Once again and this time because of the new cap on housing
benefit at £400 a week London boroughs have stared on a spate of social
engineering that is effecting Thanet and other costal areas.
The problem hinges around the relative cost of housing
in wealthy parts of the country including London and poorer areas like Thanet.
For the most part we are likely to get people shifted here who just don’t want
to be, putting extra strain on our already under financed resources. Various
newspapers have articles this week saying London councils are buying up
accommodation here and in other parts of the country, to house people they
nether want nor can afford to accommodate.
The watercolour painting of Big Ben and The London Eye is hopefully
meant to represent London’s somewhat cavalier attitude to this problem.
But the question here ought to be: If it’s going to happen
anyway can’t Thanet negotiate some sort of deal with the government and these
wealthy London councils?
We obviously need expensive additional facilities to
cope properly with another influx of people who are likely to have above
average problems and local people shouldn’t have to pay for them or put up with
even more stretched public services.
The painting wasn’t done from life, I have to
admit to cheating and looking at several photos of Big Ben and the London Eye, I
hope it will catch a few Londoners eyes and perhaps make them think about what they
are imposing on people in places without the ability to deal adequately with their
problems.
I think this is a bit scaremongering again. There will no doubt be some people who would like to move to the seaside but the suggestion they will be forced to against their will just because of a cap on housing benefit is nonsense.
ReplyDeleteAt £400 a per week there are plenty of properties to rent in the less fashionable outer Lodon suberbs without going all the way to Thanet. Mainly this is yet another Labour scare story targetting the wicked Coalition. Does anyone seriously think a new Labour government would suddenly increase housing benefit again once another government had carried the can for reducing it.
Nope, social engineering, it happened under the last Labour government as well, Conservative councillors who have the problem in their wards make as much fuss about the problem as the Labour councillors who have the problem in their wards.
DeleteAnon 6:37PM,
DeleteI agree. There are plenty of adequate properties to be had in London at £400 a week.
"I have to admit to cheating and looking at several photos of Big Ben and the London Eye". Should have gone to Specsavers!
ReplyDeleteHere something that cheers me up.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/council-spending/9665801/Council-bosses-can-wave-goodbye-to-fat-payoffs-says-Eric-Pickles.html
Regarding Eric Pickles in the above article: my two favourite descriptions are;
Delete"We watched the tiniest of tinpot chief execs swan around like a feudal lord. Banging on about cuts, slashing services and feathering their own nest. They were out of touch.”; and
"Any town hall that feels the need to pay their chief exec more than the chief exec of Great Britain plc needs its head read.”
Put yourself in the position of a London landlord. Is £400 per week better than £0 per week ?
ReplyDeleteHow many vacant properties in Thanet ?
Are these properties better generating income in Thanet or better generating nowt ?
Put yourself in the position of the mortgagor bank or building society who receives keys back to London BTL property. Are they better off with £400 a week or holding nigh negative equity ?
London councils are already sending people they don't want down here.
ReplyDeleteThey've been doing so for years.
Adolescents in care, I would agree, Yogi, but this new scare about families on capped housing benefit is just that, a new scare. Give just one example of a family sent here by a London Borough as a result of the housing benefit cap, an actually evidenced one rather than hearsay.
Delete