Cheat the Poor, subsidise the banks

The Slog

by John Ward

That won’t be the new Conservative slogan for 2014. But it will be the reality.

Even with a measure that smacks of common sense, there is something about this Government that cannot resist the chance to cheat. What is perhaps worse, they’re cheating the little people out of the little things, and leaving the enormous elephants untouched as they busy themselves chucking the furniture all over the place.

I must declare an interest here, in that I am retired and live in France nowadays. Mostly.

Quite sensibly, the DWP has decreed that people living expat in “hot” countries shouldn’t get winter fuel payments. But they’ve included France as a “hot” country. Much of central massif and entre deux mers France (where most of the Brits are) is colder – considerably so – in winter than Britain. But the bureaucrats who took such care after 2006 to feather-bed their retirement have chosen to include Francophone former colonies as also “France”. As these are all hot, their mean French average temperature pops just above the maximum for receipt of winter fuel allowance.

Well over half of all expats in France have one home, and they are not rich…far from it: thanks to the steady decline of the Pound under first Brown and now Nobsore, many of them are struggling. The amount being saved by this petty and unfair fiddle is in the order of a few million quid. Last month alone, the Coalition chucked £52bn at bank-proppingeconomic stimulation. But I don’t see any calculators being brought out to control bank bonuses, do you?

I’d be happier with no bank bonuses until they’re solvent again. I’d be fairly happy with all of them in an open prison until the debt to society (still around £0.83trillion) has been repaid. And if to get that we had to abolish winter fuel payments for anyone with an income above £25,000 a year…which is, as it happens, the current level of benefit cap….then I’d be delighted.

Camerlot is a truly unpleasant place. If things go Ukip’s way this year, it’ll become Govan, and get much nastier. All neutrals (and that includes me) take note.