A TALE OF ONE CITY, AND THE REST OF THE UK

I was amused by this opinion piece in the Mirror, written by Brian Reade, and on the subject of the Bedroom tax, and just what this government of rich boys is doing to one class of people (theirs), compared with another class (definitely no one they have ever met). 

Apparently we have agreed to pay the new governor of the Bank of Britain, no, sorry, England, along with his salary of nearly £900,000 a year (didn't Eric Pickles get himself in a strop about people in public service earning more that the prime minister?), £5,000 a week housing allowance. 

No wonder they have had to reduce everyone else's entitlement.

It appears that George Osborne has been able to surmount the immigration laws which say that you can only employ a foreigner (from outside of the European Economic Area) if no one within the EEA can do, or is willing to do, the job. So, out of the 500 million plus people from all of Europe, including, in London some of the highest paid bankers in the world, there is no one, who can run the bank of Bri, England.

Amazing! Well, enjoy Mr Reade's comments. He's far funnier than I am.

A vampire on a week-long bender would not have as much blood as currently leaks from my heart at the plight of Diana Carney.

The wife of the next Bank of England Governor says her family are struggling to afford a home in London as they relocate from Canada, despite her millionaire hubby’s £874,000-a-year salary.

She blames those pesky French tax emigres for taking up all the “suitable homes” in our capital, and she doesn’t know where to turn. Sacre bleu!

Maybe we should organise a whip-round? No, hang on, we’ve already done that by agreeing to give the Carneys a £5,000-a-week housing allowance.

So maybe she should have a word with the family friend in his 40s I was talking to this week, who, like 660,000 others, is sinking under a cloud of fear, panic and depression at the bedroom tax which kicks in on Monday.

He’s been out of work for two years, and despite a daily search, can’t (like Mrs Carney in a Mayfair estate agency) find anything suitable.

Since his mother died, he lives alone, and although he’s asked to be moved into a smaller housing association property, none is available.

So he faces the prospect of moving many miles away from where he’s lived all his life, going into sheltered accommodation with pensioners, or seeing his benefit slashed from £70 a week to £52.

Like more than 80% of everyone affected by the bedroom tax, he has no viable alternative but to stay put and instead of crawling along the breadline, sink below it.

And there are many, disabled people especially, who are worse off than him.

There couldn’t be a worse time to do this to the poor.

The lack of housing in Britain has rarely been as stark, and the jobless situation in many towns and cities where the public sector is being slashed has rarely been as bleak.

The Tories know this. Yet still they push through this vicious attack on the most vulnerable people, with slavering lips.

Hoping the odd leaked story to the Press about a jobless mother of eight living in a mansion will make the electorate believe that’s the norm and give them votes for hammering the spongers.

But what they’re really pushing is desperate people into homelessness, food banks, loan sharks, crime, mental illness and suicide.

Contrast the gravity of their housing anguish with Mrs Carney’s and you’ll see we truly do live in Dickensian times.

It’s still a Tale Of Two Cities. The few who work in the City of London are rewarded for their failure and propped up by a gold-plated safety blanket.

The jobless masses in other ­cities are human collateral in an ­ideological war they never asked for, and they are powerless to fight back in it.

There are 2.5 million people on the dole, many made jobless through a banker-induced depression.

Yet there are currently 770 known bankers in the UK earning more than £1 million a year.

The reckless who gambled with your money and mis-sold insurance which resulted in billions being stolen from hard-working people prosper, while those at the bottom perish.

We call this a Christian country. But maybe we should ask this Easter why we don’t put that philosophy into action.

Because we can crucify those at the top as much as we like but they always seem to rise up from the dead.

Meanwhile the poor, as the Bible says, will always be with us.

And from Monday we’ll ensure many are considerably poorer.

(Cartoon from the Independent other pics from net.)