actually after all bills are paid !
£53 a week. Hmm Even my low mortgage costs more than this and renting also did. I assume this figure is after rent/mortgage ? If its after rent then I could probably live off £53 a week...
My wife used to live off $60 a week after rent & bills - it's pretty miserable: her biggest expense was gas, her staple food pasta and her weekly luxury a Starbucks coffee.
I despair at this stuff re thought police - when you can get arrested for being rude about Tom Daley's dead dad on Twitter?!
FFS. Or posting a pix of burning paper poppy on Facebook? I'm not one who'd do such a thing, but we should have the right to do it and be offensive - elsewhere is tyranny.
My question yesterday was where had all the people gone and why had such an alleged reduction in ESA not resulted in a major increase in unemployment.
The answer seems to be that the way at least one of these figures, the 873K, was being presented was extremely misleading. Firstly, it was a total over 4 years not a result of recent changes. Secondly, it largely seems to have represented churn before assessment rather than people choosing not to take the assessment. So no surge.
What about the second figure which, as I recall, was 837K who had allegedly failed the tests? Presumably that was a total since Labour introduced the tests in 2008 as well. Doesn't seem to be so many comments about this one but that is the only explanation for the "missing" people.
I really think Shapps should be ashamed of himself. This kind of dishonesty with figures is best left to the Labour party. Welfare reform is absolutely necessary and reform in this context means reductions in amounts and reductions in the numbers in receipt. There is no choice about this. Demonising those affected is not big and its not clever and I really don't want the party I support doing it.
Oh ! Right £53/week.. Well I could leave the car on the drive with a SORN if I didn't have work, lets see next expenses.. mortgage, council tax, gas, leccy, tv license..
So whats left ? Food. Probably £30 a week. Phone contract £3/week or so.
"High wages have been magnificent for countries like Spain, Italy and Greece - look at all the people there that have been lifted out of means tested benefits."
I am not sure applicable a comparison with those countries and the UK is in this context, Mr,. Ghost.
If welfare bills are running out of control in part because of in work benefits then there would seem to be an argument that the taxpayer (including companies) is subsidising, often quite large, firms. Aside from anything else it is an inefficient way of running way of doing business. Therefore, is there not an argument to be had that obliging firms to pay more, whilst at the same time reducing the tax burden on them (perhaps by cutting employers NIC) would produce a better result all round (except, I suppose, for the civil servants who are employed to administer the current money go round)?
HMG is still going to have to grasp the nettle of raising pension age faster than planned, but that is a different argument.
I don't imagine Mr Farage said such a thing - its shreaks Plebgate to me - however there are rather too many opinions expressed in the Kippergraph comments that feel a bit too similar for my liking.
Given the quote being attributed to Farage, if it is another plebgate then Farage will have that MEPs guts for garters. That was a very strong accusation.
If, however it can be demonstrated that Farage did say that then the whole thing takes on a completely new light...
Interesting piece but he is being naive if he thinks that contributory systems is the way to go. The sad truth is that generations of educational and aspirational failure have created a significant underclass who simply do not contribute to our society. In times past they would have worked, stolen or starved but politicians have up to now paid Danegeld to buy a quietish life from them by accepting intergenerational welfare.
There are no easy answers to this and there will be hardship but there are two underlying forces supporting IDS's reforms. Firstly, leaving these people and their children to live desperately poor, pointless and miserable lives on benefit is a moral abhorance. On his good days IDS articulates that well.
Secondly, we simply cannot afford it any more. Without the panacea of significant growth we have to cut government spending by at least £100bn a year, even if we increase taxes as well which we will. It is inconceivable that we will accept an ever rising benefit bill in such a scenario. In fact the political pressure to increase benefit cuts will only increase as other budgets get squeezed.
The IMF will sort the benefits bill when Labour are forced to call them in.
If welfare bills are running out of control in part because of in work benefits then there would seem to be an argument that the taxpayer (including companies) is subsidising, often quite large, firms. Aside from anything else it is an inefficient way of running way of doing business. Therefore, is there not an argument to be had that obliging firms to pay more, whilst at the same time reducing the tax burden on them (perhaps by cutting employers NIC) would produce a better result all round (except, I suppose, for the civil servants who are employed to administer the current money go round)?
You could argue that the coalition has significantly raised the minimum wage by extending the 0% tax rate.
Govt should stay out of putting red tape on private business - if they are worried about the poor then stop taxing them.
UPDATE: Buried in his HMT promoted speech is Osborne’s general election campaign message:
With all our welfare changes, we’re simply asking people on benefits to make some of the same choices working families have to make every day. To live in a less expensive house. To live in a house without a spare bedroom unless they can afford it. To get by on the average family income. These are the realities of life for working people. They should be the reality for everyone else too.
No wonder the Tories were PRing the speech too. Whose side are Labour on? Simples…
Just to let you know, Re my biopsy results, that I got them last week and I DON'T have cancer!
I do, however, have a pre cancerous condition so I'm now lined up for an operation at the end of the month, followed by years of on-going care and possibly more surgery, but given the alternative I don't think it's too bad an outcome.
Thanks to everyone who's shown concern and interest, especially NickP.
Now, on to REALLY important stuff like...
The Bedroom Tax!!!!!!!!!
Glad the biopsy pinpointed the issue in good time - it sounds as though they're on top of it and you should be OK, even though the whole thing sounds like a nasty business to go through. Every good wish for the op and subsequent care. You can put us all straight on whether the NHS works or not! A sample of 1 is 1 bigger than we sometimes see here :-)
UPDATE: Buried in his HMT promoted speech is Osborne’s general election campaign message:
With all our welfare changes, we’re simply asking people on benefits to make some of the same choices working families have to make every day. To live in a less expensive house. To live in a house without a spare bedroom unless they can afford it. To get by on the average family income. These are the realities of life for working people. They should be the reality for everyone else too.
No wonder the Tories were PRing the speech too. Whose side are Labour on? Simples…
tim would rather whine about the colour of the speaker's skin and the pitch of his voice.
Why should any politician live off £53 ? they've got off their rear and made a career for themselves and their family.
An argument for bubblistas and communists only.
There is also no-one on benefits living on £53 per week, they forget to add all the other bits like rent , council tax assistance, etc etc. It is the poor sods working for minimum wage that get the raw deal , they have to pay their own bills.
So...after 2015 the new government will be pretty much forced to: 1. Actually address the deficit or see interest rates rise to crippling levels 2. Cut the welfare state - and, shock horror, see that this is popular with the low paid. 3. Address our balance of payments deficit - export more or import less
Oh shit - that sounds like a hard real programme of government. And Labour will HATE all of it.
Milliband's premiership is going to be an utter, unmitigated Hollande experience.
OT I have a mouse in my bedroom. Given I've 8 cats that sleep on the bed each night, they are remarkably incurious about the little furry rodent that I can hear nibbling the woodwork in the early hours.
Cats used to eat flies, spiders and other small insects but I've noticed a laxity over the last year or so - even now a bluebottle bashing on a windowpane barely gets a second glance - I blame Osborne.
@Plato Perhaps you should incentivise your cats to catch mice the coalition way and withdraw cat food until they decide that going to work is preferable to their current existence on benefits.
"So where do we look for the idea that can make hope more powerful than fear? Not to the Labour party. If Ed Miliband cannot bring himself even to oppose a bill which retrospectively denies compensation to cheated jobseekers, the most we can expect from him is a low-alcohol conservatism of the kind that doused all aspiration under Tony Blair."
When all one has is ad homs - everyone else can see there is no battle being fought nor argument to win.
I find it most amusing - the ruder and more dismissive the attacks as fops, fools, stupid, Burleys et al - the more I know the poster is lost for a credible line of attack.
It's all noise and no signal. Repeated hundreds of times.
What's the situation with Edmund's widget? The unremitting negativity of some posters really is making the site unreadable, and I'd like to give this ignore feature a try.
Telegraph: “Benefits reform: 'welfare victim' who dared Iain Duncan Smith to live on £53 is a gambler”
Perhaps like me he lurks around here occasionally
“A father who dared Iain Duncan Smith to live up to his claim that he could survive on £53 a week has been revealed as a gambler and a self-confessed 'ducker and diver'. David Bennett, 51, told the BBC he was struggling to survive after his housing benefit was cut, but it has emerged that the divorced father of two is a regular gambler who used part of an inheritance from his grandmother to play poker.” ... “On his Twitter account, Mr Bennett's profile says 'Poker player, self-employed ducker and diver', although he changed this yesterday to 'Market trader', and adds that his hobbies are 'football, poker and beer’.”
LOL, scrounger extraordinaire, make something positive out of that Tim
I despair at this stuff re thought police - when you can get arrested for being rude about Tom Daley's dead dad on Twitter?!
FFS. Or posting a pix of burning paper poppy on Facebook? I'm not one who'd do such a thing, but we should have the right to do it and be offensive - elsewhere is tyranny.
Absolutely. And this government of supposed liberals democrats and liberal conservatives has done absolutely zero to turn the clock back on this sort of crap. No wonder people are disillusioned with them.
Re the £53 - IDS is guilty only of failing to think quickly enough or not having anticipated the question.
His answer should have been - 'yes, if I were under 25 and looking for work I would get £53 per week same as everyone else. I would cope but it'd make me look damned hard for a job knowing that with Universal Credit I'd keep a lot more of my benefit that I would under the last government and its love of the poverty trap. And that £53 is more in cash terms than the last government ever paid the unemployed young adult...."
@jameschappers: Chancellor glottal stopping all over the place today...
The last glottal stop I heard from a politician came from the sweet mouth of Rowena Davis when reviewing papers on Sky News. It confirmed Andrea's view that the delightful girl is be'er pushed into Peckham than Hampstead.
I see Joey Jones has picked up on Chappers's tweet and is talking glottal stops on Sky without acknowledgement to his fellow journo.
Test yourself, tim:
Betty Botter bought a bit of butter. The butter Betty Botter bought was a bit bitter And made her batter bitter. But a bit of better butter makes better batter. So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter Making Betty Botter's bitter batter better
Pronounce "bought" like "bart" and you too could become a baronet.
Comments
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2302545/Truth-BBC-welfare-victim-David-Bennett-dared-Iain-Duncan-Smith-live-53-week.html
"In February, he tweeted to two gambling tipsters, telling them: ‘Rough day today lads, gonna have to find your magic potion again soon.’ The month before he tweeted he had won an accumulator bet at odds of 28/1.
He also had accounts on poker websites and, in December, used part of an inheritance from his grandmother to gamble at the card game."
It's just a shock knowing that your cells are beginning to go wrong, especially when you feel fine. But I'm getting towards middle age and I guess I haven't looked after myself like I should have done and this is the result.
At least it's not too bad and we still have time to deal with the problem.
Do you not see the connection between the amount of housing benefit paid and the fact that a small two bed house costs £700 a month to rent?
The last government let HB get totally out of control (and in fairness it was not in great shape when they started). The result is a massive public sector subsidy to private sector landlords. This created the buy to let boom and the consequential boom in house prices that put the cost of a house beyond so many first time buyers.
HB is the problem, not the solution. The government needs to find ways to deflate the bubble created with over £20bn of public money being pumped in each year. Building will help in the very long run and has other benefits but the solution must be to stop HB driving up rents at public expense. That is what the Coalition has been trying to do and the petty politics played by Labour on this is unbelievably dishonest.
Did the BBC ever do this sort of stuff to the left of centre parties?
Great news - hope you're back to top form soonest.
https://www.facebook.com/SajjadKarimMEP/posts/432093776884079 "
There's no love lost between Farage and Sked. Farage has always denied it.
@Plato
Thanks.
@Tim
Do you think The Boy's going to unleash a Fannie on us?
' it's probably not good time for an Osborne fan to be wanting the state out of the housing market.'
And if Labour hadn't completely abandoned state housing for 13 years and had the worst social house building record since world war 2 we wouldn't be in this mess.
This time it's different ? Nobody believes that of the Brownites
Get well soon.
There are risks, not least of which is that policies to reduce HB will exert downward pressure on the housing market increasing the risk of the state guarantees being called upon in the event of default. There are clearly also risks, as with every such system, of abuse at the edges and no doubt some will find a way to subsidise a second rented out house.
If we are to encourage new housebuilding by the private sector and seek to rebalance our housing market away from a base of public subsidy these are risks that need to be taken. It is vastly cheaper and more effective than the alternative which would be for the public sector itself to build in a large way. We simply do not have the money for that and such building in the past has been of very poor quality and relatively short life span.
@Andrea
@Sunil
Thanks.
What other profit-seeking enterprises should the government get involved in?
LOL!
As James said, the 2011 endorsement of the SNP was quite clearly pro Salmond leading Scotland within the UK, but was not a pro-independence endorsement.
I can't see this being a blow to the SNP in any way. The blow would come if Darling and his team actually managed to move the Sun editorial away from broad neutrality. It would have greater clout after years of being on the fence than those papers that have been raging against the Salmond machine for many years.
http://skwalker1964.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/govts-disability-distortion-even-worse-than-it-looked/
I bet the usual suspects here fell for it.
Very pleased to hear your news. Very best of luck with the operation.
If EdM wins in 2015, what exactly will change? Apart from a few cosmetic changes, like bashing the bankers, or increasing the tax rates on the rich (which will be popular, or adding a few non-jobs to the public purse, his room for manoeuvre is limited in a capitalist world.
The Trots have a remedy of course, but it's a non-starter.
There are a few committed voters and quite a few tribalists, but the ones who swing the elections are the floaters and they want to see what's in it for them. A poor second is bashing an unpopular group such as the "fops" but that's not enough on its own.
So what is EdM to do? If he introduces raw lefty policies (not in the manifesto), he'll lose all credibility and probably the markets. If he puts them in the manifesto. he'll poll fewer than UKIP.
All that's left is obscuration and that may not be enough .... We're really going to change things next time, but we can't spell it out until we see the books, but we're really different. No good as UKIP have patented that model already.
A dream is good, change is good, but EdM is old-politics, and that's not good.
@BenM
Thanks both. :)
Bev.
:-O
Bev.
His response was "If I had to, I would" which is entirely reasonable and responsible: adjusting personal spending to the available resources. The alternatives are increasing income (not possible in this scenario) or a debt-funded lifestyle.
I would not be surprised if the comment attributed to UKIP was true because although I have been tempted to vote for them on occasion there has always been an undertone of nastiness that stopped me. I also do not trust Farage - something about him sets alarm bells ringing. The last politician who did that for me was Chris Huhne, so I will go with my intuition and stay away from UKIP.
I do not trust Salmond either. I feel that his agenda is more about him than Scotland and I do not believe that when it comes down to it Scots will vote to go it alone.
The fact that Murdoch is not backing Salmond does not mean that Salmond will lose, it means that Murdoch has already come to the conclusion that Salmond will never win. Murdoch likes to back winners.
Bev.
http://lartsocial.org/shapps
Can you explain where this analysis has gone wrong?
I don't imagine Mr Farage said such a thing - its shreaks Plebgate to me - however there are rather too many opinions expressed in the Kippergraph comments that feel a bit too similar for my liking.
Hence - I'd never vote UKIP even though I can see their point on several issues and they've stirred things up something chronic - and it needed to be done IMO.
RT @jason_manc: "Ed Miliband loves identifying hard choices. His big problem is that he isn’t prepared to actually take any of them." http://tinyurl.com/cbz4cka
Gerry_Mander,
Your avatar is obviously outrageously racist, SO's is fine as it's disabled, and mine looks like a UKIP supporter.
I'd vote UKIP as a protest, but I don't trust them either.
What to do? How about the SeanT Loony party?
RT @JananGanesh: (2/2)...fighting the privatisation of utilities. These benefits aren't coming back. We are near-bust and old welfare consensus is fraying.
Yup. And Labour is once again on the wrong side of the blanket.
"mine looks like a UKIP supporter."
LOL
"BBC appointed self-proclaimed fascist Di Canio as football columnist
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9966098/BBC-appointed-self-proclaimed-fascist-Di-Canio-as-football-columnist.html
The BBC appointed Sunderland manager Paolo Di Canio as a football columnist for seven months - despite it being widely known that he was a self-proclaimed fascist."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19431338
Quite so. I should imagine that there are a large number of working people up and down the land who, despite holding down full time jobs, have less than fifty quid a week for food and discretionary spending. Consequently there is a lot of support from the low paid who see neighbours with a similar or, sometimes even better standard of living, solely from benefits. For all the squawking welfare reform is a popular, as well as necessary, idea.
'But The Fence has been completed, and it is sturdy. The Tories are standing on the right side of it. Labour is not.'
And little Ed has found himself on the wrong side of the fence.
Pure comedy
How much are they the same people / problem?
What are the costs of each?
Are attitudes to them both the same (although thousands contribute to the black economy by paying cash in hand to tradesmen)?
When I coined £6k a month - blowing £120 on three bottles of bubbly was nothing in an evening, or eating out 5 nights a week - then I got divorced and halved that, then did it again and again and again until £50 a month was the level, never mind £50 a week.
It's remarkable how one can adapt when its necessary if very unpleasant. Going from one end of the spectrum to another is highly instructive. They say one should try everything once! ;^ )
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100023849/minimum-wage-should-be-substantially-raised-not-cut/
(sorry Neil)
The unintended consequence has been to level down low pay to (or towards) minimum pay.
My view as an ex-recruitment agency type is that the Minimum Wage has created a defacto standard - that drags the better hourly rates down much more than its upped the lowest.
I can't recall the last time I saw a fairly unskilled or low skilled job that wasn't MW rated. It's now the default.
Yup, when my son was born and Herself stopped work we had £20 a month left after the bills were paid (this was 1993). I had a posting in central London at the time and came very close to clouting the big issue seller who, reeking of booze and smoking a fag (neither of which I could afford), came asking me for money.
RT @JohnRentoul: Chancellor argues that bedroom subsidy rules have applied to private sector housing for nearly 20 years; merely equalising social housing
Not that that will sink in to any 1yr static analysis gurus.
Labour sees the switch from public to private sector employment and doesn't like it - the answer to try and control the private sector. We'll its doing pretty well without government "help"....
Other PBers could learn a lot from his humanity towards others who don't agree with him all the time.
The travesty is that these people have been given social houses at either zero or peppercorn rents for so long that they cannot now face reality and expect as their right that someone else pays for their spare rooms.
So, people are objecting to someone who espouses a legal political opinion having a job?
What a brave new world we live in
Where's that rotten fruit? I can get there in less than 30 in the car!
The answer seems to be that the way at least one of these figures, the 873K, was being presented was extremely misleading. Firstly, it was a total over 4 years not a result of recent changes. Secondly, it largely seems to have represented churn before assessment rather than people choosing not to take the assessment. So no surge.
What about the second figure which, as I recall, was 837K who had allegedly failed the tests? Presumably that was a total since Labour introduced the tests in 2008 as well. Doesn't seem to be so many comments about this one but that is the only explanation for the "missing" people.
I really think Shapps should be ashamed of himself. This kind of dishonesty with figures is best left to the Labour party. Welfare reform is absolutely necessary and reform in this context means reductions in amounts and reductions in the numbers in receipt. There is no choice about this. Demonising those affected is not big and its not clever and I really don't want the party I support doing it.
But it can be done.
I despair at this stuff re thought police - when you can get arrested for being rude about Tom Daley's dead dad on Twitter?!
FFS. Or posting a pix of burning paper poppy on Facebook? I'm not one who'd do such a thing, but we should have the right to do it and be offensive - elsewhere is tyranny.
So whats left ? Food. Probably £30 a week. Phone contract £3/week or so.
Is this supposed to be hard or something ?
I am not sure applicable a comparison with those countries and the UK is in this context, Mr,. Ghost.
If welfare bills are running out of control in part because of in work benefits then there would seem to be an argument that the taxpayer (including companies) is subsidising, often quite large, firms. Aside from anything else it is an inefficient way of running way of doing business. Therefore, is there not an argument to be had that obliging firms to pay more, whilst at the same time reducing the tax burden on them (perhaps by cutting employers NIC) would produce a better result all round (except, I suppose, for the civil servants who are employed to administer the current money go round)?
HMG is still going to have to grasp the nettle of raising pension age faster than planned, but that is a different argument.
If, however it can be demonstrated that Farage did say that then the whole thing takes on a completely new light...
Bev.
RT @CourtNewsUK: Met Police detective who poisoned colleague by spiking bottle of Lucozade with anti-freeze today facing jail http://t.co/D1JTj5ekvn
Govt should stay out of putting red tape on private business - if they are worried about the poor then stop taxing them.
UPDATE: Buried in his HMT promoted speech is Osborne’s general election campaign message:
With all our welfare changes, we’re simply asking people on benefits to make some of the same choices working families have to make every day.
To live in a less expensive house.
To live in a house without a spare bedroom unless they can afford it.
To get by on the average family income.
These are the realities of life for working people.
They should be the reality for everyone else too.
No wonder the Tories were PRing the speech too. Whose side are Labour on? Simples…
Every good wish for the op and subsequent care. You can put us all straight on whether the NHS works or not! A sample of 1 is 1 bigger than we sometimes see here :-)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/borrowing/mortgages/9966222/Mortgage-approvals-continue-to-fall-in-February.html
"Mortgage approvals dropped 4.7pc to 51,653 in February, following a 2pc fall in January, according to statistics from the Bank of England."
tim would rather whine about the colour of the speaker's skin and the pitch of his voice.
Nailed on I tells ya..
Some good news Gin,all the best with the Operation.
1. Actually address the deficit or see interest rates rise to crippling levels
2. Cut the welfare state - and, shock horror, see that this is popular with the low paid.
3. Address our balance of payments deficit - export more or import less
Oh shit - that sounds like a hard real programme of government. And Labour will HATE all of it.
Milliband's premiership is going to be an utter, unmitigated Hollande experience.
Cats used to eat flies, spiders and other small insects but I've noticed a laxity over the last year or so - even now a bluebottle bashing on a windowpane barely gets a second glance - I blame Osborne.
"So where do we look for the idea that can make hope more powerful than fear? Not to the Labour party. If Ed Miliband cannot bring himself even to oppose a bill which retrospectively denies compensation to cheated jobseekers, the most we can expect from him is a low-alcohol conservatism of the kind that doused all aspiration under Tony Blair."
When all one has is ad homs - everyone else can see there is no battle being fought nor argument to win.
I find it most amusing - the ruder and more dismissive the attacks as fops, fools, stupid, Burleys et al - the more I know the poster is lost for a credible line of attack.
It's all noise and no signal. Repeated hundreds of times.
His answer should have been - 'yes, if I were under 25 and looking for work I would get £53 per week same as everyone else. I would cope but it'd make me look damned hard for a job knowing that with Universal Credit I'd keep a lot more of my benefit that I would under the last government and its love of the poverty trap. And that £53 is more in cash terms than the last government ever paid the unemployed young adult...."
I see Joey Jones has picked up on Chappers's tweet and is talking glottal stops on Sky without acknowledgement to his fellow journo.
Test yourself, tim:
Betty Botter bought a bit of butter.
The butter Betty Botter bought was a bit bitter
And made her batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter makes better batter.
So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter
Making Betty Botter's bitter batter better
Pronounce "bought" like "bart" and you too could become a baronet.
Dan Hodges @DPJHodges
Main significance of Osborne speech is that he's giving it. Tories going on offensive on welfare, not trying to firefight.