How I’m feeling about our politics right now

Some time between the last weeks of the Scottish referendum campaign, and the announcement mere days after earning their own MP that UKIP would be given a comfy place in next year’s TV election debates, I had an epiphany.

Gordon Brown: better at promises than Nick Clegg?

My leanings have always been what might best be described as ‘politically progressive’ – I believe everyone should have access to free public healthcare and I think the burden of funding public finances should come from taxing wealth, not torching the safety net –  but in recent years my views have been tempered with an uneasy feeling of futility.

Our government picks on the most vulnerable people in our society and buddies up with the most powerful. Our newspapers and news programmes are full of allusions to disaffected voters, but the parameters of political debate stay the same.

In the  days before the fateful Scottish vote on independence the UK’s main political parties, united in their support of a no vote, made an eleventh hour pledge. It promised swift action on granting further powers to Scotland on things like tax, the NHS and more. Gordon Brown set out an ambitious timetable. Once the no vote came in, the promise didn’t quite seem as concrete.

In recent weeks news stories have hinted that the timeframe which the three main parties have committed to is unworkable. One story, by The Scotsman, had several academics warning the timetable was unrealistic to deal with the technical details of devloving powers to Holyrood.

The most important thing to take away from the referendum though, was that 45 per cent of Scots wanted out. Without the pledge this could well have been higher. Glued to social media in the days before the vote I saw a wave of excitement: for the first time I can remember people were given a real chance to affect the increasingly distant political establishment and they were excited about it.

Even after the no vote, yes-voters cheerfully dubbed themselves the 45 per cent. The SNP and the Scottish Green Party saw unprecedented surges in membership; people had woken up.

But for an Englishman watching with interest across the border my enthusiasm quickly ebbed. At its party conference the Labour Party, in the distant past a party of the left with the interests of genuine working people at its heart, proved itself incapable of offering anything but the same old focus-tested fare.

On the face of it some policies announced at the conference were admirable. A mansion tax represents a small step towards a more progressive tax policy and more money for the NHS is always a good thing. An £8 minimum wage is moving in the right direction – though not nearly fast enough since it’s only expected to arrive by the end of the next parliament. Right now people are struggling to get by on low paid jobs as inflation rises.

Mansions: will be taxed under a Labour government?

But the conference was more notable to me for what was not announced. No serious policy announcements on climate change, banking reform or corporation tax. By and large Labour seem to have stopped fighting the tories on welfare and immigration. The party also seems to have accepted the conservative’s narrative of austerity.

James Crace, reporting for The Guardian, said that on arriving at the conference “it was as if the last month had never happened”. The events of the Scottish referendum were not on the agenda.

The party seems unprepared for the radical reform needed to build a fairer society. Any hope of policies that could challenge the Tories’ neoliberal austerity were unfounded.

But did anyone really expect anything else?

I felt powerless. The slow privatisation of the NHS by stealth, public sector pay freezes, rampant corporate tax avoidance and the apparent disappearance of climate change from the news agenda; there is no one in our political establishment challenging these problems.

Then, in October,UKIP bagged their first MP through a by-election in Clacton. UKIP seem to be the darlings of the mainstream media, featured regularly on teatime news programmes and national newspapers.

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that when it came to announce the plan for next year’s TV debates ahead of the general election UKIP had somehow snuck in there. Of the three debates, UKIP would be invited to one. Whether the broadcasters realised this would be a controversial move or not is unclear.

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett: not in the TV election debates (for some reason).

UKIP are not an anti-establishment party – their leader Nigel Farage is a former trader on the metals exchange educated at Dulwich College, a public School in South London..

The party’s invitation to the top table came only days after getting its first MP. Parties that remain excluded include the Green Party (1 MP), the Scottish National Party (6 MPs), Plaid Cymru (3 MPs) as well as the Northern Irish parties and others.

I suppose the reason I sat down to write this is that I no longer want to feel the futility of settling for a complacent, unresponsive political establishment any longer. This is an establishment that thinks slashing benefits for our society’s most vulnerable while privatising public spaces and subsidising fossil fuels  is the way to go.

The Scottish referendum showed me people are not apathetic by choice. If we are given the chance to decide something meaningful we will jump at it. Scotland proved that, regardless of the result. But right now the Scottish referendum is so unique precisely because our terms of debate – the choices and ideas considered realistic and reasonable in our political discourse- have somehow been artificially constrained.

That is my problem with our politics right now.

 

All argumentative comments are welcome.

Food banks are victims of social ignorance

Conservatives just don’t seem to get food banks. Last week Liam Marshall-Ascough, a Tory councillor in Crawley, told a local council meeting food poverty was not an issue because ‘you try booking a restaurant in Crawley on a Friday or Saturday night. You can’t do it’.

Earlier this month the Trussell Trust, which has links to over 400 food banks across the UK, revealed a dramatic increase in the use of food banks in Scotland. The Trust’s Ewan Gurr cited a number of reasons for this trend, including welfare reforms and the cost of living. The government responded by bizarrely claiming food banks were creating their own demand with offers of free food.

There seems to be an astonishing amount of ignorance and class privilege going on here.

It is the same ignorance that compelled Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, to sneak out of a Parliamentary debate on food banks in December. Pressure for the debate had not begun in Parliament, but as the result of a petition signed by more than 140,000 people.

Mr Marshall-Ascough also said ‘there is a £26,000 benefits cap’ adding ‘there is something wrong if they can’t live on that’. Who the councillor thinks ‘they’ are is not clear from the report in the Crawley News . Does he perhaps believe in an underclass of workshy graspers all living comfortably on £26,000 a year?

Food banks are not free supermarkets and most require a voucher or referral from the relevant authorities before access to much needed supplies is granted. It is difficult to believe the government does not know this, so to claim food banks are creating their own demand is either cynical politicking or astonishing social ignorance.

The Trussell Trust’s website reports that for the 2012/13 financial year more than 345,000 people needed the food they supplied. This is an increase of more than 200,000 on the previous year, with the top four reasons for needing emergency food being benefits delays, low income, changes to benefits and debt. None of this matters of course, because ‘you try booking a restaurant in Crawley on a Friday or Saturday night’.

We live in a society where 13 million people are classed as living in poverty. This is around 20% of the population. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation more than half of this number are part of working families. The Foundation’s Julia Unwin told the BBC last year of a labour market which offered ‘little security and paltry wages that are insufficient to make ends meet’. A TUC report released this year found one in five UK workers take home less than a living wage, with the figure in some Parliamentary constituencies rising to almost half.

The comfortably off, like Mr Marshall-Ascough, do not see this world. The government, surrounded as it is by the London property bubble, do not see it either, if they even want to at all. As the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee points out, cutting corporation tax, tax collectors and VAT inspectors are the actions of a government who would rather the state did as little as possible. Perhaps this sounds appealing to the Liam Marshall-Ascoughs of this world – who do not need a safety net to fall back on. But to millions of people it means scraping by on less and less.

We now live in one of the most unequal societies in the world. Food banks are only a symptom of this, but talk of table reservations in the face of food poverty is an ignorance we can no longer tolerate.

 

 

Youtube credit: video originally posted by Glynne Powell

Bankers invent new way to get paid too much

HSBC boss Stuart Gulliver. Photo by World Economic Forum (Licence here)

This week HSBC announced it would in future be paying its top bankers ‘fixed pay allowances’, in order to circumvent new EU rules restricting bonuses. According to the Guardian the bank’s chief executive Stuart Gulliver will be taking home at least £4.2 million a year in future.

New EU rules restrict bonuses to 100% of a banker’s pay, unless approved by shareholders. With approval from shareholders the cap may be raised to 200% of pay.

Last week our Prime Minister spoke of his ‘moral mission’ in welfare reform. He said ‘our long-term economic plan for Britain is not just about doing what we can afford, it is also about doing what is right’. If the moral mission does not include tempering the excesses of the banking sector, is the mission at all legitimate.

The highest paid employee at HSBC in 2013 earned £7.06 million through salary, bonuses and other payments. It would have taken me in my last job nearly nine hundred and fifty years to earn this figure without overtime. If the government allows this to happen is that doing what is right? Is this level of decadence even slightly defensible when the government’s 2008 banking bail out ran into the hundreds of billions of pounds?

According to the National Audit Office the banking sector at one point owed the government £1.162 trillion in various loans, schemes and shares. Much of this has now been paid off, but the cost in terms of businesses destroyed, jobs lost and lives damaged thanks to their irresponsible actions is immeasurable. Given this legacy wouldn’t the socially responsible thing to do be to make more jobs and help more businesses?

According to Reuters, HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver has slashed 40,000 jobs globally in the last three years. He has also ‘sold or closed 60 businesses’. As a result the bank saw a rise in pre-tax profit of 9% to £13.6 billion. It seems that £3.9 billion of this has gone into the so called ‘bonus pool’. Between this excess and a handful of Londoners claiming £80,000 in housing benefit the Prime Minister has made clear which he believes requires the more urgent reform.

Perhaps it’s time someone at the Treasury sat down with a calculator and worked out how many small businesses or secure jobs could be made for £7.06 million. Alternatively Chancellor George Osborne may want to take a look at Royal Bank of Scotland, the bank in which our government holds an 81% share.  A number of news agencies are reporting that a Treasury agency is permitting the nationalised bank to spend £550 million on staff bonuses for 2013. Perhaps this is a reward for a successful year? RBS has not yet disclosed its profits, but Reuters and Sky report an estimated loss of around £8 billion.

Inside sources also tell Reuters RBS could cut up to 30,000 of its workers in coming years. How many of these job losses come from low level staff and how many come from those in line for millions in bonuses?

What is the government doing to deal with these excessive bonuses? Well, the Prime Minister has made clear that, at RBS at least, bonuses will not inflate further from their current ridiculousness.

The government will also be taking its opposition to the EU bonus cap to the European Court of Justice. If you’re wondering whether you read that right – yes, our government is legally challenging a rule that restricts bankers from taking home more in bonuses than their normal salary. It seems our government is worried the rule will simply lead to higher normal salaries to make up for smaller bonuses.

Apparently it has occurred to no one that bankers should just accept a more reasonable wage packet.

Our banking sector has cost us infinitely more economically and socially than any problems with the welfare system. Unfortunately our government seems more interested in making things harder for struggling households than holding the super-rich to account.

The Prime Minister’s moral mission to attack welfare

Photo by The Prime Minister’s Office, via Flickr

Poor old David Cameron; there are so many people upset with him and he just can’t understand why. Our Prime Minister is on a ‘moral mission’ to clean up the benefits system, you see. Apparently the government’s attack on the welfare bill isn’t just about saving money – it’s about helping people.

It seems this is the message we’re supposed to buy into going into the next election. In an article for the Telegraph the Prime Minister highlighted the problems he has been heroically trying to solve in the welfare system. Housing benefit bills as high as £80,000 a year for a single claiment. Hundreds of thousands on incapacity benefit in need of reassessment. Mr Cameron also stands by his government’s decision to cap benefit rises, although he frames this as ensuring benefits don’t increase faster than wages.

These are all very simple ideas to grasp and many of them may seem reasonable. But they mask a very overt attack on the welfare system.

The claim that under labour some people in London were claiming as much as £80,000 a year in housing benefit is intriguing.  This predictably misses the point of the housing benefit problem. As Independent columnist Owen Jones frequently points out housing benefit has for years acted as a tacit subsidy for extortionate land lords. In areas like London monthly rents can be hiked hundreds of pounds at a time.

 Average rents are set to exceed £1,000 per month for the millions of UK renters in 2014. Placing responsibility for the housing benefit bill on tenants is counterproductive and, given the number of MPs who are also landlords, frankly insulting. When Cameron chooses to spotlight housing benefit claimants instead of pursuing a serious house building programme he is letting us know who his government really cares about.

The government’s solution to incapacity benefit reassessment was to expand the role of ATOS in the assessment process. In case you’ve forgotten about ATOS, it’s the company that has this on its record. In 2012 former ATOS nurse Joyce Drummond apologised for her part in the assessments. Ms Drummond even told the Daily Record ‘ATOS went by the philosophy that if you had a finger and could push a button, then you could work’. Thousands of disabled people have been wrongly judged fit for work.

If this is how the Prime Minister’s moral mission is carried out I’m not sure I want anything to do with it.

I’m also sure to David Cameron it sounds entirely reasonable to guarantee those looking for work are not taking home as much as those in work. But as a millionaire the Prime Minister has never had to face the practical consequences of his policy or the reality of poverty. Inflation has only just dropped below 2%. The rise in the  Consumer Price Index has fallen below 2% for the first time since the government were elected. Neither wages nor jobseekers allowance have matched the rise in the cost of food, rent or other living expenses under this government. When benefits are held below inflation that means people must make a very real decision to stop buying healthy food or skip a meal. This is an experience that no one in government can ever really understand.

In case you were wondering, this is why I’m not on board with the Prime Minister’s moral mission. We shouldn’t buy in to the government spin on strivers and shirkers. This narrative of the deserving and undeserving poor is Victorian. It has no place in the new millennium.

The floods reveal our government’s hypocrisy

Photo by Jim Linwood, via Flickr

An interesting spectacle seems to be playing out on 24 hour news channels and national newspapers this week. A news story has taken hold of the news cycle that shines a light on the holes in the government’s political narrative. All week politicians seem to have been running around like headless chickens in front of cameras and microphones.

It’s difficult to describe the floods that have been disastrous for huge parts of the country in the past weeks as a mere news story though. News stories come and go like talent show contestants. As many as 5,500 homes have been flooded and train lines have been wrecked. Local businesses are hurting and farmland is currently unusable.

On Tuesday news sites were reporting the flooding could, in some areas, continue for weeks and months. Even after it’s over it could take many more months to get things back to normal. Sue Blackmore highlights in the Guardian how it took 15 months to get her home back to the way it was before it was flooded in July 2012.

But back to our politicians and the bizarre puppet show at Westminster. Last week it apparently became clear to the government that the flood situation was not going away and – if anything – getting worse. They knew they needed to do something.

Or rather, as I am starting to suspect with this government, they needed to look like they were doing something.

Now let me be clear: the government are certainly taking efforts to help the flooded communities. The Prime Minister has said publically that he will spare no expense in solving the main headline of the week. But when clarifying this Transport Minister Patrick McLoughlin said ‘money is not the issue while we are in this relief effort’.

Just to be clear, the money will keep flowing just as long as there’s a need for emergency relief.

Reports have been circling since last year of job cuts at the Environment Agency. Last month the BBC reported that around 1,500 jobs in the agency were to be slashed by October. More recently ‘senior staff’ have anonymously criticised the government for a ‘salami slicing’ approach to job cuts, which will include some frontline staff. Reports also suggest that, in coming years, already cash strapped local authorities will have to boost spending on flood defences to make up for an emerging central government funding gap.

All week, whether they’re shifting blame or promising an open chequebook, the government have been skirting round the Environment Agency job cuts issue. And the less said about a connection to man-made climate change the better, apparently. Owen Paterson, our environment secretary is quite openly a climate change denier.

The jobs at the environment Agency will be cut by this government, regardless of any temporary pause in the process. This week the government have had to shoot holes in their metanarrative of deficit reduction because the flooding is a real thing that is happening to real people. But sooner or later it will be back to business as usual and the coalition will continue their dismantling of vital public services.

The floods and their long term effects will not disappear overnight. But I have an unpleasant suspicion that once the TV new cameras are pointed towards a different story the government’s grandiose promises will stop. It won’t be a matter of public image anymore.

This government don’t seem to be playing politics anymore, only PR. The goodwill of a handful of swing voters has somehow become more important to our political elite than the wellbeing of the country. Perhaps this is all Alistair Campbell’s fault …

Politicians look indignantly at big business

By Chris Hansell

Photo by graziano88, via Flickr

What happens when politicians are feeling particularly hated and scorned? They have a bash at a group even more disliked and reviled.

This seems to be what took place at a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee in Parliament on Thursday, with MPs taking the collective chance to look indignant at big business.

The issue is plainly stated in the Independent: Google have paid only ‘£6 m in UK corporation tax in 2011 despite generating more than £3bn in advertising revenue in this country’. Now to ensure  there’s no risk of me breaking defamation laws (don’t worry – probably not a strong possibility) I should clarify a few titbits. Google’s Northern Europe boss Matt Brittin says while UK staff are involved in encouraging advertises to buy ad space the actual transaction of buying ad space takes place in Ireland.

What seems to have been at issue at the committee on Thursday is just how much of the ad selling process took place in the UK. Committee chair Margaret Hodge repeatedly talked of whistleblowers who offered payslips showing ‘substantial bonuses’ based on ‘sales’. As Mr Brittin was quoted as saying in the Telegraph “’the UK team are selling, but they are not closing’”. Still, legally speaking it seems that if the ad transaction takes place in Ireland it cannot be taxed in the UK. I’m not a legal expert.

This is not to say it is morally right. If, as Mrs Hodge claims, much of the ad selling process takes place in the UK then I think it is fair that it be taxed here as well. If what Mr Brittin says about selling and closing is true I imagine it would be quite hard for Google to generate the amount of ad revenue without the UK team. This is where the circle closes itself because the only people who can make the tax system fairer and more comprehensive are the people sitting in Parliament and looking aggrieved at Mr Brittin.

On the 17^th of June the Prime Minister will host G8 leaders in Northern Ireland. One of the key points of discussion David Cameron says he intends to pursue is the issue of international tax law. Perhaps it’s time Mr Cameron pulls his finger out.

Here’s some extra content I’ve produced relating to the whole tax issue.

Some other articles worth reading on the subject:

Amazon and corporation tax

Google boss to meet Prime Minister

The ‘bedroom tax’ and the poor

By Chris Hansell

photo by Byzantine_K

On Easter Monday one of the coalition’s most controversial policy changes came into force, dragging huge numbers of the population back into a harsh reality.

The ‘bedroom tax’ is not a tax per say. It will however reduce the amount of housing benefit received by claimants if they have one or more spare rooms. It has been one of the most divisive policies in long time, and has even led labour MP Frank Field to call for direct action against it.

In what has been a remarkably unsurprising move by the Chancellor the changes will affect some of the poorest people in our society – housing benefit is intended for people on low incomes. The new cuts will only affect people living in council housing or housing association properties.

A recent article on the BBC website points out ‘the government estimates that more than 660,000 claimants will be affected, with an average loss of £14 a week’. With February seeing a rise in the Consumer Price Index of 2.8% from its level a year earlier losing £14 a week for some families could be a disaster.

Putting aside the fact that those with spare rooms not claiming housing benefit remain free to leave them empty and gathering dust, those who are affected are asked to seek smaller accommodation. This is where the cruelty of this policy truly shows itself. Those seeking somewhere with fewer bedrooms face a chronic shortage of social housing.

In London in particular housing projects seem focused on replacing housing deemed dreary and derelict with playboy pads for the wealthy. The Guardian’s Anna Minton talked in a column this week of the situation in Brixton. Minton says ‘A combination of high rents and housing benefit cuts ensuring places such as Brixton will no longer be affordable to those on low incomes.’

For Minton it appears that housing policy in London has become about building homes for tax exiles, like the Strata building and its future siblings.

The problem of unaffordable housing keeps coming up. Last year controversy surrounded whether certain London boroughs intended to send those seeking housing in their area as far away as Stoke or Derby due to the absence of any affordable local accommodation.

The most depressing part is the rhetoric coming from parts of the media.

‘The first rule of political propaganda is that if you repeat a plausible slogan enough times, and that goes unchallenged, it will eventually be widely believed’. These are the words of the Daily Mail’s Stephen Glover, and I find it extremely difficult to ignore the irony of this statement. Mr Glover is of course talking about the bedroom tax, but his words could just as easily be used to describe how the mail has demonised people on benefits.

Searching the word ‘scroungers’ on the mail’s website currently brings up 176 articles.

Mr Glover’s assertion that the bedroom tax is ‘essentially voluntary’ misses the point that in many cases there simply isn’t the social housing available for those with spare rooms to move into smaller properties.

Meanwhile the top rate of income tax will be slashed from 50p to 45p in April, saving some of the wealthiest people in Britain up to £40,000. Corporation tax will also start a steady decline this year, starting at 28% now and falling to 20% by 2015. According to the Guardian this will cost the UK £800 million a year from 2016 onward.

Glad to see we live in a fair society.

The bedroom tax is just another example of where the priorities of this government lie. The ‘nasty party’ is alive and well and knows exactly who it wants to look after.

The European Union and Cameron’s cynical move

By Chris Hansell

Photo by the World Economic Forum, via Flickr

Four years is a long time in politics. Whether this passed through David Cameron’s mind before he made his speech in London last week is worth pondering.

By calling a referendum on EU membership Mr Cameron has solved some problems and created some new ones. Let’s set the scene.

In the short term the Prime Minister has put a lid on the fizzing disorder of Tory backbenchers and possibly the voter creep toward UKIP. The Telegraph excitedly observed that Mr Cameron’s EU speech has put both Labour and the Lib Dems in an awkward position.

But cementing his position with his party in the immediate future will mean the Prime Minister will have fewer cards to play later.

The chances of getting real concessions out of Europe are low. Harold Wilson, a more talented statesman than Cameron, was unable to get any substantial gains from the EEC during his renegotiation in the 1970s.

Euro sceptics, in and out of the Conservative party, will only be onside for a short time. Mr Cameron said awkwardly yesterday that ‘yes’ he will be supporting the campaign to keep Britain in. Nigel Farage is right to say ‘it is UKIP which will be leading the campaign for independence’.

Now, having laid everything out in a roundabout way, allow me to get to the reason I began writing this.

The Prime Minister’s decision is a political one. Cameron is pro Europe. Everybody with a nugget of sense knows it’s political. The newspapers have even printed this fact.

This depresses me more than anything else that came out of last Wednesday’s speech. The public get yet another reminder that politics is not about convictions but about party manoeuvring.

The Telegraph reports that several labour figures think ‘Mr Cameron’s move will ultimately force the (Labour) party’s hand to offer a vote’ without pointing out the political cynicism of such a strategy.

The Guardian even published a piece by Tony Blair’s former chief of staff Jonathan Powell outlining why Cameron’s strategy was flawed. Mr Powell is quite right in asserting that as a result of the speech the Prime Minister has wound up ‘snookering himself’. But I would add to this another flaw: decisions this big should not be made for party-political advantage. This is not what a democracy looks like.

As demagogues go Cameron and the class of 2013 do not come across as especially talented at politicking. Comparisons between Cameron and Harold Wilson found their way into almost every newspaper on Thursday, but I have already touched on the problem with this comparison. Wilson was a far more gifted tactician than our Prime Minister.

In terms of general election victories Wilson outscores Cameron four to none. As Peter Oborne details Wilson demonstrated astute political judgement in 1974 to keep Britain in Europe. Cameron on the other hand has yet to show this kind of skill at any point since he became Tory leader in 2005.

With U-turns abound (pasty tax anyone?) and rhetoric designed more to damage political opponents than to explain sincere policy today’s politicians are pretender statesmen.

In the words of the menacing Malcolm Tucker our political class ‘has given up on morality’. They aim for popularity alone, which they achieve through image rather than substance.

The Daily Mail’s Angela Epstein described Cameron’s speech on Question TIme as ‘the first clang of the bell that says the election campaign starts now’.

Today’s politicians are certainly in an election campaign right now but it is not one that has only just begun. In 2013 politics is one long campaign for re-election, and it has drained the people we elect of all substance. All that is left is a thirst to stay in power.

Is the Treasury picking on the poor?

By Chris Hansell

By 38 Degrees, via flickr

Are you a striver or a shirker? Do you get up early and put in a hard day’s graft? Or can you be found in your dressing gown watching repeats of Come Dine with me until the sun goes down?

George Osborne’s Autumn Budget Statement has already been picked apart and put back together again. A 1% cap on benefits spending rises until 2015 sits alongside a 1% cut in corporation tax.

Elsewhere the Treasury seems to be trying to cover its mistake from earlier this year of cutting the top rate of income tax to 40p. The threshold for the top rate will be capped to rise at 1% starting in 2014, meaning it will bring more people in to the 40p tax rate.

George Osborne already has a reputation as an old Etonian, but this Autumn Statement has made him almost Dickensian.

“Please, sir, I want some more”

When Iain Duncan Smith snapped at Owen Jones a few weeks ago on Question Time we got a glimpse of what today’s Conservative party really think the poor and out of work are. The Work and Pensions secretary talked of ‘about two and a half million people who were parked, nobody saw them, for over ten years, not working, no hope, no aspiration.’

As Mike Sivier points out at Vox Political Mr Smith’s statements were not entirely accurate. However the statements might tell us what the Tories see when they look at the poor and workless. They will be seeing more and more of them lately, as claimants for jobseekers allowance rose to almost 1.6 million in October.

Signs that unemployment might be easing should also be read with a chunk of scepticism. Speaking to the Telegraph, totaljobs.com’ s John Salt said ‘until we see growth in real job creation throughout the year, an underemployment bubble will continue to disguise the true picture of the UK’s labour market’. Mr Salt also highlighted the distortions created by temporary employment around Christmas and the Olympics.

Elsewhere an increasing number of claimants to housing benefit are in work, relying on welfare to pay for excessive rents.

Perhaps surprising is that the social housing sector, which accounts for well over half of the 5.05 million claiming housing benefit, just announced a record surplus of £1.4 billion for 2011/2012.

These profits come at a time when some commentators are claiming housing benefit simply subsidise excessive rents from landlords. With government cutting the social housing grant to landlords and housing benefit to be replaced by the untested universal credit the government is in danger of pricing people out of their homes. Excessive and rising rents are already a problem in parts of the country.

Plans for housing benefits will also affect as many as 380,000 young people who are either in work, looking for work or cannot work.

Like the outraged gentlemen of the Workhouse Board who were appalled by Oliver Twist’s request for a little more, the Chancellor cannot understand why the poor should need so much. The truth is that being poor is not something people chose, but it is a situation this government is making harder to be in.

Britain’s high streets

Today’s blog post is a little different. I’ve covered the state of Britain’s high street using an interactive application called Vuvox. Below is the link to my story as well as some footage recorded for it.

The State of our high streets