General Chat

We are in the same boat Maggie, husband has been on the same pay for 5 years and me for 3...........I "might" get 1% pay rise next year *sighs*

Meanwhile all our outgoings except the mortgage go up annually and to top it all we now have a blooming water meter which means we are even more worse off!! *sulks*

Money, they say makes the world go round..............we are going in the opposite direction :-(

Hey ho....that's life, so we make the best of it :-)

Kitty have you had a check that there are no leaks your side of the water meter? Unless you have a full house it should work out cheaper. It might be worth checking as when we were renting the meter was faulty ( registering £1000s lol) and had to be replaced.

Where does this figure come from ?

£350 for single people = £17,500 a year

More like under £3700 per year

Rose..............it is up about £36 per annum.

There are 3 of us living here, my husbands work makes a lot of washing as does having a teenage girl in the house.

That plus 21 showers and 21 good washes between us per week all adds up :-(

I refuse to wear dirty clothes, sleep in dirty bedding and smell just to save a few bob :-D

Southern Water doesn't come cheap

Universal credit replaces:
Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance
Income-related Employment and Support Allowance
Income Support
Working Tax Credit
Child Tax Credit
Housing Benefit
The cap of £ 500 applies to a household regardless of the number of people living in it including children.

A married pensioner couple, both with full entitlement, get £ 214 / week. £ 175 where only one has entitlement. ON TOP of that they will get full housing benefit, council tax credit. Even without winter fuel benefit this is worth a lot more than £ 500 / week.

The change to the "universal credit" does not save any money at all - on the Treasury's own admission it will cost substantial sums in its early years and may never break even so as to say. For that reason the Treasury was strongly opposed to the idea.

So why is it going ahead?

The basic idea has nothing at all to do with UKGov balance sheet but a great deal to do with displacing the working class of London from the many social housing projects in central London and Tower Hamlets. It is a sort of fracking bonanza for the private property market ( to which the Tories are well plugged in ) with the bonus of altering the voting make up of central London too. That the great majority of people in social housing work is ignored by the D.M. and others, so is the insiduous way that the manner in which social housing rents is calculated is also forcing people out not only in London but other parts of the country.

GlitterBaby ....More like under £3700 per year???

How do I work that out?

It is many years since I went to school & made a mistake with my maths... I forgot to add on the £700 for the two weeks
£350 a week for single people = £17,500 (for 50 weeks) not a year

£350 x 52 weeks actually comes to £18,200

GB,

It is £350-00 a week.x 52 = £18,200 according to my calculator.

Well where can I claim £350 per week from ?

Being unemployed I get less than £3700 per year and still have to pay part of my council tax

The charge for my gas has just jumped from £24 to £38 per month

Wilkins Mcawber expressed it perfectly:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery."

That applies to governments as well as to individuals. If there is less coming in then less can be given out. We all must live within our means. There are far too many who expect others to give them whatever they desire.

I am certainly not advocating a return to the days of the workhouse but when you think about it, the basic principle of not allowing social care to be viewed as an easy option, was and still should be a sound one.

As far as a North/South divide is concerned which came first, higher Southern wages or higher Southern house prices/rents? Which ever came first originally it has over the years become a money chase with either even higher wages or rents causing the other to be increased as well. Money is only a way of keeping score.

Kitty I still think it may be worth checking? my annual bill comes to about £236 ( that's the last year) . I know when we were in Wales the bill halved after we got the meter and Welsh water was one of the highest priced water companies.

I know there's only two of us, but I wash clothes every day, and Dan has deep baths lol.

My water rates are nearly £400 p.a.

As Glitterbaby has pointed out, this isn't 'money in ones pocket'... it is a variable figure.

eg one gets X amount 'personal allowance' ..but that £350 is not what YOU get, it is what you 'may' get including rent...the rent is not money in your pocket as such you still only get the personal allowance whatever the rent is ( in fact you don't nec get all of that if you are making up a higher rent than is paid for by housing benefit)

Bloke on the news said he would love to get £350 a week...but he was obviously thinking 350 to spend...not £70 dole for all your other expenses and the rest going to a landlord.

Rose...............I have been consulting my husband and he is getting a plumber friend of his to call in at the weekend to see what he thinks:))

Thank you, I will also ask Southern Water to have another look at the meter for us.

xxx

I have a meter two adults only use shower not bath think the bill is approx. £300 for the year

Daughter moves into her own two bed tiny bungalow this week tells me her water will cost £40 a month £480 a year (not on meter) just her and a small baby...she hasn't even got a washing machine yet

Good luck with it Kitty :-)

Thank you Rose my husband says "cheers" too <3

Jax..............ours was £378 per year before the meter, it is a worry especially for a mum with a baby, they create mountains of washing don't they.

xx

Aren't you lot lucky with your water bills..
1 bedroom flat and I pay just under £450 a year.

Yorkshire Water,,,,,,

Edit..got the amount wrong....lol

Mr Micawber's maxim does not apply to government finances - the UK has not recorded a budget surplus in 400 years. Indeed the Bank of England was created in order to finance government debt without which the England would have gone bust.

A "balanced budget" is a sure fire recipe for economic and political disaster. A good example is the US under Pres. Hoover and of course the EU's unfortunate pigs..

On the other hand allowing any sort of bubble eg housing, in the private sector or committing to large scale government expenditure and liabilities which cannot be funded from taxation is just another primrose path to perdition.

Unfortunately Geo Osbourne has espoused both crazy public expenditure - windmills and such, HS2 and many more together with deliberately stoking up a property bubble with which he hopes to please the Daily Express and get re-elected.

Sue.................I am truly shocked :-0

That seems extortionate to me.

I will stop grumbling now............well try to anyway. :-)

Council Tax is £1370 at least it has been frozen this year.