On benefits and in debt

A national newspaper is reporting the case of a young single mother who is living on benefits with her two children, and who owes a lot of money to various loan companies.  The comments are generally far from sympathetic, but I wonder how many of these comments are from people who are sensible about borrowing money.

Let me repeat what I said in a previous post: I believe that we are all morally obliged to live our lives free from debt if we can.

It is easy for someone who is earning a comfortable salary to borrow money and be confident of repaying the loan in full, but almost anyone can suffer a reversal of fortune.  Nevertheless while I believe that people should think before borrowing, I also think that lenders should perhaps think more before lending.

While I wonder why anyone should want to borrow money to buy Christmas presents, I also wonder why anyone would want to lend money to someone to buy Christmas presents.  Children like presents at Christmas, but they benefit from having parents who are sensible with money.

Previous related posts include:
To build on debt is to build on sand
A rent arrears crisis in London

The new power house in Europe

It is predicted that the United Kingdom is on course to become the economic power house of Europe by the year 2030.  Apparently the British economy will overtake that of France in the next few years, and will then go on to overtake that of Germany.

These predictions are based on current trends which may or may not continue in the future.  For example, there is no reason at the moment to think that the Labour Party will not form our next government.  Also, the socialist government which is currently ruining France may not be in power much longer.

Some readers might think that David Cameron and the Tories deserve to continue in power after the next general election if we are indeed on course for economic glory, and it is certainly true that the most recent figures for the British economy are impressive.  The claimant count for October fell by 36,700 to 1.27million. At this rate, the claimant count could be eradicated within just three years.

Nevertheless there are many people in this country who are struggling financially, and that includes working people as well as people on benefits.  Food banks are opening every week as more and more people risk starvation in this supposedly wealthy country.

I have no problem with the British economy growing under any government, but I will never vote Conservative, and neither will anyone who cares about people not having to starve.

Another teenager dies in pre-communist Britain

Tom Acton was just sixteen when he committed suicide.  He had been upset for some time after rumours were posted online about him being a sex offender.  He had also been assaulted.

The thug who assaulted him has escaped a prison sentence, and so far as I can make out nobody has been prosecuted for spreading the rumours which led to the assault and to the suicide.

Compare this with the treatment of Liam Stacey.  He posted an offensive comment about someone online, then deleted it once he realised he had caused offence.  His target was a grown man who was unlikely to kill himself because of just one short-lived nasty comment.  Nevertheless Stacey was prosecuted and jailed.

The difference of course is that Stacey made a racially abusive comment about a black man (Fabrice Muamba).  I do not condone his stupidity, but a prison sentence was surely an overreaction on the part of the authorities - but such is the way of things as Britain slides ever deeper into the morass of communism.

Far more serious however is the failure of the authorities to protect Tom Acton.  Tom was not the first young person in this country to commit suicide as a result of internet bullying, and I do not expect that he will be the last.

If you value the lives of Britain's teenagers, then stop voting Labour or Tory or LibDem.  Those parties are led by communists who will always put their ideology above innocent human life.

Related posts include:
Ryan French is dead
Hannah Seeley is dead
Poppy Rodgers is dead 
Who killed Katie Littlewood?

Mariah Carey is not sorry

Mariah Carey is apparently unrepentant about the fact that she was recently paid a million dollars to perform live for an African despot.  I do not know how much truth there is in allegations that President Dos Santos is a tyrant who murders his opponents while enriching himself and his family at the public expense, but I do know that Mariah Carey has nothing much to be ashamed of.

No one seems too bothered about the fact that Muhammad Ali and George Foreman fought each other in 1974 in the country then known as Zaire - and yet that boxing match was hosted by one of the most tyrannical African despots of all time.

The people who criticise Mariah Carey are probably for the most part quite happy to vote for warmongering scum like David Cameron and Barack Obama, and most of them are probably jealous that no African tyrant has ever offered them a million dollars.

A rent arrears crisis in London

An inner London council has courted controversy by sending its seventeen thousand tenants a Christmas card urging them to pay their rent over the festive season.  The council has justified the cards by saying that forty-six percent of their tenants are in arrears.

Forty-six percent of seventeen thousand is just over seven thousand eight hundred.  Nearly eight thousand families in just one London borough are in arrears on their rent, and that is just council tenants we’re talking about.  Presumably it does not include private or housing association tenants.

While this statistic may seem astonishing, or perhaps even scary, it needs to be treated with caution.  First, many of the council’s tenants are presumably in receipt of housing benefit.  Housing benefit is paid every four weeks, and so any tenant in receipt of housing benefit is anywhere up to three weeks in arrears with their rent at any one point in time.  However this alone does not explain the statistic.

The council knows perfectly well that housing benefit is paid every four weeks, seeing as how it administers the benefit itself as well as being the recipient of many of those payments.  Surely it would not concern itself with eight thousand tenants in arrears if those tenants were in arrears merely because of housing benefit being paid less often than every week.

Another possible cause is the bedroom tax.  The bedroom tax has been in place now for roughly thirty-eight weeks, and the under-occupation deduction (the so-called bedroom tax) is either fourteen percent (for one spare room) or twenty percent (for two or more spare rooms).  A tenant with one spare room could therefore be more than five weeks behind with his rent as a result of the bedroom tax, while a tenant with two or more spare rooms could be nearly eight weeks behind with his rent.

There could be other reasons, such as working people either struggling to subsist on low incomes or even behaving irresponsibly with their money.

As I understand it, social housing landlords – be they local authorities or housing associations – are not supposed to seek to evict any tenant except as a last resort.  Therefore we would expect Hammersmith and Fulham not to seek to evict any tenants except for a remarkably bad arrears predicament – but of course the situation must be fairly bad in at least some of the eight thousand cases if the council has seen fit to send out Christmas cards offering a stark warning.

Hammersmith and Fulham is one of thirty-two London boroughs.  A similar situation in each of those boroughs could realistically equate to more than a quarter of a million households across Great London in arrears.  Even if we assume that only five percent of those are serious cases, then that still makes nearly thirteen thousand households in total.

Will 2014 be the year in which thousands of social housing tenants across London are evicted from their homes and end up living rough on the streets?  Will there be whole families begging outside every tube station?  Every shopping centre?  Every public house?

Time will tell.

Previous posts on related issues include:

Rough sleeping: when will it be you?

Another victim of the bedroom tax

 

The future of the Muslim world

Two things catch my eye in the press today.  The first is a comment by Max Hastings about Afghanistan.  Much as I dislike Hastings, I will admit that he makes a good case on this occasion.  He notes that:

The expenditure of hundreds of billions of pounds, the loss of hundreds of American and British lives and tens of thousands of Afghan ones have merely transformed the country into one of the most corrupt on earth.

Whole avenues of skyscrapers in Dubai are owned by associates of President Hamid Karzai, built with cash ultimately stolen from Western taxpayers.

He does not say, however, (unless I missed it) that the elections in which Karzai came to power were rigged by the USA to let him win.  Make no mistake: Afghanistan now is very much in the image of what the USA wants.  I don't know who I am quoting here, but the USA is arguably the ultimate rogue state.

The other news item is that Prince Charles has spoken out about the ongoing persecution of Christians in the Middle East.  While I am pleased that he has addressed this matter, he betrays either his ignorance or perhaps an obstinate refusal to face facts when he refers to fundamentalist Islamist militants.

The Muslim who persecutes Christians is the true Muslim.  The Muslim who does not is probably either not a true Muslim, or else is biding his time.

We should not expect the future of the Muslim world not to feature widespread corruption and the persecution of non-Muslims.

My previous posts on related issues include:

The Red Shield versus Syria

Your Muslim faith - really?

The return of the UKIP hamster

It is reported that dozens of Tory MPs are expected to sign a letter to our communist Prime Minister David Cameron calling on him to stand up to the European Union.  They might as well sign a letter to Rebecca Black calling on her to stop singing.

The most highly rated comments on the DM site are in support of either Nigel Farage or the party he leads.  On the one hand, I agree that leaving the EU makes more sense than staying in and hoping for a better deal.  Also, if there were a  huge groundswell of support in this country for leaving the EU, then it is vaguely possible that the EU high command would actually offer us a better deal in a bid to keep us from leaving.

A related point is that if there were a huge groundswell of support for a political party which supports leaving the EU, then the Conservative Party might give some ground on this issue, although I have already stated why we cannot trust David Cameron on this topic.  In fact I'm not sure we can trust David Cameron on any issue.

I am aware that there is currently an upsurge in support for UKIP, but I made clear some time ago why this cannot be taken very seriously.  Support for UKIP can fall as easily as it can rise.

Anyone who is truly concerned about membership of the EU should join a political party which supports leaving the EU, but ideally that party should not be UKIP.  I expect UKIP will do well in the forthcoming European Parliament elections, but they will not have my vote, and I do not expect their support to last.