This has also been one of my beefs in the past;

Maggie Thatcher converted traditional 'grassroots' Labour voters to Tory voters almost 'overnight' by;

a) relaxing the Consumer Credit Laws and thereby enabling them to have 'instant' better standards of living, whilst in reality 'trapping them' in a situation where they dare not 'strike' because of the amount of 'debt' which they now had to 'service'.

b) Floated deliberately undervalued Public Owned Assets such as British Telecom etc at knock down subscription prices whilst encouraging 'Ordinary Joe Public' to become 'shareholders' - even being seen to bar multi applications from her Multi National Corporate buddies and backers.

(What did it matter - the amount and scale of the undervaluing, enabled very quick profits to be 'taken' by most of these 'green' nouveau shareholders, and there was now no bar now to those same corporations buying up those STILL well undervalued shares. So in one fell swoop, old Maggie had delivered almost instant profits for her new ex-Labour now Tory supporter friends, AND delivered our Nationalised Industries into the hands of the top Tory faithful at still bargain basement cost)

3) Encouraged the tenants of Social Housing to Purchase their homes and provided huge unrealistic discounts and changes in the Law to help make such conveyancing as 'smooth' as possible.

4) Barred the funds raised from these Social Housing sales from being utilised to build new replacement Social Housing stock.

This of course - enabled the BOOM in Private Landlords and 'Levered' property acquisition with further 'gearing' and re-investment, and therefore saw public money, via Housing benefits, actually FUNDING further 'Buy-To-Let' property acquisition by Private Landlords.

Now, my point is - and has always been - that NONE of the above would have been possible without the opportunistic 'grabbing' by one-time 'Socialists'.

But it is 3) and 4) which have had the most damaging and longest lasting impact to the Social Housing market in this county, and is majorly responsible (not solely though) for the current and increasingly worsening crisis.

And a lot of one-time Council house dwellers have great culpability, because they have elevated their status and grown wealthy by initially exploiting one of the most blatant and mercenary sell offs of the VERY type of Social Housing which 'saved their bacon' and kept them off the streets.

Oh - and :laugh: to the length of time you spent writing that post. It was worth it, because at least I benefited from your graft. :hee:

Its a ****ing joke to be quite honest. The Tories and the rags have done a fantastic job of demonizing benefit claimants..the amount of people going on about how Joe down the road currently gets 100k per year in benefit income for doing nothing (impossible) is truly bizarre.

I won't go into all of the reasons I think this is cruel and unneeded, but lets chose one. Most people hit by this will be those with high rents. Who cares, they can move?!?!?!?! But as TS said above, these expensive places couold not function without lower paid workers, so shift all the unemployed/low wages out of one place, its a bit ****ed. But even ignoring that..it costs a load of cash to move house. If you are on benefits you would need over a grand just for the deposit. A months rent in advance. And to be actually able to move your stuff, so lets say 200 quid there. On top of that 99 times out of 100 you will also need a guarantor, which is getting harder and harder to find given so few people own their houses these days and even if they do, they are unlikely to want to take the risk of your benefits being stopped for whatever reason the jobcentre makes up that month as if this happens your guarantor is responsible for paying your rent. So, we are expecting someone with no disposable income and facing having even less income to find maybe 2k from thin air to move house. Its just unrealistic.

This also hits disabled people. Even though its made out it does not. Those on ESA are included in this cap. Along with having their ESA slashed at the same time to bring it into line with JSA..as an 'incentive' to work. Those in the support group of ESA are not included. However those in the 'work focused' group are. Remember these are people who have already jumped through a ridiculous amount of hoops, no doubt been told they are liars, their doctors and consultants are liars, been cured by the miracle workers at ATOS, then gone through a grueling stressful tribunal before its finally acknowledged that ATOS workers do not actually have the healing hands of Jesus and they actually are ill enough to not work right now.

The lie that people are better off on benefits than in work is just that, a lie. If this has happened to you, I can guarantee that you are not claiming something you are entitled to. Especially given 13bn worth of benefits go unclaimed each year.

I could understand the cuts left right and centre if it was only able bodied working age people AND there were an abundance of jobs (real jobs, not commission only and 0 hour contracts...) that were going unfilled. But this isn't the case. Jobs (regardless of what the rags tell you) are so few and far between. A friend who works there told me a few days back that a 16 hr per week shelf filling job in Iceland here had over 100 applicants within 2 days of being advertised. You cannot 'incentivize' someone into work if there is no work for them. Along with DWPs own records showing cutting someones income makes it less likely they will get back into work.

And in the long run, none of these cuts even save ****ing money. The bedroom tax that some people still love...the benefit bill went up because of this and now we have a bunch of larger properties empty...while their previous occupants are living in B&Bs which cost the public purse even more. And why? Its not saving anything, its wasting more accommodation and its uprooting families.

The clear answer to this all is not more bloody cuts. It is investing money into more social housing. Yes it will cost more right now, but in the long run its best all round. While building these properties, so many more people will actually get work. Builders and such...so more tax payed along with more employment. Affordable rents for more people. More properties available...private landlords will have to lower their prices and the benefit bill will ACTUALLY go down..as you are looking to the future instead of just demonizing those on low incomes.

And stop the ridiculous right to buy scheme. I mean, I can benefit from this if I can save up 40k. I can buy my house for a lot less than its worth. But why is this an option for me? When we are short on affordable housing why the **** are we still selling it off? Its madness.

I have to say this is one your really best and strongest posts Kirk.

I have loved reading ToySoldiers as to this issue.

However yours made me think, I likely would have supported Margaret Thatchers aims had I been around then,(obviously not the way I think about things now though),you lost there so much that started clearly a downward spiral of really bad decisions and also the erosion of how a decent society should be.

A very thought provoking post,it would be nice to think it possible to hope that someday modern parties and governments will come to avoid such bad decisions and errors of judgement when in power, as you outline so comprehensively in that post above.

Really insightful,full credit to you for it.

Thank you Joey. It is always nice to be appreciated.

I don't agree with the cuts by the way, because I believe that no cuts are necessary IF the Government starts spending TAXPAYERS money in a correct manner.

But that's another post. :laugh: