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Support for Mortgage Interest used to be a benefit. It's now a loan because All Benefits Are Bad (TM DailyMail). We used to have a social security system that tried harder to keep people in their homes, kids in school etc when they were unfortunate.

I'll start ranting about DIY SOS in a minute.

In a unicorn filled wonderland then yes, that would be nice.
Heck if I go down for a 10-stretch I’d come out the other side mortgage free!
Sign me up.

Of course I don’t want to break up families or make people homeless but fuck me, can’t we just accept the fact some people are proper cunts and can’t be trusted with a property if no-one’s keeping an eye on them?

Not with SMI you wouldn't. But your partner might be able to send your kids to the same school.

I always thought it was only the interest that was paid?

Get interest only mortgage, get SMI, race riot , free house...

I haven’t got a scooby. I was thinking out loud from a place where I almost certainly lack the knowledge compared to others on here.

It all started with me being perfectly ok with the idea of rioters losing their council houses and spiralled a bit from there.
As you were everyone, happy to leave the debate to those with more experience of such things.

I wonder how this discussion would look if at least one or two folks questioned the very existence of prison.

Are you saying prisons are not real? Like birds?

Yeah why not. All the things are figments anyway.

The fucking cops too - they were invented to hassle Paddy only a couple of hundred years ago.

Not sure you could ever get rid of them but massively reduced use would be amazing. Probably need to start interventions way before offending. Some sort of scheme to give people a sure start in life when they are still a toddler might help. Payback would be in a generation or two and would probably get cancelled.

Birds are real... only they're chinese drones!

Just going to chime in with the more righty opinion no one has yet mentioned...

One of the package reasons why prison isn't deterrent is because of the general cuts in the legal system. If you arrest, sentence and imprison people quickly then they register the consequences. If instead you probably don't arrest them, then when you do leave them waiting for a couple of years before handing out a punishment, then maybe or maybe not put them in prison the whole process is simply so remote that no one, especially a criminal, is going to link the consequences to their actions.

(my opinion on this is entirely adopted from the secret barristers memours)

I think this is fair though. Delayed, suspended sentences are barely a deterrent to someone who is willing to commit the crime in the first place.

Ministry of Justice reoffending statistics show that those serving a sentence of six months or less have a 59% reoffending rate. For offenders punished with suspended sentences or community orders, the reoffending rate is 24%.

There's a fair chance those figures are skewed by the type of crime committed leading to the sentence given, but shows that showing people there are consequences, and they're close to getting their freedom taken from them whilst not actually doing so, where they might be able to hold on to their previous life and not get exposed to the joys of time inside, does seem to work as a better deterrent than a short stretch and likely coming out to no job, maybe no home but having some new contacts.

Like birds

Fucking rep!

I miss my birds aren't real cap.

Imported it from the US, wore it twice then left it in a shit campsite in Wales.

Asshat

Asshat

Strange way to wear it.

All the cool kids are doing it.

Apparently it gives a zen like connection with the road, whilst the hat feels like an extension of your body.

Also simpler to maintain and keep clean.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/aug/13/nigel-farage-irresponsible-dangerous-riots-tom-tugendhat-conservatives

Fuck bellendhat is such a drip. He’s perfect to lead the conservatives.

Commentating on the situation the only way he knows. It’s not how I would have done it, my way would have been much better.

To give the police and the government their due. The riots were resolved quickly, justice has been swift.

this is all arbitrary because most of this was caused by one massive cunt who’d swanned off to Cyprus and another who shouldn’t be mp for clacton

when did council housing become free?

apologies if we have covered this point already.

Cheaper than the market and no deposit.

It didn't. Some tenants will have some or all of their rent covered by housing benefit, but that's not the same thing.

Led by Donkeys have unveiled a remote banner of a Lettuce during a Liz Truss pro Trump speaking tour date (???!!! FFS). She wasn't amused 😜👌

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-oFq-woxPR/?igsh=MWVrNms0a2ZhNTg1Mw==

covered by housing benefit

Which is now being replaced by "universal" credit?

S’funny. I thought ‘raw-dogging’ had a very different meaning

Is 'raw-dogging' long flights heroic or foolish?