Low paid workers in poor cities are set to bear the brunt of the benefit caps as tens of thousands of families, including up to 200,000 children, are exported from London into already cash strapped cities. This massive internal migration could see some areas overwhelmed with claimants. A recent DWP report suggested seaside towns in the South East are expected to be hit hardest as thousands of low income, unemployed, sick or disabled parents are socially cleansed from London along with their kids. This report was only looking at the impact of the Housing Benefit caps already introduced, not the far more extensive overall benefit cap introduced this week and which will make the problem much worse. The mass forced relocation will not even stop with the Benefit Cap. Some London councils are rewriting the rules on social housing with the aim of turning it into a subsidy for middle class professionals unable to buy a house in the capital. Social Housing rents can now be set at 80% of the average local market rent, meaning that even a council flat will be unaffordable for claimants in London. The Benefit Uprating Bill which caps annual Housing Benefit rises at 1%, when rents are rising at a rate of 16% a year in some parts of the capital, will only add to the tidal wave of people forced to leave the city. The bedroom tax, and other benefit reforms will also help contribute to burgeoning benefit ghettos in South Eastern seaside towns and beyond. Astonishingly even this is not enough for greedy Tories who seem intent on exporting all low income families to the North of England, Wales and Scotland where they can then be abandoned to managed decline. A cap on benefits at £20,000 a year, an idea floated this week in the Tory press, will make almost the entire South of England unaffordable for people on benefits. It is difficult to even imagine the scale of the social chaos this would cause. Up to a million people, possibly even more, would be turned into economic refugees overnight. Cities like Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow or Birmingham could see population increases that will dwarf anything ever seen due to immigration from overseas. None of these people will have homes or jobs. Some will be unable to work due to sickness, disability or childcare responsibilities. The pressure on schools, hospitals, housing and other local services would be overwhelming for local authorities already making vicious cuts. Currently the cap will only apply to families. Whilst a cap on benefits for single people has also been introduced at £350 a week, this is actually more than single people can currently claim in benefits in all but a tiny fraction of cases – if it impacts on anyone at all. The Benefit Cap for single people has been pure spin, designed to give the impression that people on benefits were receiving more than they actually are. However should this cap be reduced, in line with George’s Osborne’s recent fantasies, then the impact would be huge in those areas swamped by economic refugees. It is no secret that a very small minority of claimants face significant difficulties in their lives, such as a serious criminal history, or addiction to drugs or alcohol. Many of these people are single claimants in the private sector where rents are soaring. Others are socially housed and vulnerable to eviction due to the bedroom tax or other cuts to benefits. Eviction from social housing in London will now often mean exportation to private sector housing in the North. Imagine for a second every chaotic heroin addict or street drinker in the South of England, every unemployed convicted violent offender or every family like the Philpotts, turning up in Northern cities after being socially cleansed from the South. At present these people are dispersed, albeit in already poor areas, throughout the UK. As London and the South East seeks to eradicate poverty by eradicating the poor, the intention is that all of affluent England’s expensive social problems will be exported elsewhere. One of the richest cities in the world is about to get even richer at the expense of everywhere else. For the poorest in London the cap will be devastating as lives are destroyed and communities have their hearts ripped out. But anyone who doesn’t live in London, and thinks this cap is a good idea, should really think through the consequences of what they are supporting. Some of the biggest losers due to the benefit cap will be Council Tax payers in places like Margate and Southend. If the cap is reduced even further, and those forced to move to outer London towns have to move yet again, then the costs to the North of England, Scotland and Wales will be astronomical. The benefit cap is one of the biggest confidence tricks the rich have ever played so it is hardly surprising it has been built on a string of lies. Only a handful of families were actually living in Chelsea mansions – and in most cases these families were homeless and in emergency temporary accommodation awaiting rehousing. Housing Benefit is available to those in work, meaning any hard working family could have moved to London, claimed for help with their rent and been better off than those on benefits. The Housing Benefits caps have not brought down rents as promised – with demand for private rented property soaring the opposite has happened. And no matter what the Government claims, there is no evidence that anyone has got a job due to the caps which have already been introduced. Long term unemployment is at a 17 year high. Iain Duncan Smith’s changes to the benefits systems are undoubtedly hurting, but they aren’t working. Benefits were already capped, at just £71.70 a week for somebody unemployed over the age of 25. Housing benefits simply lined the pockets of the grasping landlords and buy-to-let speculators who caused the increasing benefit bill. The people the cap affects will not have any less money in their hands due to the Benefit Cap. They just won’t have anywhere to live anymore. Source - THE VOID http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/low-paid-workers-will-pay-the-price-of-the-benefit-cap/
I didn't read it, but then I kinda knew what was going on a bit. Question is how to stop the massed ranks of the banks, billionaires, the media they own and the political system they control? It's weird how almost everyone in the UK is a slave to the corporate machine, is getting screwed right up the ASS by it, but blames anything but that corporate machine.
"Trudge to work in sleet and rain Labour for another's gain Know your place and dont complain That's the rich man's law, sir" (Cant remember who sang that... Austrailian band ?, bit on the same lines as The Pogues. But it was about the Scottish shipyards). Know your place and dont complain. At least not about your betters. MPs are after a pay rise way above inflation, including the many who also have lucrative outside jobs. People on basic Jobseekers Allowance got a whopping 70p per week rise this year - 10p per day. Yet we'll whinge about the benefits culture and the feckless skivers and demand a crackdown on them, while bankers are still racking up massive bonuses. Its always easier to kick those on the bottom of the pile, and especially vicious, it seems, are those who are one rung above the bottom. So we believe that unemployment is the fault of the unemployed, that they are living the high life while we slave away, and demand that less of our tax money goes on benefits, while conveniently ignoring the fact that Jobseekers Allowance actually only accounts for about 3% of benefits, while more than twice that, around 8%, is actually paid to people in work. And we wont demand that less of our tax is spent on Trident, the monarchy or pointless foreign wars. Tug your forelock to those above you, spit on those below you. Its what made Britain great.
Ah. I agree with a lot of your post, but don't touch my constitutional monarchy! (Seriously. No.) It's the corporatised supra-state (ie, above and beyond the state we live in) pumping wealth out of our economy while telling us it's OUR fault there's less wealth to go around. It will profit them in the long term to get rid of the poorer folk from prime real estate in London. They can buy up the land, develop it, rent it out to each other before selling it off to their own private equity firms and cashing in on a bunch of tax rebates. GGGGURRRRRRR!! (not that any of this post will actually help anything, or inform anyone of what they didn't already know. But sometimes it's good to have a place to vent).
Hmmm...so its Ok to have an unelected, unrepresentive monarchy, the only qualification for which is being born out of the right womb in the right order ? And this bit of good luck entitles you to massive unearned privilige regardless of any personal qualities. You can be morally bankrupt and pig-shit thick, but hey, you came out of the right womb in the right order, so all this is yours, my son, by right ? Its all a bit... medieval, isn't it ? And its just possible that this slave mentality is the root reason why we put up with so much shit from those in power. Once you allow that one bunch of individuals are "better" than you and must be obeyed without question, why not every other bunch who tell you they're your betters ?
Thanks for the link to johnnyvoid. He's got a lot of good stuff going on. I try to keep up with what's happening in Britain but sometimes it's difficult especially if you don't want the sanitised BBC versión. The Guardian's not bad sometimes but..................... Thanks again!
I don't agree your characterisation of the monarchy is accurate (to put it mildly). I'd have a detailed argument but this isn't the right place. (but just to put the 'happened to be born to it' to bed - technically, the fairest way to decide who gets to be head of state would be to draw lots. The way I see it, our monarchy has been decided by the drawing of historical, genetic lots... so it's the fairest part of our whole, entire system.) It's the corporations who are the problem - they control the government, not the Queen. It's the corporations who profit from the government's corruption, not the Queen. It's the corporations who lobbied for and promoted the current policies that are causing the social cleansing, not the Queen. Long Live the Queen! (only half-jokingly deliberately provocative lol)
Alright then, if its such a fair method lets introduce it to other areas of life. How about football, for instance ? Only you can play centre forward for Manchester United, not because you're any good at football but because your father, and his father, ad nauseum, played centre forward for Manchester United so hey, you must have the right genetics, right ? Of course, you'd have to wait until your father dropped dead, so you might be 60 before you get to make your debut, presumably in a team made up of a range of ages from infant to pensioner, depending on the longevity of the previous incumbant of whichever position is yours by right of birth. While it might make for some interesting games, ultimately its a crap idea, isn't it ? So why do we think a hereditary monarchy is a good idea ? And of course Mrs Windsor is constantly in the media standing up for "her" subjects against the evil corporations, isn't she ? The monarchy is the original corporation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN1YipyJs2Q"]FRANKENSTEIN SOUND LAB - God Save The Queen - YouTube
But in football you've got to be good at something - the British monarch is only a symbol of the passive power of an unwritten constitution. They don't have to be good, or skilled. They just have to exist. If we're gonna have a debate let's at least avoid misrepresenting the issues. You're not going to persuade me by chucking cheap and innaccurate analogies around. Still friends? I can understand why you don't like it - as a system of political power-balancing it is counter-intuitive. But that's what I like about it - the fact it doesn't quite make total sense is at the heart of why it works. Because if the monarch abused their 'powers' then republicanism would become a huge political issue. So the monarch has to smile and wave and not much else, or they get kicked out because it doesn't really follow modern logic they're still there anyway. Also, the counter-intuitiveness forces us as members of a political society, to accept that the world doesn't always make sense, it doesn't always work as we want it to, it's never going to be quite 'fair'. And the Queen cannot 'stand up' to the corporations, she MUST be apolitical. But the passive counterweight to political power the crown represents CERTAINLY stops the corporations from taking over entirely. This is something that always gets me, remember the old adage "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" ? Well, if they support the monarchy, why is it that the corporate-owned media are so keen to dish as much dirt on the royl family as possible at the same time as utterly failing to make the hard political arguments in favour of them? The answer is this - the right wing press have to give the appearance of supporting the monarchy because of the public favour the Queen has. But they are also working to undermine the monarchy where possible, because eventually they want to get rid of it entirely - because they know the monarchy genuinely protects our society from their total dictatorship. To put it another way - the monarchy represents a non-powerful, passive, benign dictatorship of democratic ideals (yes, democratic - our right to vote is part of the 'deal'). But any other system woud give us a powerful, non-benign dictatorship without any guarantees of franchise. Think of the monarchy like a flesh and blood, living embodiment of the constitution. The Americans wouldn't say their constitution is an unjust dictatorship "But we're ruled by a bit of old paper! It's so not fair!" The Queen represents British freedoms under law. She's symbolic - I'd rather have a crown court with judges who are conditioned, cultured to have allegiance to the 'crown' (ie British rule of British law) than judges chosen by a President whose allegiance was to the capitalist agenda. LONG LIVE THE QUEEN
