Lead story

Court rules against bedroom tax

by Daphne Liddle

THE COURT of Appeal has ruled that the hated Tory bedroom tax discriminates against a victim of domestic violence and the family of a disabled teenager in a ruling that could have implications for many more victims. The bedroom tax is a cut in housing benefit for tenants who are deemed to have more rooms in their home than they need. Because housing benefit is strictly means tested claimants by definition cannot afford to pay more rent than they already are. Their benefit is cut by 14 per cent for the first room that is deemed extra to their needs or 25 per cent for two or more rooms deemed extra to their needs.

Affected claimants are supposed to seek smaller accommodation. In most cases this is unrealistic because such accommodation is not often freely available. Even when it is, it often means moving from social housing to privately rented accommodation at a much higher rent so the state has to give them much more housing benefit.

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Court rules against bedroom tax

Londoners fight the Housing Bill

AROUND 1,500 Londoners gathered in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park last Saturday for a rally and march to protest at the Housing Bill currently making its way through Parliament. The march was organised by Lambeth Unite Community branch with other housing groups such as Defend Council Housing.

This Bill will accelerate the social cleansing process now going on throughout London and many other cities in the UK, whereby the costs of renting or buying a home are rising beyond the reach of most working class people and the middle classes as well.

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Londoners fight the Housing Bill

Editorial

Socialism or barbarism

DAVID Cameron has returned from negotiations with European Union leaders boasting that he has won vital concessions, parading these as some sort of triumph for British democracy and culture. But these concessions of which he is so proud give the British government the right to refuse in-work benefits to European migrants until they have been here for some four years.

What does that really mean? What sort of migrants would want to claim in-work benefits? It would be those who are young, possibly with children, who have jobs but low paid ones, part-time or zero-hours jobs where they cannot be certain of their income from one week to the next.

Cameron is proud that he is now free to let these people starve. What sort of pride is this? Proud to be mean and cruel to vulnerable people!

It is the same sort of pride that refers to “swarms of migrants” — the refugees from Africa and the Middle East camped in Calais — as though these desperate humans were rats.

We see this attitude reflected in the open Nazism of a large section of the racist right-wing protest against the refugees in Dover last Saturday. It is reflected in the callous cruelty of the Department of Work and Pensions towards the sick, the disabled, the long-term unemployed and single parents. There is now a sickening pride in being cruel to people who cannot answer back.

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Socialism or barbarism