The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Monday, January 02, 2012

Dubious Benefits

Research by the Chartered Institute of Housing indicates that the deserving poor - those hard-pressed yet hard-working families which have laboured to spew forth our Daveyblokes, our Osbornes, our Alexander Boris de Kosovo Johnsons - may allow themselves a brief period of rejoicing. The welfare cuts which, as of this month, kick in while also kicking down, will result in mass migrations by those of the undeserving poor whose animal instincts are sufficiently fine-tuned to tell them where they're not wanted; for the rest, there will be a humanely uncomplicated choice between hunger and homelessness. The analysis notes that "big cities where we expect to find most of the jobs and the most varied employment are the worst hit by the government changes" and that, as a result, the undeserving poor will have to work harder to find work, to the incalculable benefit of their moral fibre and the Big Society thingy.

In celebration, the Department for Work and Pensions Withdrawal regurgitated its standard Daily Mail leader column to the effect that "housing benefit was unfair because some families on benefits had been able to live in homes that most working families not on benefits could not afford"; a self-evidently deplorable situation for which the only sensible remedy is to ensure that only the right sort of families are able to afford anything. The Department also noted that "early indications are that people are not moving out of cities in their droves to cheaper rural areas"; which indicates that the brilliant Iain Duncan Smith and his minions are not yet altogether up to speed on the distinction between a description of the present and a prediction of the future. Liam Byrne, the former Minister for Infant Repatriation and current shadow Minister for Work and Pensions Withdrawal, said that, as usual, Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition did not oppose the Government except on one or two points of detail: though utterly gorgeous in principle, the social cleansing programme in its present form "could actually end up costing more by pushing up the costs of homelessness", and the whole point of homelessness is that it's supposed to be cheap.

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