Give up Bingo because of Benefit Cuts

Eastland Homes Housing Association suggested their tenants give up bingo, Sky TV, cigarettes and drink because of new benefit cuts which are soon to be introduced.

Horrified residents of the Eastland Homes Housing Association are said the be ‘disgusted’ with the advert in their recent newsletter which contained the following content –

“Can you really afford Sky, cigarettes, bingo, drinks and other non essentials? If your benefit is being cut and you want to keep your home you have to make up the difference.  Non-essential items won’t matter if you lose your home. Start budgeting now – we can help you do this, call us!”

Some of their tenants are said to be absolutely furious with the context of the newsletter and have hit back on their facebook page with a number of angry comments.

Eastland Homes have issued an apology on their website, which reads as follows –

“We’re sorry if our article offended you. We’ve lobbied continuously against the government cuts which threaten the quality of life for many of our customers.  We’ve increased the range of support and advice for anyone struggling in the face of these cuts as you will see from our newsletter.”
“We know there will be stark choices – our message is that we are here to help wherever possible and we’re sorry if we worded that clumsily.”

In April this year one of the welfare reform changes are to include an under-occupancy levi or what is being dubbed (The Bedroom Tax). This will affect families who have an unused bedroom in their home, which could lose those people in this scenario hundreds of pounds in benefits each year.

There has been lots of speculation regarding this new welfare reform in the news over the past few weeks and it has caused much controversy.

If you have one bedroom which is not occupied, you could lose around £11 per week, for two un-occupied bedrooms your loss could rise to around £20 per week. Look at this as a monthly loss and it appears even more daunting – a cut of £44 or £80 from housing benefit which the tenant would have to make up, as their rent would most likely stay the same.

Would stopping playing bingo bridge the gap? Well yes it most probably would if you were a weekly player (which of course not everyone is). For a regular night out at your local club, you would be looking at spending around £15 to £20 and this is on the assumption that you only purchased the sessions bingo books and did not play gaming machines or ‘party bingo games’ in the intervals.

If you played online, you could spend £10 to £20 in a matter of just a few hours. The minimum deposit you can make at an online site is £5 (although, some operators do have a higher min deposit requirement). If you played online once or twice a week, depositing the minimum amount, you could save £10 – which again, would go a long way to make up the housing benefit cut.

So the outcome is yes, if you are a regular player who likes to dabble at least once a week you could make up the shortfall of the housing benefit cut – but the thing is, not everyone who this will effect plays bingo, has sky TV, drinks or smokes and at the end of the day, no one has the right to tell us what we should or should not do with our money.

Everyone can look at their income and expenditure and how they could save pennies, but this is entirely down to the individual to decide.