Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

Lol what can anyone here do about it? It's being ignored by everyone who can do something about it

Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

What can be done is that our left wing bretheren can start to realise that rents aren't being set by (evil) landlords, just market forces :dozey:
Then we can all begin to address the causes of the problem rather than just watch socialists engage in erronious rabble rousing

Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

But they're not set by the market because the market is being manipulated if it was genuinely being set by the market we'd see houses being built to satisfy the demand

Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

You are seeing a conspiracy where there is simply ineptitude.

Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

You seem to be forgetting things like planning permission, lack of finance, lack of skilled trades persons, lack of raw materials, inertia, NIMBYism etc. There are any number of reasons that house building doesn't go ballistic.

Perhaps the most unmentionable is just like the argument against new roads: cars will come to drive on them. Build more houses and people will flock from everywhere to fill them.

What we really need to do is to use the existing stock more efficiently. Time was when several generations lived in a single small property. Now we have singles living in multibedroomed properties. Something the so called "bedroom tax" was bought in to try and solve.

Of course if we had a fully Soviet Stallinist government and all housing was owned by the state then people would be forced to move to properties deemed sufficient for their needs and also forced to share with others if there were spare bedrooms. Problem solved. ;)

Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

Too true. So far as I can see, aside from making better use of what we have, the most logical way to tackle this problem (and many others) is to build more homes of the type really needed but control population growth, especially that due to mass immigration which brings with it sudden and large scale demands for homes, services, infrastructure etc. The alternative is for more of the UK to be built upon with all of the irreversible detrimental effects that will have on our way of life and environment.

Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

Council rent here has just risen by 3.8% :(

Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

He was referring to Private Sector rents, not your local Labour Council.....

Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

Get bent, how often to people still come out with " it's all Thatchers fault". 25 years after she's gone.

Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

:confused:

So? First of all I don't do that so I don't see why I should 'get bent'. Secondly they're also wrong or at least misguided since anything that was Thatcher's fault was subsequently had time to be rectified.

That defence is nothing more than the "But Mum! They do it too!". Two wrongs don't make a right and, contrary to belief on here, there is not a 'red' team and a 'blue' team who are reasonable for everyone else that they vaguely share a spectrum with.

People have to come up with a better defence than trying to find someone else who has also done it. It's meritless.

Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

Probably 'cos you came out with such a stupid comment. :D
As has already been said here. The Tories inherited a total clusterf*ck left by the last lot on top of a financial depression. 5 years isn't long enough to undo all that. Especially in a coilition with the other bunch of numpties.

Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

I forgot nothing even in spite of a couple of the things on your list being erroneous, two of the biggest hurdles to house building aren't even on your list, house builders having gotten used to making 20% on the cost of a house and councils like Kensington and westminster not only not enforcing house builders legal obligation to provide a certain amount of social housing according to the numbers of houses they build but they've actively encouraged them not to build any.

Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

What's wrong with that?lol, social housing alongside 'normal' new builds........if the experience in Woolwich is anything to go by, that approach simply provides a certion sub section of society with easy access to cars and houses that can be broken into. :D

Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

Actually it works well and has done for years, because ,shock horror ,not everyone in social housing is an anti social scrote ,the same as everyone in private housing isn't a drug dealer.The idea that a section of society should be removed from another section of society and housed in different areas is as antiquated as it is pompous

Re: Oooh, look. Half a million more people claiming housing benefit under coalition.
 

Never said that it is always the case. Simply pointing out that it sometimes doesn't work and that council/govt led brute force social engineering possibly isn't the best way forward.
....and are you saying that this approach doesn't provide a certain sub section of society with easy access to cars and houses that can be broken into?