Monthly Archives: March 2011

Cuts are affecting the poorest

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Letter in The Independent – 30 March 2011.

There is a different interpretation of the ICM opinion poll to that suggested by Dominic Lawson. Maybe the “57 per cent support for the cuts or more” tells us that 57 per cent of the population have not been as seriously affected by the crisis as they were led to expect.
They should thank the fellow citizens who are taking a disproportionate £18bn reduction of their welfare incomes, which were already below the Government’s poverty line and even further below the Joseph Rowntree minimum income standards. They comprise 2 million pensioners, 4 million children and 7.5 million adults, who will be forced into unpayable debt because their incomes will not keep up with rising prices of food and domestic fuel and increasing rents.

The Rev Paul Nicolson
Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust

Affordable Homes. The Times, 15th March, 2011.

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Sir, Deficit reduction will end sooner or later so now is the time to plan a rapid growth in affordable homes. The building industry has the capacity to build 500,000 green and affordable homes a year for seven years. The costs are estimated at £350 billion, or £50 billion a year, without the land. Closed landfill in hte UK comprise at least 70,000 acres required to build 3.5 million houses. Flood plain land is to be avoided. Recycling the waste in the landfills and remediating the sites would cost about another £5 billion a year. The expenditure could be recovered over time by selling half and renting the other half of the new affordable homes.

The cost of £350 billion is feasable, when compared with the £1 trillion government support to the banks. It will stabalise house prices and, coupled with appropriate regulation of lenders and borrowers, will provide the UK with the begginnings of a national housing policy.

Adrian Cooper, Director, Team Homes.

Peter Ambrose, Visiting Professor in Housing and Health, Brighton University.

Rev Paul Nicolson.

Welfare reform bill will punish the poor. Guardian, 8th March, 2011.

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The welfare reform bill has carried the application of the economic theory of moral hazard to such extremes in its exaggerated claims of welfare dependency that unemployment benefits could be reduced to an amount incapable of keeping body and soul together.

The new universal credit will be made up of a standard allowance (SA), an amount for children, another for housing and one more for particular needs or circumstances. The bill does not attempt to explain how the level of the SA will be decided. There is no link to the escalating prices of food and other essential needs. The Centre for Research in Social Policy has calculated that some time in the next 10 years the weekly cost of a healthy diet will overtake the weekly amount paid in adult unemployment benefits.

The caps on housing benefit and the local housing allowance will create debts that will have to be paid out of the money needed for a healthy diet.

Rev Paul Nicolson

 

Welfare Reform Bill

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Letter in The Guardian – 8th March 2011.

The welfare reform bill has carried the application of the economic theory of moral hazard to such extremes in its exaggerated claims of welfare dependency that unemployment benefits could be reduced to an amount incapable of keeping body and soul together.

The new universal credit will be made up of a standard allowance (SA), an amount for children, another for housing and one more for particular needs or circumstances. The bill does not attempt to explain how the level of the SA will be decided. There is no link to the escalating prices of food and other essential needs. The Centre for Research in Social Policy has calculated that some time in the next 10 years the weekly cost of a healthy diet will overtake the weekly amount paid in adult unemployment benefits.

The caps on housing benefit and the local housing allowance will create debts that will have to be paid out of the money needed for a healthy diet.

Rev Paul Nicolson

Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust