Green Home Grants Wales?
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Posts
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Not going to argue with zinger or Wrex-it,but i thought the benefit system was for un-employed people looking for work,or those on a low income,now whether people abuse this system i wouldn’t care to say.
I’m not in the know about this particular scheme, but isn’t it the case for most home improvement grants that ultimately the actual homeowner is the one who benefits from such a grant, because it’s improving their home for free and thus the overall value.
There are 3 living situations here:
1) In the case of council house / social housing dwellers the scheme financially benefits the council for improving their housing stock or the social housing organisation.
2) Then for those in private rental it benefits the landlord. I don’t know many people in private rental who’d think, I know I’m going to pony up £500+ of my own money to improve the infrastructure of a house I could be asked to leave at any given time.
For the above 2 if a home is too cold in winter or bills are too high, then that is something that the tenant can legitimately ask to be improved in terms of fit and proper dwellings.
3) So ultimately it’s only owner-occupiers with a mortgage or owns outright who are seeing a net overall financial benefit to their own home being improved. Now please tell me how many mortgage paying people fall into the benefit scrounger category?
Because I’d love to be on these types of benefits, because even with a full time job I’m not eligible enough at this point in time to get a mortgage. So who are these people on benefits getting handed a mortgage so they can go and improve their own home?
I understand the frustrations other people have about perceived handouts others are getting when they have paid their way their whole life and that’s a debate for some other time as I don’t think there’s an easy agreement on who deserves what.
But I wanted to focus on this particular grant in question because the assertion that those on benefits are the only ones who will gain an advantage makes no sense to me.
In England homeowners will receive vouchers of up to £5,000 for energy-saving home improvements. The WAG have yet to announce how they will use our share.
I don’t know if they still do it but the Council did group repair schemes where they fixed up rows of houses in an area.
Where I lived there was a lot of resentment because the scheme was means tested so if you were on some benefits you got the work free but if you worked or had savings your were stuffed.
You had people who owned a house but because they hid their money and worked cash in hand then they got work done for almost zero. I applied and the council wanted nearly all the money because I was working full time and Mrs Councillor X had a part time job. Too bloody honest.I won’t say where I lived but if you look at some areas of Wrexham maelor then you can see lots of nice houses in a row and the odd one or two in a terrace with knackered old roofs and garden walls and windows falling out. You can guess which ones weren’t done and why.
This sorry sidebar just shows how effective ‘divide and rule’ is. Well played, Daily Mail, Sun, Express, etc, I have to hand it to you.
The state pension has always been part of social security spending, it’s included in most of the pie charts. It’s part of ‘cradle to grave,’ which is supposed to be about a bare minimum decent standard for everybody.
They’ve already gone after young people and disabled people, and soon they’ll be going after pensioners. What happened to the free TV licence for over 75s? Look at how they keep pushing the pension qualifying age higher. Some even wanted to make pensioners work for their pension after they’ve retired, which is a bit of a cheek. And that’s before we talk about how low the state pension is compared to other European countries.
Yet, instead of getting angry with the politicians who organised this rotten deal for pensioners, some people would rather get angry with ill people, disabled people and unemployed people; even though corona virus ought to have taught us that sometimes there will be less jobs or no job for you, and it’s nobody’s fault. How many have lost their job? 720, 000? How many people will lose their job in the deepest recession since records began? Do they deserve a good old sneer too?
But, hey, like I said, it’s amazing how effective ‘divide and rule’ is.
By the way, I don’t know if it’s still available, but there were government grants for pensioners who need a new boiler. Worth checking out if you need one.
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