Tags
bedroom tax, benefit, benefits, clothes, debt, drug, eat, exempt, Facebook, food, health, loophole, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, people, politics, room, sell, sick, social security, spare, speed, starve, Vox Political, welfare
Vox Political just had this Bedroom Tax story from a commenter on Facebook who has asked not to be named. I don’t think it needs any commentary from me:
“A neighbour of mine couldnt bear to give up the family home so she struggled and paid £24 a week for two spare rooms.
“She was missing all her other payments and not eating for days.
“She then had to start selling things from her house…
“Then started asking us if we had any old clothes because she had found a place where they weigh old clothes and give you money for them…
“Then because we had given her all we had, another so-called friend told her how she does without food… She then started taking speed as you don’t feel hungry and what money was left she could at least use to feed her daughter.
“She came to mine and broke down because she was ill with it.
“She’s okay now but guess how?
“After all she had been through…
“For nearly 10 months…
“We then found out…
“Because of the 1996 loophole…
“She was exempt.”
Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
Vox Political really needs your help.
This independent blog’s only funding comes from readers’ contributions.
Without YOUR help, we cannot keep going.
You can make a one-off donation here:
Alternatively, you can buy the first Vox Political book,
Strong Words and Hard Times
in either print or eBook format here:
Mike Sivier's blog 
If it affected everyone the bedroom tax would be annoying but no more so then the other taxes. But it just effects the poor and disabled which is what makes it so nasty.
All I will say is what I end all of my posts with.
Tommaz jay
Once proud ,but now ashamed to belong to a society that has forgotten how to care
Reblogged this on Social Action.
How on earth could she afford to purchase speed if she couldn’t afford to buy food? Priorities need changing perhaps? We are full time 24/7 carers for a severely physically disabled, ventilator dependent son. Your friend taking drugs does not help her bad situation it only makes things worse. I felt for her up until you said she took speed. My son is severley disabled through DMD and through no fault of his own I have no sympathy for people who do drugs – sorry.
Not my friend – this was a message from a commenter to my Facebook page. HER friend was misled by somebody else who my commenter described as a “SO-CALLED” (caps hers) friend. I think everybody involved knows that person wasn’t really a friend at all.
The impression I had was that she had got into such a desperate mental state that it seemed like a good idea.
As with most substance dependencies, poverty is the root cause, not the depency causing the poverty.
Psychiatrist refer to it as self medicating
A gram of speed can be had for less than £10 and may last for 2 or 3 days so less expensive than food. A sad but mis guided attempt to better the situation. You are so very wrong to compare this to the Daily Mail stereotype drug user. Amphetamines are commonly used as an apetite surpressant within many walks of life such as modelling, not something you would associate with your veiw of drug use.
When I am really skint I can live £3 for five days, if I am skint healthy eating goes out of the window and I live on noodles a packet costs 18p, certainly a lot less than any drug, which doesn’t stop the hunger, it just delays it and it will become more painful.
A fiver a gramme? Hardly excessive. An intolerant user not after the ‘high’, a tenner could eke out a week. Then malnutrition and later drug psychosis due to sleep deprivations, both will come calling pretty soon…
not everyone can cope and do things they would never usually do to escape their troubles
What is the 1996 loophole?
People continuously claiming housing benefit on a property since – or before- 1996 are exempt under the current law… Don’t hold your breath, we’ve seen IDS’ contempt for rule of law before
Reblogged this on Same Difference.
The evil thing about the bedroom tax is that its underlying principle is to treat people as numbers. It takes no account of the fact that for many, their house is their home, a place of security and something to be proud of. They will have decorated and furnished it to reflect their taste, and perhaps similarly created a garden. To force people out of their home as the bedroom tax seeks to do
is an act of authoritarian fascism.
I never came under this loophole but how I wish if were possible a group of these effected tenants banded together and took out a class action against the government for illegal use of a law causing distress and for some losing their home. If there was a willing solicitor, perhaps there would be light for some at the end of the tunnel.
Pingback: Yet another Bedroom Tax tale to make your blood...