overseas property buyers lounge

hi all i've reads so many things about the LHA scheme, now i'm confused as i don't know which is true ot not. i know that LHA applies to private tenants who pay rent for their accommodation, right? does that mean anybody renting from a private landlord without distinction of their immigration status in the UK? 1- a friend of mine who is an "overseas full-time student" in the UK recently got married and is keen to rent a property (1 bedroom flat in one the london boroughs where the scheme was introduced into) from a private landlord/agency. Will he be eligible for LHA. 2- How should it work out how much council tax reduction he could get? is council tax reduction/exemption part of the Housing Benefits scheme. please help me to help him...accurate details only please. Thank you all

I do not want to spend it with his family and here's why. Last summer his brother got married, they live overseas, hubby took all his time off for the wedding, we travelled there but it was the most horrible experience ever. To start off hubby was asked to be bestman but is brother said "do you want to be my bestman? If you don't want to it's ok, I can ask Jack" - jack being his fiancee's brother.My husband and his brother are only 1,5 yrs apart, he also planned to have his stag do / batchelors weeks before the wedding and didn't invite my husband. I know that if it were me, I would have it closer to enable my sister to come especially if she was best girl. At the wedding they had a dinner the night before for close family and friends. After that, my brother in law and his wife had a pre wedding party at their house, which were not invited to. Bare in mind we are not that far off in age and I am actually younger than her. They had their friends over and my sister in law's siblings were there too. At the wedding, she told the photographer I was JUST the brother's wife and didn't need to be in the photos. That hurt my feeling a lot. Because I see myself as being part of the family. The photographer had not heard her, so she repeated but after realising I was looking she spoke in her teeth. My husband heard this too. On the way to the airport, she refused to come, apparently she didn't want to sit in traffic! They had been to our place several times including some of her family and some of it was not even planned, but we would go out of our way to ferry them around and have them stay at our place. Anyway, she is an ungrateful person, because she never even says thank you for any birthday gifts or christmas gifts. So this year I have decided not to get them anything at all. Am I wrong? I am also sure that my brother in law must know about this, because at the wedding I didn't know anyone except for my parents in law and husband, that is the only family they have. The rest were the bride's family. But my brother in law kept insisting that I should go and hang out at the men's bar with the men rather than in the girl's changing room. I suspect she didn't want me there but all the women were there including my mother in law who didn't want to be alone because she only knew me out of the women. Anyway when we came back home, my parents in law knew something was down but they wanted to play it down, maybe they don't want their boys to fall out. But we told them what happened and how we felt. They knew and had seen some of this themselves but gave excuses for every single thing - basically they took their other son's side. I felt like sh***t to put it bluntly because I could have gone overseas to my family instead of spending time with ingrates. What annoyed me the most is that my parents in law think it's ok, that what happened, happened, and make excuses for everything. Am I wrong in saying that they should really have confronted my brother in law and made him aware and then maybe he may have apologised and we could have moved on? I feel that their excuses for everything mean that it's ok that I was treated that way, and that my husband had to be subjected to that too. Clearly from what I have seen, they favour my brother in law, but my husband doesn't want to accept it even though it's right in his face. They talk down to my husband and go on about how our place is not nice (we live in an expensive area and any reasonable house will cost well over half a million pounds), we are young, I am still finishing my studies but I feel we have done well so far with some properties in other areas which we rent out. But his parents always talk down at us, never to my brother in law though. So I am tired, since we were together we always go to his parents for Christmas but I don't think I can be bothered anymore because I no longer feel like part of their family due to recent events. And so there's no need for me to keep pleasing them. I have my family overseas, I could go and see them instead or just spend Christmas in my home where I feel comfortable and loved. Immediately when told my husband my reasons he said, he will have to go do after Christmas on his own. I understand they are his parents but can he not get that I am hurting? Do I not come first. We spent all summer with his family and it was awful. Am I wrong to want to spend time with him at home? He thinks I am making him choose, but yet he aknowledges everything that happened. I don't feel welcome with his family anymore, what do I do? Obviously if it's up to me, I would never get them any presents, brithdays or christmas. But what would you do if you were my husband? Sorry for the long post, I just want you to get the whole picture and decide. Personally I would rather remove these people from my life, his brother and wife, although seeing their small family I was really looking fwd to being great buddies with my sister in law. I can forgive my I have told my husband that I dont want him to choose. But surely he sees what has happened and why would a want to drive 10 hours roundtrip to spend time with people who do not care about my feelings? I don't think I am being unreasonable. I am offering him the choice to stay at home or go to his parents if he wants to. But shouldn't a husband automatically put the wife first. I would have thought he would say - nobody disrespects my wife and if they want to be like that then we'll see them once a year or something but not on Christmas? I also feel awful because I miss my own family and would feel even worse to spend time with peopl who don't like me, just to make my husband happy. When we leave we are always upset because they enjoy putting us down. So I am not really sure why we go?

I moved overseas when I was 18, my step dad lost his job after that and with 3 siblings I started working and helping my mum and stepdad with everything from bills, school fees, clothing etc. They always said they would start a business but my mum is a bully and it would never work and it never did even after numerous borrowings from the bank which left me with hefty debts, my mum didn't care. She thinks she gave birth to me so I should honour and submit to her demands. A couple of yrs ago I decided to follow my careers after 5 years of helping her. So I warned her and suggested she may want to move here to in order to work for a year and save enough for the kid's school fees and enough to invest in property or something. She came over thinking it was a joke, but what she found was that she was living a much better life than me in her twenty something roomed house, but living off my money (and my husband's - I was married by then). She hated our 2 bed flat and having to work, so she started picking fights, then flew back and spred lies to the whole family about me and my husband. It wasn't long before my immediate family realised she was wrong, because I stopped sending her money and her true colours came out. She was nasty to everyone. I tried mending fences and told her to return after another failed busines venture - but this time at her own expense. Once again the lies started. It hurt my feelings in a way that I cannot explain. We had to ask her to move out after 9 months because my husband and I were now constantly close to fighting. She continued spreading lies about us, it bothered me so much that I now suffer from depression. Since she moved I barely speak to her because it never ends well and I don't get involved in sending money to my siblings and step dad, I let her do that. She was supposed to go back after 2 years but she cannot save any money because she loves material things, clothes etc and even now the kids can without pocket money at school and sometimes skip meals because she would rather go shopping. I think she does this because she knows I will always step in to help my siblings. But so far I have not done anything. Right now it's almost Christmas, she was meant to send them clothes and all their gifts which she sent me to purchase with her money. All these things are at my house and she wont ship them as she claims not to have any money. But we all know she gets paid and how much. I feel that she is trying to make me feel guilty about seeing all my sibling's christmas gifts and thinking about them not having these things at christmas. And right now she called me saying I should pay for shipping she wil give me back the money later. I feel sorry for my siblings but my mum is so iiresponsible. I have already made plans for christmas and how I will spend the little that I have and non of it involved her plans. Apparentlylast week she went to a wedding and she has been bragging about how well she was all dressed up. I really do not want to have to deal with her responsibilities. It drains me. I am doing a very difficult course at university which I cannot afford to fail. I am also now at a point where I want to start a family eventually and I can't let her drag me down. What should I do?

Since the property bubble burst, unemployment has risen to over 12%. As a result the government is taking in literally billions less in tax revenue than it costs to run the country and are borrowing heavily as a result. The recent floods left a humanitarian crisis(though thankfully no one died as a direct result) and people have not only been left without running water or electricity, but without homes. The Irish red cross and St. Vincent de Paul are involved. Should Irish overseas aid agencies like concern, trócaire and goal come back to help the people here instead because what the government pledged in aid to flood victims countrywide wouldn't cover the cost to repair one housing estate. People are heavily in debt and in danger of having their homes reposessed. The corrupt government is bailing out powerfully corrupt banks and property developers with taxpayers money while the ordinary working person on the dole has no such safety net when it comes to his/her home being repossessed. We have, to a certain extent, a developed world infrastructure. But we have a public health service in crisis and some school children who have to take classes in old run-down pre-fabricated structures rather than permanent school buildings because the broke government won't(can't?) spend the allocated budget to upgrade these schools. So my question is: Is Ireland now a third world country disguised as a developed country. Maybe this question is a bit sensationalist. But is there a very real danger of us heading in that direction?

We are a small business and administer overseas property. Our bank just gave us notice they are closing our account and refuse to give any reason. We have large amounts of money in and out of our account all the time which I understand could be percieved as money laundering or wahtever. but all our accounts are up to date and everything is legit - documents etc. How come they are allowed to just do this with no explanation or whatever! We have never been overdrawn or anything like that.

Hi all, Policies I've thought of so far include (in no particular order and have been "refined" from another question I posted yesterday): 1) Tougher child benefit schemes, so that it's only available to people whom have permanent residence in the UK. I'm under the impression pretty much anyone can claim this - even if their children do not reside in this country. Child benefit should remain "as is" now, if you are married, but should have a "reducing quota" if you're single and are still having children. For example, a single person with 1 child, gets full benefits. 2 children, gets 100% for the first child, perhaps 75% for the second. Third child gets harsher - Perhaps 75/50/25. Also! Single parents should not be able to claim a property so easily. Spending should be increased on sex education and preventative pregnancy measures. 2) Cuts in spending on NEW religious buildings - and to spend that money elsewhere on prolong existing religious buildings (we have enough already I think!). 3) Introduction of a new tax (I think would need to be quite high) on overseas transactions - so that anyone sending money away from the UK, are taxed for it (on the transactions value), thus our treasury retains a higher percentage of that money for public spending. 4) More regular, but "online" Prime Ministers Questions. Why give MP's a reason to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of tax payers money on temporary or permanent residence in London, when technology will allow us to do everything we need to do, from our very own homes / constituancies? We abolish "MP allowances" completely and lower MP salaries as they will have no reason to claim such high salaries when they're confined to their own localities. This will save the taxpayer up to 20 million pounds per year in MP salaries and perhaps that much again in the abolishment of MP allowances. 5) Reduce the number of councillors in all constituancies. I live in Nottingham and our councillors do absolutely nothing for us - a huge waste of tax payers money. 6) Get out of the EU - We should be free to make our own laws, trades and legislation. I appreciate that this may not be a popular one, but in order to get the harder punishments on criminals and gain control of our borders, laws and legislations, it's an absolute neccessity. This will also save the tax payer up to 40 million pounds per DAY. 7) Human rights should be ammended so that (convicted 100% sure) criminals lose a majority of their rights. 8) Prisons should be made into harsher environments and not the hotels that they are now. The "fear" of going to prison should (alone) be enough to deter people from committing crime. 9) Consider re-introducing the death sentence. This would only be used in severe cases - rapists, murderers, paedophiles etc. Why are we paying money to keep these people alive and safe? 10) Massive increases on spending on the NHS and pensions. NO changes to minimum wage. A valid point was made in a previous post that a lot of NHS spending is on the higher earners in the NHS - such as consultants etc. This needs to be made more widespread to nurses and junior doctors. Salaries of grades should be given "caps" and "responsibility" of the people that earn these high salaries should be clearly defined. The same person also noted that minimum wages should be greatly increased. I, however greatly oppose this. Small businesses are making people redundant day-by-day and one of the main reasons for this is that their overheads (primarily salaries) are a great stress on the business finances - especially during these hard-times. If the minimum wage were to continue increasing now, it would bring about more redundancies and the end of thousands more small businesses. Minimum wage must be held "as is" for the short-term. 11) Trade Unions should have less power. We saw recently how a trade unions demands did more worse than good with the oil workers strike at Total. 12) Immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq - reparations to be paid over time to the re-building of Iraq (thanks to the warmonger of an ex-PM of ours!) 13) More funding to border control / customs etc. 14) This kinda overlaps point 7, but people whom preach hatred among religious groups should be thrown out of a plane with an empty / unpacked parachute strapped to their back in their own country. 15) Long-term unemployed (2 years) whom are fit to work, should have all benefits immediately stopped - and will not be eligible to apply for unemployment benefit again for another 3 years. Conditions can be applied to this so that (for example) someone whom was made redundant, may have a longer period of time to find a job. Someone whom left their job of their own accord will be entitled to less time. Enforcement of stricter rules on this would save the taxpayer billions!!! 16) Police to have paperwork reduced. Consider the possiblity of having "criminal bounties" for police officers arresti just noticed it's not pasted all in... here's the rest: 16) Police to have paperwork reduced. Consider the possiblity of having "criminal bounties" for police officers arresting wanted / suspected criminals. 17) Social services to have paperwork reduced, and should be given more authority towards the protection of children. 18) Increased pay for lower ranked members of the armed forces. 19) Equality amongst British people. Seems rather unfair that (for example) English tax payers are not entitled to some medicines for free from the NHS. Also, English students are not entitled to free university fees (I personally think that students should pay these fees so I'm in favour of the English way of doing this).

Hi all, I was wondering what peoples thoughts and opinions are of forming a political party that would devote itself to "justice" within the UK - policies are mainly around much harder punishment on crime, devotion to spending tax payers money wisely and also giving the tax payer a better say in what happens with laws / legislation within our country. I appreciate these won't make everyone happy, but, this is just my own personal thoughts. Perhaps we could refine them together? ;) Policies I've thought of so far include (in no particular order): 1) Tougher child benefit schemes, so that it's only available to people whom have permanent residence in the UK. I'm under the impression pretty much anyone can claim this - even if their children do not reside in this country. Child benefit should remain "as is" now, if you are married, but should have a "reducing quota" if you're single and are still having children. For example, a single person with 1 child, gets full benefits. 2 children, gets 100% for the first child, perhaps 75% for the second. Third child gets harsher - Perhaps 75/50/25. Also! Single parents should not be able to claim a property so easily. Spending should be increased on sex education and preventative pregnancy measures. 2) Cuts in spending on NEW religious buildings - and to spend that money elsewhere on prolong existing religious buildings (we have enough already I think!). 3) Introduction of a new tax (I think would need to be quite high) on overseas transactions - so that anyone sending money away from the UK, are taxed for it (on the transactions value), thus our treasury retains a higher percentage of that money for public spending. 4) More regular, but "online" Prime Ministers Questions. Why give MP's a reason to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of tax payers money on temporary or permanent residence in London, when technology will allow us to do everything we need to do, from our very own homes / constituancies? 5) Reduce the number of councillors in all constituancies. I live in Nottingham and our councillors do absolutely nothing for us - a huge waste of tax payers money. 6) Get out of the EU - We should be free to make our own laws, trades and legislation. 7) Human rights should be ammended so that (convicted 100% sure) criminals lose a majority of their rights. 8) Prisons should be made into harsher environments and not the hotels that they are now. 9) Consider re-introducing the death sentence. This would only be used in severe cases - rapists, murderers, paedophiles etc. 10) Massive increases on spending on the NHS and pensions. NO changes to minimum wage. 11) Trade Unions should have less power. We saw recently how a trade unions demands did more worse than good with the oil workers strike at Total. 12) Immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq - reparations to be paid over time to the re-building of Iraq (thanks to the warmonger of an ex-PM of ours!) 13) More funding to border control / customs etc. 14) This kinda overlaps point 7, but people whom preach hatred among religious groups should be thrown out of a plane with an empty / unpacked parachute strapped to their back in their own country. 15) Long-term unemployed (2 years) whom are fit to work, should have all benefits immediately stopped - and will not be eligible to apply for unemployment benefit again for another 3 years. Conditions can be applied to this so that (for example) someone whom was made redundant, may have a longer period of time to find a job. Someone whom left their job of their own accord will be entitled to less time. 16) Police to have paperwork reduced. Consider the possiblity of having "criminal bounties" for police officers arresting wanted / suspected criminals. 17) Social services to have paperwork reduced, and should be given more authority towards the protection of children. 18) Increased pay for lower ranked members of the armed forces. 19) Equality amongst British people. Seems rather unfair that (for example) English tax payers are not entitled to some medicines for free from the NHS. Also, English students are not entitled to free university fees (I personally think that students should pay these fees so I'm in favour of the English way of doing this). I'm sure there's loads more. Feel free to add!

I used to work in the overseas property sector and I did that for about a year and a half. I am 23 years old and I am now working with kids ages 12-14. I want to do my masters this September and I have no idea what to study. I know I like children, I want to help children from abusive homes, I want to help families get back on their feet, I am very inquisitive and like to know backgrounds of families and help them out. Can anyone help me figure out what I can master in. I completed my bachelors in Business two years ago, but I have no interest in it any more. I really want to be working full time, doing what I love before I am 25. Please help! I like helping adults as well with relationship problems

I have a lot of belongings from my childhood (books, cds, etc) and currently it's in my parents attic...They are moving to a smaller house and I really need to sort this stuff out. I don't own property because of my current lack of job security and I may work overseas. I've been looking into buying a garage and using part of it for storage and renting a bit of space out. I've also been looking at storage units in warehouses. I'm not very good with finances and unsure whether to buy a garage as an investment or pay the yearly storage fee in a unit. Would like some suggestions. Thanks!