RT @ajcpk63: Debt, Council Tax and why we need to ban bailiffs - great work by @TbyMrry and @debtjustice on the brutality of #debt and ways….

RT @debtjustice: 🧵 Our Policy and Campaigns Manager @tbymrry is in The Times today arguing that debt write-off is essential for tackling th….

RT @IWGBcharity: Important Announcement: IWGB members at a very relevant housing-focused 🏘️ charity are standing up ✊ against precarious co….

And find out more about our campaign here:

Feel free to sign our petition! Now up to 2500 signatures and growing (although not as fast as council tax arrears).

1. We need to break the link between debt collection cruelty: councils are the biggest user of bailiffs to collect council tax debt. 2. We need a Duty of Care for council tax debt collection - we reckon about £91m of harm is being done a year, a duty of care would address this.

Clearly this is a huge, and growing, problem. One only likely to get worse as the spending review forecasts for council tax to rise by 5% a year. This is a huge and growing problem, great to see the recent MHCLG consultation launched, but we need to go further.

Why? Well council tax increasingly affects low income households. A third of people in arrears are living below the poverty line, and 79% are households in the bottom half of earners. People aren't avoiding tax, they're just broke.

Arrears now stand at £6.6bn for England, £1.5bn for Scotland and £0.16bn for Wales. These are huge numbers, and clearly they're only travelling in one direction. Collection rates remain high, but have never fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

Most of that increase is driven by arrears from across England, with arrears going from £6.0bn last year to £6.6bn this year - an 11% increase. However, Wales has seen the biggest increase - 15% yoy; 170% over 5 years.

I don't tweet much anymore, but new council tax arrears numbers out this morning are a reason to break a good habit. Huge 11% increase in amount of council tax debt across Britain, standing now at £8.3bn. An increase of 11% since last year, and up 79% over the last 5 years.

Anyway, as Amy's article makes clear - lots of bad stuff happening to young people. There needs to be a real political focus on rebuilding collective security (see here: & raising living standards over the next few years. Particularly for young people.

Hence - it's all women's fault, it's all immigrations fault, etc. I'm not saying this is driving the right wing surge exclusively, but I do think it's underappreciated in why so many young men follow people like Tate.

If someone swears you can fix this by following their 10 step plan, I reckon that's enough to sucker someone young & desperate in. These schemes are all bogus though, built on exploitation. So you need a fall guy for when they inevitably don't make your followers millionaires.

KCL put out some interesting research on this: . "economic insecurity caught up with traditional familism and marital norms produced toxic anxiety among young men because leading a “normal life” of marriage and family is deemed beyond their reach.".

Sure, this affects both genders (albeit differently - see below), but there's a whole ecosystem of (often racist or sexist) influencers waiting to exploit young men by insisting you can solve these problems yourself (e.g. weird crypto schemes, financial bootcamps, etc).

Their situation, obviously, is the result of systemic forces beyond their control but the blame is hugely individualised. Something @hannahrose_web and I explored through our report, Age of Insecurity:

*make it topical* This has taken on new meaning in light of last week. I don't think you can understand right wing sympathy among young men in the US (and probs the UK) without recognising how much they're overwhelmingly told their terrible financial situation is their fault.

My colleague @Becca__Stacey and I were interviewed by @amy_borrett for this article - it's a good read, check it out:

RT @mmhpi: Today Chancellor delivered her #Budget2024 statement. While there are a number of welcome changes, we are deeply concerned by t….