2 New policies

Rent

New legislation should be put in to cover the following

1) If a person is renting a property and has a deposit in deposit protection scheme then the deposit should be deemed to be ok for a new property rental if the tenant wants to move.  This would negate the trapping of tenants into rents which they cannot get out of due to not having deposit money for a new property.  This occurs due to the return of deposits from an old rental agreement taking time (even when done under the new agreement) and new rental agreements needing deposits prior to moving in.

2) Understand the risk that the old deposit may get used to cover issues in the old property it would put the condition that any short falls in deposits caused by these events would be made up or the rental agreement (new) terminated.

3) landlords are not allowed to demand more than normal rent up front.  I.e. you only can ask for the month ahead (as per normal payments) not 2 or 3 months rent in advance.

This should help a lot of people without any major inconvenience to anyone in the market

Loans

The banking sector is in such a mess that stupid decisions are being made along the lines of:

a) Person has a debt of x at percentage interest % very high

b) Person x goes to the bank and shows that they have been making repayments in full on time

c) Person x asks bank to take out a loan to reduce the cost of debt advertised at 2/3rds % very high

d) Bank says no, you cannot afford a loan at that rate and you must stay with your more expensive debt

This has happened now both scenarios where the new loan request is with both a new bank and with the old bank holding the current expensive debt.

So, new law.

If a person with debt of any form who can demonstrate a good repayment history comes to any organisation offering a loan of any form at a lower % rate then it will be illegal to refuse that debt on the grounds of affordability.

I.e. if a you have a loan of £10,000 at 17% and the bank offers loans at 12% for the same amount that bank cannot refuse you the cheaper loan.  This should apply to mortgages, loans, credit cards etc.  

The only condition is that the loan is used to shut down the old loan and not as well as.

 

inflation indexes took into account actual money.

This is a simple issue.  Inflation and indexes like RPI work as %.  The issue with % is that the absolute numbers are ignored in the reality of our day to day lives.  If you are a multi-millionaire and get a 0.2% rise in income that is an amount that means you can buy a new car every month instead of every other month.

If you are on minimum wage a 0.2% increase won't even amount to a postage stamp.

So growth rates and inflation may well be looked at by economists to make important decisions but the impacts on the poor are disproportional.  2% growth is great but 2% of nothing is still nothing.

Printers

Would the world be a better place if the cost of replacing the ink cartridges in a printer was not more expensive than buying a brand new printer complete with ink.