These benefits are a compensation for land stolen over the centuries

Fri May 11 00:24:07 BST 2012

Hi Joan,
Housing should never be a 'market' as markets are 
faling and we cannot afford to have everyones roofs over their heads fail.
Housing bubble is largely responsible for our present woes.
Without Housing Benefit we really would have mass 
homelessness. Indeded only people with full time 
or the best part time jobs would have anywhere to live.
Terrible deprivation. Back to the worse excesses 
of the 19 twenties or thirties.
These benefits are a compensation for land stolen 
over the centuries as the economic system - 
through asset stripping industry and a reliance 
on casino banking - has slowly ground to a halt 
and big business and The City Of London who are 
the real government have entered (after they 
kicked out Harlod WIlson in the 1970s) into 'the 
unemployment is good' mode - because they need a 
massive pool of unemployed to help them force 
down pay and conditions and job security  - - and 
ultimately turn their money into the only power in the land

Britains 1,000 richest persons made gains of £155bn in last 3 years
April 29th, 2012
http://www.michaelmeacher.info/weblog/2012/04/britains-1000-richest-persons-made-gains-of-155bn-in-last-3-years/ 

http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=161039#161039
The Sunday Times Rich List, published today and 
compulsory reading for anybody who wants to 
understand Britains power structure today, holds 
three extremely significant conclusions. One is 
that the 1,000 richest persons in the UK have 
increased their wealth by so much in the last 3 
years  £155bn  that they themselves alone could 
pay off the entire UK budget deficit and still 
leave themselves with £30bn to spare which should 
be enough to keep the wolf from the door. The 
second, even more staggering, is that whilst the 
rest of the country is being crippled by the 
biggest public expenditure and benefits squeeze 
for a century, these 1,000 persons, containing 
many of the bankers and hedge fund and private 
equity operators who caused the financial crash 
in the first place, have not been made subject to 
any tax payback whatever commensurate to their 
gains. This is truly a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.
The third is that despite the biggest slump for 
nearly a century, the slowest and most anaemic 
recovery, and prolonged austerity stretching to a 
decade or more, this ultra-rich clique are now 
sitting on wealth even greater than what they had 
amassed at the height of the boom just before the 
crash. Their combined wealth is now estimated at 
more than £414bn, equivalent to more than a third 
of Britains entire GDP. They include 77 
billionaires and 23 others whose wealth exceeds £750m.
Despite these massive repositories of wealth, 
these are some of the very people to whom Osborne 
gifted £3bn in his recent budget by cutting the 
50p tax rate. That measure alone gave 40,000 UK 
millionaires an extra average £14,000 a week, at 
the same time as those on very low incomes in 
receipt of working tax credits who couldnt find 
an employer to increase their hours of work from 
16 to 24 a week were being deprived in the same 
budget of £77 a week, around a third of their 
income, through their tax credits being withdrawn.
In 1997 the wealth of the richest 1,000 amounted 
to £99bn. The increase in their wealth over the 
last 15 years has therefore been £315bn. If this 
increase in wealth were subject to capital gains 
tax at the current 28% rate, it would yield 
£88bn, and that alone would pay off more than 70% 
of the total budget deficit. However Osborne 
seems to share the notorious view of the New York 
heiress, Leonora Helmsley: taxes are only for the little people.

Without a Biblical style Jubilee where all the 
land is redistributed to everyone in Britain that 
wants it nobody can build any future for 
themselves or their family because big businbess 
has seen that if they take away our security of 
tenure and our homes then they can get us to do 
anything for money - including building nuclear 
power stations, joining prvate security firms -

We have to redistribute land and nationalise the 
banks in the public interest or we will have a civil war on our hands.
Trouble is the mass media in the UK shuts out the 
only solutions (debt default like Iceland did so 
happily and banking nationalisation) and makes them taboo.
The present system massively rewards the greedy.
It's little better than an antdeluvian 
civilisation in reverse type descent into only one human value - bribery.
We have to take greed out of the system so when a 
greedy bad boss arrives on the scene he (or she) 
's emloyees vote with their boots and leave.

Your little plan to get rid of housing benefit 
would really smash the poorest people in the land 
which really is only doing the banksers dirty work for them.

Tony

At 08:42 10/05/2012, you wrote:
>
>
>James, I agree with everything you say but would like to add a bit.
>
>A huge part of the problem is the very existence 
>of Housing Benefit.  It separates out housing 
>from other essential, but only for those who rent, so
>
>1. It assumes that owner occupiers have no 
>housing cost (taking no account of the cost of 
>maintaining property explains why owner occupied 
>housing  is in poor repair in some cases).
>2. Rented accommodation has ceased to be a 
>market good and landlords have been raking in taxpayers money.
>3. The proportion of income spent on housing 
>(which Engles found to be a good measure of 
>wealth/poverty) has no meaning, since "income" 
>in the form of HB rises as rent rises independent of other variables.
>4. People are not able to make rational housing 
>choices and are not encouraged to save money 
>because flat sharing, for example,  results in 
>money being saved by the government, not by the tennants.
>... and so on.
>
>In short the invention of HB was awful social 
>policy, successive governments have failed to 
>recognise this and now the ConDems are 
>penalising the poor for being trapped by a 
>monster which the state created!  Capping HB. or 
>even introducing controlled rents, won't really solve this. HB has to go!
>
>Joan
>
>.
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:tony at cultureshop.org.uk>)>James 
>(by way of Tony Gosling <tony at cultureshop.org.uk>)
>To: <mailto:diggers350 at yahoogroups.com>Massimo
>Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 3:01 AM
>Subject: [Diggers350] "I can afford to pay the rent - most people can't"
>
>
>
>
>
>Owen Jones: I can afford to pay the rent  most people can't
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>To get a two-bed place in Tower Hamlets you need 
>more than double the median household income
>
>I already knew that Britain was in the throes of 
>an escalating housing crisis, but, on the move 
>for the first time in two-and-a-half years and, 
>having been protected from soaring rents by a 
>benevolent landlord, I was in for an unwelcome 
>meeting with reality. Looking for a modest 
>two-bedroom place in London's Zone 2  with a 
>housemate who, appropriately enough, works for a 
>housing charity  I found that a standard 
>monthly individual rent was £800, even £900. One 
>estate agent asked what our maximum budget was: 
>when I suggested £700 each a month, he 
>spluttered down the phone. How many can actually 
>afford  and I mean "have sufficient money left 
>over to have a decent existence after paying the 
>landlord"  these sorts of rents?
>
>Inevitably, I took to Twitter to vent. I was 
>stunned by the response. Hundreds of furious 
>Londoners bombarded me with their renting horror 
>stories. One had a 35 per cent rent hike imposed 
>on them at Christmas; another was forced to 
>desert their Stockwell flat after a 40 per cent 
>increase. "My tiny flat in the East End went up 
>by £200 a month for the next occupants when I 
>left," freelancer Scott Bryan tweeted me. "It 
>was £600 already. Eyewatering." Another 
>abandoned their own "tiny flat" in Zone 3 after 
>their monthly rent went from £720 to £950.
>
>Private landlords can do as they please, of 
>course. Having a roof over your head is a basic 
>human requirement and, when there is a lack of 
>houses to go around, it is a need that can be 
>exploited. A landlord knows that, if their 
>tenants don't like an outrageous rent hike, 
>their only option is to put themselves back at 
>the mercy of the ever more pricey private renting market.
>
>According to Shelter, annual rents in inner 
>London went up by 7 per cent last year  or just 
>under £1,000 for a two-bedroom house. When 
>people's wages are flat-lining, that's a big 
>hit. Of course, some landlords  like mine  can 
>be benevolent; others ruthlessly profiteering. It is a complete lottery.
>
>I'm no victim. I can afford a high rent, even if 
>it rankles. That is not the case for most. The 
>number of us privately renting has soared: One 
>in six households now have private landlords. 
>And it is no longer largely the preserve of 
>students and young people. Indeed, the number of 
>families with children forced to privately rent 
>has nearly doubled in just five years to more 
>than a million. They face the prospect of having 
>to repeatedly move, disrupting the education and 
>overall wellbeing of their kids.
>
>Greedy landlords are fully aware that most 
>cannot afford to pay their extortionate rents. 
>But they also know that the taxpayer will step 
>in and subsidise them with housing benefits. 
>According to the Homes for London campaign, to 
>get a two-bed place in Camden, you need an 
>average monthly household income of £5,324; in 
>Tower Hamlets  one of the poorest boroughs in 
>Britain  it's £4,333, way over double Britain's 
>median household income. It's the state that 
>tops up the difference. Back in 2002, 100,000 
>private renters in London were claiming housing 
>benefit; it soared to 250,000 by the time New Labour was booted out.
>
>But Cameron's Government has decided to punish 
>the tenant, imposing a housing benefit cap that 
>will force many out of their homes. London is on 
>course to be more like Paris: with a centre that 
>is a playground for the affluent, while the poorest are confined to the edges.
>
>Here are the consequences of Thatcher's 
>ideological war on council housing. Her mentor, 
>Keith Joseph, argued right-to-buy would spur on 
>"embourgeoisement". Instead, it has left five 
>million people languishing on social housing 
>waiting lists, and millions at the mercy of 
>private landlords. Council housing has been 
>intentionally demonised as something to escape 
>from, and the lack of stock to go around has 
>left it prioritised for those most in need. 
>We've come far from Nye Bevan's vision of 
>council housing supporting mixed communities, 
>replicating "the lovely feature of the English 
>and Welsh village, where the doctor, the grocer, 
>and the farm labourer all lived on the same street".
>
>But rather than leave millions at the mercy of 
>the mini autocrats of the rented sector, a new 
>wave of council housing would offer accountable 
>landlords, without the absurdity of market 
>rates. Instead of wasting billions on housing 
>benefit, we could spend it on building housing, 
>creating jobs and stimulating the economy.
>
>We could learn a lot about private renting from 
>Germany. Local government sets the maximum rent 
>for flats. The landlord cannot arbitrarily 
>impose dramatic hikes; increases can only come 
>in regulated steps. Such a solution would be 
>good for the British taxpayer, bringing down the 
>housing benefit bill without kicking the tenant. 
>This ever-worsening housing crisis is just a 
>striking example of a society based around the 
>needs of profit, rather than people.
>
>We were told the free market would liberate the 
>individual: instead, it leaves them trapped by 
>the whims of landlords, financially less free, 
>and banished from entire communities. It is a 
>con  and an expensive con at that.
>
><http://twitter.com/@OwenJones84>twitter.com/@OwenJones84
>
>

--
+44 (0)7786 952037
http://groups.google.com/group/uk-911-truth
http://www.youtube.com/user/PublicEnquiry
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Diggers350/
http://www.reinvestigate911.org/
http://www.thisweek.org.uk/
http://www.911forum.org.uk/
"Capitalism is institutionalised bribery."
_________________
www.abolishwar.org.uk
<http://www.elementary.org.uk>www.elementary.org.uk
www.public-interest.co.uk
www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/Bristol+Broadband+Co-operative
www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1407615751783.2051663.1274106225&l=90330c0ba5&type=1
<http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf>http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf 

"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic 
poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
<https://217.72.179.7/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/>https://217.72.179.7/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/

Fear not therefore: for there is nothing covered 
that shall not be revealed; and nothing hid that 
shall not be made known. What I tell you in 
darkness, that speak ye in the light and what ye 
hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. Matthew 10:26-27

Die Pride and Envie; Flesh, take the poor's advice.
Covetousnesse be gon: Come, Truth and Love arise.
Patience take the Crown; throw Anger out of dores:
Cast out Hypocrisie and Lust, which follows whores:
Then England sit in rest; Thy sorrows will have end;
Thy Sons will live in peace, and each will be a friend.
http://tinyurl.com/6ct7zh6 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.gn.apc.org/mailman/private/diggers350/attachments/20120511/bdf304cf/attachment.html>