Weekend protest organised for Halesowen over controversial "bedroom tax" (From Halesowen News)

Miss Peacock, why let the truth get in the way of a good soundbite eh? If you bothered to check you would know that children with severe disabilities which mean they are unable to share a bedroom are exempt. So are foster carers and members of the armed forces serving overseas. If you had claimed nurses and silver haired old ladies would be hit too you would have completed the set of the publics favourites!
As someone who is struggling to decide who to vote for next time round maybe you could tell me what you would do to cut the welfare bill rather than arrange a silly protest based on lies?

Dear Sick of Lyes,
If you look at the top of Stephanie's press release you'll see it was published on Wednesday 13th March which means she probably sent it to the paper on Monday or Tuesday. It wasn't until Tuesday that the coalition government did the U-turn on foster carers and the armed forces.
I would respectfully remind you that it has been the Labour Party which has consistently pointed out the flaws in this policy and I would say that rather than telling Stephanie to stop organising against the bedroom tax we should be encouraging her because protesting against this ill-thought out policy obviously works!!

Cllr Bills I would respectfully remind you that your party helped get us into this mess in the first place! So come on then, lets hear what your solutions are?
My vote is up for grabs so tell me what you would do instead?

Sick of the lyes after reading your comments I don't suppose anyone would want your vote

What a constructive and helpful response that is Dudley Old Boy. So explain please? Why would nobody want my vote?

I'm not out for anybody's vote, I just want a fair system of council housing that doesn't vilify a vulnerable group in our community. A few hours as a councillor and you'll soon learn that not all people on benefits are scroungers and a huge number of those in receipt of housing benefit have become disabled owing to workplace accidents and working conditions. There just aren't enough 1 and 2 bedroom properties around. If people become homeless it is still the Council's responsibility to house them. This policy is just ill-thought out and panders to some people's prejudices about those in receipt of benefit.

Sick of the Lyes is right: under the leadership of Ed Miliband the Labour Party has become far too savvy at opposing Coalition policy and not enough at explaining what it would do in its place.

Of course, Labour know in their hearts that a situation where the bill for housing benefit doubled in cost to £20 billion between 1997 and 2010 is clearly unsustainable. Indeed, it was presumably for this reason that its 2010 Election Manifesto quite rightly declared that “Housing Benefit will be reformed to ensure that we do not subsidise people to live in the private sector on rents that other ordinary working families could not afford”. In fact, so confident was Labour that big money could be saved by slashing entitlements that elsewhere in the Manifesto they even promised to use those savings to fund additional paternity leave.

So for all the fun it is is having labelling these reforms a ‘bedroom tax’ (and, let’s face it, only in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of left-wing politics could a reduced entitlement to public money possibly be considered a ‘tax’), the housing benefit bill is still rising and reforming it remains as pressing as ever.

Besides, the dilemmas mentioned are also common to people who either rent and do not claim housing benefit, or who have bought their own homes. After all, if they need an extra bedroom for whatever reason, do they not also have to pay the higher rents or mortgage payments that come with acquiring a larger property? Likewise, if a grown-up child moves out do they themselves not then have to either make good the loss of their son's or daughter's contribution towards the household bills, or reduce their rents or mortgage payments by moving to a smaller property?

Either way, the days when the state could blithely carry on paying for the million unused bedrooms currently being subsidised by housing benefit are over. Furthermore, it is ironic indeed that, amidst all this furore, Labour seem to have conveniently forgotten the over two million people currently on local authority waiting lists and the quarter-of-a million people living in overcrowded accommodation (a situation caused in part by the loss of over 420,000 social housing units that took place under the stewardship of Messrs Blair and Brown).

Of course, Hilary Bills is right: not all people claiming benefits are scroungers. However, her party's encouraging of mass immigration into this country whilst simultaneously destroying incentives to work through a capricious tax and benefits regime has trapped millions of ordinary people in a dangerous welfare dependency ghetto that is doing neither them nor the nation's finances any favours.

Hence, Iain Duncan Smith has bravely grasped the nettle with both hands, leaving his opponents screaming blue murder over an issue that they lacked the bottle to tackle when they were in power.

Get a job then you wouldn't have to pay bedroom tax!

Cllr Bills that's the first time I have ever heard an elected politician state that they are not out for anybody's vote! I shall remember that next time I go to the polling station. Maybe you should include that on your leaflets next time you are up for re-election!
I never said all people on benefits are scroungers, though I would point out that some are as we know all too well, but that's another issue.
Your party has been in opposition for almost three years now. Opposition to a government whose performance, in my opinion, has been at best mediocre. Yet all you seem to do is deny any responsibility for our current problems, sneer, jeer and organise protests while failing to produce any alternative solutions.
I asked you a simple question which you have completely failed to answer. So I repeat, what would your party do to tackle not only this issue but also the wider economic difficulties facing the country?

of course to be remembered its not a tax as such but a benefit cut- for the vulnerable that are in hardship all this will do is make people either poorer or need to cut back on spending and this will not help the economy to grow or help