Things that you are scared about with the new Tory Government

Thank you, Eloethan, but I stand by my previous post.

Didn't mean you, Eloethan.

Obviously Cameron does not care about the 14,000 pensioners living below the poverty line in his own county, so I did not expect you two to care.

Ana Here's a link to a Mail Online article from November last year headed "Cold 'killing thousands of elderly'". In it is a quote from Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK:

"Fuel poverty is a national scandal which has claimed the lives of too many people - both old and young - for far too long and left many more suffering from preventable illness."

www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-2830873/Cold-killing-thousands-elderly.html

I was refering to the 22.15pm post

^^
That is why Ana, I am afraid to say I gloss over a bit at "living in poverty".

I think I am right in saying that, previously at least, there used to be a certain % who had to be deemed as living in poverty. So when incomes went up, there were not enough as a % "living in poverty", so the benchmark moved upwards.
Am I right?
Not sure this happens now? So might be a different matter.

Please feel free to put me right anyone, if I am ,or was wrong in this.

As do many low-income households.

'Living in poverty' is relative, as has been discussed on another thread. The poverty line is actually set quite high, many pensioners fall below it and manage perfectly well.

"Age UK Oxfordshire estimates that 14,000 of the county’s 120,000 pensioners are now living below the poverty line. They said: ‘Rising costs degrade the quality of life for people…Older people face a squeeze…Energy costs are rocketing, food does not get any cheaper.’ Many pensioners living in areas of Banbury and Oxford are officially classified as ‘deprived’ while nearly half of those living in rural Oxfordshire are in the worst 10 percent in the country in terms of accessibility of services.
Young people’s lives blighted by stress and cuts: Teachers say services are ‘at breaking point… The budget-cutting austerity agenda has reduced both staffing and resource levels in schools, placing increasing pressure on teachers to achieve more with less.’

Gina, disability activist: ‘I'm living on noodles, the belt won't go any tighter. As a wheelchair user who needs kidney dialysis, I'm terrified. I depend upon DLA and I face the capping and taxing of DLA and the axing of Carers’ allowance’. Gina, an activist with DPAC, will be speaking at the Unite Against Austerity demonstration on Saturday 30th May, Bonn Square.

Homeless and vulnerable people are being sent to live in Birmingham, Cheltenham and Cardiff by a council who’ve consistently failed to provide housing support in high-rent Oxfordshire. High levels of nurse vacancies have led two community hospitals in Oxfordshire to shut beds."

This is in Cameron's own county.

It is paid to private and social landlords but the lack of social housing means that a substantial amount is going into the hands of private landlords. The moving of people from central London means the number in private housing is increasing so more is going to private landlords. Can we stop harking back to over 5 years ago and look at what is happening now? This government is constantly making derogatory remarks about people on benefits without making it clear where the money goes. Why can't social housing provide a roof over their heads? Lets enable local authorities to build and aquire properties and stop funding private profit from public money. (Restrained myself from making comments about why there isn't social housing in London)

Isn't housing benefit paid to both private and local authority 'landlords'? Wasn't housing benefit also paid to the same people during the Blair/Brown years? Doesn't housing benefit improve the lives of poorer people by helping to pay for the roof over their heads?

The thing that bothers me is that the housing benefit being paid is not going to improve the lives of the poor families who are forcibly moved, nor to help the local councils who are accommodating them, it is in fact going into the pockets of private landlords.But that is something I think we should expect from this Tory government, demonisation of the poor and vulnerable whilst the rich and powerful reap the benefit.

Of course it's ridiculous to make a comparison. There is no comparison I agree.

Farnorth I agree with you entirely, but you mention cheaper housing costs (for the government). What I found astonishing is the £440 million increase in housing costs as a result of cuts as per the article in dj's link.
I think it's ridiculous to make any kind of comparison with the situation faced by desperate refugees.

x post Far North

Anya - you are of course right that there is no comparison between having to uproot yourself in the UK because of work or other factors and the families fleeing Isis.

Like you, I had a childhood that featured numerous moves of home as a result of my father's work. I went to 5 primary and 3 high schools and though I survived ok, I wouldn't wish that on any child if it could be avoided. As with your family, mine moved because dad was improving his employment, increasing both income and a level of status for his family. Even as children, we had some understanding of his desire to provide well for us and that helped us cope with the moves.

The vulnerable families I mentioned are exactly that, vulnerable. Single mother's with mental health problems, children already known to children's services or cahms. Uprooting them can only add to the demands they will inevitably make on increasingly limited resources. It seems cruel and Dickensian to me.

Anya your parents obviously moved to places where they thought job prospects were better, so they were optimistic about the move. That optimism and feeling of making things better for themselves would have been felt by you, as a child, also.

Now, tho, people are being moved, not by their own wish, to places that have cheaper housing costs (for the government) but are likely to have even poorer job prospects for the individuals.
They may well feel that they have no way of making things better for themselves and they could be right, given the way society in the UK is now.

Granted, they are not fleeing for their lives but the situation for many still is dire.

But when I see the poor families fleeing ISIS it does put things in perspective

I'm not saying it's ideal.

I suspect that a lot of the families that are moving, have not ventured very far before. A suprising amount of people dont cope well with that. Especially if it wasnt their choice in the first place.

But is it really the case Iam? My own parents moved away from friends and family to find work in the early 1950s, and again ten years later. I moved schools many times, coped with making new friends, changes in schools, and so on. I hardly knew my grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins.

My own children moved away, one to NZ, and coped too. Granted we now all live much closer together and we have a close family set up.

But had my parents stayed where they were we would have suffered unemployment, poor schooling, bad housing and so on. It's been this way since civilisation began, moving away for better hunting grounds, to escape war, to find a job.

We're not quite as far to the opposite end of the country as mcem, but I share her sympathy for families being evicted from their London homes for the benefit of the private housing market.

Another of the negative effects of the cost of the housing benefit bill is the way in which vulnerable families are uprooted and moved to the north west or north east because rents are cheaper. They're cut off from established support networks, children's education is negatively affected, mental health of adults and children deteriorates. The financial and social costs are huge. Add to that the fact that for some reason (!) northern, Labour councils have had their funding cut at a higher rate than many of the wealthier southern Tory councils and I feel another cry of 'we're all doomed' coming on.

Quite apart from the social/ethical considerations I'm appalled to see an increase of £440 million in the housing benefit bill during the period that all the 'caps' have been put in place.
Although I'm at the other end of the country, I have felt enormous sympathy for families being evicted from their London homes so that those homes can be demolished/upgraded for the private housing market. Have signed petitions but I think that these drastic moves to change housing policy will be hard to shift and it's the people who are directly affected who seem to have no say.

This is what has been happening in London over the last five years.

speye.wordpress.com/2015/05/24/housing-benefit-cleansing-of-london-since-may-2010-election-why-it-costs-every-taxpayer-more/

I am worried that even more social cleansing will take place over the next five years. However, as this article states, it does not save money.

Cameron and his cohort decide what those values are, Eloethan.

This is interesting.

theconversation.com/david-cameron-has-promised-too-much-on-europe-and-that-could-mean-a-brexit-41726