Father killed himself after housing benefit cut, blame the Government

[peterb]

<---snip

It's no coincidence that the week directly before and directly after the riots, the Tory's #1 priority was abolition of the 50% tax rate for people on over £150,000/year.

snip--->

No, and I guess the rationale is that the tax income from that extra 10% was relatively small, the consequiences of a penal tax level is that it may result in those people leaving the country, and possibly taking their wealth creation businesses with them, so 40% of someth is better than 50% of nothing. And if the wealthy do leave the country, they won't be spending their disposable income on gpoods and services here, so the VAT take on those goods and services will reduce.will reduce.

[aidanjt]

From your post you had your own flat. Presumably that means that you had lighting, power.

Discarded the bits I didn't have. If I didn't have the income to eat, where on Earth do you think I was going to get the money for a telephone and broadband? Broadband alone was £50/m at the time. Jesus.

You are already way better off than people in poorer parts of the world.

Having a bunch of bricks around your head you doesn't give you heat during the winter, and a healthy and stable nutrient supply. All that provides is shelter to keep your head dry, something people in most impoverished countries don't have to worry about.

Do you not get JSA if you live in a shared house?

You do. But I wasn't in a shared house, I was in a flat. If I was still at my parent's house I wouldn't have a problem, I wasn't, hence the problem, and the systematically screwed up policy. Why even offer a service to someone you fully intend to starve out of the service to begin with? Better to be honest up front and say '**** you, die for all I care', at least then you know where you stand instead of being roped into a lease agreement based on a broken promise of welfare. Not that exposure is much better.

Perhaps in that case you should be arguing for donations of food/medicines etc over cash?

Yeah, cash is flat out useless, that just goes straight into the corruption black hole. But even drops of food and medicines (a lot of which not uncommonly gets redirected to black markets/armies) only facilitates population growth and foreign dependence. Better bringing in drills to access wells, materials for buildings, machines and chemicals for agriculture, etc., and training to help them put it all together. At the very least it'd give them hope, and something to work towards. We should also force companies harvesting resources in those countries to pay their employees there a fair wage and put value back into the country they're pillaging. People will do what they need to do when barriers to self-sustenance are removed.

[aidanjt]

No, the quality of life you had, was far better than half the world had. Get some perspective on things, we all suffer, often needlessly, but we're talking about people who lack access to clean water, let alone the other foodstuffs and shelter.

And there are people here dying of exposure and starvation. You have no quality of life when you're wasting away, or just plain dead.

[TheAnimus]

And there are people here dying of exposure and starvation. You have no quality of life when you're wasting away, or just plain dead.

Bull.

Bull pure and Simple.

Go to any city in the second world, there are people who are far worse, who in the UK would simply rock up at A&E and get treated. Granted it would in no way be a permanent solution.

You can watch in a comparatively developed country to the 3rd world, such as Vietnam (which pulled itself recently to being a net exporter of food), and see every now and again someone who is showing clear medical signs of starvation. A swiss girl I was completely failing to chat up noticed a very young, about 8 year old child, who had very dodgy legs walking the street, she looked almost pregonant, it was a direct result of malnutrition, not enough to kill her today, but more than enough to get a couple of weeks stay in a hospital in the UK.

When someone has debt obligations that stop them been able to feed themselves, there are meant to be routes open via the job centre lot, they can work out a budget and if its not feasible with your grants change the terms of repayment. This is definately the case in England, but NI might differ. The other problem is that few people who are really poor choose to rent their own place, there is a sizable portion of the world that doesn't get to make that choice.

I still stand by my original statement, there are people in far greater need.

[aidanjt]

Bull.

Bull pure and Simple.

Are you trying to say people don't die from either of those things in the UK? Or are you saying dying is ok, just because not everyone is dying?

[roachcoach]

I don't think anyone is denying sometimes very bad things happen here, but it is the exception, rather than the rule. And equally, as a rule, we have options available to us if it does all go pear shaped.

As I said before the severity and magnitude of the difference is huge.

[petercook7]

No, and I guess the rationale is that the tax income from that extra 10% was relatively small, the consequiences of a penal tax level is that it may result in those people leaving the country, and possibly taking their wealth creation businesses with them, so 40% of someth is better than 50% of nothing. And if the wealthy do leave the country, they won't be spending their disposable income on gpoods and services here, so the VAT take on those goods and services will reduce.will reduce.

those types dont pay income tax, look at the greens family, they extract wealth.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I do agree that aid to countries who have their own space program is a waste of money though.

I think when it comes to foreign aid people people are more annoyed at the billions going to countries with nuclear and space programs. Far to much is allocated as diplomatic bargaining chips rather than based on actual need.

Less than £200mil to darfur, billions to india.

The aid we give to many countries is more for political or trade reasons. It does come with strings attached.

People comment on the amount of aid we give India which is around a billion quid a year.

For example India is the second biggest investment in London after the US:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6599693.stm

Indian investment in London alone reached 52 billion pounds by 2007.

If the MRCA is won by the Eurofighter it will mean that production lines will be kept open at many UK companies. We have also sold them 123 BAE Hawk trainers since 2000. These long term contracts alone will be worth billions of pounds.

As usual people jump to conclusions too quickly. The aid is nothing but a sweetener to aid trade and corporation between the UK and India.

If Indian companies were not going to jnvest billions of pounds in the UK economy and the Indian government was not going to make large purchases from UK government the aid would be far less.

[Saracen]

....

They spend Billions on wars Billions of foreign aid yet they push aside their own people just makes me sick, Cameron & co your evil and rotten to the core, you have let of those MPs that have fiddled the system, haven't fined the rich for tax evasion and storing their money in Switzerland. Over sentence those from the riots, while letting those that created this mess off.

Completely agree with the last bit .... Gordon Brown and co got off scot free, after spending the country stupid for years.

If you get a disease, don't blame the doctor if the medicine tastes foul.

Oh, and for the record, several of those that "fiddled" expenses went to jail. The rest might often have been breaking the spirit of the rules but not the letter of them, or were breaking rules but not breaking laws. We still have to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that "expense fiddling" is criminal before we convict .... unless you want people to get their trials in the notoriously fickle court of public opinion with tabloid editors, perhaps Mr Murdoch, as judge and jury?

[sammyc]

I feel sad that a man has taken his own life. I hope I never become that desperate.

Likewise. I don't find it so hard to imagine that having your housing benefit cut & effectively rendering you homeless can be far from pathetically trivial and in fact the final straw for someone who is not a strong character, especially on top of previous money troubles, unemployment, stress/worries &c. (I acknowledge not knowing the story in full detail). There are a lot of shades of grey between being strong and able to cope, and mental illness way at the other end. I find sometimes there can be over-reverence for the strong and contempt for weakness on this forum, and tbh it is one of the strands of attitude I find least appealing here, far over any in-forum insulting that goes on.

Yes we have to put poverty and deprivation in the UK in context with that of poorer nations. But if it is to be the end argument to EVERY issue, then 'but there are so many worse off than yourself!' would have to be the response to virtually every post/thread on here if someone has so much as had their car scratched or got the flu.

But I personally don't buy that you kill yourself because you're unemployed and have your HB cut - there have to be far more factors than that, which have been ignored here.

Doubtless there are, but I do think prolonged money worries on their own can do a good job of grinding you down if you are not you are tough as old boots to start with..

[Saracen]

....


If the current administration (at least one of whom is serving a jail sentence for fraudulent expenses claims) weren't being so profligate with their slash and burn policies, then these consequences wouldn't be on the increase ?

Who?

As far as I remember, the only Tories jailed were Lord Hanningfield and Lord Taylor, both of whom were peers, not MPs. Hanningfield was, IIRC, a Shadow minister at one point.

Labour, on the other hand, have at least four MPs that were given jail sentences, some of whom were Ministers with actual power, not just Shadow roles. And, just to add a bit of detail, three of those four Labour MPs got longer sentences than either of the Tory peers (12 to 18 months, compared to 9 and 12 months), and the fourth Labour MP got 12 months, the same as Taylor and more than Hanningfield.

....

Ever wonder what the urgency is ? After all, it's merely the equivalent of living frugally in order to cut a 25 year mortgage to 20 years (who on here has done that ?). The urgency is so they can repay Lord Ashcroft with the inheritance tax cuts (etc.) that they promised him.

No, that's not the case. The cuts, even at the current level, aren't designed to cut the debt. If they were, that analogy might be accurate and your point about urgency might have merit. The cuts are designed to reduce, then eliminate the deficit, that being the rate by which the debt is growing.

If, and it's quite a big "if" the cuts succeed in eliminating the deficit in five years, then it's equivalent to to having a 25 year mortgage now that will be a 50 year mortgage in 5 years if we don't stop borrowing and increasing it.

The urgency is this. If you owe a huge mortgage and are struggling to keep up interest-only payments, as we are, you are stupid if you keep spending more and more on a lifestyle you patently cannot afford, thereby growing the mortgage you owe ever and ever larger. That's urgency number 1 - stop the rate at which the debt is getting bigger. If we're lucky, and the cuts succeed as deigned, the mortgage will only have about doubled by the time we stabilise it.

Urgency number 2) is that the interest rates we pay on that debt vary over time. It's not like a a mortgage, because governments have revolving funds and have to borrow regularly to pay back short term funding that that debt actually consists of. Regularly, previous bonds mature and government has to borrow to repay the bond. If they can't, they "default", which is what everyone's peeing themselves might be what happens to Greece, or even Italy or Spain.

But to be able to "borrow", i.e. issue more bonds (for two, or five, or whatever years) there has to be to be someone prepared to lend, is.e. buy the new bonds. And that determines the interest rate we pay. If the market is not convinced that we have a credible plan to cut the deficit, the interest rate will shoot up. And that is also what happened to Greece, etc.

At the time of the election, we were paying some £44 billion a year in interest on that debt. That's more in interest than all but about the largest three government departments. It's about £120,000,000 a day in interest. And that's with our bond rates close to Germany at under 4%. If you don't convince the markets that we have a credible plan to cut the deficit, you risk bond rates increasing substantially, and if they do, that £44 billion a year will jump hugely.

Every extra billion we pay in bond financing costs is a billion we don't have to spend on actual public services. And if that debt (not the deficit, the debt) doesn't come down, all we're doping is incurring deferred taxation. Sooner or later, it has to be paid. Meantime, it costs us a fortune in interest, and the debt grows.

So no, it's nothing at all like paying off a 25 year mortgage in 20 years. It's more like earning £20k a year, and spending £30k a year, putting the missing £10k a year on a credit card that your kids will inherit and have to pay off themselves, in order to finance your extra holidays now. If we do not pay off that debt, never mind deficit, out of tax revenues now it's deferred taxation that our kids, or grandkids, will have to pay off, and pay interest on, out of their taxes in the future.

The only real argument over the scale of the cuts is the balance between risk of increased bond rates versus risk of curtailing growth, and the thing about that is that no economist can tell you for sure. They all have an opinion, and arguments for it, but nobody does or can actually know.

....

It's no coincidence that the week directly before and directly after the riots, the Tory's #1 priority was abolition of the 50% tax rate for people on over £150,000/year.

It's no coincidence because it is simply not true. Many Tories would like to see the back of the 50% rate, partly for ideological reasons and partly for pragmatic ones. The pragmatic one is that we know from past experience that, first, it doesn't raise much money and second, is risky in terms of encouraging the entrepreneurship and investment that is absolutely essential to any real prospect of growth, that being the only way out of our mess short of drastic cuts far, FAR beyond anything yet even hinted at. There is a principle (Laffer curve) that shows that as the marginal rate of tax goes up, actual tax revenues go down. And we saw it in operation in the brain drain under Labour's incredibly misguided punitive tax rates in the late 60s and 70's. We aren't anywhere near that yet, but even at 50%, there's a disincentive to risk and invest.

So yes, the Tories would like to see it go eventually. So would many Labour politicians. But it is not any sort of priority for the administration, let alone number 1. It is not on the political agenda any time soon, if for no other reason that that the LibDem element of the coalition would throw a wobbly, and Cameron and Osborne have both said that while it's a long term aspiration, it's a LONG way down the track before it's politically feasible.

[petercook7]

Most of the debt comes from the banks, look at the billions we waste on wars, billions in aid yet anything to do with the poor gets cuts and they dont really do anything that hurts the rich in this country.
Billions wasted on welfare via private companies that supposed to help the unemployed get to work, what is the point of the job center is the government needs to hire private companies to do their work and fail.

This government is a failure they say they are going to hit the rich yet u turn on everything, they say their going to hit the poor but never seen any u turns on their policies towards the poor or working population.

When the riots kicked off cameron took 4 days to return from his holiday, when Libya Capital was taken he was in downing st in 4 hours from his holiday.

Then they come out with this rubbish "councils told to house homeless people in boats and caravans"
"homeless people will not be able to refuse private sector accommodation "
and they want to keep down spending its become a joke.
http://www.estateagenttoday.co.uk/ne...s-and-caravans

If they were serious they wouldn't cut corporation tax, they should have cut the tax a company pays for their employees if they hire extra workers, this Government doesn't think they are a bunch of retards.
When the MPs were caught fiddling he said if he was PM he would do everything in his powers to bring them to justice, rubbish, but the riots he said the same and look at the prison times given, just some they dont give a about the working people, they just loot the system for their rich buddies.
They complain about JSA how expensive it is, we are one of the richest country yet our unemployment payments are the lowest, they moan about the amount wasted but did you know its only 4 billion that goes on the unemployed , by the time it gets to them its less than half, private companies take their cut.

Tax land is what i say the more land you have the more tax you pay simples.

[roachcoach]

Yeah the agriculture industry is certainly pulling in uberprofits

[TheAnimus]

Tax land is what i say the more land you have the more tax you pay simples.

No, tax on the number of windows. That will work far better.

Its not like anyone has ever tried either of those ideas before, and found them to fail.... ever.

Its not as if a few places still tax that old way.

maybe we should live in small enclaves and have a nice agrarian utopia!

[Kata]

No no Animus, petercook7 is just spinning the standard Labor supporter line that successful people are evil and we should cut them down to size. The country would be far better off without successful people, right Peter?

[petercook7]

No no Animus, petercook7 is just spinning the standard Labor supporter line that successful people are evil and we should cut them down to size. The country would be far better off without successful people, right Peter?

No, i do not even support labour, successful people should pay their share equal to those that work for min wage and maybe more, successful people have a social responsibility, Landowners do nothing for this country apart from taking free money from the state. Until they tax landowners we'll always in the mess.

The private sector and a few rich individuals are making hundreds of million from your tax money its a transfer of wealth from you to the state to a few rich.

They are making fools of you, Libya reports have suggested that some of the rebels are Al-Queda we are funding them giving them weapons etc... lets see when those weapons and tactics are used against the west.