Nicely swerved, how about addressing the issue ?

Or get the puppeteer to address it for you.

The whole issue for me boils down to my wifes family and what her parents situation was at the end of their lives (8 years ago now) and how they would have been affected by this.

In a nutshell they moved into a brand new 3 bedroom council house in 1964, two adults and four children which increased to six children, all raised int hat house with her father working hard all his life and barely missing a day off sick, paying rent for forty years and occasionally getting the front door repainted by the council for their pains.

After he died her mother continued to live in that 3 bed house on her own on a single state pension, she got the benefits that are automatically awarded (bus pass, winter fuel) but never applied for any other benefits, thankfully if this law had come to pass back then she would have been unaffected but if she had then it would have been simply unaffordable to ask her for an extra £22 per week.

As it happened, before she died she had requested a move to a 1 bed bungalow on the same estate but the waiting list was huge and I just cannot imagine her reaction if her council had offered her a bungalow in the next town, to uproot her from her community in her last few years just for the sake of a civil service scoring some points on a spreadsheet.

The people who have to enforce this rule of law do not like doing it (see press reports) for the simple facts that they, as humans, have to sit in front of other humans and tell them that they are being treated as something less than human and more of an annoying statistic that a person much more worthy than them has considered needy of being wiped from the ledger.

Its a nasty little piece of legislation in the familiar divide-and-conquer theme that can only have been invented at arms length from a person uncaring of the consequences and probably completely unaware of any social implications at all.

Wow - thats a revalation !

Well worth knowing about too, and not widely publicised - and you won't get to know about it until your application is refused and a note on the refusal made on your credit file - nasty.

A couple of brief points:

1) what constitutes a 'bedroom'? Technically, we have a two-bed flat (and to clarify, it's not council). One of those bedrooms is, however, barely big enough to put a single bed and small table in. Somehow, we've wedged two desks and a couple of bookcases in there as an office (as a freelancer, I need it), although to describe it as cramped would be a massive overstatement.

2) I did read somewhere (apols, don't have a link) a woman who worked for a housing association saying that they don't actually have any properties that are listed as having just one bedroom – and that very few properties do. Flats are certainly now being built with just a single bedroom, but in our bit of London, such a thing goes on the market at around £250K – or £125 for 'key workers'.

That is astonishing – and very 'Big Brother'.

and also, not true.

Not really.when we first applied for a mortgage, we had to show two years of regular saving history (as well as a 20% deposit), it's just a move back to the way things were

One local Housing Association, knowing that they didn't have sufficient stock to cover low-occupancy, have been re-classifying their two & three bedroomed homes to one & two bedroomd plus a study. They know that they will lose out on reduced HB but as they said "being a social landlord is not about making continual profits"

Until the end of "interest only" mortgages etc. then we'll never get the housing market back to where it should be, I kow plenty of people in £300k+ houses that really can't afford them, but Interest Only means they think they can, the contents are from Bright House and the cars on the drive are leased, they never have cash and everything (even a couple of pints) goes on credit.

You'd better tell Paul Lewis and his Money Box team then. They interviewed a lender a couple of weeks ago, who stated quite clearly that they were now looking more carefully, not just at income vs expenditure but just what that expenditure was spent on

well it is true because ive just had to do it....even though i wasnt losing.

went back with 3 months 'clean' statements and was accepted.

doesnt even show up as a bet on your statements just shows as a card transaction but still they refuse.

alot tighter now.

also had to show where i had got my deposit from, to stop money laundering. so had to send in more statements highlighting deposits i had made into my savings

Apologies, I had misunderstood the context of your comment (hand't gone back over all the pages), I got the impression an LA or HA had turned you down for Social Housing because of a history of betting, I can understand a bank turning you down for a mortgage on the basis you suggest.

One thing I've recommended my eldest to do, although they've been provisionally accepted for a mortgage, is to apply for the longest term that is offered and to speak to a "proper" building society who understand what house loans are about and who's business is house loans - she's a first time buyer and at 23 years of age shouldn't be phased by a 30 or even 40 year loan and neither should the lender (although they will be).

The simple truth is that the monthly repayments are critical to the new buyers and they are highly unlikely to live in the property for the full term anyway, some sensible annual reviews and valuations and the odd overpayment here and there should, in a sensible market, get them into the market and be ready to upscale in five to ten years time, close that mortgage and then look again.

Nationwide I have found to be always willing to talk.

40, 50 or even more years morgages are not unknown in Continental Europe. This occasionally rusults in parents leaving their children a liability instead of an asset. But as we know, renting - even for a lifetime, does not seem to attract the same social stigma that some 2@s put on it over here

On the subjects of the Housing Benefit cap and the "bedroom tax", they have managed to cause two farcical and even more expensive scenarios.

Kensington & Chelsea have watched as tenants in receipt of HB have been evicted. Now because local authorities have a legal obligation to house such families, they are now paying over £1000 per week to put them up in B&B acommodation.

It is also anticipated that some social housing tenants will be evicted because their HB minus bedroom tax will not cover their rent. They will then need to be found alternative accommodation with fewer bedrooms, probably in the private rented sector and they will be charged higher rents for the smaller units, resulting in increased HB payments.

The residue of ten or so years left on your parents 50 year mortgage wrapped up into their will when they shuffle off this earth would surely only be criticised by those with no compassion or sense of reality that you've just been given 80% of £250,000 and all you have to do is sell the bloody thing now.

However I would believe that there will be people like that, those who would see loans or mortgages on what they see as their inheritence right being an infringement of their rights.

I still recall the time my dad called me and my brother around to his house a couple of years after my mother had died and he had recommenced going back to Benidorm for long periods of time and he explained how he wanted to relocate there permanently but would need to sell his bungalow in the UK to do so, he asked for our permission to do this as he saw his own house as our inheritence. The meeting took about 30 seconds to resolve after we both told him to sell his house and spend the fookin lot in whatever way he saw fit and bollax to us both if there was nowt left.

His liver lasted for another eight years but jesus christ, what an eight years he had

Never knew that! Nice one! I'm looking for a house and I have a flutter online

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21585235Good or Bad News?[/url

There is a quote on there which is unattributed, pity really because we need to know what sort of fookwit thinks this way : "Ministers say this will help reinvigorate the market".

I hope its the journalist who has assumed that and not an actual Minister of Government who has spoken those words - how the hell is someone buying their own council house, the house they are currently living in, the house that they will continue to live in after they have bought it, how the hell will this reinvigorate the housing market ?

Other than that, as always, if LA were allowed to keep and reinvest sales money into new or refrubished housing then it would be a good idea although at 75% discount you're going to have to sell at least two properties for every one new one, but that is at least better than selling one and losing one from the stock.

Indeed, and I would have thought Labour would have done something about that during their years in power.

Didn't they greatly lower the top rate of discount available for right to buy to purposefully make the scheme less appealing?

Yes, they reduced the discount, I was more talking about ring fencing the receipts to force LA's to emark on New Build.

I get you.

Interesting figures here.
Right to Buy giveaway has exceeded all of the privatisations put together in the 80's and 90's.

[urlhttp://www.newsroom.hsbc.co.uk/press/release/right-to-buy_sales_continue_at[/url

[urlhttp://www.dailyshame.co.uk/2013/02/satire/landlord-camerons-bedroom-tax-he-wants-you-out-basically/[/url

[urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/12/bedroom-tax-u-turn[/url