Average Weekly Expenditure in UK

This was announced as breaking news on Sky whereby the Office of National Statistics has stated that the average weekly expenditure in the UK is £468.20, if I remember correctly. It has gone up by £10 per week too, err I think it said from last year?

Now I am assuming that encapsulates everything and am interested to know how they work that one out, I mean it makes a big difference if its essentials and utility bills only or includes personal items. So has the cost of living expenses alone gone up or have people suddenly found £10 each week to spend?

Still the figure was of interest to me as I could not imagine spending that mush each week and every week.In fact the total I get with all benefits is £275 per week and they whinge about that?! Good job I do not have a wife and four children, eh? LMAO!!

Now if I decided to move back inside London into one of the two areas I used to live then the rent alone would go up by £100 in one area each week and £150 to £200 in the other!

It also makes me realise that with all these caps on Housing Benefits that it suddenly occurred to me that there ALREADY ARE caps on Housing Benefit, or Local Housing Allowance as it is now called. Funny one that switch over as I was told that IF I switched over they would then pay my full rent whereas they did not before, yes despite it being £100 + cheaper than a London postcode?!

What they did not tell me is that I would LOSE a weeks rent in the process, for reasons they do not know, and when they the resumed payment guess what happened?! Yup it stayed exactly the same except I lost £175 out of my own pocket to add to the couple thousand I had already lost in shortfalls since I moved in because the Revenue Information Officers could not answer a simple question though they were asked 5 times... Is there a maximum amount of monthly rent you pay? After I moved in I found out that yes there was and it was £50 per month LOWER than my monthly rent.

Now when I found my house I had looked at dozens of places in this area and the absolute lowest monthly rent right across the board was £750 per month. I got to view several and no matter whether 1 bedroom flat, house or condition it was the same so imagine my surprise when the council inform me 8 weeks AFTER moving in that their maximum payment is £699?!

East Hertfordshire Council at the time was either £550 or £600. Walthamstow would have been £900 or more and Hackney around £1,000 or more. So the Housing Benefit was effectively CAPPED! I had never come across nor even HEARD of this before I moved into my current home! I suspected that the LHA limit was just under the standard rent asked right across the country?! Convenient that one it really is but unfortunately that forced me to start a war of words with Enfield Council that ended up with one senior manager running away from my building, one member of staff being fired and the senior manager that remains runs down the stairs whenever he gets a call from the desk staff stating I am in the building!!

I kid you not!

I sometimes wondered what would have happened at Wirral Council had I ever walked in and announced my name?! LMAO! Enfield had a walk in the park with me compared to what I did to them and still today they feel the effects and will last at least a month and likely a great deal longer.

Well that is at least if there is not some massive type plan being put into action to protect the senior staff and poor front line staff following orders going to prison as fall guys.

Now consider this ... I know I am right about this but if you the reader can think for one moment that I am indeed right about the front line staff being fall guys. Now for arguments sake let us say that on the 3rd January at Birkenhead Court this will indeed take place. Let us say that this Social Worker called Ben is going to appear in court then it stands to reason that the judge will punish him instead of the people that ordered him to do what he did. That is NOT right and inhuman! BUT...

...if this case DID hit the news, as indeed it should, then what might you think other 'front line' staff in every public office right across the country will them do? DO you think it is at all possible that hearing word of this they will all then think the same could or even IS actually happening to them?!

Every .. single .. member .. of staff on the front line right across the UK for every conceivable government organisation you can think of from the Police to Councils, the DWP and even Ombudsman and the NHS all suddenly seeing and hearing this?!

The Rising Wave of the Whistle Blowers?