Bedroom tax an iniquity equal to Maggie's horror

“The whole point of this letter is irrelevant as this is not a tax on bedrooms, it does not involve payment of extra rent or any form of tax, it only affects people receiving benefits to pay rent.

If you are employed, pay rent for social housing, you pay nothing more. It does however affect benefits where a hoyse has unused rooms. The idea was furst proposed by Labour when they told us that there are too many empty rooms and there is a need for underoccupied properties should be made availble to larger families, whilst encouraging single people, or couples, who have spare rooms to move into smaller properties. Labour have dubbed this the "Bedroom tax", which is of course misleading and a vare faced lie!
There are obvious flaws in the system in that it affects disabled people who have had their rented homes modified to suit their needs, in many cases spare rooms are used for essential storage, or as accomodation for carers. Each case should be dealt with accordingly and where the extra space is essential to the tenant, exceptions need to be made.”

“'Deviating somewhat' keeper?

Have you any idea what the word 'horror' means?

And the DT substituted the words 'poll tax' for 'horror'.

I think you've proved my point, keeper, thank you very much!”

“rbob,
The first 6 words of the heading are taken from the last sentence of Mr Moreton's letter with only the last 2 words deviating somewhat.

It's what a headline is for - to convey the essence of what is written. It'd lose it's punch if the headline was soft and fluffy followed by a diatribe. Or vice versa. Hardly an indication (either way) of political bias.”

“I think Mr Lupo's point, and one with which I would agree, is whether a decorator, a plumber or an electrician should charge different rates depending on a client's ability to pay. Should Tesco do the same? How about petrol stations; most of that is tax, so surely the low paid should pay less for their petrol?

It's not about choosing a cheaper plumber, but about whether more well off people would pay more to the same plumber for the same job.

As a final thought, it's interesting to see the title to this letter, which is not down to Ken Moreton, but the DT editorship......and they reckon they're not biased to the Left!!”

“That's hardly a relevant comparison, Monsieur_Lupo - when you hire someone to do a job the scale of charges is mutually agreed. You pay what you can afford, they charge what they can afford to accept, if that doesn't tally up you go to someone else.

As I said, in principle everyone paying the same amount sounds good on paper, but, as we all know, when you are dealing with real people things are never so cut and dried. You could equally argue that 3 low paid adults in a 2 bed terrace using one bin are paying more to have that bin emptied than 2 people in a 6 bed house with more purchasing power and more waste. Sounds daft when you turn it round that way, but that's the point. Community Charge didn't take into account use of services, just numbers of people, and 'simple' doesn't always equate to 'fair'. Do you also believe Road Fund Licence should be a flat fee across the board, regardless of the size of vehicle/emissions output/Engine type etc?

I don't much like Council Tax - let's be honest, none of us like to pay taxes, it's just a fact of life - but at least Council Tax does try to take the 'fairer' aspects of both rateable value and fixed figures.”

“So Sarah, it wasn't the Community Charge you objected to but the amounts involved?

It should not have be a flat rate for all?

If this is the case, how do you go in when, say, hiring someone to do a job, for example, a pinter and decorator? Should there be a sliding scale for those charges? Where would you draw the line?”

“Good to see you all read my post before stamping your feet. I did say it was a good idea in principle. I don't have any objection to everyone paying their way, but the poll tax was an example of simplifying a system using simple, primary school mathematics. It was rushed, ill thought out and what should have been a fairer system, was in reality, more unfair than the one it replaced. The fact it was abolished so soon is testament to that.”

“What utter drivel SarahL123.

Why should someone living in a more expensive house pay more for council services - something you could argue they would use significantly less of?

Why should someone employed, living with their parents and aged 18 or over not contribute to council services instead of expecting their parents (and others) to cover their share? How can you aruge that that the latter is fair?

Your point smacks of nothing more than wanting those in more expensive houses to foot the bill for others. An attitude that typifies today's society. Too many see everything as their 'right' but want to avoid paying their fair share.”

“The lower income homeowners paid less in virtually every case under the poll tax. If only one of them was working their bill would almost halve. If two were working it was more or less the same.
The people who bought their council homes were the massive winners under Mrs Thatcher. They could hardly then complain about paying rates/poll tax like every other homeowner!
It also helped the hundreds of thousands or retired people living in the house they had lived in for decades and struggling to pay crippling rates. The poll tax reduced their burden by asking working people to pay.

As I said, it was much fairer than the previous rates system. But too many people belived the media hype and didn't look at the facts, especially all the reductions available to the low paid.”

“The concept of community charge sounded good on paper, but in reality it was wholly unfair.

Those in more expensive properties loved it because it meant a reduction in the rates they had paid previously - anyone else ended up with a hugely increased bill. People who rented suddenly found themselves with bills for an amount that had previously been included in the rental figure (did anyone get a rent reduction when their landlord passed responsibility for the rates back to the tenant?) It was unworkable and unenforceable (far too easy for tenants, students etc to simply not pay and move on) and based on figures plucked out of thin air! The people who really suffered were the lower income homeowners, who had purchased properties having taken into account its rateable value, and budgeted accordingly. They were the same homeowners whose mortgages were already stretching them to the limit due to interest rates sky-rocketing, many of whom were the same people encouraged to take out mortgages on their council houses, in the first place.

Fair? Hardly! Not one of Mrs T's better ideas. (Ranks up there with privatising everything we owned.)”