DJKillaQueen

Once the notice goes up on the windows/door the squatters have 48 hours to leave after which you can use bailiffs and Police to force eviction. So hopefully you'll have your home back within a few weeks, not months.

I broadly agree on H's view of Beveridge but it also has to be remebered that the reforms to housing st the time were also aimed at ridding the UK of the last of it's slums, and overcrowded ones at that, with whole families still living in one or two rooms. The assault on HB makes no sense for lots of reasons. I don't think anyone has a problem with doing something about a situation that allows a minority of recipients to live in properties with ?1000+ per week rents. But what the coalition are doing goes much further than that, in ways that will affect every poor person in the country. There's a contradiction in the alteration to the ceiling level of meridian rent. They announce a ceiling cap of ?400 per week but with the meridian adjustment this will mean a much lower cap in many areas. HB has always been capped to the meridian mean regionally. The coalition seem to think it will force some landlords to lower rents, but I don't think it will - mostly because (especially those on buy to let) don't have much leeway to lower the rent beyond the mortgage repayment. What we'll see is local authorities paying rents directly (i.e. outside of HB) for those they can't find a cheap enough place to house them in, which is a return the far more extremely expensive (to the tax payer) practise of using bed and breakfast. At the same time, the government grant for building affordable new homes have been savagely cut, meaning that councils who want to build homes will have to severely raise rent levels for new tenants to raise revenue, and given that the majority of social housing tenants nationwide receive HB, they will need more of that. If we ever get into the situation where social housing becomes too expensive for HB (which could happen in London) then we are on a road to disastor for a lot of people (why are there no moves to end the right to buy scheme for example? if we really want to improve the lack of affordable housing, surely that is one thing that would help). In Southwark for example, a one bedroomed flat in the private sector will cost around ?900 a month to rent. A council flat of similar size will cost around ?360 per month. If the new mean meridian is applied, suddenly the most HB will pay out is ?300. That essentially means that even the lowest available rent, suddenly becomes unafordable for anyone on benefits....if you then add to that the 10% reducaton after a year, you are looking at thousands of people finding themselves in an impossible situation very quickly (needing to spend around ?25 per week of the ?65 benefit the recieve on rent). If you then add on the move to increase social housing rents to 80% of private sector rents, then Southwark will have a real problem on their hands, and many tenants whom have never had rent arrears are going to find themselves in trouble for the first time. Add to it the policy that no-one under 35 will get HB for a single dwelling (I'm gussing those with children will be exempt) there are going to suddenly be a lot of younger people (and some of them vulnerable) housed in one bedroom and studio flats and suddenly homeless. It's nonsense. 700,000 recipients of HB are in full time work too.....how will this affect them? If a low waged person has to move further away from their place of work to find cheaper housing, they then are faced with increased transport costs.......... Basically it's a policy that says, if you don't work (and worse still, don't earn enough if you do work) then you have no right to live in a individual property (although the costs of a room in a shared property are usually just as high). Boris Johnson was absolutely right in his comments and I think it gave a true insight into the philosophy behind those setting the policy. They hate the poor....simple as that. Either this thing is so badly thought through that they'll have to change their thinking on it, or they really are hell bent on squeezing the poorest and most vulnerable into even further poverty and potential homelessness. And none of this will create a single extra job in those areas where unemployment is high and most unemployed have no chance of finding work. There are at least five times more unemployed than there are jobs advertised (and many of them part time) at any one time. Where are the policies to close THAT gap? The biggest part of the welfare bill....some 60% of it....is spent on the over 65s. Nothing of any significance is changing there (because it's such a political hot potato) yet we are all expected to keep the baby boomers in the manner which they were promised decades ago. For me, and I might be wrong, everything the spending review has proposed has been geared to hurting the biggest voting blocks least (ie the over 65s and middle classes) and hammering everyone else (i.e. often traditional Labour voters - the poor and low paid). It's Dickensian to say the least. Anyway, it seems as though there will be internal opposition to these reforms. We'll have to wait and see which ones make it through to enforcement.

Oi go to bed you lol.....

He's a lovely guy though...and yes I speak from experience.

Yes surely an Interim Possession order can be obtained in this case? Meaning they can be evicted within two weeks if they don't leave of their own free will.

Well that just blew THAT suprise PMSL...................

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But tackle it how.... There have always been professional house burglars. It's nothing new. Beyond a good alarm, the only way to catch them is with CCTV....so put that up. And all that nonsense about it not being legal to put up CCTV on your property is indeed nonsense. You are allowed to put up a camera on your poroperty.......until a court tells you otherwise. Section 36 of the DPA states that personal data ? including video footage of an individual ? captured only for limited domestic purposes is not covered by the restrictions of the DPA.

Hmm a stolen bus.....I didn't think about that......was the driver wearing a stripey shirt and a black mask binary?

Noted ;-)

DJKQ - Thats far too serious - we need to address that in the morning, At the moment I feel we need to focus on Guinness and potatoes. LOL you are right.....plus I am reeling after the strongest Margharita's known to mankind.....would potatoes go with a margharita I wonder?

How might ?55 be spent? Gas per week ?10? Electric per week ?10? Food ?25? That leaves just ?10 for EVERYTHING else.....could YOU do it? Most people would find a couple of months of that soul destroying, try it for years. It's a total myth that the unemployed are living a life of luxury.

I don't think capping the limit of HB is really the problem. But taking 10% away after a year is. Efectively it is a way of reducing JSA to the LTU. They can't reduce the level of base benefit by law but for someone on ?65 per week to lose ?10 or more to rent is an attack on the poorest, especially when most of the people affected ARE looking for work but live in areas of high unemployment and have virtually no chance of finding a job unless the governement find some way to create jobs in those areas. And outside of London there are MANY areas like that. FACT...for every job vacacy there are at least five unemployed....so what will reducing HB after a year achieve? Nothing, when it comes to reducing the numbers of unemployed.

those old buses with wooden seats that are on the night service That is definitely a ghost bus - jeez I didn't realise the problem was so widespread!

It's just occurred to me as well that it could have been a 'ghost bus' like the one in Harry Potter - I'm sure the bus compnay would want to know of anyone illegally taking their trade like that.....;-)

I can cycle from Brixton to Dulwich in less than nine minutes so don't understand what the deal is. In fact the timetable says it should take 14 mins from Brixton Town Hall to Goose Green and that's allowing for all the bus stops en route, so 9 mins seems about right without any need to speed.

Edited because I just realised I fell for it lol.

Where do you get that figure from? Is that 40 working hours, or 40 hours including breaks? You can find all the stats on the Labour Force Survey that is updated every three months. Let s/he who is without sin cast the first stone. Most people do the job they are paid to do....there is NO excuse for not delivering items a customer has paid for delivery of.

I'm with Sean on this issue. I think we can afford things - we are not a poor country but we are an expensive one. There is definitely an ideological edge to the distribution of cuts about to be made (that is basic politics) and it is an ideology that will reduce upward social mobility for the poorest and inrease the gap between rich and poor (we already have one of the biggest gaps). Any society that squeezes the poorest (who are poor through no fault of their own) in the way the recent spending review does, is a bad society, and what angers me is that no-one really cares.

My dad never charged for the out of service rides :))

Ty :)-D

A joke about rape is funny is it?

40 hours may not be "excessive", but most workers are on 35 hours a week - aren't they I don't know anyone that works a 35 hour week, very few private sector jobs are less than 40 hours and they make up 80% of the Labour force. I really do think that public sector workers are in la la land in terms of the average working conditions and hours for most workers in this country. That doesn't mean to say that we should all be happy to be overworked and/or underpaid of course, but until unions start to fight for better working conditions for ALL workers, most private sector workers will continue to balk at some of the claims of 'hard done by' made by the public sector. Just because some postal workers sometimes do this when they shouldn't does not mean that they all do it all the time, and nor does it mean that it was what happened in this case, because clearly it wasn't. The point is that NO postal workers should be doing this, and every time they do, it costs their employer in compensation (which is perhaps why Royal Mail seem to take the issue seriously).

My dad (who was a bus driver) used to do that. If he was on the last bus, he would terminate in town, before then driving an empty bus back to the depot which was halfway along the route. If he saw anyone, especially women, waiting at a stop (not relaising they'd missed the last bus or otherwise) he'd give them a lift to anywhere long the route to the depot. For him it just seemed a safe and sensible thing to do.

How much had you two had to drink? And was Sambucca involved? :)