Tuesday - May 29, 2012
10 years gain, gone
But, but, but they keep telling us how the housing market is getting better! How the overhang is decreasing! How new housing starts are up! How the economy is getting better! How unemployment is down (cuz the labor pool keeps shrinking)! This news is soooo unexpected!!!11!
Home prices hit new post-bubble lows in March, according to a report out Tuesday.
Average home prices were down 2.6% from 12 months earlier, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index of 20 major markets. Home prices have not been this low since mid-2002.
“While there has been improvement in some regions, housing prices have not turned,” said David Blitzer, spokesman for S&P.
Although five cities - Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, New York and Portland - saw average home prices hit new lows, that’s an improvement from last month’s report, in which nine cities notched new lows, Blitzer noted.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/29/2012 at 11:52 AM
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Permalink • Monday - May 07, 2012
we were shackling ourselves to a corpse.
Something tells me the news is going to be a bit more interesting in the coming months.
Here’s Daniel Hannan’s take on things and I believe he is correct.
We thought we were joining a growing and prosperous market all those years ago when we signed up to Europe. In fact, we were shackling ourselves to a corpse.
I’m never certain how much interest there is among our readers in the happenings on this side of the world. But as Drew pointed out recently, it’s a global world economy and so yeah, France counts.
Britain is shackled to the corpse of Europe
By Daniel Hannan
Europe’s economic problems are about to get a whole lot worse. For the past three years, governments have tried, however ineffectually, to tackle the debt crisis. Now, though, in country after country, voters are demanding precisely the high-tax and high-spend policies which caused the recession in the first place.
Yesterday’s elections in France and Greece were the first of what will surely be many advances by the populist Left. In both places, candidates were elbowing each other aside during the campaign to demand more intervention and an end to cuts.
The new French President is an unapologetic Socialist of the kind we haven’t known in this country since Michael Foot. François Hollande wants wealth taxes, stimulus spending and a massive expansion of the state payroll.
He understands that this might lead to dismay in the international markets, but he has an answer to that: he will create a French credit ratings agency which, unlike the American ones, will tell him what he wants to hear.
Hollande summarises his programme as ‘growth, not austerity’. Gosh. Who knew it was so easy? Why has no one thought of that before?
The truth, of course, is that France has already pushed tax-and-spend to its limits. The government accounts for an extraordinary 56 per cent of the economy, and the French budget was last in balance in 1974. If state expenditure really had a stimulus effect, France would be the wealthiest country in Europe.
Yet every one of the ten presidential candidates there demanded even greater state intervention. Nicolas Sarkozy promised to make France ‘stronger than the markets’. Three of the other contenders were Trotskyists and one was a Green.
The National Front’s Marine Le Pen, while retaining her father’s anti-immigration platform, offered an economic programme well to the Left of Sarko’s and Hollande’s.
Not a single candidate argued for smaller government, freer competition or greater international trade. All ten offered more of the medicine that had sickened the patient.
We thought we were joining a growing and prosperous market all those years ago when we signed up to Europe. In fact, we were shackling ourselves to a corpse.
Posted by peiper
on 05/07/2012 at 09:07 AM
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Permalink • Friday - March 30, 2012
Recovery? What Recovery?
With pastures withered from a lingering drought, farmers in Texas and northwest Louisiana have abandoned donkeys by the hundreds, turning them into wandering refugees that have severely tested animal rescue groups.
The nation’s biggest donkey rescue group says that since March 2011, it has taken in nearly 800 donkeys abandoned in Texas, where ranchers mainly used the animals to guard their herds. Many of the cattle and goats have been sold off, largely because of the drought and the nation’s economic slump, putting the donkeys out of a job.
The donkey market has shriveled with the dried-up fields of Texas, where auction houses won’t take them.
“The last ones we tried to sell, they brought the donkeys back to us. They tried to get a $5 bid for both of them and couldn’t get a $5 bid,” Deputy Bill Pentecost, who wrangles stray livestock for the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office north of Austin, said last month.
Texas has 1.4 million fewer cattle than it did a year ago, a drop of 10.5 percent.
“Texas has large, large, large, large ranches. As the wells dried up and grazing’s gone down, animals are coming up to the fence to eat. People are realizing they’ve sold all their cattle … but they’ve got 20 donkeys,” Meyers said earlier this year.
Ranchers use donkeys to guard remote herds. Donkeys instinctively don’t like dogs of any kind, including coyotes and wolves, and will pretty much attack them on sight. Most of the guard donkeys are close to feral. Ranchers have taken to sneaking donkeys onto other rancher’s property. Go to sleep with an empty dusty pasture, and wake up to an eeyore alarm clock as several dozen braying surprises greet the dawn.
The horse meat pet food business has pretty much been shut down, so farmers with too many donkeys can’t exercise the Alpo Option either.
Gantt, a Claiborne Parish livestock farmer who works on contract for the sheriff’s office, blames U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., for the scores of donkeys he’s taking care of. Landrieu was among sponsors of a measure that shut down the nation’s only horsemeat processing plant by forbidding the U.S. Department of Agriculture to inspect such plants.
In most other parts of the world, people are happy enough to eat horses. They probably wouldn’t mind a bit of donkey stew either. In the USA, we can’t even use them for dog food.
Posted by Drew458
on 03/30/2012 at 08:12 AM
Filed Under: • Animals • Economics •
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Permalink • Thursday - March 29, 2012
Ok, Who Let The Fox Reporter In AT NBC?
Hard to believe this article came from NBC. It’s not the story itself that matters, just the editorial take at the end.
NO $5 Footlongs in San Fran
The catchy Subway sandwich shop jingle involving a variety of foot-long sandwiches available for $5 doesn’t apply in San Francisco.
The sandwich-making chain stopped selling the five-dollar footlongs in San Francisco due to the “high cost of doing business,” according to SF Weekly.
Oh noes!!
Apparently, the city’s new minimum wage, raised to $10.24 as of Jan. 1, make $5 footlongs an impossible business model.
Unless you want tuna fish, which is the sub of the month. Yum.
My goodness, that’s very nearly a Conservative thing to say! Imagine that, having to pay the proles San Fran’s “living wage minimum” cuts the margins too closely.
We’ve got a Subway in our town too. When they have the $5 deal running, they have steady customers from late morning to mid afternoon. When it isn’t running, business isn’t so good, even though the $5 deal only saves you a dollar or two off their better sandwiches.
Calls to Subway’s corporate headquarters have not yet been returned. But half a dozen San Francisco Subway workers said this recent move was explained to them as a reaction to San Francisco’s minimum wage ordinance. Per the will of the voters, minimum wage is calculated each year based on the “August-to-August change in the Consumer Price Index.” On Jan. 1 of this year, it jumped from $9.92 to $10.24, apparently pushing Subway execs to revoke our county’s cheap sandwich privileges. As the minimum wage rises higher, perhaps Subway will be forced to scrap Jared Fogle for parts.
Again and again, Subway workers cited the city’s minimum wage as the driving factor in this decision.
So there you have it. I don’t know how large the Subway shops in San Francisco are, but the one in my town never seems to have more than 3 people working at any given time. 3 people times an additional ($10.24 - $9.92 = $0.32) 32 cents comes out to less than one dollar per hour. That seems an awfully small amount, but when the margins are microscopic, a dollar an hour could mean the difference between just getting by and losing your shirt.
Posted by Drew458
on 03/29/2012 at 09:01 AM
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Permalink • Sunday - March 25, 2012
Over The Edge And Into The Abyss
When you’re spending on the scale Washington does, what matters is the hard dollar numbers. Greece’s total debt is a few rinky-dink billions, a rounding error in the average Obama budget. Only America is spending trillions. The 2011 budget deficit, for example, is about the size of the entire Russian economy. By 2010, the Obama administration was issuing about a hundred billion dollars of treasury bonds every month — or, to put it another way, Washington is dependent on the bond markets being willing to absorb an increase of U.S. debt equivalent to the GDP of Canada or India — every year. And those numbers don’t take into account the huge levels of personal debt run up by Americans. College-debt alone is over a trillion dollars, or the equivalent of the entire South Korean economy — tied up just in one small boutique niche market of debt which barely exists in most other developed nations.
“We are headed for the most predictable economic crisis in history,” says Paul Ryan. And he’s right. But precisely because it’s so predictable the political class has already discounted it. Which is why a plan for pie now and spinach later, maybe even two decades later, is the only real menu on the table. There’s a famous exchange in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Someone asks Mike Campbell, “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways,” he replies. “Gradually, then suddenly.” We’ve been going through the gradual phase so long, we’re kinda used to it. But it’s coming to an end, and what happens next will be the second way: sudden, and very bad.
via Insty
Posted by Drew458
on 03/25/2012 at 10:03 AM
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Permalink • Friday - March 16, 2012
yeah, there’s that
Smith School of Business professor Peter Morici hits the nail on the head with his essay on high gas prices and the search for oil. And blames the whole damn mess on Obama and his running dog Chu. Their failed policies. Not Bush’s or anyone else’s. Theirs.
Gasoline prices are zooming past $4 a gallon and the United States is hardly freer from the grip of imported oil or closer to robust economic recovery. With his approval ratings dropping precipitously, U.S. President Barack Obama is blaming speculators and investigating fraud and at the pump when this mess is the direct result of failed federal energy policies.
By word and deed, the Obama administration has sought to limit off-shore oil exploration and development and hasten the commercial viability of solar, wind and alternative vehicle technologies.
The annual trade deficit on petroleum is about $300 billion. Raising U.S. oil production to its sustainable potential of 10 million barrels a day would cut import costs in half, directly create 1.5 million jobs. Applying Obama administration models for assessing the consequences of stimulus spending, it would indirectly create another 1 million jobs.
Overall, attaining U.S. oil production potential would boost gross domestic product about $250 billion. Not bad, considering that it could be accomplished by reducing dependence on foreign oil, increasing federal royalty and tax revenues and cutting the federal deficit.
If there was no other reason to increase domestic oil supply and refinery capacity, this alone is more than sufficient. Keep the money in the USA and it builds jobs. Send the money to sandland and it funds terrorists. Good enough for me.
Posted by Drew458
on 03/16/2012 at 02:01 PM
Filed Under: • Economics • Oil, Alternative Energy, and Gas Prices •
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Permalink • Sunday - February 19, 2012
Unemployment Makes You Crazy
Pure scam, or acts of desperation?
Hey, at least they’re no longer “officially unemployed”, which helps Obamessiah’s all important number stay below 9%.
Jobless disability claims soar to record $200B as of January
Standing too many months on the unemployment line is driving Americans crazy — literally — and it’s costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
With their unemployment-insurance checks running out, some of the country’s long-term jobless are scrambling to fill the gap by filing claims for mental illness and other disabilities with Social Security — a surge that hobbles taxpayers and making the employment rate look healthier than it should as these people drop out of the job statistics.
“It could be because their health really is getting worse from the stress of being out of work,” says Matthew Rutledge, a research economist at Boston College. “Or it could just be desperation — people trying to make ends meet when other safety nets just aren’t there.”
As of January, the federal government was mailing out disability checks to more than 10.5 million individuals, including 2 million to spouses and children of disabled workers, at a cost of record $200 billion a year, recent research from JPMorgan Chase shows.
The sputtering economy has fueled those ranks. Around 5.3 percent of the population between the ages of 25 and 64 is currently collecting federal disability payments, a jump from 4.5 percent since the economy slid into a recession.
Mental-illness claims, in particular, are surging.
During the recent economic boom, only 33 percent of applicants were claiming mental illness, but that figure has jumped to 43 percent, says Rutledge, citing preliminary results from his latest research.
His research also shows a growing number of men, particularly older, former white-collar workers, instead of the typical blue-collar ones, are applying.
Aw crap. If even the suits are learning how to game the system, it’s over.
I’m of mixed mind on this one. On the one hand, bully for them for learning how to play the game that countless millions of *****s have been playing for decades, and getting back some of what they’ve been paying in forever. On the other hand, get a job ya bums. But what if there are no jobs? And all these big companies, having cut staff to the very bone for several years now and having become used to running not just “lean and mean” but “anorexic and psychotic”, while socking away the cash and returning a fat bottom line, have concluded that they’ll never need those extra employees again?
Disability claims come from the Social Security Trust Fund, which is set to go broke in 2018. Congress last week agreed to dip into the revenue stream to give a 2-percentage point tax break to working Americans.
So now with millions more claimants, the government is going to reduce their own income with a bit of tax break? Won’t that push the “Use By” date forward a bit, say to 2016 instead of 2018? We are utter screwed.
Posted by Drew458
on 02/19/2012 at 10:20 AM
Filed Under: • Economics •
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Permalink • Thursday - February 02, 2012
There He Goes Again
Saying that he is issuing administrative maneuvers for a “homeowners bill of rights” and other means to investigate and prevent abuses in the mortgage industry, Obama told an audience in Falls Church, Va., that he wants the Federal Housing Administration to guarantee refinancing for families who are current on their mortgages.
...
Obama said the bill of rights would compliment the work approved by the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
“Now that our new consumer watchdog financial agency is running at full steam, now that Richard Cordray is in as the director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, they’re moving forward on protections like this,” he said.
...
“I’ll be honest, the programs we’ve put forward didn’t work at the scale we’d hoped,” Obama said. “Not as many people have taken advantage of it as we wanted.”
The administration proposal faces a major hurdle in Congress. The program would cost between $5 billion and $10 billion, depending on participation, and the administration proposes to pay for it with a fee on large banks. The administration has tried unsuccessfully before to win support for such a tax on large banks.
Gee I wonder why. Hey Mr. Banker, whaddya say we put a new law in that forces you to make less money, and we tax you to cover the overhead costs of the whole program? No? You don’t like that? Why not?? Boo hoo, you’re so unfair! Capitalism sucks!!!
snake graphic lifted from Maggie’s Farm.
Posted by Drew458
on 02/02/2012 at 08:47 AM
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Permalink • Wednesday - February 01, 2012
Just shut up already
"Seriously”, I think “unexpected” ought to be purged from the lexicon.
January: Unexpected Lack Of Job Creation!
The pace of job creation by private employers slowed more than expected in January after a sharp gain the month before, a report by a payrolls processor showed on Wednesday.
The private sector added 170,000 jobs last month, the ADP National Employment Report showed, shy of economists’ expectations for a gain of 185,000 jobs.
The ADP figures come ahead of the government’s more comprehensive labor market report on Friday, which includes both public and private sector employment.
That report is expected to show the economy created 150,000 jobs, and a gain in private payrolls of 170,000.
ADP also revised down December’s private payrolls to an increase of 292,000 from the previously reported 325,000.
Obama’s policies hard at work: the best economy in the world continues to flatline.
Posted by Drew458
on 02/01/2012 at 01:05 PM
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Permalink • Sunday - January 29, 2012
Taxing? Yes, and Vexing too.
“The reason I say that liberalism is the philosophy of the stupid is because we can look at what’s going around in the country today. If, in your own lives, you were pursuing policies that were destroying your own home ownership, that were destroying your own job, that were creating a massive, impossible debt for your family and your children in particular, you’d stop it. You wouldn’t keep doing it!
“And yet for the liberal, if it’s imposed on you—and they feel that they can be immune from it—they’re for it.
Ok, Ok, demand more than a balanced budget, demand a dynamic budget that never spends more than 75% of received revenue, and immediately pays the other 25% back to our creditors. Immediately, so the money isn’t there in two weeks to be borrowed by some “emergency”. This is how real kitchen table economics works: if you’re in the hole, not only do you stop digging, you do whatever you can to put dirt back in the hole. Lean, mean, and going without. And yeah, to be on the safe side, and to prepare for those real emergencies, you’re going to have to spend no more than 60% of what comes in, leaving the extra 15% on the side, just in case. Come the end of the year, and you haven’t had a real emergency, you can take the family out for ice cream. Once. Double scoop cones only, no sundaes. And then the extra cash goes against the debt, putting a few more shovels of dirt back in the hole.
And that’s the one and only way you or I can ever pay ourselves out of debt ... so why should the government be any different?
Posted by Drew458
on 01/29/2012 at 06:15 PM
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Economics •
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Permalink • Monday - January 23, 2012
Let The Cheating Begin
Is it just old cynical me, or was your very first thought “here comes another Oil for Food scandal”?
BRUSSELS – The European Union formally adopted an oil embargo Monday against Iran and a freeze of the assets of the country’s central bank, part of sanctions meant to pressure the country to resume talks on its nuclear program.
Diplomats said the measures, which were adopted in Brussels by the EU’s 27 foreign ministers, include an immediate embargo on new contracts for crude oil and petroleum products, while existing contracts will be allowed to run until July.
EU diplomats are calling the measure part of a twin track approach toward Iran: increase sanctions to discourage what they suspect is Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons but emphasize at the same time the international community’s willingness to talk. Iran says its nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague called the embargo part of “an unprecedented set of sanctions.”
“I think this shows the resolve of the European Union on this issue,” Hague said.
Rrrriiiight. Sure, I believe it. Embargo. Uh huh. Big noise now, but it won’t even start until July. So this is just a lot of noise right now.
Except they cut a deal where poor little Greece, who lives for cheap Iranian oil, can do an end run, right? No? Wanna bet? Wanna watch Greece suddenly become a next exporter of oil when the embargo starts?
To protect Europe’s economy, struggling with a two-year-old debt crisis, foreign ministers agreed to delay full implementation of the oil embargo until July 1, an EU diplomat said.
That will give countries such as Greece, which rely heavily on Iranian oil, to find alternative sources.
Alternative sources, like old Hugo down in Venezuela, who isn’t part of the embargo and will probably act as front man for the mullahs? Or China, who, despite assurances from the Saudis that they would match production, isn’t part of the embargo?
Oh, and of course the price of oil just jumped $12 a barrel, to $111, on top of the 30¢ price jack you’ve seen at the pump over the past couple of weeks. Here we go again, $4-5 gas coming soon.
Thank God Obama killed the pipeline. As politics shuts down one international source after another (Nigeria will tip soon), it’s so reassuring to know that our Fearless Reader has done whatever he can to stop our supply from any and all other sources. Not.
The only way to make an embargo real is to do it at the point of a gun. Genuine old school naval blockade at sea, and armies along the borders. And let them do what they do best. Anything less is just an exercise in bullshit.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/23/2012 at 09:28 AM
Filed Under: • Economics • EUro-peons • Oil, Alternative Energy, and Gas Prices • War On Terror •
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Permalink • Friday - January 20, 2012
when somalis aren’t out - a - pirating
When Somalis aren’t out – a - pirating
They’re here in the former GB collecting. Could this be land piracy?
Of course, they aren’t the only ones, and membership in the EU doesn’t help this problem either.
That’s THREE BILLION ONE HUNDRED MILLION in US dollars. And trust me, bad as things are, this won’t be the end of it.
The foreigners being paid £2billion in benefits a year including 371,000 on the dole (and 5,000 claiming £42m in illegal handouts)
· DWP fraud probe after 5,000 illegal immigrants claim £42m in handouts to which they are not entitled
· 371,000 foreign nationals on out-of-work benefits
· 6% of all benefit claimants are foreigners, study finds
By TIM SHIPMANMore than £2billion is being claimed in benefits by foreigners every year, including thousands of illegal immigrants, figures reveal.
The Department for Work and Pensions announced a fraud investigation last night after it emerged 5,000 illegals claimed handouts worth £42million to which they are not entitled.
Ministers acted after the first-ever study of claimants’ nationality, which found 371,000 foreign nationals are on out-of-work benefits.Taxpayers will rightly worry the rules designed to prevent benefit tourists are steadily being eroded by a meddlesome EU, leaving Britain to pick up a bigger welfare bill than it needs to.’
Somali asylum seeker Saeed Khaliif was given a £2million home in one of the country’s most exclusive neighbourhoods at the taxpayer’s expense.
The 49-year-old was granted housing benefits of almost £8,000 a month to live in the six- bedroom property with his wife Sayida and children.
The unemployed couple demanded to be moved to West Hampstead, north-west London, after deciding their home in the Midlands was inadequate.
The payments, revealed last year, are among the largest ever given in housing benefit.Their new home has a 90ft garden and has been recently refurbished, with an en suite master bedroom and modern kitchen.
It is minutes from West Hampstead Underground station and the neighbourhood is home to comedian Stephen Fry.
It is understood Mr Khaliif has up to eight children and lives on benefits. He has not worked since arriving here three years ago.
Sought-after: The Khaliffs’ new home in West Hampstead
It is understood the family left £600 worth of damage to their old home in Coventry and did not pay the final month’s rent.
Housing benefit was recently capped at £400 a week, but the Khaliifs were able to claim more because they moved before the change came into force.
According to property sources, the house was being advertised to rent at £7,800 per month.
We’re in the money,
We’re in the money;
We’ve got a lot of what it takes to get along!
We’re in the money,
The sky is sunny;
Old Man Depression, you are through,
You done us wrong!
We never see a headline
‘Bout breadline, today,
And when we see the landlord,
We can look that guy right in the eye .
We’re in the money
Come on, my honey
Let’s spend it, lend it,
Send it rolling around!
(From 42nd Street)
bmews readers are encouraged to see the source link, scroll down to the comments. I can imagine how those Brits feel. Not too good. Not good at all.
Posted by peiper
on 01/20/2012 at 11:28 AM
Filed Under: • Daily Life • Economics • Insanity • UK •
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Permalink • Wednesday - January 18, 2012
A SOCIALIST PARADISE FOR ALL BUT THE TAXPAYER
There are a couple of rcob items I’d like to share. Or maybe ‘like’ isn’t exactly the correct term here.
Pick up any paper on any day, turn on radio news (TV too I guess) and someone is going to be speaking about the economy, the cuts being made and the many protests over cuts. Unless you are personally affected the whole subject is probably a crashing bore. But hold on. Maybe not. Because what makes the subject more then interesting to me, personally, is watching this nation and culture which I had long admired, tear itself apart and commit national suicide. I do not like that at all.
I can forgive dumb mistakes because I make them all the time. But what I am seeing is no mistake. I’m no economist, I never managed to balance a check book. Not once in my many years. Maths was never my subject. But it doesn’t take rocket science to know when people have been led down a garden path and lied to. And bad as the previous left wing Labour govt. was, I don’t see great strides being made by this
coalition govt., and I don’t see evidence of the Conservative promise to alter the squatting laws. What I see is more of that and more spending outside the country while being told cuts must be made everywhere inside. Cept those cuts do not include all members of the ruling class.
Among the many cuts on tap is money for things like, national parks. In this case, the beautiful Dartmoor National Park.
Folks are angry because in order to cover the shortfall caused by the cuts, for the very first time, Dartmoor authorities are talking about parking charges. Now this is just one tiny example but added to everything else going on, it’s frustrating for the camel carrying all that straw. Speaking of straws.
IMF confirms plans to expand bailout fund to around $1 trillion, as French banks face write-downs on Greek debt.
And guess what? Britain may be forced to give 15 BILLION to the IMF. Pretty big straw that.
Unemployment is expected to reach new highs and it’s touted that by next year, they could be the highest since 1990.
No job? What? Me worry?
Not the filthy foreign slag who is shown here. Of course she’s happy. The Brit taxpayer is spending over £27,000.00 on the NON English speaking bitch.
Let me convert that to American dollars. Rounding things out, the mommy of four (don’t know where dad is or if there is one) that comes to $41,725.00 added to the txpayer’s payload, while cuts are being made in country. Foreign aid in the multiple millions continues.
The Big Issue is a newspaper for the homeless. And oh btw. Her lack of English sure didn’t stop her from getting legal help when she was first refused ADDITIONAL money.
Romanian Big Issue seller given legal right to claim housing benefit (on top of the £25,000 she already claims)
The mother-of-four currently claims £25,547.60 in benefits each year
That will rise by a minimum of £2,600 when she receives her additional housing allowance
By LUKE SALKELD
As a Romanian immigrant living in the UK, Big Issue seller Firuta Vasile already qualified for more than £25,500 a year in benefits.
But one state handout she wasn’t entitled to was housing benefit. Until now.
Yesterday the 27-year-old mother of four was celebrating having won the extra payout – worth at least £2,600 a year – after her local council was over-ruled by a judge.
Miss Vasile, whose marital status is unknown, said the benefits money would help her pay rent on her £130,000 three-bedroomed home, while she continues to earn around £100 a week selling copies of the homelessness magazine.
Housing benefit has previously been provided to Romanian citizens only if they fit into one of three categories. They must either be registered with the Home Office to work in specific sectors such as agriculture or construction, have highly skilled jobs, or be self-employed with a National Insurance number and tax registered.
Miss Vasile has persuaded officials that she should be considered as part of the third category because she uses her own money to buy copies of the magazine in the hope of selling them at a profit.
Speaking through an interpreter, Miss Vasile said she came to the UK in 2007 to look for work, but could find only a post selling The Big Issue in Bristol.
‘I can keep half of the money I take and I usually make around £100 per week,’ she said. ‘This isn’t enough to meet all my family’s needs so I asked the council for housing benefit to help with my rent. My claim was turned down.
‘I was told that because I am Romanian I could not get benefits unless I have a job or I am in self-employment. They said work for The Big Issue didn’t count. I got legal support and was helped with an appeal.’
Miss Vasile claims £25,547.60 annually in benefits. Every week she receives £326 in tax credits, £60.50 in child benefits, £49.30 in disability living allowance and £55.50 in carers’ allowance.
She would now be entitled to around £160 a week in housing benefit – although this will be reduced to around £50 due to her other income.
Unlike other European Union nationals, Romanians and Bulgarians are subject to strict employment rules in the UK because their countries were late entrants to the EU.
Their rights will be brought into line with other European member states at the end of next year.
Let me guess. Ah .... gee this is a hard one. Their RIGHTS translated means more money then allowed now.
Jackpot. For them.
Miss Vasile, whose children are 11, seven, six and two, first applied for housing benefit from Bristol City Council on November 15, 2010. It was refused six days later.
A social security tribunal ruled that she should be paid the benefits because selling The Big Issue counted as self-employment.
But the city council appealed and the case was taken to an Upper Tribunal in London last year.
Judge Mark Rowland released his written judgment on January 10 and the council has said it would not appeal again.
Miss Vasile – who has one disabled child – was represented by welfare benefits adviser Andy King, of Avon and Bristol Law Centre.
He said: ‘This is a victory for people struggling to work to support their families. Anyone who thinks selling The Big Issue on a British street in winter is a soft option should have a go themselves.’
But Chris Grayling, minister for employment, said: ‘We disagree with the court’s decision.
‘We have to remain in line with our national and international obligations. However, it is absolutely necessary to protect the taxpayer and the benefit system from possible abuse.’
But the problem is, all these folks have to do is ..... show up here and ..... BINGO!
Meanwhile, there’s this possibility to contend with.
Take a serious look at this.
Would you want a clipboard- wielding jobsworth telling your parents it’s time to leave their home?
By BRENDA ALMONDElderly people have a hard enough time in modern Britain. The private pensions crisis, the scandal of neglect and abuse in the NHS, the erosion in the value of their savings and the crippling cost of care are all increasing problems for older generations at the very time in their lives when they are at their most vulnerable.
But now an insidious new source of pressure is looming on the horizon — the growing belief within the Government that private properties belonging to the elderly should be used as a solution to Britain’s chronic housing shortage.
Houses are no longer viewed as beloved homes, safe havens, and welcome private assets for hard-pressed families. Instead, they are to be regarded as a potential source of state-run accommodation, ripe for exploitation.
That is certainly the thinking behind the scheme outlined by Conservative Housing Minister Grant Shapps, which said that local councils should help the elderly downsize to smaller properties, with their homes then rented out to families on local waiting lists.
Posted by peiper
on 01/18/2012 at 12:24 PM
Filed Under: • CULTURE IN DECLINE • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Economics • UK •
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Permalink • Saturday - January 14, 2012
And Over They Go?
France has been stripped of its AAA credit rating for the first time as Standard & Poor’s downgraded nine countries on fears that policymakers were failing to get to grips with the eurozone debt crisis.
• S&P downgrades nine eurozone nations
• France and Austria lose prized AAA rating
• All except Germany and Slovakia face further downgrades
• German legislator: If S&P cuts France, it should also cut UK
• Bond yields rise on Greek debt writedown fears
• UK ‘teetering on brink of recession’, warns BDO
Difficulties that began more than two years ago in Greece and were initially viewed as a problem that could be contained to smaller, less significant economies in Ireland and Portugal, have now spread to once-thriving economies.
Europe’s leaders have been criticized for months for not taking decisive action to stem the crisis and S&P echoed that criticism.
“In our view, the policy initiatives taken by European policymakers in recent weeks may be insufficient to fully address ongoing systemic stresses in the eurozone,” S&P said in a statement announcing the downgrades.
S&P also criticized European leaders for in S&P’s view misidentifying the crisis as one stemming solely from the “profligate” fiscal policies of “peripheral countries” such as Greece, Italy and Portugal. In reality, the problems are far more systemic and won’t likely be fixed by austerity measures alone, according to S&P.
France CUT one notch to AA+
Austria CUT one notch to AA+
Italy CUT two notches to BBB+
Spain CUT two notches to A
Portugal CUT two notches to BB (junk)
Belgium AFFIRMED at AA (the country was cut in November)
Malta CUT one notch to A-
Cyprus CUT two notches to BB+ (junk)
Luxembourg AFFIRMED at AAA
Germany AFFIRMED at AAA
Slovenia CUT one notch to A+
Slovakia CUT one notch to A
Ireland AFFIRMED at BBB+
The Netherlands AFFIRMED at AAA
Estonia AFFIRMED at AA-
Finland AFFIRMED at AAAAll outlooks are negative (meaning these countries face a one-in three chance of a further downgrades [within 18 months]) EXCEPT Germany, and weirdly, Slovakia.
The first link above is a live blogging coverage of the events of the past 2 days. The second link is a news article. This link goes to a gateway news page that provides all the details you could ever want.
The EU is going over the edge. This is the time when the shit of Socialism finally hits the fan of Reality; they’ve run out of other people’s money to spend.
Maybe they’ll figure that out, along with the wisdom of not sending more than a third of their spendable cash to China or Saudi Arabia. Make stuff at home, live within your means, don’t let foreigners own your strategic assets, and limit immigration. That’s a start.
PS - how did the UK escape the downgrade flail this time around?
Posted by Drew458
on 01/14/2012 at 08:45 AM
Filed Under: • Economics • EUro-peons •
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