Some rather bizarre stuff from our Ritchie:

David Cameron claimed yesterday that “Social unrest would have been likely if housing benefit payments had not been slashed ”.

Oh yes. people were going to be out on the streets saying with demands such as “make people homeless” were they? I doubt it. Very much. The man’s living in cloud cuckoo land

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Let's unpack this for one second. The housing benefit proposal is to set the maximum benefit at the 30% point rather than the median (which would be 50%). Some people may have to move, but into another property, not a cardboard box. The proposals will cap benefit at about £21,000 annually. That's insanely generous, representing a sum way beyond the means of most families. It's a full 50% higher than my mortgage payments for the year for example.

And I do think such enormous payments were testing the patience of a tolerant, caring society. Why should those who are prepared to work hard have to pay high taxes to fund a lifestyle that they could never hope to enjoy themselves? Isn't it right to expect everyone, whether rich or poor, to live within their means and to cut their cloth accordingly? If that means moving to a cheaper house, like so many taxpayers have had to do themselves, then so be it.

If these proposals are "making people homeless" then I'm a banana. As I appear to have neither a stalk or yellow skin, I suspect that Ritchie's merely a hyperbolic idiot. Again.

Written on my Android mobile phone. Article may be edited later.

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Filed under: Other blogs, Politics with tags bananas, housing benefit, idiots, richard murphy, welfare benefits