Never Over Estimate a Prole.

That seems to be British government policy at the moment.

Throughout the post-second world war period Britain has strived to maintain social cohesion through an integrated housing policy. As a result we don't really have rich neighbourhoods and poor neighbourhoods to the extent you get in other countries. This policy has been maintained through planning legislation that requires a certain percentage of units in new housing developments to be affordable housing. It has also been maintained through the housing benefit scheme through which the government gives low income households money to afford to pay the rent in wealthy areas. The planning side of the policy has long been under attack with local councils increasingly being prepared to allow property developers to buy their way out of their obligation to provide affordable housing. The present, unelected, Conservative government is currently at war with the housing benefit side of the policy with plans to put an upper limit or cap on the amount that any one household can receive in benefit payments at £26,000 (USD41,600). This is being done for the simple reason that rich people don't like having to mix with let alone live near too poor people.

What is bizarre is that the government has managed to manufacture a lot of support for this policy from poor people. They've done this by arguing that it will save the ordinary, hardworking taxpayer a lot of money and that it will get tough on the lazy and workshy who live the life of luxury off the benefit system. Both of these arguments are crap. The policy will save the tax payer around £200m (USD320m) per year which sounds like a lot of money but actually is only about half what the government spends on refuse collection every year. Also the lazy and workshy who live off the benefit system often do so by deliberately having lots of children. This pushes them to the top of local council's housing lists and gets them into social housing that is often much better quality then private housing. Although the days when councils owned social housing are largely long gone but they still set the rents. The local councils also pay those rents so obviously keep them very low. Conversely the majority of housing benefits payments are made to the landlords of people living in private housing who obviously keep them very high. Housing benefit is also what is known as a working benefit meaning that the vast majority of people who receive it are working but only earn a low income. So this benefit cap will largely leave the lazy and workshy alone but hit working people who receive a combination of housing benefit, child benefit and child/working tax credits the hardest. Or to put it another way the very same people who are supporting the policy.

At this point I have to declare a slight interest in the issue. If my grandmother were to rent her know vacant property to me and I were to claim housing benefit to pay that rent a housing benefit cap would obviously limit the amount I could claim from the local council. So in a desperate attempt to gain attention ahead of the Olympics the Church of England Bishops in the House of Lords yesterday (23/1/12) set out to defeat the government's policy amid discussions over whether the parliament building's subsidence problems would cause cracks to appear or would the parliament collapse completely? In the end the Bishops did defeat the policy but all that means is that the Crown appointed government will overrule the Bishops when the issue returns to the House of Commons.

Or to put it another way. Boring!