The politics of £72 a week vs the price of housing.

This is quite simply an example of the "free market" producing a grotesquely inflated parody of a market-clearing rate because the supply side has been choked by successive New Labour and Thatcherite Tory governments buying votes from their home-owning and landlord clientele.

It would be quite nice if we could figure out some other way of making money in this country than selling each other the same houses over and over again and having the government tax working people to pay rents to those same working people's private landlords.

In London, we firstly need to mobilise the several thousand acres of undeveloped land held by public bodies for the immediate provision of social housing.

We need to open up brownfield and some greenfield sites to development by not-for-profit bodies like housing associations.

We need to reinstate the squatting laws so that empty apartments owned in absentia by Arab oil sheikhs, the Russian mafia and Chinese Communist Party mandarins can be put to a better use than money laundering.

We need to cease the advertising of such properties at investment fairs in said countries prior to offering them in the native British market.

We need to impose a use it or lose it rule on land banking property developers.

Following the excellent moves of the SNP against their land barons, we need to conduct a comprehensive cadastral survey from Land's End to Berwick-upon-Tweed in order to find out who exactly it is that owns the land and what they use it for, if anything.

We need to abolish the majority of taxes levied on working people and small businesses and transfer them to a Georgist land tax, coupled with a system of reliefs to encourage development in strategically important infrastructure such as renewable and nuclear energy installations, high-speed trains etc.

The voting public need to wake up and realise that no, their house isn't really worth hundred and hundreds of thousands of pounds and no, they do not have a right to buy to let and literally have a working tenant buy them a house over twenty years while demanding a month-to-month profit and offsetting mortgage interest payments against tax on top.

It's quibbling over a couple of quid a week here. Are disabled people just to stare at the wall all day? With the question of the TV licence we ask ourselves whether benefits should be rags and gruel subsistence or include room for basic entertainment to keep one sane, as well as connected to the outside world.

The BBC is necessary and in my view keeps our television relatively civilised and raises standards. Even as it is ITV is pretty mind-numbing tat and Channel 4 is getting worse. Even Sky, the costliest of subscription services, is nine hundred channels of rubbish plus a few sports and movies.

The TV licence is a tax of a couple of quid a week if you have a TV. If you're that bothered don't watch it at all.

The thing is I bet everyone quibbling about the TV licence has Sky to watch the football. Had the BBC kept the football, people could have seen it for two quid a week rather than Sky at five times the price. It astounds me that people care more about supposedly having "freedom" to watch the football on the one expensive package which offers it than about how much money it ultimately costs. Such is the folly of many attempts at making a free market of things when the market becomes dominated by a monopolist.

When the amount under discussion is £72/week, the quibbles are inevitably going to be over a few quid. And I do think that benefits should be 'rags and gruel subsistence' although my phraseology would be slightly less slanted than that. It is not the job of the taxpayer to provide anyone with a middle class lifestyle. I think it's quite amusing that people these days view television as a necessity rather than as a luxury. There were sane people before the advent of television too, you know.

Benefits should only provide a bare minimum but enough for rent, bills, food (three meals a day), a landline (for work purposes), an Internet connection (again for work purposes and should be means-tested on an individual basis - are there any public libraries near the claimant's residence that have free Internet and is the claimant able to travel to them without damaging his or her health?) and any training that is necessary for a job that the claimant is hoping to get. It may only be a difference of a few quid but with deficit and debt as large as the UK's, I'm afraid belts need to be tightened where possible.

I don't actually mind paying the TV licence because, as you say, it's only a couple of quid a week and I like watching TV every now and then. But surely you see the irony of the bit in bold? My whole argument up till now has been that if people cannot afford it while on benefits, then they shouldn't watch it. I merely scoffed at illegaltobepoor's attempt to absolve people of responsibility on this matter purely because they're a single mother or disabled (or both). Unless it's a mental illness that renders them unfit to sign legal documents, I don't accept that at all.

I also think you've misunderstood why people call it 'freedom.' A lower price per capita does not necessarily equate to freedom. It is called freedom because somebody who likes sports is free to get that if he or she wants and somebody who doesn't watch sports (e.g. me) does not have to get it. The whole idea is that you pay for what you like and I pay for what I like, which I think is a much fairer way of doing it than forcing everybody to pay for some things that they don't like so that it won't be illegal (since it is a criminal offence to watch TV programming on any device without a licence) for them to watch what they like. The only kind of person for whom that sort of deal would work would be somebody who liked everything, and that's pretty rare. I'm more than happy to pay the full cost of the channels I want to watch rather than expecting everybody to chip in.

But now we come up against the reality of the job market in the twenty-first century, where there are not enough jobs to go around. What is the point of giving benefits to someone based on survival plus job search when there are no jobs? At some point we are going to have to face up to this inconvenient truth and move towards a universal basic income, which won't be untold riches but will be entirely decoupled from the outdated idea of "getting a job".

If you are really concerned about the deficit and the debt you'll know how insignificant unemployment benefits are within public spending as a whole, let alone how insignificant it would be shaving a couple of quid off them to take the TV licence off them. You can't just throw around the deficit argument to justify any and all cuts. And you might question why you are so insistent on taking money off the poorest people if it isn't actually going to make any difference.

Well I think the disabled thing has some legs to it, pun totally intended. Unlike a single mother, someone with limited mobility, pain, low cognition, any number of things, can't really get out of the house to entertain themselves for free by going to feed the ducks or whatever.

Well we are led to understand that free markets go hand in hand with lower prices and greater prosperity. I suppose I would therefore say I would rather have less supposed freedom (not that it is free as Sky has monopoly rights over football) in return for a much lower cost. And I suspect those at the bottom of the income distribution would agree. Plus if you agree that the BBC raises programming quality then it would appear to be a win-win.

You say I pay for what I like and you pay for what you like. Well with the BBC/TV licence model, the whole idea is that I pay for a bit of what I like and a bit of what you like and you pay for a bit of what you like and a bit of what I like. I see no real difference other than that it tends to produce a few generalist channels that do a bit of everything rather than 900 specialist channels that show the same thing morning till night. And I much prefer the idea of a channel that shows just a bit of everything. If nothing else it ensures people only watch the odd hour of telly a day rather than staying up all night binge-watching back-to-back Family Guy on Family Guy 24h.

All in all I feel that having both models running alongside each other keeps everyone happy. The commercial/subscription channels act as a check and balance to stop the TV becoming too monolithic and the BBC acts as a check and balance to stop the other channels becoming too lowest common denominator.

Council Tax: £3.60 (Single occupants only pay 75% of the bill and Benefit Claimants get 75% of the amount due as Council Tax Benefit).
Broadband & Phone with Anytime calls: £4.62
Electricity £6.90
Gas £2.30
TV Licence £2.80
Water £2.77

Total £22.99

So excluding Rent there would be £49.01 left for food.

Well lets put you in someone else's shoes shall we. Lets say you live in a poor built up area where all the libraries have shut down and you have zero access to the internet but to use Universal Credit and Universal Job Match you need access to the internet. What do you do?

Lets also put you in the position where you need the use of a telephone to apply for jobs. Since you don't want to have high phone bill at the end of the month you take the Anytime calls option.

Oh and 10% of the UK isn't covered by Optic Fibre so those prices aren't available for everyone.

But your right Job Seekers do not need a TV licence but the Goon's who work for the BBC though their contractor Capita have a tendency to set up innocent victims for prosecution though tricking them into signing a form which they use as evidence in court.
Should a person risk this and get into debt?

Was reading a thread in the society section and I was wondering is it possible to live on £72 a week in benefits? My answer; its a postcode lottery!

These calculations are based on a single person.
I got these figures from a mate who is a ultra frugal hippie.

Council Tax: £3.60 (Single occupants only pay 75% of the bill and Benefit Claimants get 75% of the amount due as Council Tax Benefit).
Broadband & Phone with Anytime calls: £4.62
Electricity £6.90
Gas £2.30
TV Licence £2.80
Water £2.77

Total £22.99

So excluding Rent there would be £49.01 left for food.

The problem is that those who claim housing benefit often pay more for their housing than the amount given in housing benefit. This means that private landlords who provide for the benefit claimant market know perfectly well that they are recieving money from claimants Job Seekers Allowance.

I have came to the conclusion that there is nothing wrong with the rate of Job Seekers Allowance. The problem is greedy landlords and the lack of council housing.

The thing is this. If there was no housing benefit there wouldn't be a price floor for the free market of rental accommodation. The market rate is kept up by welfare programs.

If we where to ban housing benefit to be used on private property then the rental market would go right down.

How is it that social housing has been maintained all these years though meager rents and private housing demands excessive rents and is in a worse condition with damp and mold.

The answer is speculation and greed.

Do you know how many people that would make homeless? As a single, childless, 22 year old with no physical disabilities I would never be eligible for a council flat. But I can't work and I'd never be able to afford somewhere to live. Even on the highest level of ESA I'd be left with £10 a week after I'd paid my rent, council tax (assuming I'd still get CTB) and bills. It costs me just under £5 to get the bus to a supermarket so I'd have £5 to feed myself and buy toiletries for a week.