Blah Blah

What was being proposed in 1959 isn't really relevant to what Thatcher's government brought in. The key figure in it all though was Conservative councillor Horace Cutler, who started selling council homes to tenants once he became leader of the GLC in 1977, and it was he that purusuaded Thatcher's government to adopt it as policy, through Hesaltine, who had to work to pursuade an initially resistant Thatcher round to the idea.

That's not quite true Uncleglen. People have always been able to apply to buy a council home but the council were under no obligation to sell. RTB not only took away the councils right to refuse it also forced them to sell at a discount and under Thatcher they weren't allowed to use the money from the sale to build or buy new homes. So let's not go down the path of trying to pin the loss of 2 million plus council homes on Labour shall we? I think it's both Otta. But we now have a government totally opposed to council homes, who also thinks social rents are subsidised when they are not, and that private market rent is where rent should be. They bang on about low inflation but housing inflation is never included in the figures. If it were it would be off the scale. They also fail to understand that it is in the interests of property developers to keep supply low, which is one reason why the private market can not be left to fix the supply problem and is also the reason why the government is going to give billions to private companies to build starter homes (so they don't lose out on market profits). Our taxes would be better spent building homes for social rent. At least the equity and rental income from those sees a return to the taxpayer. Giving a subsidy to private developers so that a few people can get a home for 20% below market rate does not.

It's precisely because of the challenge he wants to make that he has backed Brexit. The consensus seems to be the that the result won't matter because at least 100 Tory MPs look set to vote for Brexit and Boris would have their support. If Osborne and Teresa May run too, and split votes with Cameron, then Boris would definitely go through to the second round. The question is whether Osborne and May would jump into a leadership challenge rather than waiting for Cameron to step down first imo.

I think that's spot on ????. Osborne is finished and Boris will absolutely be challenging for the leadership in the summer I think.

Iain Duncan Smith has resigned. The fallout begins.

The issue here is that the money doesn't provide what the homeless need, which is affordable and secure accomodation. There are 75,000 families for example, currently in expensive temporary B&B accomodation because local authorities have nowhere to house them. New Labour pretty much eradicated this, but now we are back to where we were 30 years ago, but in higher numbers. The continued sell off of social housing, the continued stranglehold on not allowing councils to replace those homes, and welfare caps making much of the private rented sector unaccessible to those people are all factors. Rough sleepers are often those with other problems, with alcohol, drugs or mental health and they need specialist support along with sheltered accomodation at a time when all of those services have been cut back because of the 40% cut in central funding to LAs. The bottom line is this. We have a government that doesn't really believe in a welfare state. It thinks charities should increasingly play that role - which takes us back to Victorian thinking on these things. It doesn't see anything wrong with millions of people needing food parcels for that very reason, and doesn't think it really needs to care about the poor because the poor don't traditionally vote Conservative. Nothing makes my blood boil more than hearing some MP who was born into privilege going on about personal responsibility. They just don't understand the poor, or poverty or really how much is against those born into it. BUT, most voters are not affected by most of these things and too many have been conditioned to think the poor only have themselves to blame. The media has a lot to answer for as well.

I don't disagree with any of that DaveR, but often these things are the result of things going wrong in other parts of the economy. And anything that stays a certain way for any period of time becomes entrenched. The only real answer would be enough jobs for all (and ones that pay enough to live on), but we are as far away from that as we've ever been. On acadmeies, I'm a bit on the fence. What matters to me is outcomes. I do wish though that the great experiment with children's state run education would stop. You are never going to match the oucomes of private educaton while you continue to have a shortage of teachers and huge class sizes in the state sector.

I think that's the difficulty with the debate. Many genuine claimants feel tarred with a brush because of the efforts that other claimants don't make. But claimants can't get away with doing nothing anymore. And I would still like to think that most people given the choice between working and claiming would choose work. We know there are at least a million people in full time working making that choice, because we top up their wages. And that's before even getting to the tax credits figures. What hasn't changed though is the ratio of available jobs to those chasing them. Even in London, you will have 100s of people going after a basic job. How does any employer sort through that?

To answer your question LondonM, probably not as many as some areas would like to make us think. JSA claimants ARE required to demonstrate they are looking for work. Those on disability benefits ARE put through the governments work capability assessment, and many genuinely ill people fail to get through it. We could look at the level of sanctions as an indicator, but 63% of those sanctioned are on ESA are in the WRAG - so have some kind of health problem. When people are ill, they can't function on the same level from day to day. I think the issue is that under New Labour, people became parked for years on different types of benefits with no review - which isn't a good thing, but now we have a system that has flipped to the other extreme. The long term unemployed often have specific reasons for being so, like age, or living in areas of high unemployment. So assuming that unemployment is soley the fault of the unemployed themselves is wrong in many cases. Unemployment figures also are not ever a true reflection and there's a lot of temporarily unemployed within those figures. If we look instead at the number of people who are economically inactive, that figure hasn't gone down (it's currently around 30% of age 16-64 adults). Of those people, how many are dependent on the state for financial help? I'd have to look for some reliable figures on that, but I think the real problem remains the level of wages compared to the cost of living (and housing) in general and then in turn, the number of people in work compared to those their taxes need to support (which includes the under 16s and over 65s of course). Entertaining any idea that any percentage of claimants abusing the system counters that is nonsense. And to add, benefit fraud is thought to be just 0.7% of all claims.

There is pelnty of evidence that genuinely disabled people are being unfairly hit hard - 80 suicides, thousands dying from underlying conditions within six weeks of being found fit for work by Atos and Maximus for example. So the system to sort out genuine claimants from those who are able, is flawed and deeply so. That's before we even get into the debates on the realistic chances of the disabled being able to find work. Employers prejudice against several groups of people based on everything from age to disability. Nothing is being done by government to address that. The message is clear. If you are disabled or over 50 or Long Term Unemployed, you are damned on every level. Just on mental health conditions DaveR, it can take years for someone to recover from a breakdown, and they will need specific ongoing support to get well. This is perhaps the most misunderstood area of disibility by both the public and government alike and there is nothing like the funding needed in place to deal with this. Their continued attacks on the disabled are beyond any measure of reason if ever they were. We can afford to give tax breaks to the top 10% but we can't afford to make sure half a million disabled people have enough to live on. Completely spot on Jah Lush regarding tax credits and that's why he was so happy to u-turn. At the time it was pointed out that Universal Credit was going to wipe out the tax credits anyway. Now compare this to the ESA cut where the government is defying the Lords - because there is no alternate way to cut them without people noticing. Osborne has created a hole for himself for sure. The really cynical part is the offset of some tax collectons for two years (allowing them to be paid in arrears) therefore creating a windfall tax in 2019 to try and con us all into thinking he's suddenly come good on his target to reduce the deficit or even send it into surplus. It will be a total con based on a year of creative accounting that won't be repeated in the following year. Deliberately deceptive is an understatement for Osborne. The real pointer is the increasing fall in investment rates. NOTHING Osborne has ever done has sent that in the right direction. He just doesn't understand that excessive cutting strangles capital investment. He's relying completely on the free market to stimulate the economy and it's not working and hasn't worked for the last 6 years! How long does it have to go on before he wakes up? Does anyone really believe anything he says anymore on fiscal targets? He's missed every target he has set, and now just looks like some kind of fantasist. Public borrowing is up. Investment down. Exports down. Productivity down. And everything continuously being downgraded. Yet he and Cameron insist they are doing the best job with the economy, not just within the country, but in the whole G7!!!!! Complete fantasy.

Government ministers have consulted with American healthcare providers Loz. They published a report via one of their think tanks. I will try and find it. What I would say is that there is not enough investment in preventative care. Some areas have improved on that front, like cancer, but other areas like mental health and obesity are extremely under resourced. If we want to reduce NHS cost, we could start with the diet of the nation. The long term savings to the NHS would be significant on that front alone.

It's not exactly free though. We all pay into it. When making European comparisons, we are not always comparing like for like. Many European countries have aspects to their health services that run like private models. In France for example, you will pay for a GP appointment and then claim the money back if you are eligible to do so. The only areas that we manage like that are prescriptions and dentistry. The NHS though still remains excellent value for what we spend. And what dismays me about the pressure for privatisation is that government look to America, when really they should be looking to Europe, where there are plenty of good examples of where changes could be made that don't in reality privatise huge areas of healthcare.

How is renting a temporary site not 'commercially viable', especially if the rent were comparable? That post office always has a long queue because there are so few counter staff anyway. Hope this isn't being seen as an opportunity to close yet another Post Office by Royal Mail.

Have a look at this. http://forums.pepipoo.com/lofiversion/index.php/t55562.html Someone there also mentions that a layby is not part of the highway. So I think anyone ticketed should challenge as they are not parking on Zigzags - they are off the highway.

To me that looks like a layby with no parking restrictions. What is painted on the highway has nothing to do with it. Southwark would have to have specific and clearly dispalyed parking restrictions in place for the layby itself imo. There's definitely a case here for a challenge I think.

I think we can pledge some eggs. We'll buy them over the weekend and arrange to get them to you x

Good post Joe. The 5bn rebate isn't even something we actually pay. We deduct that before handing over any money to the EU. Without question there are pros and cons to the arguments on both sides. For me the issue is what is preferable. I think staying in and working for change will serve us better than leaving. And I absolutely agree with the premise that countries that work together don't fight each other. I want a world of co-operation, not isolationism.

But you are making an assumption. Whether a persons view is agreeable or not, it's quite clear when someone is very engaged in what they debate beyond just having a view. People who are political activsts (for want of a better definition) are usually very driven. Unions are organised and maintained and run by people like that. The came is true of charities or any organisation that depends on a huge amount of voluntary effort. I can't ever see a time when I won't be motivated to do somthing if I can to defends peoples right to a certain quality of life for example. Altruism might be a rare thing, but it definitely exists on many levels and in many forms.

Because you argued that more financial institutions would move to the UK, but thre is no reason to think that or evidence of such. I mentioned Holland to make the point that what makes any country attractive to financial institutions are the regulations they have in place, none of which are determined by EU membership. In fact, Gordon Borwn's light touch made London one of the most attractive places for investment banking (esp hedge funds) in the world. There were things that were legal here that were not legal in the US for example. The EU has nothing to do with any of it.

Sigh Dave R. Do you think anyone who stands up for people is a hypocrit then? I wonder what you do with your spare time? Do you just poor scorn over anyone who tries to challenge inequality or poverty or any other worthwhile issue? I disagree LondonM. My point was not that the Tories are the new Nazis, but that state sanctioned prejudice has a process of stealth. That was very clear from my words. But as usual, a different context is applied at the mere mention of National Socialism. I could easily have made comparisons to other totalitarian states. The government's policies on migrants ARE an extreme knee jerk reaction to the imagined support of someone who would go much further if he ever got a sniff of power (Farage). And as such have impacts on public perception and then consequences. The same could be said about the government's attack on the poor and disabled too.

Odd thing to seize on Jeremy! As an active member of a trade union, work and employment rights are very much at the fore of my thinking. Of course I'm going to fight for those things, til my last breath if necessary.

Except that there are other european countries like Holland and Switzerland that offer financial incentives we could never match. Take the 'Dutch Sandwich' for example. A nice stepping stone for tax avoidng corporations to our very own Caymen Islands amongst other tax havens. As too that there is any such thing as free trade. Outside of the EU we would be subject to the rules of the World Trade Organisation, which has it's own set of tariffs etc. There are deinitely pros and cons in both in/out scenarios. It's just a question of where the pros and cons outweigh each other.

Closed mind? Really. You haven't even contributed to this thread. That you join it just to have a go says more about you than it does me. Bonkers.

Such an intelligent comment Maxxi.

Godwin's Law is just a bit of fun. To assume drawing an analogy with National Socialism automatically renders a debate lost is stupid. My analogy was valid and relevant to the topic.