economic situation is dire

[snowychap]

It's not like this is even a new thing either. Anyone remember Rumbelows?

They were ace. I got my first portable telly with remote control from them.

I'm easily shocked. You should know that by now.

[peterms]

It's not that shocking, really. This is David Freud.

Bit more about Fraud and spare bedrooms here.

Loads of room to talk! Bedroom tax Tory Lord Freud lives in eight-bedroom country mansion

19 Jan 2013 22:00

Welfare Minister, who also has a £1.9 million London home, is labelled as an 'out of touch hypocrite'

The Tory lord plunging 95,000 into poverty with his “bedroom tax” stays in an eight-bedroom country mansion ... when he’s not living in his £1.9million London home, the Sunday People has revealed.

Lord Freud was accused of being an out of touch hypocrite last night after provoking a storm of criticism this week defending the tax which will see some of Britain’s poorest families charged for spare bedrooms.

And thousands face being turfed out on the streets if they cannot afford it.

Lord Freud owns a huge, historic country pile – one of the oldest in England – in Kent, which he uses for weekends and holidays.

During the week, the father of three, 62, whose children have grown up and moved out, lives with his wife Priscilla in a four-bedroom townhouse in Highgate – that’s three MORE spare bedrooms – while working as David Cameron’s Welfare Minister on the front benches of the Tory party.

It will astonish those in social housing who face losing their homes if they cannot afford to pay bedroom tax when the reforms are pushed through in April.

Labour MP Jon Cruddas said: “The bedroom tax is one of the most abhorrent attacks yet by this Government on some of the poorest people in Britain. Now we learn one of its architects has ten spare rooms himself.

“This is rank hypocrisy and more evidence of how out of touch this Government is with normal people. How would Lord Freud feel if he was told to downsize his properties?”

The tax – officially called “under occupancy tax” – means people in social housing who have a spare bedroom will find housing benefit claims reduced by £40 to £80 a month.

Anyone in housing association homes or council housing with a spare bedroom will lose 14 per cent of housing benefit, or 25 per cent if they have two spare rooms – despite the lack of one bedroom council homes. The bedroom tax will see 666,000 working-age social tenants losing an average £14 a week. Housing association tenants face losing £16 a week. It is estimated 95,000 people will not be able to afford the changes.

All claimants with at least one spare bedroom will be affected, including separated parents who share child care and may have been allocated an extra bedroom, foster families and those with disabled children.

Lord Freud, the great-grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund, has been responsible for overhauling the benefits system after leaving Labour as an independent advisor and joining the Conservatives in 2009. He is also behind the controversial Universal Credit – due in the autumn.

He went into meltdown when he tried to defend his policy on BBC Radio Five Live this week when he told Graeme Gair from Inverness that he did not deserve a spare bedroom for his children as they only stay with him on weekends and holidays.

Flustered Freud tried to bluff his way out of it by repeating the policy. His attitude provoked a storm on social networks.

But the Lord’s Eastry Court, a listed building, has plenty of room for guests. One local said: “It’s an enormous place. There are passages going off in all directions.”

[Genie]

With all this snow the BOE have an excuse for poor results at the next reporting point.

[CI]

Wonga praying on the vulnerable, rocket polishers, 4700% apr

How is that even allowed

[peterms]

Austerity has damaged recovery, says former Bank of England official

Likelihood of a triple-dip recession and more than two years of flat growth can be partly blamed on Osborne's handling of the economy, says Adam Posen

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Austerity doesn't work.

[TrentVilla]

But it must work? Gideon said it would

We are all in this together

[peterms]

ONS confirms Osborne is increasing the deficit and indebtedness, despite his claims to the contrary:

Public Sector Finances, December 2012

Coverage: UK

Date: 22 January 2013

Geographical Area: UK and GB

Theme: Economy

Latest figures

• Public sector net borrowing was £15.4 billion in December 2012; this is £0.6 billion higher net

borrowing than in December 2011, when net borrowing was £14.8 billion.

• Public sector current budget deficit was £13.0 billion in December 2012; this is a £0.5 billion

higher deficit than in December 2011, when there was a deficit of £12.5 billion.

• For the period April to December 2012, public sector net borrowing (excluding the capital

payment recorded as part of the Royal Mail Pension Plan transfer in April 2012) was £106.5

billion; this is £7.2 billion higher net borrowing than in the same period the previous year, when

net borrowing was £99.3 billion.

• In 2011/12, public sector net borrowing was £121.6 billion; this is £4.4 billion lower than the Office

for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasted net borrowing for 2011/12 of £126.0 billion.

• Public sector net debt was £1,111.4 billion at the end of December 2012, equivalent to 70.7 per

cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

[peterms]

The thing is that many tories actually believe the lies that Osborne tells them about the state of the economy when they took over, the scary levels of debt, and all the rest of it. They then repeat it ceaselessly, so that people hear the lies so often they come to believe them.

Here's one from yesterday, with tory MP MIchael Fabricant tweeting something wholly untrue about public debt under Labour, being corrected on it by an economist, and simply continuing to bluster while refusing to accept the simple fact that he was wildly wrong.

No doubt he will continue repeating the lies.

Fabricant and debt ratios

[drat01]

Nothing to do with renting DVD's in the internet age being a pretty poor business model, it's obviously the government's fault....

That's like blaming government's past for the motor car putting Blacksmith's out of work.

:-) I missed this comment.

Funny how those who "liked" it are avid Tory supporters also and like you AWOL employ the ostrich mentality to this Gvmt's economic policy - i.e. head in the sand

The point as well you know is the number of profile high street organizations that have gone bust within quick succession. Now as a Tory supporter I appreciate that your basic instinct is to say "bollox" to the lot of them and survival of the fittest and damn the consequences - that is the Tory philosophy - but even from your position thousands of miles away surely even you must see that the economic climate is certainly accelerating the demise of certain business structures. The consequences of these businesses going bust is not just a few shops closing as you well know, there are families that then have no incomes, these people not spending, stimulus to local economies etc etc, but I am sure that your blacksmith analogy dealt with that - or did it?

I wonder how the head in the sand mentality will try and deflect and blame others re the massive increases in borrowing that were announced today, or will that be something to do with organ pipe cleaners or arrow makers?

This is a very fragile economy at the moment, not helped whatsoever by the flawed policies of a quite corrupt Gvmt and its supporters.These are exceptional times and unlike in the past when organizations like Rumbelows as TheDon mentions, the high street and the retail sector that so much of the so called recovery plan is based on has to be carefully looked at and especially the impact of so many failed businesses.

[Dr_Pangloss]

The thing is that many tories actually believe the lies that Osborne tells them about the state of the economy when they took over, the scary levels of debt, and all the rest of it. They then repeat it ceaselessly, so that people hear the lies so often they come to believe them.

Here's one from yesterday, with tory MP MIchael Fabricant tweeting something wholly untrue about public debt under Labour, being corrected on it by an economist, and simply continuing to bluster while refusing to accept the simple fact that he was wildly wrong.

No doubt he will continue repeating the lies.

Fabricant and debt ratios

The funny thing is that Fabricant has a BA in economics and an Msc in Econometrics, yet spoke of a 'GDP-debt' ratio. What an out of touch idiot. He must have left behind all of his training many years ago.

[drat01]

With all this snow the BOE have an excuse for poor results at the next reporting point.

Osborne and Cameron must be the only Chancellor and PM who actually hope for bad weather - it's not the first time they have blamed bad results on it.

[drat01]

The funny thing is that Fabricant has a BA in economics and an Msc in Econometrics, yet spoke of a 'GDP-debt' ratio. What an out of touch idiot. He must have left behind all of his training many years ago.

He is also a clearing in the woods of the highest order, a "twitter" troll and someone who many of the Tory party supporters especially those around his constituency seem to love.

[peterms]

The funny thing is that Fabricant has a BA in economics and an Msc in Econometrics...

Does he now?

Michael was born in Brighton in 1950 and has a Bachelor's degree in Economics and Law from Loughborough University and a Master of Science degree in Operations Research from the University of Sussex. He undertook postgraduate doctoral research in Economics and Forecasting at Oxford, London University, and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He is also a Chartered Engineer, and a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. He was a 100 and 220 yard sprinter for school and university "before they changed it all to metres".

I find it very hard to see how someone claiming to have done postgrad economics (or even O level economics, or basic maths, or anything which involves being able to read a graph) could fail to see the vast and glaring mistake he had made in this fantasy claim. I can just about believe he might have repeated the lie without checking, but once he had been corrected and shown the graph - no.

I wonder if he really has these qualifications. The bit about running puts me in mind of another tory MP, the fantasist with a "fragrant" wife...

[TheDon]

The point as well you know is the number of profile high street organizations that have gone bust within quick succession. Now as a Tory supporter I appreciate that your basic instinct is to say "bollox" to the lot of them and survival of the fittest and damn the consequences - that is the Tory philosophy - but even from your position thousands of miles away surely even you must see that the economic climate is certainly accelerating the demise of certain business structures.

Is it?

Or is it that the gleeful borrowing of the past artificially propped up failing businesses with antiquated business models with a reluctance to change?

The high street has been doomed for years, as internet penetration has rose and the fear of "the big bad internet fraudsters" has diminished it's only natural that the high street is going to have seen a crash.

I can't remember the last time I made a major purchase from a high street retailer. Shopping online is just far more convenient, as it is for many other people. I hate going into shops, from pushy sales people to people who walk around like they're extras in the walking dead, it's something I avoid like the plague.

The high street offers near enough nothing for me.

The convenience of getting something straight away often isn't worth the hassles of dealing with parking and over paying.

[drat01]

Is it?

Or is it that the gleeful borrowing of the past artificially propped up failing businesses with antiquated business models with a reluctance to change?

The high street has been doomed for years, as internet penetration has rose and the fear of "the big bad internet fraudsters" has diminished it's only natural that the high street is going to have seen a crash.

I can't remember the last time I made a major purchase from a high street retailer. Shopping online is just far more convenient, as it is for many other people. I hate going into shops, from pushy sales people to people who walk around like they're extras in the walking dead, it's something I avoid like the plague.

The high street offers near enough nothing for me.

The convenience of getting something straight away often isn't worth the hassles of dealing with parking and over paying.

You see your argument goes against what messers Osborne and Cameron have been bleating about especially in regard to services etc and all that goes along with that.

The fact that you do not purchase "major" items from the High street means bugger all in the whole scheme of things though does it, you can shop online but that is not something that all have the "privilege" of being able to do - I know a lot of people who cannot through many circumstances (e.g. lack of internet, lack of trust in the "systems", lack of credit cards) etc. Just because you don't like shops and don't like the people who frequent them again means nothing in the argument does it.

As said the economy is very fragile and despite what Cameron, Osborne and their supporters would have you believe by the constant lies they tell, there is still a need for evolution rather than revolution in the way economies based on retail - which lets be honest certainly contributes a lot to the UK - are allowed to progress.

[villamark]

Is it?

Or is it that the gleeful borrowing of the past artificially propped up failing businesses with antiquated business models with a reluctance to change?

The high street has been doomed for years, as internet penetration has rose and the fear of "the big bad internet fraudsters" has diminished it's only natural that the high street is going to have seen a crash.

I can't remember the last time I made a major purchase from a high street retailer. Shopping online is just far more convenient, as it is for many other people. I hate going into shops, from pushy sales people to people who walk around like they're extras in the walking dead, it's something I avoid like the plague.

The high street offers near enough nothing for me.

The convenience of getting something straight away often isn't worth the hassles of dealing with parking and over paying.

No it's the governments fault, it has to to be for some people on this forum! The government has got a lot wrong but I not sure how you can really blame them for HMV and Blockbuster. Was it Labours fault that Woolworths went under?

[mjmooney]

My missus's latest comments on the banking circus

BTW she'd appreciate some votes on the poll (top right of page).

[villamark]

The high street is changing, a lot of people don't need to go there anymore. The internet and retail parks have had a large impact on them. They need to change or die. Improve service, add extra value and be a place where people want to go to. They have to have a more social experience.

[drat01]

No it's the governments fault, it has to to be for some people on this forum! The government has got a lot wrong but I not sure how you can really blame them for HMV and Blockbuster. Was it Labours fault that Woolworths went under?

Ridiculous comment

Read the thread maybe? and try and understand a bigger picture.