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Definitely not Tony, TARRED WITH THE SAME BRUSH - "Someone who shares the sins or faults of another, though possibly to a lesser degree, is tarred with the same brush. The saying may have something to do with the tarred-and-feathered criminals, but the reference is probably to the tarring of sheep. Owners of a flock of sheep, which can't be branded, used to mark their wool all in the same place with a brush dipped in tar to distinguish them from sheep of another flock. It is said that the red ochre was used to make the mark and that brushing sheep with tar served to protect them against ticks."  Have a read of all of it http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/19/messages/491.htmlAs for why I have posted today, I do feel quite irritated by how people claiming benefits are being demonised by this government and the right wing press. I work with many families who are being affected by these changes, children who are trying to study, but are now having to move miles away, just before their GCSEs. People who are worried about eating or heating.  By the way refugees, those people who have come in having fled from life threatening danger, are not allowed to work, when they first arrive and for a number of years, until they are granted a right to stay, a law that needs to be changed. So that could well be why many from Irag, Somalia and other war torn countries haven't worked.    Politically I belong to no party. I just don't like injustice,and scaremongering gossip and statements. Why don't you have a read  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spirit-Level-Equality-Better-Everyone/dp/0241954290

Jaz Brown ● 4771d

Re  personally know anyone who has never worked?              xxxxxxxxxxxxx      yes. The first Iraqi  I got to know in 2000. Has not and does not work, has bummed off the State ever since here, drug taker, secure accomodation " member ", Police record, lives the life of Riley. Now banned from London. His father has 5 bed house  in Cambridgeshire, where I assume the son now is, and the mother joined the father in 2002 from Iraq. She found life  in the Shires too quiet, so moved to London, got  a flat overlooking Hyde Park compliments of the taxpayers, was otherwise kept by taxpayers despite a husband and house back in the Shires, used to go back to Iraq for 6 months at a time  but kept  the Bayswater flat going. The son, my first Iraqi acquaitance was originally sharing with an Iraqi doctor, who had been here since 1982, training to be an Iraqi Army doctor  and when the Iraq/Iranian war broke out he applied for asylum. Got it, and married an Australian woman and owned own house in Tooting, wife had 6? cats, doctor decided to leave his house, came to Ealing with some sob story, was given  place, compliments of taxpayers but who turns out not to be a doctor at all, on all sorts of benefits imagineable, never worked since in UK, drove around in Peugeot car. Then disappeared post haste for some reason, went back to wife and daughter in Tooting. Then divorced her, went to Syria, found another wife, came back to Blighty with her, given another  place in Ealing, compliments of taxpayers, sired more children ( still not working btw), divorced that wife, found another back in some Middle Eastern country, brought her to UK and  kept procreating. All while disabled, of course, whatever that bogus disablement was it was never manifest nor inhibiting. That's just one " tale of woe ", there are others  of personal factual knowledge.

Tony Price ● 4771d

Re  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/06/welfare-britain-facts-myths            xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx very interesting article, thanks. The Guardian are left wing and not to be taken seriously, any more than the Rountree Trust , just look at this bit:-    " The Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a study in December testing whether there were three generations of the same family that had never worked. Despite dogged searching, researchers were unable to find such families. If they exist, they account for a minuscule fraction of workless people. Under 1% of workless households might have two generations who have never worked – about 15,000 households in the UK. Families with three such generations will therefore be even fewer"          Dogged researching indeed!, but even if as suggested  there are 15,000 families with 2 generations never worked, that is 15,000 too many, and to state the obvious, 3 generations  would be lesser in number. And to go on to say such families are committed to work, pull the other one. But surprisingly there are those  who champion the " right " of such people to sit on their backsides and let others keep them. Sorry to say, I am dead against such immorality, despite their apparent desire to work!. And don't forget, reference is to families, not persons, who would thus be  many more in number, plus there is the strong possibility such families are ones of high " members " variety. As far as I am concerned it is totally  immoral for persons  to expect be kept longterm by others, if they can work but voluntarily choose not to. If there is no work locally, move to where there is work. If persons can come half way across the world to the UK to work, I am damn sure  persons already here have a head start and should do likewise?

Tony Price ● 4771d

I believe the changes are a good first step but there is more to go.Labour have successfully grabbed a catchy headline "Bedroom Tax" to distract people. It's not a tax, which is the imposition of a financial charge, it's simply the partial withdrawing of a subsidy. Only Labour and their incompetent financial management skills could call a subsidy reduction a tax! That explains there handling of the economy for 13 years.We all know we spend too much on welfare, 1 in every 4 pounds in fact. Also, every single penny in Income Tax collected goes onto welfare. That means school, NHS, Police, defence etc does not come from your labour but other indirect taxes, such as VAT, fuel duty, stamp duty, Excise and custom etc. That's appalling in many respects. Every day you work doesn't even pay for the services you use.Welfare is meant to be a hand up, not a hand out. Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man how to fish and feed him for a lifetime.We have a national problem with subsidies. We subsidies low wages with tax credits, we subsidise excessive rents with housing benefits. In effect we as tax payers are funding a poor capitalist model.If we stopped subsidising then the law of supply and demand would start to work properly, rents would have to come down and wages would have to increase.Unfortunately as we no longer control our borders, employers can now ship in cheaper labour from abroad, thus pushing down wages. Free movement across the EU only serves our corporate masters, not the little person, like all of us. If companies can push down labour costs, if the Government subsidises that practice with tax credits, what are we to expect?As a nation we have a responsibility to those that are here now. We must stop subsidising artificially high rents and low wages. We need to make work pay and welfare not. The cap is a great first start.We need to control immigration, only bringing in skilled labour as and when necessary, just like the USA, canada, Australia, NZ, in fact most nations on earth. Unskilled, low paid people should not be coming in. There will be a period of rebalancing and pain. Employers will have to pay more, and home grown citizens will have to take those jobs that have gone to low paid immigrants. There will be pain, just like any rebalancing, but the long term benefits outweigh the short term pain.Welfare is actually despised more by those on it than by those championing it.

Cllr Benjamin Dennehy ● 4772d

Re You have to meet certain criteria to be considered             xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx that may well be Keith but when one sees  some of the cars parked in Council estates and housing areas, one wonders how effective the screening is. And here are a few facts re this Bedroom Tax, extracted from a financial  publication I receive :-      "  The tax that isn’t actually a taxOn her blog this week, Merryn Somerset Webb, waded into the big welfare debate and took a look at the so-called ‘Bedroom Tax’. The first thing to note is that this isn’t a tax, says Merryn. “A tax is when the government takes from you what you have earned. A reduced benefit is when it gives you less of what you have not. This is the latter.”Indeed David Cameron hits the nail on the head when he calls it “the removal of the spare room subsidy”, says Merryn. After all, “no one pays anything - some people just get less in benefits if they have a spare room that is not exempt (just like private sector tenants in receipt of housing benefits). On the Observer’s numbers, some 660,000 people will now receive a reduced payment of around £14 – so £2 a week (unless they move or take in a lodger in which case they will lose nothing).” Another thing worth noting is that almost all vulnerable people are exempt from this cut, says Merryn. “It doesn’t affect anyone not of working age (so no pensioners are being turfed out of their homes), anyone in the forces, or anyone operating as a foster carer.” There’s also another, more fundamental point, says Merryn. “The idea coming from the government is that the taxpayer shouldn’t be stumping up for single people, couples or small families in council housing to have spare rooms when other families – housed in bed and breakfasts and the like – have no rooms to call their own.” So this measure might be bad for those with a spare room, but it will help some of those on the UK’s huge housing waiting list. And that latter group deserve our help too, says Merryn. Unsurprisingly, this controversial topic soon attracted plenty of comment from readers. ‘Ellen’ spoke for many when she said that it was not a tax but “a withdrawal of an accidental benefit”. She continued: “This idea that the taxpayer should fork out for spare rooms for some while other people have no home at all, and probably cannot make real plans until they are allowed to put down root, should be ignored.”

Tony Price ● 4772d

It's a brave government that takes this on, and gets it right. The danger of chucking the baby out with the bathwater is enormous. If there are abuses of the current system, then I suspect there will be an equal number of life-changing failures in a new scrounger- free system, if such a thing can even exist. Real hardship for some is inevitable.And how many scroungers are there, actually? Do we know, other than the ones highlighted with such relish in the right-wing press? One immediate and ironic problem presents itself . People who are willing to down-size to retain benefits find that there are not nearly enough one/two bedroom premises for them to move to, as so many were sold off by a previous Tory government, a policy continued by Labour. So, even if willing, many people will lose a substantial proportion of benefits, or else agree to be rehoused in areas very far from home.The other problem that underlies just about everything else that is wrong with Britain, and why so many worthy people are having to live on benefits, is that we relinquished our manufacturing economy years ago, hence so many people out of work, or bringing in less than a living wage and needing top-ups. This is the real problem that needs addressing. Socially and economically it is more efficient and life-enhancing to subsidise a person in work than out.The trillions that are going to be spent on Trident could re-establish a mixed economy that produces stuff that people actually want to buy, whilst providing jobs. Obviously it's a complex area, but some novel thinking is required to get England and Wales back on its feet - Scotland is going in a very different direction.Curtailing benefits whilst providing no alternative means of income may very well be the issue that loses this government the next election, fair or no. And of course Nth Korea is going to nuke us, so we really need to keep Trident! I heard that on the news tonight, and if it weren't so incredibly stupid and manipulative I'd be sniggering.

Judy Jaafar ● 4774d

It would be very interesting to know exactly what the Labour Party would do to reduce the amount spent on welfare benefits if they were in power.No use in them harping on about unfair taxes and so on without them revealing what they would put in place of these changes. After all wasn't it due to the 'generousity' of the Labour Government during their 13 years or so in power that helped get us into this mess in the first place? (The Labour Party and the Bankers surely have a lot to answer for).The Labout Party were also responsible for opening the doors to all and sundry which of course put a great strain on the Welfare Budget. This policy provided housing, benefits, access to the NHS to new arrivals - no questions asked.A few years ago a friend's son was living in a really tiny 1 bed flat with partner, daughter and son. Brent Council would not even consider them for housing - it was for 'newcomers' they were informed. Fortunately his mother stepped in to help buy them a place (on an interest only loan) but there was no help from the council because they were born here. Can this be fair? I think not!Too much has been squandered by the last government and I fear the present incumbents will not be able to sort the welfare situation out either. I believe there has been a sharp rise in people rushing to claim Disability Benefits before the deadline. That means that the new claimants won't be properly assessed.David Cameron said the housing allocation will be for the indiginous population (or words to that effect) yet staff at the Town Halls will say they cannot turn people away wherever they come from if they are considered 'homeless or in need'The situation will probably continue to get worse unless something drastic is done. Can you imagine what will be in store for this country from January 2014 when the rules change yet again to allow Romanians and Bulgarians free access to this country and all it has to offer?

Jean F Fernandez ● 4777d