Letters to The Guardian
Letter The Guardian
The London borough of Haringey is planning to make people on benefits pay a percentage of council tax. Above, queue outside a Haringey citizens advice bureau, 2012. Photograph: Graeme Robertson
The minister for welfare reform told the House of Lords that “it is bluntly impossible to do a total cumulative assessment … you don’t know what to put in or take out”. However, away from the blur of statistics in the Department for Work and Pensions, he should publish a limited assessment of the cumulative impact of the reforms down here in the London borough of Haringey.
The council has decided to charge people on benefits 20% council tax. Its analysis shows that 73 individuals will have to pay between £41.43 and £158.01 a week out of their £71 weekly jobseeker’s allowance (JSA), due to the cumulative impact of the council tax and the overall benefit cap from April. Also 49 couples with two children will have to pay between £72.40 and £255.24 out of their JSA plus children’s benefits of £258 a week.
Housing benefit cap adds to the damage done by the cumulative impact of the council tax and overall benefit cap (Editorial, 9 January). Moving uprating from RPI to CPI and the proposed 1% freeze on benefit uprating (News, 9 January) will further reduce the low value of the benefits in relation to the escalating prices of necessities.
Some brave claimants in Haringey, Camden and Hackney are starting the process of judicial review of those councils’ consultations. Information about the cumulative impact and options other than taxing benefits were not put to residents in Haringey. I would be prepared to pay the £45 a year, or 86p a week on band D, to leave the 100% council tax benefit for my poorest fellow citizens untouched. I was never given that option.
Rev Paul Nicolson
Taxpayers Against Poverty
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/21/council-tax-blow-people-benefits
8 Responses
Fucking unbelievable!!!.. How much more of this shit are we going to take??
How can people pay taxes when they don’t have the money? Why don’t they go after the rich who dodge their taxes?
This is what’s so perverse about these cuts..They give us all less and expect more off us?!?!? fuckin insane..
As an atheist, I NEVER thought I’d utter these words but, THANK GOD or at least, thanks to the Rev. Paul Nicolson.
And more particularly, thank God to those brave folk who are taking on the sharp end and the very, very, very best of luck to you.
It Takes the Piss to Put it Bluntly
Tax the Bloody Rich there the Hotshots with All the Money
Let the Poxy Rich try Existing on Fresh Air
The System is the Problem so Bloody Well Wake Up Supine Britain and Change It
Given the Jellyfish Spineless Docility of the British People all this Pahlava Taking
has Gone on FOREVER as it is
It Angers Myself how Servile People are in this Spineless Clapped Out Joke of a
Country
A Line has to be Drawn in the Sand Not Endless Heads in the Sand
Don’t you understand by now you are not living in a democracy but under a TYRANNY!
may they never get in again they abuse all those who havent much monies in the banking system ok if ones got a mill extra 44thou a yr so ok for them whilst we get hammered by this sorry lot who call themselves humans they deride themselves as they nothing but the social scroungers who abuse the poor yep never ever do you want to vote sick torys party jeff3