He'll Go Waltzing Matilda Back Home...

Well it has been rather too long, but a wonderful bit of news on Monday inspired me to launch back into the
blogosphere. Trenton Oldfield is being deported. He of Boat Race ruining fame. Good.

Now today's post is not particularly about his barmy political view, but we may as well touch on it. Oldfield decided that elitism is an entirely bad thing, and is fully represented in the annual Oxford vs Cambridge Boat Race. One assumes he was protesting against Oxford and Cambridge in general as institutions rather than the sportsmen and the race itself. If the latter were true, I assume that Mr Oldfield was also planning on demonstrating at all the Olympic events last year too. And the final of Countdown. That is because what the Boat Race itself encapsulates is the success of those who have striven. Like the Olympics. Or indeed Countdown. All the participants have dedicated themselves to being better at something than almost everyone else, whether it be rowing, modern pentathlon or getting to 977 in 30 seconds using 3,4,5,7,8 and 9.

They wish to become champions - the elite. In the case of the Boat Race they have scaled two summits simultaneously - that of academia to be be selected to study at world-leading universities and then also to be selected to row in highly competetive crews usually dripping in past, current and future world and Olympic standard athletes. Protesting at this type of elitism is what is making us uncompetitive in the world. It creates sports days where there are prizes for all lest children find out than in life there is a near constant hierarchy in play in one way or another. No, best protect them from the idea that failure is the other side of the coin of success. That'll prepare them nicely for life.

It is too what drives the constant bilous outpouring against the private education system and the Russell Group universities, most notably Oxford and Cambridge. We don't like people doing well and like to confuse equality with equal opportunity. We've been here before. I doubt Oldfield has ever had a look at the admissions system at Oxford or Cambridge, looked at the ways those institutions try to see through results and pick those with the best potential to make use of the education they have to offer them. Very few journalists or politicians have ever bothered themselves with actual investigation here. They tend to look at one statistic - percentage of state vs private admissions and pin all their arguments on that. They conveniently ignore the failures of large swathes of the state system in either encouraging pupils to apply or educating them well enough to stand a fighting chance at selection.

But that's not really the point. The point is that Oldfield broke the law. He knew he was going to break the law. He knew he was going to ruin the race for those competing, who had worked so hard for so long to compete. He knew he would ruin it for the crowds. He knew he would ruin it for the sponsors, who I think have shown enormous restraint in not suing him for every penny he is worth. He knew what he was doing and he knew the potential consequences. So, I was very happy to hear the arrogant moron has had his visa renewal application rejected.

His wife, however, "accused the Government of politicising the immigration process" say the Evening Standard. Nope. You are, love. Read the rules on visas - it appears this country is still able to close its doors to some people it finds not "conducive to the public good" as the Home Office put it. There is an interesting comparison to be made here with our inability to remove convicted criminals from other countries, either EU ones or those outside the EU where they apparently are also not that popular if we sent them back. It's also not the main point here (we've touched on the 'human rights' farcical argument many times before), but probably worth pondering why it isn't always this simple - or more importantly, shouldn't it be.

Her statement is what I found so ridiculous and made me want to blog again. She laments the deportation order; "the impact would be devastating for us and for our child, She will have to spend her first year without her father as it would obviously take time for me to emigrate. The Government want him out and they have given no thought to the consequences of this decision." I would be surprised if the offspring in question makes it into Mensa with the combined genetic idiocy of these two parents. The reigning Countdown champion can probably sleep easy in his or her bed (unless they don't sleep and just stay up all night trying to make a 9 letter word from the word 'carthorse').

This is what we have come to. It seems we have relinquished all responsibility for our actions. It is apparently up to the Government to consider its actions rather than Oldfield to consider the potential fallout from his idiotic behaviour. What total cock. Unfortunately the lady of questionable intelligence is not alone here. Her argument is no different essentially from prisoners who claim that the Government is responsible for stopping them having children after they have been incarcerated for various heinous crimes.

To quote the Iron Lady. No. No. No.

It is not for the Government to consider your circumstances and how being deported or imprisoned might be a touch inconvenient. It is for you to realise this potential ramification and decide not to break the law. You put yourself in this situation, Trenton, with your misguided sense of self importance. You reap what you sow. I might also point out that he must have known this was likely, yet still decided to have a child well after his arrest, knowing this very situation might occur. It has nothing to do with the Government's (completely correct) decision, and everything to do with Oldfield's (totally stupid) one.

We must stand up for responsibilities over rights. Cases like this just illustrate how far we have fallen as a society, how selfish, irresponsible and lazy we are. Everything is about what can you do for me, what am I owed and putting the responsibility for all your actions on others. We must stop pandering to it. You broke the law? Enjoy prison - if your man tadpoles are all dried up when you get out, perhaps you should have thought of that first. You want 10 kids? Pay for them yourself - because I sure as hell can't afford that decision so I'm buggered if I should pay for you to absolve all responsibility. You want to stay in our country? Obey the rules - it shouldn't be too much to ask.

Oh, and it's (9x7x5x3)+(8x4) and 'orchestra'. Took me an hour and a half...

Spare Subsidies?

A brief look at the ridiculous furore over "the so-called 'bedroom tax'". Only "so-called" because the BBC and the left media immediately picked up Ed Milliwho's illogical soundbite and ran with it, "so-calling" it from the rooftops. Immediately it was announced, the BBC was trailing "bedroom tax" across its News 24 screen and hasn't stopped referring to it since.

No chance of calling it what it is, which would require some neutrality from those we pay nearly £150 each for the pleasure of their supposedly apolitical views. As Cameron stated in the Commons, only Labour (and its propaganda wing) could think a reduction in benefit (read "free, unearned money") could be called a tax.

Also only that same group of innumerate, economically moronic people could happily pretend there is no problem with social housing. The bill is astronomical. A large part of this is that successive Governments have failed to build more housing stock and instead the taxpayer is paying private landlords a king's ransom to make up the deficit. This failure to build was exacerbated by housing being removed from the system through the admirable intent of the right-to-buy scheme. More housing still has been removed by stealth over the years through the far less admirable home-for-life policy that the Tories are trying to change, but people on the left (like Bob Crow) think absolutely fine.

In fact, this is really just an extension of one of the first Coalition policies - to stop needy families on the social housing waiting list being kept on the list because individuals or couples wish to continue to live in a house that was built for more people. In the private sector, if you want an extra bedroom, you pay more rent or a higher purchase price. In the public sector, Labour think there is no reason why these basic principles should be even vaguely considered. The left see nothing wrong with complaining one day "granny evicted from house she has lived in for 70 years by heartless Tories" and then the next "heartless Tories fail 5 million poor, hard-working families on social housing waiting list".

The two concepts just run around different parts of their teensy little brains, and ne'er the twain shall meet to discover their contradiction.

It's pretty simple. If the state has been generous enough to lend you a house, it seems only right that you don't take the piss by having one bigger than you need. This would be true even if there weren't 5 million people on the waiting list. Which there are. These are the needy people the left pretend to support, but singularly ignore for political convenience.

If you live in a council house that's bigger than you need, you have no right to stay, regardless of how long you've lived there, or indeed if you are now wealthy enough to pay your own way. There are people who need that space more than you. If you live in a privately rented house that the Government is paying for because there aren't enough social houses, and it too is bigger than you need, you have no right to stay there and charge the taxpayers of this country (many of whom would love a spare room but can't afford to pay for one of their own, so don't have one) full whack for it. It stands to reason that if you are in this position, you can help pay the bill. If you want your spare room that much, pay for it like everyone else. Otherwise, remember that you are living at the generous largesse of the taxpayers and stop whining.

There are huge inefficiencies in social housing, which if solved would massively decrease one of the single largest draws on Treasury expenditure - social housing costs. Fuck tinkering with the MOD, its budget is dwarfed by the interest on our debt alone. We spend more on housing than on education and defence combined. If you don't think we could do with finding some efficiencies here, you are mentally sub-normal. Not only are the general populace paying for the huge cost of this over-generous gift, but some of the neediest in society are without proper housing because of it. The left should be ashamed of their intentionally mendacious slurs about a totally sensible policy. Only as we know - just look at Tony Blair - they don't really do shame.

George's Taxing Decisions

George Osborne's budget must have gone well last week, because one of the main things Labour are making a point over is the fact that an Evening Standard employee broke embargo to tweet Budget information before Georgy Porgy got to his feet in the Commons. Naturally, it's hilarious to hear that according to politicians of both sides, nobody has ever intentionally leaked budget data before the actual budget. This is despite the fact that in the run up to most budgets various treasury insiders angling for a straw poll or ministers angling for public outcry at their budget being trimmed take the same approach to secrecy as your average C list celebrity selling the mundane details of their tawdry lives to glossy dentist reception magazines. But that's beside the point as it is perfectly normal to pre-release to news institutions with strict provisos and controls in place. That a Standard employee broke the embargo is a matter for the Standard and maybe the police. You can blame George for a lot of things I am sure, but this isn't one of them.

The thing that struck me about the commentary on the budget though was the pathetic language of the entire press corps, whatever their political colour (you don't see any red in the Torygraph and it's all you can see at the Peoples' Commissariat for Public Information - the BBC). It seems that no matter what the news, no matter how generous a budgetary move is, anyone who doesn't benefit from it muct be a victim or a loser.

For example they are all up in arms at the "discrimination" of choosing to put 10p more tax on wine but take 1p of beer. There is little talk of the fact that wine bars are doing just fine, as is the wine producing industry, and those who tend to drink more wine can probably live with the 10p increase. No talk of the fact that the lower financial echelons disproportionately drink more beer than the better off. Nope, when the stats aren't in our favour we ignore the class envy angle. Nor will you read much about the benefit (though 1p is more symbolic than financially meaningful) that our flagging pub industry will receive from this cut. The important one here is that women drink wine and men drink beer. So this cut in beer duty is... a discriminatory attack on women. You simply cannot win with this bunch of whining liars who seem to set out to deliberately misrepresent policy for a mix of profit and political propaganda.

Newsflash: As I have mentioned before, the word discriminate, means to choose, nothing more. That is the job of Government. They decide from whom they should take money and how much, then to whom they should give it and how much. Otherwise we could just have a system designed to extract a flat amount (or rate) of tax, and then to redistribute it evenly, so as nobody can be accused of making a choice, which by definition would be "discrimination". That would unfortunately put the cat amongst the 'fair tax' pigeons. It would also mean we may as well not pay the people to take and give back in equal measure, because their pay just reduces your rebate. Let's have no Government - it worked pretty well for Belgium.

Flippant yes, but the point is that Governments make decisions every day - it is what they are elected for - where they prioritise their many competing demands against their limited resources. Increasing funding for cancer research is not a vicious attack on all diabetes sufferers. Buying new science textbooks for a school is not a slap in the face of the teaching of humanities.

Unfortunately we continue to characterise all such funding decisions exactly so. Why? Because we are a nation of spoilt, selfish children. We cannot be happy for anyone else unless we get the same or more. Watching politicians, journalists and the general public discussing public spending is like watching a bunch of poorly brought up children fighting over who got more sweets, or complaining that the other kid gets all the presents on their birthday.

This is much like the talk of "real terms cuts" - when what we need are actual cuts. All these people talk about an increase in this benefit or that as a "real terms cut" because it is below the level of inflation. This again puts me in mind of a kid in a sweetshop. Every year the child grows, and its appetite with it - inflation. Mother hands out some of her hard earned cash to buy a bag of penny sweets, but as the years go by, and mother adds 5 pence to the bag per year, the child complains that the percentage its stomach is growing is larger than the percentage increase mother has gifted. In today's society, this means mother is evil. She is a horrible bitch who is starving her children - and should probably have them taken away from her. And even that analogy is without going into whether, if the child wants more sweets, it might be better off taking a milk or paper round rather than constantly demanding more from its mother...

We have NO MONEY - have we forgotten that? How short are our memories? Labour gave it all to their key demographic to ensure election victories and the exacerbation of most social ills during their time in power. Where did all that money go? Is anything tangibly better (apart from Tony Blair's bank balance, of course)? The Tories, fighting with one arm tied behind their backs thanks to having to pass everything by the bizarrely powerful, finanicially illiterate and very unpopular minority Lib Dems, have somehow allowed the press to say they are cutting deeply and we have real austerity in this country when we are actually increasing out debt and increasing our spending.

The result; no spare money to pay for growth policies like tax cuts because of such largesse and no votes at the polls because everyone believes they are slashing budgets left, right and Chelsea - the worst of both worlds. God, it's enough to wish Alastair Campbell was a Tory - this party are so poor at getting their message across, they couldn't sell water to a man dying of thirst in the desert.

Back to the point… even more furore has been kicked up over the new childcare tax rebate. I read everywhere of the unfairness to all stay at home mothers. Apparently this policy will penalise them.

Bollocks. Plain and simple.

If you stay at home, you don't need sodding childcare. That's your job. Women have campaigned, quite rightly, for homekeeping and childrearing to be considered a job and not a cop-out for the workshy. So how on earth, if you have decided that this will be your full time job, could you are you being unfairly penalised by not receiving something for which you have no need?

It is akin to an able bodied person complaining when an amputee receives a prosthetic limb that they don't also get one. They need that to bring them up to nearer your level. The key is, these whiners don't want the spare leg; they just want to stick it on eBay and pocket the cash. That's what this is about. The Government is rightly saying that the disgracefully high cost of childcare in this country is one of (if not the) biggest barriers to going back to work. So to help women, who as we all know are very under-represented in full time work (primarily because of this), they are giving a small helping hand back into work. What thanks do they get? They get greedy (and, yes, I do mean greedy) people complaining that that money should have been theirs rather than acknowledging a positive step in helping women back into employment and a much needed rebate to help defray the obvious costs of doing so.

It is shameful that a supposedly responsible media happily gives these people a prominent voice without even the hint of balance or even pragmatic and sound financial analysis. Even if there were enough money for Gordon Brown's style of dowsing voters in borrowed cash in return for votes but no progress, it is morally bankrupt as a policy. Instead, we are actually bankrupt by any normal standard which means there certainly isn't enough money for such profligacy.

We have to target the spending better - this is Government's job. Just as they were right that if one of you earns £60k (and therefore about 130% above the national average income; and as much as it would help and you'd like it), we cannot afford to give you child benefit, so they are right here. Yes, that means some people will get stuff you didn't get, and because it is too expensive to get everything perfect, it also means you can find seemingly unfair anomalies. But that shouldn't be the story - because ultimately you don't need it. Like people with two legs don't need spare prosthetic ones and stay at home mothers don't also need help paying for childcare. Childcare is crippling, and help is welcome for those who want or feel they need to go back to work and who can earn enough to make it worthwhile. Anyone who thinks it isn't is a spoilt brat.

Those in Glass Houses

Over the last few years the Clergy have been increasingly vocal in their voicing of political views. The last Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams seemed drawn to public political statements like a moth to a flame. Bishops positioning themselves for high office it seems likewise like to make tactically timed public comment about Government policy. It seems the new spiritual leader of the Church of England is no different.

Whenever I hear a churchman talking about the ills of Government policy I cannot help but think of gay-yet-gay-bashing paedophiles hurling sanctimonious stones out of their glass houses. Just saying - it's the image that pops up. I wonder perhaps if they might consider staying on line for a spell and putting their own houses in order?

Now as Iain Duncan-Smith pointed out this week, it is certainly right that church leaders (and all men and women of the cloth) are concerned for their flock and indeed those outside it, especially the meek, poor, weak and needy that the Bible and other religious texts points out could do with some help. But it is the manner of their intervention that is so unseemly.

A few weeks ago the Bishop of Liverpool condemned the Government because the welfare cuts fell disproportionately on the poor. Yes. They do. Because poor people use welfare more than rich people. It is a non-point. The fact is most public money goes to those with less (it's the hallmark of a generous and humane society), but that does mean that cuts in this largesse will also work in the reverse. It is disingenuous and moronic to pretend it is a ghastly thing or indeed avoidable.

If the Government spent public money on providing Beluga caviar and Cristal champagne for all those earning £200,000 a year, it would be eminently sensible to cut that budget first. But they don't. The fact remains that the rich subsidise the poor through taxation, and take little draw on the public coffers, so cutting their take is pretty tricky. When it comes to decreasing spending (and it is clear that must happen, because our economy and therefore tax take is not about to jump 15% to cover the shortfall between spending and income) the Government can only decrease what it does spend money on, which naturally is stuff that more poorer people benefit from.

The other side of the coin is certainly the question of whether more money could or should be extracted from the richer in society. But, as mentioned here before, with some of the highest tax rates in the world, not only are "the rich" already doing more than their moral "fair share", but they also will not produce more by an increase in taxation. We are already well beyond optimal levels of taxation for money gathering and economic growth purposes. Pretty much all tax rises now are essentially economically self-defeating in the long term and politically- (masked as morally-) motivated in the short term.

The latest church intervention by Justin Welby mirrored these type of comments, condemning the welfare reforms for sharing the burden incorrectly. He is right it is shared incorrectly, but not in the right direction - half the tax collected in this country already comes from just 5% of us and 1/2 of us take more than we give. He has rowed back somewhat since his comments last weekend, qualifying that the welfare system is shot to pieces and requires reform, but he is still out of lane.

If he thinks his words were not political or guaranteed to be used politically, he is far to naive for Lambeth Palace. The church's (all churches, not just C of E) place is not in politics, despite (no more obvious now than with the recent Papal elections) politics being rife within the church. It would do well to tend to its own dwindling flock and its failings than try to draw attention away by one-eyed, economically unsound political point scoring to divert attention and raise personal profiles. If they really want to help the poor, they could always sell some of their lovely golden clothes...

The Limited Benefit of Children...

I've been storing up a follow-up post on the issue of child benefit - much of my previous work is here. I'll do it quickly because I don't see the point of repeating everything ad infinitum. The crux of the matter is whilst you have a right to have as many children as your body will allow (note that it is not a  right to have a perfectly functioning body, including reproductive ability), should the state (by which we mean the taxpayer) pay for all kids you wish to produce?

This is the argument raised last week by IDS with the proposal of the two child limit on benefits. There are various caveats, exemptions and anomalies to consider. Not least, the limit of two is one just being proposed as an idea. It is likely that it would only affect newcomers, grandparenting in those already beyond the threshold. I could imagine complications when talking about families with multiple parents - whose kids count, who gets the money etc. Triplets are rare but you can see the problem they might raise. Nobody says this would be easy. Nobody says it would bring in a vast amount of money either. The point that IDS is trying to make (and will probably fail to knowing the Tory party's failure to score open-goal policy wins and the predictable left wing media hysteria) is that the Big Society is about fairness, about responsibility, about one's own actions, not just about how much you can take.

I'm, as you'd expect, with him on this. And so should almost everyone. The majority of people in the country work, pay taxes and to one extent or other, budget their money. Asking them for support for a policy that asks for those being given free money (and welfare is just that) to have to live within their means like they do, or do something in return should be an easy win. This could be limiting to £20,000 net the contribution to rent (which the average worker on about £26,000 gross could never afford) gratis from the Government. Or it could be asking those claiming unemployment benefit to do some voluntary work to break the unemployment cycle and put them on a path to work. Or it could be asking them to pay for their own children if they want to have lots.

But the country is apparently not all behind this rather sensible idea. Nope - and you may forgive my lack of surprise - I heard on Any Questions on Radio 4 quite the opposite. It turns out this policy is one designed to give children cancer. And to force them to spend time with Jimmy Savile. Or something like that. I definitely came away from the programme with the idea this was a deliberately cruel policy designed solely to punish children. Cock. A load of it.

The argument put forward (and raucously applauded by the bus loads of morons the BBC source for an audience) by Dr Katherine Rake of the Family and Parenting Institute was that cuts in child benefits are unfair because they fall disproportionately on the poor. Yup. Because rich people don't generally get welfare; poorer people do. They just pay for it. It is the exact argument used by Nick Clegg and any of his lefty loon pals in the Labour or Lib Dems when any cut of any size or shape is devised which might remove one penny from the purse of someone who is of a financially lower status. They always say "same old Tories, looking to take it first from the poorest, and never from the richest", or to use his favourite phrase "from those with the broadest shoulders".

What Nick et al never mention is that those with the broadest shoulders are already paying a lot. We have started with them. It's called progressive taxation. Those with broad shoulders are paying massive truckloads of money. Dr Rake, and countless others like her, maintain that taking money away from welfare is de facto taking money away from poor children. Yes. To an extent. But it doesn't mean any cut in welfare is punishing children. Poor people often have children. Like rich people. And all the people in between. If you make any cut in welfare you are removing money from many families with children. This simple and obvious fact cannot be allowed to be trotted out as if it is proof that all welfare cuts are evil just because naturally the parents of some children will have been given less money. An increase in the top rate of tax was not touted as a punishment on the children of wealthier homes - but money was being removed (even worse than just less given, surely) from the homes of children. Child cruelty no? Of course not. Just selective lefty bullshit about which children matter and where cuts 'fall'.

If we double the welfare bill overnight (to about £400 billion, or what would then be about 1/2 of all spending) and then took a single pound off, that cut would fall 'disproportionately' on poor families. That fact does not make it a bad policy decision. It is simply because they receive the benefits that others have generally paid for. How they use that money is up to them. There is generally more than enough of it there to keep children fit and well. Just because some people will misuse their handouts and thus punish their own children does not mean we should never decrease the amount of money we give them (see this argument over state-aid for the poor children of nuclear-equipped and space-age countries). It is a senseless argument that the left are yet to confront. Mainly because the right seem to be struggling to make them do so and put it in the right terms.

Cutting one's coat according to one's cloth means adjusting what you spend based on what you can afford. Both Dr Rake and Charles Clarke mentioned they agree with the policy, but when asked how they pay for the Labour-induced deficit, they predictably trot out the same old leftie mantra of not properly defending ourselves by not renewing our nuclear deterrent, or raising more taxes from their favourite golden goose - 'the rich'. This is not cutting one's coat according to one's cloth. The point is that we are spending too much. We need to cut spending. We need to cut spending. WE NEED TO CUT SPENDING. This is CUTTING one's coat appropriately.

We do not have enough money (cloth) as a Government to pay for everything we currently have chosen to spend it on. We clearly have no chance of overnight increasing our tax take by 15-20% to match our spending 'requirements'. So we need to decrease what we spend (our coat). Welfare is a fucking enormous bill. The biggest in fact. It was never intended in its present form even by the most left wing supporters of its creation. It must be reduced. It is costing every working person in this country nearly 1/3 of all the money they hand to the Government in taxation. It is as unhelpful as it is disingenuous of the Opposition (inside the Coalition and outside) to suggest that it shouldn't be reduced - and their reasoning of "not punishing poor children" is as incorrect as it is corrosive.

What is being proposed is a move towards a sensible, affordable rebalancing where welfare stops being a comfortable lifestyle choice. The sooner the Tories can properly explain to the population of this country that cutting one's coat according to one's cloth is about budgeting what to do with what you reasonably have rather than about working out where you can get more money to pay for unaffordable idealogically-driven policies, the sooner we might have a chance of returning to being a country of producers, not just receivers.

(They Want to) Live in a House, a Very Big House in the Country...

This will be a quick one as I've already spelled out my thought on this subject before (here and most particularly here). You may have noticed yesterday an article about a particularly large family wanting "a bigger house in the countryside". I found a snippet in the Torygraph, but unsurprisingly the Daily Hate Mail also covered it among others.

Have a read (here) - it's genuinely astounding.

Two things here. First off, council houses or those which one rents and pays for with housing benefit should be sanitary. This is perhaps not true of the house in question. I don't, nor should any sane person, think families should live in squalor. People deserve to be put in safe housing, just not palaces. Thought I'd park that before I get onto the main point. Which is…

WTF!?

I find the idea genuinely incredible that you can just keep squeezing out kids and demand someone else pays for them. Amazing. We are such a sodding soft touch. If you think I'm being mean cast your eyes over these stats:

£12,000 family income from paid work (the boyfriend and perhaps father to some or all children)
£30,000 in benefits and allowances (albeit including disability allowance for an epileptic child which will and should go untouched under new reforms)
9 children, 10th arriving in 6 months

So, that's an income of £42,000. What do they do with it - let's ask mum…

"Money is not tight; we survive well on what we have. As soon as we come back from our summer holiday, we start putting money away for Christmas"

Brilliant. Of course my and your taxes should pay for summer holidays for super-sized families. That's what welfare is for - enough to get by, as long as by 'get by' you mean go on fucking holidays and have a sodding massive collection of toys (see pics with Hate Mail link).

What does mum think about the situation? "I want a bigger house with somewhere for the kids to play; somewhere with a garden. This house isn't big enough for us." Well stop having fucking kids you can't fucking afford you feckless scrounger. I think we'd all like a bigger house but some of us in this country still think you have to earn them. And having a functioning uterus is not 'earning'.

We as a society perpetuate this ridiculous situation. Because there will always be support for people like this there is no disincentive. It's like giving aid to India's poor children because its Government prefers to have a space programme than deal with its widespread poverty. As long as you take care of the essentials, you teach people they don't need to. What is required is tough love. Unfortunately the problem is only getting worse and the world is getting poorer per capita with an increasing population.

A robust welfare and social services system might be deeply unpopular (or the lefty media would portray it as if it was unpopular in the eyes of all - like the generally supported welfare cap) but make total sense. You cap benefits and say crack on. Have as many kids as you like, but we're only paying up to a certain amount. As mum says "it's not about getting more money; if we didn't cope we wouldn't have kids". Or more to the point, I will keep having kids because I will always be able to cope due to the ever increasing handouts correlative to children produced...

The ability to have children is not a blank cheque. You will have to share rooms - most people did as children at some point and don't consider they were in 'poverty'. You'll probably have to cut down on holidays, or shock, horror, not go on holiday. That's your choice. Kids are expensive. If you want more, earn more, like the rest of us. If it gets to the point where you cannot support your children on your capped income, they get taken away from you. The children do not suffer.

Remaining in a house of such negativity and greed will cause them to suffer far more. Odds on most of those children will be jobless for most or all of their lives. They will mimic the life they have seen their parents have and society accept (I appreciate the boyfriend does have a job which is certainly better than the situation in many totally workless houses in similar situations). That is unfortunately the way it goes - check your stats; worklessness breeds worklessness. Patronising them just perpetuates the cycle and reinforces it as a viable way of life. Society has to change. This has to be an unacceptable way of living, as it was viewed not 50 years ago. How did we come to this?

Forced Fed Charity?

Now I know I already blogged exactly on this subject a couple of days ago, but I had to append a quick postscript. I was listening to Radio 4 on the commute home today when an odd phrase pricked up my ears. Some totally neutral commentator on the Beeb was talking about the Government's work experience plan and why it was so mean when he said "it's because it's compulsory" that it had attracted such leftist vitriol.

Which I thought was odd. Because you see, it's not.

You don't have to 'claim' unemployment benefits. It isn't compulsory to claim them. You can be unemployed and not claim them. You'll be 60 odd quid a week the poorer but nobody is forcing you. And in that situation you can do whatever you see fit with your non-working week - further education, apprenticeships or create hilarious cat-based YouTube hits in a bid to become wealthy through…well through however one becomes wealthy from just putting things on the internet that people look at.

If you do sign up, however, to unemployment benefits, you sign up to a contract of sorts. From my memories of The Full Monty, I think roughly speaking it says you have to actively look for work and the Government will a) help you and b) give you a small amount of money to keep you alive. All the Government is now doing is adding another rule.

They've decided that you might also have to try some work-experience for the various reasons alluded to in my last post (break the unemployment cycle, gain skills, guaranteed job interview afterwards etc). That's now your side of the contract. They've decided to be given this free money that you may or may not have in part contributed to in previous tax payments, you have to do a little more because the current system is so obviously fucked.

Seems fair to me. If you don't like it, don't claim and save George Osborne another £3,000 a year. Simple as that. Every little helps...

Life in the Slow Lane

An easy Saturday blog to try to ease myself back into the blogosphere. Having been silent for a month or so, there's a fair bit on which to catch up. I suppose I could probably launch into a spiel about welfare in general. We might talk about the underlying issues with our system. There were two things that used to encourage people not to live on benefits. The first was the stigma attached to permanently living off the state. The second was that welfare payments were generous enough to keep your head above water but not generous enough for anyone to consider it a good enough life to choose not to try to make even a few more pounds, even if it meant seeing their kids less of having to get out of bed before The Jeremy Kyle Show.

The fact that people choose not to work tells us both these previous factors now no longer apply. People are happy to not work and be seen not to work. Life is clearly comfortable enough without having to work. There is too a disgustingly large proportion of society who believe these handouts are 'owed' to them (read 'entitlements' rather than 'benefits'). The reality is they are the largess of a generous state doling out hard-earned taxpayer pounds. But that would get me too angry to enjoy my weekend, so we'll move on.

We could talk about housing benefit and the cap, or the most often relevant factor, the biological ability to have children and the apparently God-given right this gives people to have them housed wherever they wish by the state. But not only have we already 'discussed' this here, here and here, and nothing has changed since (except finding out the £26,000 cap is actually post-tax, meaning one can 'earn' the equivalent of a £35,000 wage under the cap by doing diddly squat), but it will also make me too angry to enjoy my weekend.

Incidentally note how when there is public vitriol directed towards someone rich, say Stephen Hester, all the media talk about his pre-tax bonus (£963,000), but when discussing the evil Tories' plans to bankrupt hard-not-working families, they talk about the post-tax amount (£26,000). Probably a mistake - they couldn't have meant to compare like to unlike and present it as inequality. Definitely not intentionally misleading to suit the sensationalist headlines. They wouldn't do that. Dicks.

Or I could talk about the obsession with relating the average wage to what a man earns who controls an enormous, multi-billion pound company with tens of thousands of employees. Now you can argue all you like about whether or not the bonus recently awarded to the RBS chief executive is a reward for failure (though remember he came in after the balls up to sort it out). What is certainly true is that he has a right to whatever the remuneration committee decide to award. They set the criteria. They decide. Shareholders, even those approaching 90% shareholders don't get a vote. So less willy waving please, Ed Milliwho, with your farcical "If I was Prime Minister, I'd bally well stop them paying that capitalist pig etc..." daydream.

As it is, the Government suggested it shouldn't be over £1 million, and it wasn't. Do remember though, that in finance, a bonus is a part of the wage structure. I think few people outside this industry understand this. They imagine that their basic pay forms the same part of their remuneration package as the basic pay of someone in the financial industry, when that is far from the truth. Therefore they struggle to understand bonuses being paid almost as a standard.

It is a better comparison to think of those in financial services as similar to car salesman who get a basic plus a commission-based bonus rather than it be equivalent to just handing a bonus to a guy who earns a set salary at the Home Office, the NHS or B&Q. The salesman still gets a 'bonus' from his commissions in a crap year of selling cars where he was massively under target. It's just less, and added to his basic is essentially his wage. It is just a different way of paying people. So if people could stop demanding individuals give up what is part of their pay when they have nothing but a share price in a company they do not begin to understand to go on as evidence, that'd be super.

Now concern over whether the total remuneration across the sector is a bit high, or a lot high, I can certainly understand. I just don't get going after one man. Incidentally, what did the no.2 at RBS get? It seems you don't suffer public scrutiny unless you're the CEO. It all just seems a little childish, and smacks of the politics of envy. By all means talk about boardroom pay, but go about it like envious hordes and you lose all credibility. So we definitely won't discuss that today either.

Or we could talk about the crackpots at anti-monarchist organisation, Republic, who think it is illegal to get school children to cook for the Queen. In their eyes, one can only do this if you also have an equal amount of time devoted to anti-Monarchical study. Celebrating a 60 year reign of a Monarch by cooking her chicken á la turkey twizzlers is clearly too political. We wouldn't like to nail our colours to the mast and say this is what we as a country are and believe in lest you upset a minority of window lickers. By similar thinking you should also teach as much guerrilla- and anarchist-based politics as democracy in any discussions about Government. And probably give equal lesson time for learning about Satanists as for learning about the baby Jee. What a bunch of cocks. So we shan't discuss that either.

No, after that brief introduction, covering several of the topics I will not be covering today, I shall move onto the small Saturday nag. Wouldn't it be nice if caravans (or anyone who chooses to travel at 10-20 mph below all speed limits) pulled over every once in a while and stopped wasting our lives? Or even just stopped flashing you when you legally overtake them as if you have just emasculated them by  shagging their wife and weeing in their favourite slippers? It's just whilst I know the speed limit is a limit and not a target, you'd think it'd be nice if they peeked in their wing mirrors from time to time. If you're reading this and you're one of them, the 35 car tailback behind you is not a bunch of like-minded people queueing up to read your hilarious real ale-based humorous bumper sticker. They're just people whose lives you are holding up.

Perhaps we could have a rule: If you're a caravan, you have to go round all roundabouts twice to allow people behind to overtake. Or maybe we could have enforced lay-bys. Or we could just be allowed to mount missiles to our bonnets like James Bond. I shall be honest, I haven't thought these policies through totally to the finish, but I think there's enough to form a working group. Maybe we could get Republic to come up with some ideas - they clearly have a lot of spare time on their hands.

You Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Right Round...

Well this past week has seen the Government in a spin with more U-turns than by the drivers at the sodden Canadian Grand Prix. One does rather get the feeling that the Coalition, or more specifically the Tories within the Coalition, have decided on quantity over quality when it comes to some policy. There are rumours that they have taken onboard Tony Blair's regret (from his self-aggrandising autobiography) that he did not set about the big legislation early enough in his terms. This in itself is quite a worry seeing as he went at about a law a day throughout his time in office. One imagines it was probably the only thing he could imagine he did wrong during his tenure too.

Whilst the quick action the Tories have made in some areas has been laudable (e.g. their swift work on deficit reduction appeased money markets keeping our astronomic borrowing from sinking us with interest rises), one wonders whether everything was fully thought through. They run the risk of losing public support to change intrinsic and systemic flaws in education, welfare and the NHS by going too quickly into policy making. It is possible as some individual reform policies begin to look unpopular, the fickle public might withdraw its backing for any type of (desperately needed) reform; throwing out the baby with the proverbial.

One area they should not be contemplating a U-turn, however, is the benefits cap. Not only should they not be 'bending to Lib Dem pressure' (is there such a thing?) because the Lib Dems have less leverage than ever (which I wrote about here), but they should stay the course because this is not only morally and economically a sound policy, but a vote winner. It is a small percentage of the population who will lose much from this, but some of them will lose a lot. These are more than likely not a demographic who are planning on voting Conservative, rather tending towards the Labour 'pay them to remain poor' camp. The people who would be happy to see this cap come in form a far greater part of UK society.

I genuinely believe the man in the street does not think it is right for some families to remain workless, produce children to their hearts' content, live somewhere nice and get the tab picked up by John and Jane Q. Taxpayer. I don't think the average Briton thinks it right that you can make more staying at home than at work, therefore I think making the cap at the average wage a particularly shrewd bit of political economics.

IDS certainly thinks the cap is still in place, but yesterday Lord Freud, the Tory welfare reform minister suggested that there would be exemptions from the cap because it would be "unfair to punish larger families". He went on to say that ministers would be looking hard to make sure large families were not treated unfairly. I must take umbrage with the word "fair", or "unfair". Yet again, a word bandied about with impunity. As long as you say "fair" anyone countering what you say must be "unfair" and therefore nasty and wrong. Nobody ever bothers to qualify or quantify fairness though - like how much tax one should pay in a "fair" world.

It is not fair for the rest of us who have to make informed decisions on how many children we can afford, or which areas we can afford to live in to have to do those things whilst supporting those who choose not to work but can have all of those things with none of the worries. I shan't totally drag back out my full thoughts on the matter, but if you fancy a refresh, they're here, here and here. Ultimately, the state is there to help you up when you need a hand. It's there to support the needy (I'll always caveat the welfare cap with those with serious disabilities). It is there to top up from time to time. It is not meant to be a long term way of life.

£26,000 is OK for the average Joe to survive on pre-tax, so one should not expect more than that from the Government (much of it un-taxed), under the banner of fairness or any other without having to lift a finger. If it costs more than that to live where you live, move. It's what everyone else has to do. If you can't afford to pay for more children, don't have them. It's what everyone else has to do.

It is "fair" to expect the Government to help you out provided you do your bit on your side, and that you don't take the piss. A third of the families currently receiving over the new cap are single parent families with a staggering 5 or more children. It's not the single parent part, telling though it may be, that is important here. It is the 5 or more children bit. I'd say it may well be fair to expect some help with your first couple of children, but after that? You're just taking out loans funded by taxpayers because you biologically can. So let us hope this U-turn frenzy that Dave and Co. have going on doesn't spread to the proper policies, and certainly not because of the Lib Dems or some bizarre idea of fairness.

Hey Big Spender...

Ah, budget day. And a real budget too, in the real sense of the word - the one you and I understand. That is, one where we look at all the money we have and don't have before we decide which section of the society to buy off. You may recognise the latter strategy as that of the last Government.

In a couple of years' time, there's a pretty good chance either Labour are going to get egg on their collective face, or else the Tories, to some extent the Lib Dems, the money markets, the OBR, the IMF and countless more economic bodies are. That is because everyone except Labour agree that if you don't deal with the staggering deficit quickly, there will be no economy left in which to 'encourage growth by spending' - the Labour line. Around the end of this Parliament we'll see who was right. I'm inclined to think that the ones with the right idea on how to deal with the deficit are not those who created it. Labour's idea of how to get out of the budgetary hole we are still in, remains to be to throw in a spade and dig.

It was a sensible budget. It gave a couple of breaks here and there to signal that the end of the pain was in sight; to signal the Government has positive plans to help people, not just save the economy; to signal that it is listening. There were no ludicrous and uncosted giveaways. Some people seem genuinely upset at this. Some of them seem to struggle with the idea that it may be possible that a nation does not enjoy a rise in living standards every year until eternity. Yes, sometimes, we have to tighten our belts, sometimes we have less money than last year. Yvette Cooper-Balls proved herself one such moron on radio today.

She thinks it totally unacceptable that the Government didn't increase living standards of everyone in Britain with the backdrop of an economy on a slow road to recovery with a war chest barer than a nudey centrefold. Presumably she would like headlines like "all benefits doubled", "NHS spending to top £1 trillion" and "Cooper-Ballses fall to number two on poll of world's most irritatingly, smug-for-no-reason couples". However, there is only so long you can give away money you don't have and call it a budget. 13 years wasn't a bad record in a way.

The main themes continue to be pay off the deficit and encourage private sector growth. The former continued with a neutral budget of no giveaways. The latter by the simplifying of planning regulations and reduction in corporation tax and plan for its continued downward movement through the life of this Parliament.

There was too a show in where this Government thinks money should be coming from and going. Motorists were given a 1p tax reduction in addition to the cancellation of Labour's proposed 5p increase in April (it was their fuel duty escalator). This is a 6p reduction, not 1p as Ed Miliwho tried to claim when suggesting the January VAT rise of 3p on fuel duty dwarved today's cut. Accusing the Coalition of Del Boy economics when his basic mathematics is more akin to Plonker Rodney's left him looking like a bit of a silly boy. This fuel cut is being paid for by a windfall tax on the oil companies who have been raking profits in hand over fist with spiralling crude oil prices and even higher charges to customers. An increase to the bank levy, not a lowering of the 40p tax rate band paid for the rise in tax free personal allowance.

So all in all, it was a budget that simply said, things are on track, but look where they will go when we've cleared up Labour's mess. The long road to budgetary balance remains ahead, but at least the Government are staying on it. No foolish giveaways that they can't afford financially or politically. Anyone who was disappointed by this budget has fundamentally misunderstood the situation. This was not a budget designed as a panacea for all our financial woes - it takes more than 1 year to sort out a recession. It is merely pointing out that the road back from a deficit like this is long, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Passing the Buck

An old topic regurgitated today, thanks to the farcical remarks of a labour front-bencher. For a graduate of the London School of Economics with Masters in both Economics and Social Policy she has displayed an incredible lack of intelligence. Not only has she made a horrifically offensive slur in stating the Coalition's motivation in reducing housing benefit (which I wrote about here) is to cleanse London of black, Muslim and ethnic minority women, but she is also demonstrating her total lack of understanding of social policy, economics and indeed statistics.

I refer, of course, to today's news of self-satisfied, soon-to-be ex-shadow front bencher Karen Buck launching a bilious attack on the Government's housing benefit policy. I say soon-to-be, because surely even Miliwho realises he can't allow this kind of political point scoring by implying racial hatred. They should just stick to the classic Labour sexist and classist lines to fight on.

Ms Buck thought it totally appropriate to suggest the Coalition (and specifically the Tories) were out to make London an upper class shangri-la, where presumably the only people one might see there not earning six figures were commuting loo cleaners from the shanty-town suburbs. It never crossed her mind that it might be to try to make sense of a welfare system designed to entrap people and remove any incentive to make their own money. A system where you are often better off doing nothing than doing something. It never occurred to her, no doubt, that there might be a need to save some money since the Labour Government (which covered her entire 13 years in Parliament) used all of it, and then borrowed the moon. She probably doesn't know spending on housing benefits increased from £11 billion in 2000 to £20 billion in 2010. She probably doesn't realise that is a near £10 billion increase, or an increase equivalent to 1/3 of all education spending in the UK - still, seeing as education is the best way out of poverty, let's keep throwing money at landlords.

Yes, you might think that I have little time for Ms Buck's ilk, and you would be right. They are the same people who think that capping housing benefit at £400 a week is social engineering. They think that because this will force people out of homes they couldn't afford in areas they couldn't afford (and whilst we're on it, we as taxpayers can't afford), the Government is socially engineering. No, the opposite is true, and anyone who tries to tell you different is a fool or a liar.

The idea of free market economics can easily be extended to society and housing. It is exactly social engineering to place very poor people on benefits into a disproportionately rich area to make the social cross section more varied. The parts of the country who pay lots of tax and pay for their own housing have to choose where they should live based on where they can afford to live. Lots of them, in fact most, can't afford to live in Mayfair. Why we think the section of society who earn less than them and therefore qualify for housing benefits somehow deserve a better standard of living free of charge is beyond me. Welfare is there to make up the shortfall, to catch people who fall through the cracks. It should be a crutch to those who will permanently need help and a helping hand to lift the others up who fall on hard times. It should never though be there to lift them up to above the level we are willing to let people live at who don't qualify for welfare. This is what housing benefit has been doing for years.

So, I say again, if you think £1600 plus change a month for rent is cripplingly meagre, you're far too used to the good life. You won't be able to rent 1 Park Lane, but why should you? Who do you know that pays that much? If you're not on benefits and you choose to have a big family, you need to budget, so you will probably live in a poorer area to afford a larger house. It's free market housing. Returning to this concept is not a policy of social engineering, it is ending that exact policy. So let's grow up a little when looking at the real reasons for this totally sensible policy.

When we look at make-believe reasons for this policy to spout off at public meetings in Islington, it might be sensible to check one's facts. 87% of recipients of housing benefit are white, leaving just 13% of the apparently targeted ethnic minorities. Just 46% are single females, compared to 32% single males, and 22% couples. So, if you're going to spew some total crap to score some political points, at least try to get your numbers right even if your political reasonings are barmy. Tutors in Economics and Social Policy at LSE must be shuddering at the ignorance of one of their Masters graduates. For Miliwho, it's probably time to pass the Buck.

Target Practice

I have already blogged in part about my issues with the welfare state (here). I am increasingly tired of hearing how the worse off are "targeted" by the budget cuts. They are not "targeted", but that does not mean they will not be those most affected. That in itself though, does not make it an evil budget. I shall explain.

The budget is the plan of what to do with all the monies taken in taxes. This might come as a surprise to Gordy, Tony, Alastair, the Milibrothers et al. I assume in Labour HQ there is a dictionary that under "budget" reads, "enormous giveaway of cash we don't have to people to make them vote for us". Yes, it is indeed considered slightly dodgy economics to plan (if indeed there was any real economic planning other than the standard "hang onto power until the money runs out then wait a generation until everyone's forgotten" plan) to spend more each year than you are going to get. I blogged a little about this here.

Now those taxes come from the people; generally the more you earn the more tax you pay, and vice versa. On the other side of the budget come the public services, benefits etc paid for by these taxes. With the exception of the old rules for child benefit (which was universal and non means-tested), income vs benefits pretty much worked on an inverse sliding scale: the more money you earned, the fewer benefits you were entitled to, and the reverse.

So, if you earn very little, you are likely to be dependent on public services (NHS, welfare, state schooling etc). If you earn lots you probably aren't (BUPA, no need or entitlement to welfare, private schooling etc). Clearly these are broad brushstrokes. So, cuts to these services affects those dependent on them, and doesn't affect those not on them. Not exactly rocket science, or should I say rocketry?

Somehow, people are enraged that cutting these public services and benefits doesn't hurt these "better off fat cats". Yes, the shocking truth is that if you don't really use something, if someone reduces (or indeed increases) spending on it, it doesn't really affect them. At the same time, there is uproar at "the merciless targeting of the dependent classes".

Be under no illusion; the "better off" are taking home less money as a result of the budget. They are contributing to public services more than before. Their pain comes in many forms. Just because cutting the out-of-control budget of the social services they fund does not hurt them as much as it does the poor does not make those cuts unfair. It is a pernicious society that wishes the benefactors of the welfare state to be punished when its recipients feel pain. The "better off" are not proportionately affected by cuts in public spending because they pay for it but do not use it. If you can find moral injustice in there, good luck to you. Hand. Feed. Bite. Rearrange?

The Most Expensive Decision You Ever Make

Now I'm willing to admit that there are some people who live in a slightly different financial world to the rest of us. For them, the purchase of a superyacht, a diamond encrusted Bentley, or a small private island might actually be the most expensive decision they ever make. For the rest of us proles though, the most expensive decision you ever make is to have a child.

Now one might think that it is actually buying a house - of course there are some very expensive houses about - but we're going to deal with averages. The average house price is about 170k. Roughly speaking, the cost of raising a child to 21 is 200k. So, that means to the average man in the street, the decision to have a child is the most expensive one he can make, and that's just for one. That is of course, as long as he's planning on paying for that child.

Yes, inevitably and rather obviously this post is going to focus on children and the state's role in funding them.

My better half and I do ok on the earning front. We won't buy a private island, but neither will we receive child benefits. We've worked out that as long as work continues to provide promotions and according remuneration we might just be able to afford two children. It'll be tough, but to give our children the best, that's all we can afford. It may sound detached and material, to consider affordability of children as we would a house or a new car. However, that is the stark reality - children cost an enormous amount of money.

For a large number of people, much of that money comes from the Government. From the budget. From your taxes. From your schools and hospitals. From your armed forces. Should there be a Chinese style limit on children? Of course not. Should there be a financial test for parenthood? Of course not. What of the people on permanent welfare with 6, 8, 10 children? Does this make it right to keep on reproducing knowing you will be sending the bills directly to John Q Taxpayer?

The argument the left will always fall back on is that one has the right to have children. What do I think? Yup, you do. The crux is that perhaps the state isn't obliged to pay for it all. If I can only afford two children that I will pay for, why should my taxes pay for someone else to have 10? Your rights, and what is right are two very different things…

Discuss.

Some Are More Equal Than Others

Housing benefit is to be capped circa £400 a week. That is, the contribution that the Government (the taxpayer) will put towards rent for people qualifying for this benefit will only now be about £1600 a month. Scandalous. Apparently. According to Red Ed and that whining, carp-faced pillock Simon Hughes amongst others.

The idea that poorer families might have to move out of high income areas is "tantamount to social cleansing", we are told. People will have to choose where they live now on the basis of what they can afford. Holy shit! Sound familiar, oh yes, that's what people not on housing benefits do anyway.

The oblivious, self righteous arrogance, nay temerity of these socio-economic dunderheads (Miliband, Hughes et al) is quite unbelievable. I'm all for helping the poorest and neediest. I'm not, though, all for handing them a far better life than people who are working their cotton socks off could ever dream of. Not only is it economically unviable, it is morally wrong.

Why should someone have the right to live in an area they can't afford? I can't afford to live in Mayfair. Can I have a top-up? Most people would probably like to live somewhere better than they do, but they have to make grown-up decisions about it because they pay the bill. Supposedly because they don't pay the bill, it is unfair to housing benefit recipients for them to not be able to live in houses vastly out of their wage bracket.

This doesn't just stop at houses. People apparently have 'rights' to telephones, cable tv, yearly overseas holidays, you name it. Yet many people with all these things, the things even our parents, let alone grandparents would call luxuries are still claiming benefits because they need them for their essentials. It is not everyone, but it's a massive share of them - ask a social worker or a policeman how many council houses they have visited that are without flat screen tvs. The welfare state started spiralling out of control the day Britain decided it is ok to pay for your own luxuries because the state will pick up the rest.

So, let's not get too upset for the displaced people of SW6 when they have to move out of houses that most people couldn't afford.

The Council House Jackpot

I read yesterday about the proposed amendments to the running of the council house system. It all makes lots of sense to me. I am simply waiting for the idiotic Lib Dem and Labour backlash.

Why do we have social housing? For those who cannot afford to buy or rent living space. Super. Key words: "those who cannot afford".

As it stands, if you were once poor enough to qualify for a council house, the Government assumes you will always be. A little patronising, but not my main point. If you needed a family home because you had 3 children, the Government assumes you will always have 3 children living with you.

The first of the 2 main changes is to be (for new applicants only) 5 or 10 year 'leases' for want to a better word rather than life-long leases. At the end of your lease, you get re-evaluated to see if you could afford to contribute more (for we all have to contribute - there should be no free rides), or less (situations can easily get worse than better), or have no need for social housing.

Situation 1: The means and requirements test reveals no change in circumstances. A new 5/10 year lease is granted. Winners: Family - still supported to the degree required in terms of housing. State - fulfilling social obligations to poorer families.

Situation 2: The test reveals a worsening in circumstances (reduced pay for example). A new 5/10 year lease is granted at a lower percentage of market rental value. Winners: Family - as situation 1. State - as situation 1.

Situation 3: The test reveals an slight improvement in circumstances (increased pay for example). A new 5/10 year lease is granted at a higher rate. Winners: Family - as situation 1. State - as situation 1 and gains extra income for reinvestment in budget.

Situation 4: The test reveals a large improvement in circumstances (large increase in pay for example). No new lease is granted. Winners: State - gets a house back for the 5 million more needy currently on the social housing waiting list. A poorer family - a house is freed up and they move off the waiting list and into social housing.

The part that the lefty idealogues will harp on about is the 'evicted' family. If they can pay to live without social housing they should. The state is then able to give to someone more needy. Anyone disagreeing with that on the basis of not supporting the poor needs a lesson in basic logic and economics. That is the essence of social housing. It should never be an option to stay in a council house if one does not need to. It is not about a war on aspiration - you will be as well off out of social housing as in it, as the second you become ineligible you have become wealthy enough to afford to house yourself. That is the idea of the test; make sure only those who need it most get social housing. Not only is there a limit on how many people we can afford to house (5 million strong waiting list), we also morally should not be paying for people to live if they can do it themselves.

The second major change I will discuss is the size of the house relative to the number of inhabitants. Clearly there is great pathos evoked in asking a widowed 70 year old man to move from a 3 bedroom house he has lived in all his life to a 1 bedroom flat. However, we simply don't have enough houses to afford to be so generous as to leave him there. Go and ask the 3 child household on the waiting list if it is fair that they have nowhere suitable to live because of this generous grant to the widower. Also remember - new applicants only.

Welfare is about helping the neediest. Unfortunately there will always be people who will feel something is being unfairly taken from them when it is given to someone poorer. One hopes then for a modicum of understanding at least for the system which helped them no longer be the neediest.