Idiocy in Westminster

The Palace of Westminster - courtesy Wikimedia Commons

There have been reports in the paper recently about young people's disaffection with Parliament and their consequent failure to vote.  The young aren't the only people disaffected with our present government.  I worry - though not very much - about becoming Disgruntled of Hastings, like those crotchety pensioners writing in from Tunbridge Wells, but have recently been thinking of the most obvious bits of Parliamentary idiocy.

Let's start with the so-called Bedroom Tax.  It all sounded so logical: council house tenants hogging accommodation too large for them needed to be induced to move to smaller homes, so as to free up the larger ones for those on the waiting list.  To incentivise them, remove some of their benefit if they stay in the over-large house or flat.  Nobody seems to have checked the availability of the smaller houses or flats that make the system work.  The result is that people are not moving, because there's nowhere for them to go.  They're merely being deprived of money that in many cases is needed to live on.

Of course there's an obvious solution, which is to build more public housing.  Which brings us to idiocy item number two: the Help to Buy scheme, i.e. government assistance to people wanting to get onto the housing ladder and buy their first property.  When everyone predicted that this would result in rocketing house prices and increased personal debt, the emollient tones of senior civil servants and members of Parliament chimed in to say that wasn't a danger and if it was something would be done.  Even the Bank of England appeared to belittle the likelihood of a housing bubble.  Hoho.  What do we now have?  housing prices rising everywhere, but particularly in London and the south-east.  Meanwhile those suffering from the bedroom tax are visiting food banks to stay alive.

This is stupid, but not necessarily nasty, unlike the increasingly aggressive attitude to immigrants.  UKIP has a frightening tendency to voice prejudices that should be kept quiet if not stifled altogether, and the Tories are now joining in.  Figures show that immigrant workers use less public services than the natives, and therefore contribute more in net terms to the economy.  Without immigrant labor many jobs would not get done because the unemployed Brits find them unacceptable (care home workers, carwash attendants, fruit-pickers etc.).  Nonetheless, the government is reinforcing the view, held by many, that immigrants are taking jobs from the natives and leaching the economy.  The British don't like to be compared with Germans in the 1930s, but the parallels are fairly clear.  So watch out, all minorities.

I could go on, but won't.  It doesn't make me want to withhold my vote.  But, for the first time since I was in Germany in 1968, I may join people protesting in the streets.  

Antony Mair