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Birkenhead families to lose housing benefits

Dolescum Chomsky | 19.06.2006 18:42 | Repression | Workers' Movements | Liverpool

So-called 'neighbours from hell' in Birkenhead are going to be among the first to be stripped of housing benefits, plunging them even further into the poverty that causes their 'antisocial behaviour'.

Birkenhead is set to be one of 10 pilot areas nationwide to be set up next year as part of an attack of the very poorest in our society.

Families will lose housing benefits worth on average £70 a week and be moved to a "sink site" alongside other offenders - the ghetto of the ghetto.

And this will solve what exactly? Rupert Murdoch's tax bill?

Field first drew up the blueprint for the scheme in a 2002 backbench bill, which ministers first shelved but have now revived as part of Tony Blair's 'respect' agenda.

Field said: "Such families will from next year not be able to get away with it. About time."

He said that an appropriate site for hell families to be relocated to has yet to be identified.

Other pilot schemes are unlikely elsewhere on Merseyside because ministers want to spread them around the regions, including Manchester, Leeds, Tyneside, Bristol and London.

But if 'successful', the scheme will be rolled out to all areas.

Let's not forget, the problem is the 'hell', not the neighbours.

Dolescum Chomsky

Comments

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television rights- the ghetto of the ghetto

19.06.2006 19:51

if the offenders are really extreeeme they could make a pot of money from the telly people, much more interesting than Big Brother

bad george

Does this make sense?

19.06.2006 19:52

I can't see a great deal of sense in this. Fine, so anti-social (and presumably dysfunctional) families - and there are plenty of those - are penalised by withdrawing benefits. But surely that's going to make them even more anti-social in the sense that they're going to be scratting around for money to make up for lost benefits.

And what about all those anti-social sods who have bought their homes thanks to the government flogging off all the social housing on the cheap. Plenty of those families don't rely on benefits at all but are just as anti-social as anyone else. I haven't heard of plans to deal with them.

I haven't got any sympathy at all with the anti-social but unless the government think this problem through properly and then apply it right down the social line, it simply isn't going to work.

The phrase 'knee-jerk politics' springs to mind...

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