Comments by "" (@grokitall) on "LBC" channel.

In this country we have a problem of believing that simplistic solutions can solve complex problems, but complex problems usually have complex causes, and thus a simplistic solution which ignores the causes at best does not work, and at worst makes the problem much harder. We had a catchphrase of tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime, and then spent decades not even looking at the causes of crime. Now it looks like we are following the old trope of the deserving poor ans the benefits scammers. This has been adopted many times, and never works, and labour are equally guilty of it, so the idea of just vote labour and that will fix everything won't work. This whole problem is made harder by the move away from simple universal benefits like working tax credit whih you can work out how to make revenue neutral, in favour of badly implemented means tested benefits which generate benefits traps. We need a cross party agreement to actually have grown up discussions on why the system is not working well, and how to reform it in constructive ways, rather than having jingoistic point scoring discussions which don't make a difference.
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Civil service pensions are higher as a means of paying lower wages. If you want to cut those pensions, you need to up the wages so you can retain the people who can get better paying jobs elsewhere.
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Lower wages than whom?, the people you are trying to retain. Civil servants get paid well below market rate for their services in return for better pensions and a measure of job security. If you break that deal for new hires in order to save on future pensions, you go back to having to pay the much higher market rate for people of this ability level. If you are even stupider and try to change the pensions of those already working in the civil service, you will see a mass Exodus of staff as they scramble to take their existing pension contributions and try and get better jobs to make up the. Shortfall in expected pension returns.
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@hardywatkins7737 no, I am talking about all levels of employee. If you take someone from accounts, they can leave tomorrow and work for an insurance underwriter and get an immediate pay rise of 20%. Admin is the same. You pay below market price plus generous holidays and pensions. This already does not apply to executive level jobs, as the pay cut would be too high, so you have to pay market rate and they do their own pensions.
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Buy to let was made a problem in the last rent reform bill. If you own a house and need to move for work, you now need to either bring it up to the current rental codes in order to rent it out, or pay extra tax for not renting it out. This applies to anyone buying the property, which forces the house prices down for legacy housing stock, quite a bit of which cannot easily be upgraded to modern standards. It also forces the prices up for modern upgradable housing stock, pricing a lot of people out of that market. This will have the same effect as the 1970's reforms which basically forced a mass Exodus of landlords until the balance swung back.
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@mydogeatspuke the purpose of a tenancy agreement is nothing to do with benefits. It is about predictability and consequences. Also commercial settings have to have a deposit guaranteed by someone other than the landlord. These things were brought in over time in order to protect tenants from bad landlords who would decide to just force you out, or massively raise the rent with no warning, or just decide to make something up to keep the deposit. Similarly it provides the landlord with a basis upon which to extract bad tenants from the property, and get financial judgement against them to be able to recover costs incurred from the bad tenants. As an aside, when you then try and rent from someone else, you have to state any problems, and if you lie then you have instant grounds for eviction. Even with being a documented bad council tenant you lose the ability to get. Council property in another area and make getting a commercial rental much harder.
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@mydogeatspuke home ownership peaked in the uk under margaret thatcher with the right to buy, and was destroyed under tony blair with the move to outsourcing the provisioning of social housing to housing associations. add to that the above inflation rises in house prices, and most people have to rent. due to scandals over dodgy landlords, these commercial lettings through estate agents have to have contracts, and deposit guarantee schemes. with the latest changes it is even worse, as if you do own a house, if you move for work you either have to pay double Council tax after 6 months for it being empty (introduced to deal with properties abandoned by absentee landlords), or have to bring the property up to the current code for commercial letting, or sell it quick to avoid having to pay in either way thereby reducing your sale price for a quick sale. even worse, every time you have a tenant leave you have to upgrade to the latest standards before you can rent it out to someone new. this leaves the market with a perfect storm. people cannot afford to buy, home owners cannot afford to keep unused homes and rent them out, and nobody is building enough new rental properties and social housing for those without a home that they own. a lot of this was offset by buy to let, but now the compulsory upgrade regulations are killing that option as well. looks like the uk in in for interesting times.
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