Chrysalis

yep as soon as I mentioned not in full time employment both LA's inthe area put the phone down on me, they have got dozens of properties empty for months but still dont want any benefit claimants. Its a lowish employment area as well as its seasonal work mainly.

how do I know what cannabis smells like as I have never used it. also I reported my neighbour as a suspected cannabis grower, the police werent interested, they were so laid back it was unbelievable.

Ok I am needing to move mainly for health reasons and as I claim houising benefit have very limited choice in the market. I found by chance a private landlady not using a letting agent in the area i want to move to and negotiated with her and she is willing to take me on, however I negotiated too far so then renegotiated saying I didnt have so much ready cash and now the deal is this. The reason i did that is I feel the risk of them doing a runner is too high now as they seem desperate for cash. I pay 3 months rent in advance. Bond to be sorted out during the initial 6 months. initial 6 month agreement but will be renewed for longer after. she pays half of cost of fitting a BT line. (installation) In addition the place has no central heating, no gas at all, so all electric. single glazed, no carpet in living room, no curtians, storage heaters, card meter for electric. Obviously the heating cost will be very high for water and heating, so I negotiated 25 a month of the asking price, which I suspect will be added on first renewal, they agreed to put up curtians, supply a couple of rugs for living room and a heater for the living room as that has no heater at all. I plan to buy a oil radiator tho as probably cheaper than normal electric heaters. Suddenly I have a concern of paying 3 months up front and something then going wrong ie. they scam me and I dont get the flat, worried they not paid mortgage or something. So would like to check if possible. Also management fees were mentioned to my dad when he did a 2nd visit, he got the impression I wa sbeen asked to pay them on top of rent so told me. When I asked the landlady she said dont worry she will handle them but I am sitting here thinking what management fees would a landlady be paying who doesnt use a LA? my dad said she said £80 a month. Also any reccomended companies that will move furniture from east midlands to norfolk?

interesting, is first I heard of this. So the tories made no ammendmants etc. they simply made people aware of it?

if only we could all print money. Now if wages inflated then no problem I believe debt deflation could work, the problem is official inflation figures will be spoofed and wage inflation will remain low.

The nhs is bloated for sure, my opinion of it is low at the moment. As some already know, I am on incapacity benefit, I am 31 years old and have had my health problem since I was 25 and a half. When my problem was new to me I must have made easily 30 or 40 GP visits within a year, out of those visits I had maybe 5 or 6 hospital refferals which led to some MRI scans on my head and back and was told no obvious problem found. At that point the GP's gave up and all my latest visits I get the impression they think I am either lying or they don't consider it serious. Now when nhs direct first was introduced I used it a few times as had severe pains in legs and feet and a ambulance took me to the hospital for painkillers and diagnosis, it also took me home. However late last year I had very severe diarhoee following a bad reaction to anti biotics, I was extremely dehydrated rejecting water , severe pain in bowel and stomach and couldnt sleep. numerous 999 calls even after I told was advised to use by 999 by out of hours GP I ended up been threatened with the police for using up 999 resources, I told the police to come but their threat was clearly a bluff. NHS direct this time refused an ambulance stating not enough resources (cost cuts?) so clearly the NHS is now worse than it was a few years back and also my GP refused a home visit.

such a policy splits britian into two and a civil war would start. I guess thats why the police are needed to defend the new upper class this would serve?

watched the clip, I only seen him talk about raising muslim representation in the parliament, nothing said about housing.

Well the flaws of LHA are raising itself. LHA for a start has to a big of a catchment area, so as someone else has said it can lead to high rents for grotty properties because it also covers better areas. But at the same time it should also mean it underpays for the better areas. For example me a current housing benefit claimant if I moved on to LHA I would get less benefit as the LHA rate in my area is not enough to pay my rent (395 a month). This shows how some areas have got out of control, my area the LHA rate is just £80 a week for a 1bed property (55 a week for a bedsit/room) and £95 a week for a 2 bed property. Yet some areas are getting huge amounts. As for landlords fighting over benefit claimants, it may be the case in london but it isnt in the east midands and east anglia, I wanted to move nearer to my parents and out of my city but all vacant property EA's wouldnt deal with me as I don't work. In my local paper my landlord is the only one out of the entire section who doesn't specifically put no DSS. Finally, yes the tories are the prime cause of this mess, very short termist policy of buying votes by allowing people to buy houses on the cheap for their own personal profit (like they want to do now with bank shares, promoting personal greed again back to old ways) which has led to these social problems we have today in a lack of cheap social housing. Labour could have halted the right to buy tho but didn't so they are not blameless either.

that graph is someone's dream? seems very detached from reality. or perhaps bankers bonuses have pushed the averages up.

18% average? some people must have very low interest rates, mine is 34%.

then how can he afford it whilst property empty?

I dont sign any tenancy agreements now until landlord has signed first.

Here is my story. First severn trent are sending 2 bills to this address, one for me, and one for some guy I have no idea who it is. I told them politely 3 times to remove his record at this address and they said they would do it but clearly havent, so I am now witholding my own bill until its done. Strangely I get no reminders but they keep coming for this other guy. Second lloyds tsb sent a letter to someone else, I opened it and some guy has brought and paid for house insurance at this address, some months later after various monthly statements a letter says they have cancelled the policy due to non payment. Third, there is various letters for various names for applied for credit, loans and credit cards. Finally there is some for debt from debt collectors.

LL's make me laugh at times. It seems 90% of property owners feel young proffessionals are the ideal tenants and then start rejecting what is otherwise. What they dont realise is they cutting themselves off from chunks of the market.

yeah I see no problem with the death tax. What I have a problem with is people whoring cash, sure people should save up for things they want to buy, but then to just keep saving more and more without putting it in the economy is bad for the rest of us. Forcefully taking 10% on death seems fine to me.

I am not surprised one bit. There is what I see 3 different shopping scenarious. 1 - Town centre, lots of walking, pay to park, dingy looking (mine is). 2 - Out of town shopping park, free parking, nicer looking, less walking. I put supermarkets on this category also. 3 - Internet shopping, cheapest usually out of the lot, dont need to leave own home. Funny enough my council I feel did something very silly, they pedestranised big chunks of the city centre. The result was, people with mobility problems such as myself seriously upset, even fit and healthy people who catch buses etc, now have to walk in from further out, they pedestranised a high street which had hardly any shops anyway and buses are now rerouted down a narrow road which did at least have used shops on it. I have not been to my city centre since this all occured but from I have heard, we have the market, we have the indoor shopping complex which recently expanded, however the shops on the streets are fast been closed and there is a glut of empty properties. Night life has had it the centre now has a reputation of been dangerous with too many stabbings. I think #1 is doomed, #2 will be fine as the internet will not likely make up 100% of shopping, so the future will be a mix of out of town shopping parks and internet.

can I ask why you been age discriminate? the fit and healthy should be actively looking for when when claiming benefit regardless of age. But I do see and hear time and time again the young getting special preference when it comes to abuse aimed at the unemployed.

That article wasnt what I expected it raises a very good point. Take a person on benefit. They try to start been a sole trader for example. But they need a period of time of financial security whilst the income from what they doing would not be enough for them to live on. The only workable solution for that person is to not declare the income and then declare it when the time is right. One big weakness of the current benefit system is its a all or nothing on specific benefits, if you doing any kind of work you lose the benefit and as such anything you declare needs to be enough to live on. The alternative when not wanting to break the law is dont do the work at all.

to be fair to shelter they are the only organisation I know that pubished a housing benefit rule that allows claimants to stop waiting for months on end for a decision. The rule been can get 'payment on account'.

food for thought, 30-50% sacked. so lower public services bill. However unemployment as a result shoots up so higher social welfare bill. Who is going to give these people new jobs? I guess the motto is its cheaper to pay them JSA than a living wage.

I guess I am imagining my insane living cost inflation then.

From my own experience, a wealthy person or someone who owns a company will have a fixed figure in their head on what they consider acceptable tax. If the government increases the top tax rate then I assume all that happens is they declare a lower income and as such still only pay that fixed figure. So to me it seems obvious the problem. The government either doesn't have the means or the willpower to come down on the wealthy, so new tax revenue generally has to come from the poor since people on PAYE have no choice it is taken directly out of their wages. I have come to the conclusion money really is the root of all evil and we would benefit if all money was instantly declared useless. The modern day laws written by the land owners, even a previous posted on this thread explained how his family came to own land by killing people etc. once landowners were established laws were put in place to protect their wealth and nothing more. So in modern day society if I go up to a landowner and kill him I wont be able to declare his land mine but instead will be in prison. I am not sure a revolution will happen, the population is well under control now, masses controlled via tax credits and child benefits and the police powers are been increased year upon year. In theory if 10s of millions of people worked together the government and the wealthy would all become powerless but minds are split.

If FPTP was scrapped I believe they would have far more seats then they have now. I am sort of in the category you said, I know labour are a problem but the tories are not the fix.

Here is me at the bottom of the scale. Income per month 720 - excluding council tax benefit that factored into outgoing council tax rent 395 council tax 17 food 120-160 landline 12 broadband 20 mobile 35 sky 20 electric/gas average over year I would say about 40 water 10 tv licence 13 debt commitments 15 I think thats pretty much it of regular outgoings, in terms of cuts well sky is planned to go and I will be ok with freesat, Virgin media cable now available so I am considering dropping the BT landline, broadband and getting a combined cable package. Mobile phone contract ends in june/july and at that point I will renew without a free gift/phone so should be a lot cheaper. Can see food is a big part of my outgoings hence why someone like me on a very low income is affected by food inflation so much, if the rent goes up my housing benefit should go up to match the increase so the problem for me is food inflation and electric/gas inflation. Recently I got offered a job with 17k (seems guy bailed out tho he making excuses to not employ me now and I have to chase him for any updates). I did a tax calculator to work out income after tax, and I would be about £200 a month better off. To me I would be fairly comfortable on that wage but clearly my standard of living is way below what many people are used to. If I was on 22k, I would consider it a luxury considering the highest wage I have ever been on is 14.5k and that I currently live on barely 8k (net).