Capping It

I'm risking going a bit political today, and yet I'm still trying to see both sides.  The new benefits cap which the government plan to bring in seem, on the face of it, quite sensible.  It is quite ridiculous to have situations where people are being given up to £80k a year for doing nothing while most ordinary people wouldn't earn that in four years.  However, this isn't the case for most people and just one of those stories that the media like to bandy around as if it's the norm.  Most people still struggle on what benefits they get. And in some way there should also be an incentive to work, which sadly people need in the UK since there is very little 'work ethic'.
Then again, for someone who works hard and is in a good job, only to find themselves unemployed because of the economic climate, to have their benefits capped at just £26k for a whole year might see themselves and their family out of a home within nine months if luck doesn't come their way.  After all a lot of life is about luck, not just hard work.  But then you have the realm of one rule for some and another rule for others, and that cannot work realistically either.
The real deeprooted problem is that the only likely place for work is London.  Jobs therefore need to be spread around the country more easily, and much much more of them must be created.  Then of course housing has to be considered.  There is still far too little housing and far too high a cost, so landlords must be given some sort of incentive to charge lower rents.  Finally the costs of transport, and daycare for children, can be prohibitive for a lot of people, so these need to be addressed too.
The problem with all this is that it would take a long time to sort out, probably a similar length of time that the problems have been escalating for (roughly 40 years) and no government is ever going to be in for that long.  Therefore, sadly, a simple benefit cap is the only way forward for them.  And after all that, I'm still not sure where I stand, so here's a poem inspired by it all instead, called "Caps".

They give out their caps

Expecting us all to wear

They say that they’ll fine us

If our heads all go bare

Then they change all the sizes

And make us compare

If we wear the wrong one

It makes everyone stare

You think to speak up

But in the end you don’t dare

Yet if none of us speaks

Then they think we don’t care

That what was our home

Is a multinational lair

And we all have to swallow

That it’s supposed to be fair.

Dodgy Landlords - Part 3

When I first moved in I noticed that there was never any hot water or heating in the middle of the day, but simply put this down to the number of people in the property and the subsequent problems this would cause. Annoying as it was, I didn’t believe anything could be done about it.


After some time I found the timer controls and realised that the hot water was actually switched off during the day. Since I realised that more hot water was actually needed by the house I began to change the settings, only to find that they would be changed back again on a Friday after the landlord had been.

The problem was exacerbated by the fact that my room being the last in sequence, the radiator seemed to fill more with air than it did water. I complained on a weekly basis to my landlord (especially during the winter when my room would never be warm), but rather than properly check the system out, he slightly bled my radiator and that was it.

I would be surprised if during last winter it got above 14 degrees in my room and at night it would be colder. I would regularly find myself wearing two pairs of socks, about four layers of clothing, a hat, gloves and scarf while inside!

Eventually to make a point I started setting the heating and hot water to come on all day, in order to bring about some warmth. This led to the landlord leaving a notice by the timer that by “his express orders, the timer was not to be changed”. This led me in turn to seek out legal advice via the internet at which I was told that this was arguably illegal.

I left a sign next to his, but when he next arrived, he simply removed it. I spoke to him about it at which he said that the gas bill would simply be too large if the heating was left on all day and it would not be worth him staying a landlord. I think that, if nothing else, tells you all you need to know about the man.

Thankfully by then I had acquired a better job, with better references and finances, and was able to afford to rent a property via an agency. My new landlord has been very helpful, friendly, and timely with rectifying faults

However I fear for those on lower incomes who will not be able to afford the much higher rents required for a decent service and will have to make do with landlords who are simply in it for the money.

Dodgy Landlords - Part 2

My new property seemed okay when I first viewed the place, and the landlord seemed fine. But it just shows that first impressions aren’t up to everything. Plus when I say that the landlord seemed fine, I should have guessed that he might be dodgy but the problem was that what I now know to be either illegal or bad practice, I did not know at the time. After all we cannot know about every rule and regulation about everything in the world can we? We have to trust that people are honest.


When I say I should have guessed, it came with the fact that he wrote a lower amount for rent on the contract than he actually took. He put this difference down to the fact that he paid the council tax, water and gas bills, but later I found out that it was probably a tax dodge. He also put the property’s address as his own address, even though he did not live there.

Deposits these days are a much safer affair, but this landlord got out of having to register one by claiming that it was more of a month’s rent in advance and that the last month would be free. Technically I think this is legal, but it should possibly have been a sign that he was not completely above board.

His advert had stated that the house was “HMO standard”, since there were nine people living there, and when I looked around he stated there was a cleaner for the showers and bathrooms (all shared) and staircases. It turned out that there was no cleaner at all, in fact one of the residents occasionally cleaned, and I wonder if the property was actually a registered HMO. I had no fire escape other than the main entrance three floors down and the floor of my room sloped in various directions, sagging in the middle.

My window frames were half rotten and one night one of the panes of glass even slipped a centimetre to leave a gap at the top. After telling my landlord, rather than repairing the window he simply slotted a small sliver of wood into the gap and said it was repaired. I used to have nightmares of the frame finally rotting through, the glass breaking up upon the tiled roof and splinters raining down upon the children, who lived in the basement, while they played in their garden.

The rent was collected weekly, in cash, by the landlord. When I first moved in I expected it to be during the day, but on average he turned up at about 9pm on a Friday night. Sometimes he wouldn’t turn up at all without informing me and I would stay up late for no reason. He found it impossible to understand why this was so rude, annoying and arrogant of him. It being a weekly rent, I later found out that by law he should provide a rent book, but he didn’t.

After living there several months he left a later saying that next week the rent would go up. I thought nothing of this since the rent was paid weekly, but again I later found out that he would have been required to give a months notice of a rental increase.

But all this was nothing compared to the situation regarding the heating and hot water.

Dodgy Landlords - Part 1

Private rental prices in the UK are increasing rapidly and with wages and interest rates stagnant, this only makes it more difficult for people to find somewhere to live. Getting together enough money for a deposit takes many years of saving and whilst you’re saving you’ve still got to live somewhere. Unfortunately with rental prices somewhere in the region of 56% of gross pay, the amounts you can save every month are extremely small, making this a viscous circle of which only land and property owners are in control of.


The majority of landlords are respectable, with a reasonable moral compass as to their responsibilities; however there are many more that are not. And as rents increase, it is likely that more and more people will have no choice but to turn to these bottom end landlords. I have personal experience of the less scrupulous.

The first of which was either Russian, or at least eastern European and mostly seemed absolutely fine. In fact throughout the two years in which I rented the property I heard nothing from him. However, the problem was that the electricity board heard nothing from him either.

Shortly before I moved out a key meter suddenly appeared next to the electricity meter (strangely there was no key and with a large amount of credit showing), along with an open letter stating that over £2000 was owed for electricity. I should point out that my rental contract was an “all inclusive”, and so it was the landlords responsibility to pay all bills.

As time went on the credit slowly dropped, but a call the landlord went to voicemail and no response came. Finally the electricity disappeared completely, for a day or so, before more credit mysteriously appeared in the meter. Once more I called the landlord but with the same outcome.

I finally decided that I should move out and quickly, but with the haste that was required and the lack of funds for somewhere via an agency, I took the first reasonable seeming property that was available.

Now I phoned my landlord again to say I was moving out, several times, and even stopped my last months rent. Amazingly I still received no response and after leaving the property unlocked with the keys on the inside, I often wonder whether anyone else has moved in.