Monday 30 March 2015

Taxpayers Against Poverty ELECTION SPECIAL

TAP ELECTION SPECIAL 

It is the tenants of the UK who have been made to pay for the failures of the banks and the housing market;  and the failure of Parliament to create a just housing policy.  


“Lifting the lid on austerity Britain reveals a perfect storm - and it’s forcing more and more people into poverty.” 

The Charity Commission rapped OXFAM’s knuckles saying they "should have done more to avoid any misperception of political bias". 

TAP is not a charity – our political bias is with and for the poorest tenant citizens of the UK who pay 30% of their income in indirect taxes, pay ever increasing rents and since 2008 have had their benefits reduced and then taxed in April 2013.  

OXFAM UNDERSTATED THE DEPTH OF POVERTY INFLICTED ON BENEFIT CLAIMANTS IN WORK AND UNEMPLOYMENT SINCE 2008. 

The poster listed zero hours contracts, high prices, unemployment, child care costs 

In fact it understated the depth of poverty inflicted on UK citizens by Parliament in the name of austerity since the collapse of the banks in 2008. OXFAM could have added sanctions, bedroom tax, £500 CAP, council taxation of benefits, ever increasing rents and food banks. 

The consequential impact of shredding benefits on income after rent and council tax have been paid creates unmanageable debt, despair, mental and physical illness  at great cost to NHS, employers and the tenants themselves. 

Women are being denied a healthy diet before they conceive and while they are pregnant so increasing the risks of low birthweight and permanent damage to the mental and physical health of their babies. The cost a healthy diet,  keeping warm and cooking, cannot be met due to ever increasing rents. 

It is the tenants of the UK who have been made to pay for the failures of the banks and the housing market;  and the failure of Parliament to create a just housing policy.  

TENANTS ARE PAYING AN EVER INCREASING PROPORTION OF THEIR INCOME IN RENTS. 

Based on the 2011 Census data we know that 33.1% of households in England live in rented accommodation (social and private rented) 47.8% in London and 58.2% in Haringey where I live – most of them in Tottenham

The banks caused their own collapse by lending recklessly to home buyers and buy-to-let landords in a housing market in short supply since the 1980s. The price of housing, land values and rents therefore escalated upwards. Home owners and landords got ever wealthier and still do today. 

Parliament caused the rise in the welfare bill by paying out billions in housing benefit to the profit of landords. £22 billion in 2008 and £24 billion last year.  Now help to buy, right to buy, a flood of pension cash and the freedom of landowners to hold the public to ransom before building more homes continue to stoke up the price of a home and therefor the rents of the tenants. 

If you are property tycoon, a home owner or a landlord you are sitting pretty getting wealthier. 

If you are a tenant in Tottenham all you have to look forward to is increasing rents, demolition of your council estate, food banks or eviction out of town because you cannot pay the rent.  

The developers bandwagon is rolling over the security of tenure of the tenants of the UK with the support of the powers that be both local and national. 


​                                                                     from the ​
Rev Paul Nicolson

Taxpayers Against Poverty
No British citizen without an affordable home and an adequate income in work or unemployment. 


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