A housing policy fit for nobody.

Do you remember the hazy days of May 2010 when Dave and Nick joined hands to lead us all into a brave new world? The yoke of state control was going to be lifted off people’s shoulders, the books would be balanced but not at the expense of the most vulnerable members of society.

That was always just so much pie in the sky wasn’t it? If you needed proof of that look no further than the figures released by the Department of Work and Pensions this week which show that some 450,000 disabled people will be up to £13 a week worse off from April 2013 thanks to changes to housing benefits. It is all part of the government’s plan to force people out of social housing deemed to be too large for their needs into smaller but more expensive properties.

Combine this with the replacement of the Disability Living Allowance under Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms and a review of the statutory services councils are obliged to provide for disabled people and you have a perfect recipe for chaos, injustice and despair. Disability charities are already reporting clients contacting them who feel suicidal with anxiety and the ‘reforms’ are still a good two years away.

As Neil Coyle of the Disability Alliance told the BBC this week he had spoken to people who had told him ‘that if they lose the kind of support that helps them to work for example, they’ll lose the ability to be independent and they may take their own lives.’

Is that a price worth paying for making savings on the housing benefit budget? It hardly seems logical to try and cut welfare costs by making people more dependent; but then I didn’t do PPE at Oxford so what to I know?

Regarding the review of council’s statutory responsibilities a spokes person for the Department of Communities and Local Government said that ‘while some duties remain statutory others may no longer be required or may no longer be needed or may create unnecessary burdens or restrictions on local authorities.’

Nobody, on the government side anyway, seems to have spotted the flaw in this argument, that if given the chance many councils will see this as a golden opportunity to slough off a lot of difficult responsibilities. As a spokesperson for SCOPE told the BBC ‘under these proposals councils could decide not to provide any services for disabled people,’ creating ‘a very real threat to the lives, security and futures of disabled people.’

What of the golden couple on whose watch this farrago of injustice is taking place, surely such a thing can’t happen now that Dave has detoxified the Tories and Nick (helped by St Vince) is on hand to be the government’s conscience; but it has.

It’s happened because David Cameron has reverted to Tory type, rattling the nation’s sabre on the international stage whilst railing against the ‘enemies of enterprise’ at home. As for Nick Clegg; Jiminy Cricket has been pretty much squished and these days all he can do is prattle ineffectually about ‘alarm clock Britain’ and how hard it is to be unpopular.

Meanwhile the banks go on playing roulette with other people’s money and paying themselves obscene bonuses and conditions for the most vulnerable people in society continue getting worse. As if to make himself feel better Citizen Dave occasionally talks breezily about how he’s going to use the ‘big society’ to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony; all along knowing that the truth is the tune will be called by the banks that got our national finances into such a mess in the first place.

CONFUSING SMOKE SIGNALS.

As a reformed smoker I should be in favour of the government’s proposals to ban cigarettes from being displayed openly in shops and to be sold in plain packaging; but I’m not.

This is, in part, because it seems that nothing makes a grubby habit like smoking seem more glamorous to foolish and impressionable people than making it subject to official censure. As for plain packaging, the marketing departments of the tobacco companies will soon turn that to their advantage, as they did with the restrictions placed on press and poster advertising.

What really sticks in my craw though is the rank hypocrisy of the government lecturing smokers about their wicked ways whilst eagerly accepting the tax rake off from the habit that is slowly killing them.

SOFA POLITICS

As part of his campaign to patronise the nation into submission David Cameron, in his ‘just call me Dave’ incarnation, pitched up on the BBC’s dreary The One Show this week, sharing the sofa with a rather startled looking Barn Owl and prattling about what he likes on his pancakes.

Politicians love this sort of soft soap because it makes them appear more ‘human’ and has the added benefit of meaning they don’t have to answer the sort of tough questions they might face on Newsnight.

Where will it all end? Probably with Citizen Dave landing a guest spot on Rastamouse so that he can explain how he’s going to use the ‘big society’ to make a bad ting good.

The families we aren’t all talking about this conference season, but should be.

David Cameron says on the eve of his party’s first conference since returning to power that we should all stop worrying and learn to love the spending cuts, or at least put them ‘into perspective.’

The comments were made in an interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr, as the government confirmed big changes to the benefits system. Changes that Mr Cameron called ‘refreshingly radical’ and which he promised would always make people better off to be in work than claiming benefits.

Welfare reform is at the heart of Conservative plans for cutting the deficit and will see most current benefits combined into a ‘universal credit’ that will be more responsive to changes in the circumstances of claimants. Iain Duncan Smith, the architect of the reforms promised they would ‘break the cycle of dependency and poverty that has become so entrenched in poor communities.’

Who could disagree with that? It should pay people to work; benefits should be a short term support not a life sentence. The trouble is reality tends to play havoc with the best laid plans of politicians.

For a start the economic outlook is far from promising, Ireland is tottering on the brink of bankruptcy again and may drag other European economies into the abyss. At least one Tory ‘big beast’ has expressed reservations about the future and since it is Ken Clarke, Chancellor during the recession of the Major years, it might be a good idea to listen to what he has to say.

Speaking to the Observer on the eve of the party conference he said he was ‘at the more pessimistic end’ of opinions about the economic future and was not ‘sunnily optimistic about where the Western economy is going.’

He expressed support for the cuts to public spending and said there was a below 50% chance of a double-dip recession hitting Britain, but refused to rule out the possibility of one being caused by ‘some fresh wave of global fear and crisis’ in the near future.

Last week’s Labour conference was all about families, or rather the feuds within a particular family; it was, if you like, Eastenders with policy documents.

This week’s should be too, but this time about families who live in the world outside the Westminster bubble. Not the families claiming universal benefits when they’re rich enough to do without or the ‘feckless scroungers’ who normally surface whenever welfare reform is discussed.

The families in question are those of people working in threatened public sector jobs or struggling to get by on benefits. They aren’t ‘public sector fat cats’ of the sort pilloried in some sections of the tabloid press or guilty of making a ‘lifestyle choice’ to be on benefits; they’re just doing their best to get by.

Later this month they’re going to be dealt a body blow by the cuts to public spending from which many may never fully recover. It is by no means, despite all their talk about ‘sharing the pain’ and all being ‘in it together’ whether a government composed largely of people with first rate educations and little idea about life as lived by ordinary voters, fully grasp the extent of the suffering they are about to unleash.

They will have to learn quickly though, this goes as much for the Labour Party as it struggles to come up with a credible alternative as the Tories making the cuts in the first place, because vague talk about the ‘blitz spirit’ from politicians will cut little ice with people who didn’t have much to start with and now risk losing the lot.