Loony Left: UN housing investigator Raquel Rolnik
UPDATE: Housing benefit claimant Paul from Clerkenwell has called up London radio station LBC 97.3 to complain about the “bedroom tax”. He says he needs his extra room so his mates can stay over when they come round for a party! Give me strength…
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The Loony Left are as mad as ever.
Whilst President Assad gasses his own citizens, the UN has found time to come to Britain and admonish the Coalition Government for getting rid of an anomaly in the bloated welfare system whereby if you have your rent heavily subsidised by the taxpayer already through housing benefit (to be abolished and merged into the Universal Credit, if the computer system ever works!) you also receive the luxury of being put up in a four bedroom house when your family only actually needs three bedrooms.
Aren’t we taxpayers absolutely mugs? Why bother working?
The spare room subsidy was rightly abolished by the Coalition Government a few months ago, dubbed by Labour and its broadcasting arm (the BBC) as a “bedroom tax”. Of course, it is not a tax as the recipients don’t pay tax on their benefits. What the spare room subsidy abolition actually means is the State will no longer give you a four bedroom house if your family only need a three bedroom house. Sounds fair to me.
But UN housing investigator, Raquel Rolnik, disagrees. The Brazilian national (others question if she should get her own house in order first) has investigated the reform of the over-generous housing benefit and decided it is a human right for its recipients to have more bedrooms than they need.
This sums up the British Labour Party and the world-wide Left in a nutshell: they believe people should not work and those who are silly enough to find work a driver for living a happy life should be taxed until the pips squeak (to coin a phrase!) to house claimants in properties the same taxpayer could never afford to privately rent or buy.
Gavin Maclure's Musings 
September 11, 2013 at 10:53 pm
Whilst I agree with you on the majority of JSA recipients, there are a couple of issues I have with the way this policy has been arranged.
For instance, there is no discretion allowed. Whilst this might seem sensible, what it means in practice is that someone who is pregnant is told they must pay extra towards their rent, or move into a smaller property, yet within weeks they are likely to be eligible for the property they are already living in.
There is also the point that successive Governments have failed to build enough social housing, so if you are in a two bedroom property, but only entitled to a one bedroom property, you want to move out, but you can’t – because there simply aren’t any one bedroom properties.
Both of these examples could be dealt with by getting further employment, however that is not always an option.
For instance you and I both know a former Conservative candidate who, due to an almost fatal brain injury, cannot get work. He will forever be reliant on the state for “handouts” as you call them, and he cannot increase his income. Why should he have to down size to a smaller property when he is not responsible for his situation? It seems very harsh to say that you are penalised when the situation you are in is not one of your own making, doesn’t it?
That said, the reality of this policy is that it is merely adapting the rules that Labour brought in for private sector housing. If it is so unfair now, why wasn’t it unfair when Labour introduced it?
The real cost of housing benefit, which is after all what we’re trying to reduce, is paid to people who are in work. The real tragedy is that the Labour Party has, for the last 15 years, developed the idea that welfare was better than increasing wages. Low wages has meant an increasing number of people dependent on welfare despite being in full time work. That really is a disgrace – and it is something that Cameron should throw in Miliband’s face whenever he mentions living standards.
September 13, 2013 at 12:13 pm
Thanks for your comment, Ben. I very much agree with you on your last para: low wages is the biggest scandal this country faces today. It has been caused by Labour’s reckless policies which created a bloated welfare state and allowed mass uncontrolled immigration, forcing down wages not just for low skilled wokers but throughout traditional blue-collar jobs and into white collar managerial and professional jobs. The only people who have benefited from these mad policies are the rich who do not see the need to push company wealth down to the workforce as the labour market is saturated with immigrant labour at one end and at the indigenous population end welfare payments are so generous these people do not provide competitiion in to the labour market. It has become a vicious circle of low wages affecting the 99%. It is sustainable for now but come the time jwhen Generation X retires (or more likely are not physically able to go on working) the bill to the Government will be billions and billions or risk that same generation starving.
The acts of the Labour opposition frontbench were criminal when they were in Government but today they still act with such arrogance and do not have a shred of remorse. Let’s hope the electorate get it by May 2015 – but I don’t hold my breath on that.
September 13, 2013 at 11:34 am
Raquel Rolnik is bonkers.
September 13, 2013 at 3:36 pm
There are substantial discretionary funds for this but Labour local authorities are slow in publicising them for some reason. Ben is right to remind us that was a Labour policy first, applied to those in the private rented sector.
September 13, 2013 at 4:07 pm
The discretionary funds are there, but they don’t come close to covering all the cases that might be considered inequitable. Whilst people are muddling through, this might come back to bite us in the arse come 2015.