Is Boris Johnson’s Workfare Scheme The Biggest Benefit Shambles So Far?

‘It was a bit strange, I had to go to a job interview the next day so they said either you cancel it, or you will be sanctioned.’
(Claimant, non-start, North London)

The DWP have repeatedly claimed that benefit sanctions are a last resort aimed at those who fail to stick to the ever more draconian rules.  Yet a damning evaluation of a workfare scheme aimed at young people in London reveals that those who had their benefit claims stopped or sanctioned for refusing to take part were more likely to find jobs than those who completed the programme.

The laboriously named Day One Support for Young People (DOSfYP) Trailblazer was cooked up by then Employment Minister Chris Grayling and London Mayor Boris Johnson as revenge for the 2011 riots.  This nasty attempt at collective punishment means that young people in many London boroughs can be sent on workfare for 13 weeks from their first day of claiming unemployment benefits.

A recently published evaluation of the Traiblazer reveals that the scheme has been an utter shambles from start to finish.  Almost half of young people sent on the programme signed off or faced sanctions rather then undertaking unpaid work with many claiming they would rather spend their time looking for a job instead.

They seem to have made the right decision.  Only around a quarter of young people who completed the scheme had found jobs by the time the evaluation was carried out compared to half of those who refused workfare.

The Trailblazer was supposed to be aimed at those aged between 18 and 25 who had little or no work experience.  The evaluation found however that 25% of people referred to the scheme reported over six months prior work history.  Some of these young people were scathing about the so-called help being inflicted on them:

“‘It didn’t help me [the placement] it didn’t give me any more experience than I already had and it just used up my time during the week when I could have been looking for work that I actually wanted to do.’
(Claimant, completer, South London)

The programme was run by the upcoming Atos replacement Maximus in north London and the Careers Development Group (CDG) in the south of the city.  These companies were supposed to provide ten hours a week ‘provider led jobsearch’ but the report finds they barely bothered.  Just over half of young people questioned said they didn’t receive any of these kind of job search sessions at all.

In encouraging news for those opposed to workfare schemes, the private sector providers reported that placements were hard to source with charities concerned about “press coverage and public perception” should they become involved with forced work. As usual the majority of placements were in charity shops.  The rushed nature of the referral process meant young people were expected to attend an interview with the provider the day after their intitial claim and start workfare the day after that.  This led to chaos with some young people turning up to their workfare placement only to be mistaken for customers with no-one knowing who they were.

Jobcentre staff also criticised the scheme, saying they were not given adequate time to explain the details of the placements in a short meeting in which they also had to process a benefit claim.  According to some of the participants they were misled by Jobcentres who implied they were being sent on a training course rather than full time workfare.  Some claimants reported being threatened with benefit sanctions due to being unable to attend an appointment the next day because they had a job interview.  Other claimants who did attend their next day appointments with the private sector providers were sent away because paperwork had not arrived.

The evaluation reveals that the vast majority of young people sent on the scheme were living in the family home which may have lessened the impact of benefits being stopped.  The report notes however that those living independently “would complete the Trailblazer regardless of whether they believed it was worthwhile and were consequently unengaged throughout the placement.”

A third of those who refused to attend forced work were sanctioned, whilst others just abandoned their benefits claim completely.  56% of those who did start dropped out before their time on the placement was completed.  Almost a third of them were sanctioned as well.  Despite this those who left early were significantly more likely to be in work at the time the evaluation was carried out – around five to seven months after the placements ended.

It is clear from this report that the young people who rejected this scheme were not workshy.  Instead they simply had a better idea of how to find work than the bungling fucking idiots in charge of the DWP.  They were even prepared to give up their benefits rather than face being ‘helped’ by the Jobcentre.  If young people’s future were not being casually destroyed by schemes like these it would be laughable. But there is nothing funny about this appalling treatment of those entering the jobs market for the first time.

You can read the report at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/378308/rr888-day-one-support-for-young-people-trailblzer.pdf

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The Rich Will Destroy London Like They Destroy Everything Else

One Hyde Park, where flats cost £100 million and no-one lives in them.

It is difficult to imagine a more grotesque situation than entire streets full of mansions lying empty in Chelsea, Knightsbridge and Kensington whilst just down the road the number of people sleeping in shop doorways soars. But this is the sad reality of a reckless free-market economy which turns our homes into just one more commodity to be gambled with by the rich.

It is impossible to guess just how big the London housing bubble will get, and how far outside of the capital the impact will stretch.  The news that house prices have risen by 18% in just one year should chill everyone who hopes to continue actually living in the city.

London’s housing market is being turned into a billionaire’s casino, and as more money pours in those returns will keep getting bigger.  Or at least they will until someone blinks.  And then the whole sorry scam will come crashing down, leaving the not quite so obscenely rich – who thought they were the players – discovering that they have been well and truly fucking played.

The end result could be a disaster as London is split between a minority of buy to let landlords, who have several homes, and tenants with none who can no longer afford the rents demanded to compensate for mass negative equity.

The real fucking tragedy though is that the only thing worse than the bubble bursting is prices continuing to soar.  Already most of the capital is unaffordable for those on low incomes.  With housing benefits now capped far below rents in many areas, the vast majority of London’s private tenants are only a P45, an illness, or an accident away from being socially exported from the capital.

As prices soar the creative heart of London will be ripped apart.  The days when young people could come to the capital, live in a squat, or a cheap if grotty shared house in somewhere like Hackney or Brixton are already long gone.  It is no surprise that beyond over-hyped internet start ups and hipster twats, London’s cultural life is decaying from the bottom up – those at the top just can’t see it yet.  Artists, actors and musicians will be forced to join the exodus out of the city along with street cleaners and care workers.

Social housing is now being re-structured as a stepping stone for young middle class professionals, with laughably called affordable rents set at 80% of soaring local rental markets.  Many of those who already have a council flat are being bedroom taxed out of the capital.  When these tenancies end, these homes too will convert to ‘affordable housing’ in many boroughs – which means they will be unaffordable for most people.

The problems do not end there.  Hundreds of thousands of children are currently growing up in social housing in London who will never be able to afford to live here when they have families of their own.  Meanwhile as the so-called ‘generation rent’ approaches old age, few will have pensions which cover London rents.  The housing crisis in London is only just beginning.

Yet to hear the debate about London’s housing problems you would think the problem only affects ‘young professionals’ hoping to get on the housing ladder.  It is as if the rest of us – millions of us – do not exist.  The people who built this city, clean it, drive the buses and look after its children are being quietly abandoned with no thought at all to our lives, housing needs or futures.

Across London, from Deptford to Tottenham, luxury flats are springing up like a virus – the first warning to the poor that this is no longer our town.  There was a time when gentrification took a couple of decades, areas like Notting Hill did not become the playgrounds of the rich overnight.  Now as soon as a Foxtons opens next to the launderette you know you’re fucked.

When this onslaught is finally complete London will die.  No-one wants to live in a city full of braying chinless wankers jabbering into smart phones about house prices all day.  A global city of the super rich may sound like a utopia to the likes of Boris Johnson or the toffs in government.  But they will destroy London like they destroy everything else.  The end result will be a city that may have lots of places to buy fucking artisan cupcakes or quaff Champagne, but it will be a place with no soul.  Their money will not be able to fix that.

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Hands Off London Transport Campaign Flash Mob January 10th 3pm Euston Tube Station

Like so many Tory policies, it is the poorest who will be hardest hit by Boris’ bungled plans to remove station staff from tube stations.

As well as making the London transport network even less accessible to disabled people or those with young children, this move will cause chaos for those who cannot afford annual or monthly season tickets and have to buy a ticket every time they travel on the underground.

Most Londoners will already have experience of arriving at a station and finding it impossible to buy a ticket due to broken machines.  Without station staff this will mean people are unable to travel, or are likely to face a penalty fare when they reach their destination.  Revenue Protection Officers, working to strict targets, rarely listen to excuses.  For those on the lowest incomes these can be devastating, particularly as these £40 fines rise to £80 if not paid within 21 days.  For someone on the dole this represents over a week’s income.

Already the cost of transport into Central London makes it almost impossible for those on the lowest incomes to travel regularly into the city centre.  That is why many of the people working in pubs, shops and restaurants in Central London are from overseas, often living in dormitory style accommodation or hostels.  Someone living in Zone 6 who needed to travel into London everyday would face a weekly fare bill of a staggering £55 – approaching a third of a weekly net minimum wage.

It is not that people from the UK are too lazy to take this kind of work, or even that there is a benefit system which pays people to stay at home as lying politicians claim.  The stark truth is that it is financially impossible for many Londoners to take low paid work in the centre of the capital due to astronomical rents and transport costs.

Stripping away station staff will only make this problem worse, particularly for disabled people who are already excluded from much of London’s transport system.  On top of this nearly 1000 station staff are set to lose their jobs.

Any Mayor worthy of the position – and no-one ever has been – should be striving to make London’s transport system both fully accessible and affordable, or even free.  Boris Johnson is doing the opposite.  A wave of strikes and protests is inevitable, and they deserve the support of all Londoners.

A flash mob will get the ball rolling this Friday 10th January.  Meet at 3pm in Euston Tube station ticket office, for more details visit: http://dpac.uk.net/2014/01/hands-off-london-transport-campaign-supported-by-dpac-flash-mob-january-10th-3pm-euston-tube-station/

For more information on the Hands Off London Transport campaign visit: http://handsofflondontransport.wordpress.com/

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Boris Plans To Build 27,000 Unaffordable Houses A Year To Ease London’s Housing Crisis

Londoners should brace for themselves for an influx of toffs whilst the poor sleep on the streets if Boris Johnson’s latest Housing Strategy is given the go ahead.

According to the Mayor, 42,000 new houses a year are planned for the capital  over the next ten years.  Many of these houses will be bought by global super-rich vultures who seem intent on buying up London properties as investments, not homes.  Most of the rest will go to highly paid professionals.  5,000 will be built for ‘long term private rent’ at the current soaring market levels.  Of the total number of new homes Boris plans to build a mere 15,000 a year will be ‘affordable’.

Yet even this will mean nothing to the hundreds of thousands of low income Londoners desperate for decent and secure housing.  40% of these ‘affordable’ homes will be ‘low cost home ownership products’. The Mayor’s own report admits that the average annual income of people who access these schemes is £33,000 a year – over two and a half times the salary of someone working full time on minimum wage and £7,000 more than the amount of out of work benefit a family of any size can now receive in London.

For those not on £33,000 a year – which means most of London – that will leave 9000 homes a year.  That is less than the 14,500 households that were accepted as homeless in London in 2012/13 and they represent the tip of the iceberg.  As the Bedroom Tax and Benefit Cap bite the number of homeless families is likely to soar.  There will be nowhere for these families to go if Boris gets his way.

And even these 9000 new homes will not be anything like the kind of long term social housing that is so desperately needed.  These new homes will be on fixed term tenancies and the majority will charge an ‘Affordable Rent’ – which can be anything up to 80% of market rents.

Half of these homes, just 4,500, will be set at “discounted”  rents.  But this according to the Mayor means: “set at the lower of up to eighty percent of market rent or the local housing allowance (LHA).”  The lowest Inner London LHA rate for a three bedroom property is £305.77 a week in South East London whilst in Inner North, East, South West and West London LHA rates are set at the maximum payable under housing benefit rules – £347.48 a week.

For a family with three children who are out of work, this would mean an income of just £150 a week once rent is paid.  These families will not be able to afford to stay in the capital  If you are unable to work due to sickness or disability, are unemployed or have caring responsibilities then you can fuck off out of town as far as Boris is concerned.  As the report says: “access to these homes would be targeted to those in work in the first instance”.

A development in Stratford announced last year and aimed at low income workers was charging £323 in ‘affordable rent’ a week just for a two bedroom flat a long way from the centre of the capital.  This is more than could be earned in a week even for someone on the much touted Living Wage.  The so-called Living Wage isn’t even enough to pay for an Affordable Home.  That politicians of all parties trot out these glib phrases with a straight face shows just how out of touch the political class has become.  What is transparent bollocks to the rest of us is a credible housing strategy  to these clowns.

You can read the Mayor’s proposed housing strategy at: http://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/London%20Housing%20Strategy%20consultation%20version_0.pdf

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Watch Out Surrey, Here Come The Benefit Claimants!

The Home Counties could soon be swamped by tens of thousands of families fleeing London due to this months benefit changes.   With almost every London borough set to become unaffordable for families on benefits, many people will be sensibly looking to the surrounding areas to escape imminent homelessness.

The cap begins this months in Croydon, Bromley, Enfield and Haringey, meaning Surrey and Kent in the south and Hertfordshire and Essex in the north of London could be first to take the hit.  Luckily the leafy home counties still have some reasonably priced  accommodation for those on benefits who wish to remain within commuting distance of friends and family in London.

Take a look at this delightful 2 bedroom house in Mertsham, the perfect starter home for a young single mum looking to start a large family.   Two single claimants wishing to escape London’s housing benefit caps could try this cottage – unsuitable for children due to ongoing renovations nearby – but ideal for a group of young unemployed friends who like the country air.

In reality Surrey residents should not be overly concerned about the upcoming influx.  Far from the lurid tabloid portrayals, the vast majority of claimants are thoroughly decent people.  Statistics show that those on sickness benefits are no more likely to commit crime than any other sector of the population.

Whilst claimants are no more likely to commit crime than anyone else, they are often high users of public services and so can be expensive.  Despite this Government’s lies, many people on sickness and disability benefits are subject to the Benefit Cap and will need to leave the capital.  GPs and hospitals across the South East are likely to see a surge in demand as a result.  Some large families leaving London may not speak English as a first language, but Surrey’s excellent schools system should soon help clear that up.

The first mass influx will begin over the next few months as an estimated 40,000 families affected by the Benefit Cap will be forced to seek housing outside the capital.  This is only likely to be the beginning however as soaring rents and shrinking benefits could mean soon almost all private sector tenants on benefits will be priced out of the capital.  Hundreds of thousands of claimants could soon be making a move to Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Berkshire and Kent over the next few years.

Boris has been only too aware of the impact of the radical changes to Housing Benefits.  Back in July 2010 he wrote to Iain Duncan Smith (tif file, spotted by @AnitaBellows12)  about the likely impact of the unprecedented cuts.  According to the Mayor, quarter of a million Londoners could be affected by the changes with many moving to ‘fringe’ areas of the capital.  Since he wrote that letter the situation has become far worse, with the emergence of the Benefit Uprating Bill which will cap annual Housing Benefit rises at 1%. London rents rose by 7.9% over the last year.

Boris has spotted it will not just be poor inner Londoners affected but those in the leafy commuter belt, where some people actually voted for the clown.

And Tory voters in the Home Counties will only have themselves to blame as public services are overwhelmed and unemployment is exported out of the capital straight into their backyards.  So desperate have they been to punish London’s poor with the badly thought out Benefit Cap, they have cut off their noses to spite their already chinless faces.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Blundering Boris Leaves London To Burn: Fire Stations Slashed

Bullingdon buffoon Boris Johnson has let the clown mask slip with the news that 13 of London Fire Stations are to be closed.

Whilst the announcement was due to be held back until fire brigade staff had been informed of the closures, Boris blurted out details of the closures on BBC London Live this morning.

Boris has also suggested that fire fighters may be forced to use Mini fire vehicles which fire fighters have complained ‘make them look like the bloody Italian job’.

The fire fighter’s union, the FBU (@londonfbu) have described the cost cutting plans as ‘reckless and wrong’.  The fire stations facing closure are: Belsize, Bow, Clapham, Clerkenwell, Downham, Kingsland, Knightsbridge, New Cross, Silvertown, Southwark, Westminster and Woolwich.

This decimation of public services comes after furious edition of BBC’s Question Time in which the audience repeatedly denounced the threatened closure of Lewisham Hospital’s A&E department.

These are the cuts that don’t make the headlines and are happening around the UK.  Closed hospitals, fire stations and slashed public services were the hallmark of the last Tory government.  Only the faces have changed, the agenda – to privatise and destroy public services for good – remains exactly the same.

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The Tories on Drugs

Theresa May on drugs : “I have a very tough view on drugs.

I think there are far too many people who think drugs is something you can do without it having an impact, but it does have an impact.”

May was responding to this week’s call from the chair of the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs, Prof Les Iversen, that people caught in possession of drugs should not face criminal records.

David Cameron on drugs: “I’m allowed to have had a private life before politics in which we make mistakes and we do things that we should not and we are all human and we err and stray.”

Boris Johnson on drugs: “It was jolly nice.”

Louise Mensch on drugs: “Although I do not remember the specific incident, this sounds highly probable… since I was in my twenties, I’m sure it was not the only incident of the kind.”

Francis Maude on drugs: “It was hard to go through Cambridge in the 70s without doing it a few times.”

Oliver Letwin on drugs: “At Cambridge, I was a very pretentious student. I grew a beard and took up a pipe. On one occasion some friends put some dope in a pipe I was smoking. It had absolutely no effect on me at all. I don’t inhale pipes.”

Tim Yeo on drugs: “I was offered it on occasion and enjoyed it. I think it can have a much pleasanter experience than having too much to drink.”

George Osborne on drugs:

The law on drugs: “The maximum sentences for possession of each class of drug are:

• up to seven years in prison or an unlimited fine (or both) for a Class A drug
• up to five years in prison or an unlimited fine (or both) for a Class B drug
• up to two years in prison or an unlimited fine (or both) for a Class C drug“

David Cameron Looks More Like John Major Everyday

The Tory wipe out in the local elections leave David Cameron looking more like John Major than ever before.  Despised, clueless and inept, the hapless Prime Minister blunders on with no ideas and no direction.

There are differences between the two.  John Major came from a circus family, not a family of millionaires.  He was also elected, unlike this toff Government.  And whilst Major had bastards in his cabinet to contend with, Cameron has got the biggest bastard of all in City Hall.

The insipid Lib Dems are likely to prove the least of his problems.  If yesterday’s election showed anything, it showed the Lib Dems are nothing at all.  Their party is dead.  Clegg and Alexander will no doubt carry on in their lucrative jobs, but the only hope Lib Dem MPs and the few remaining Councillors have of saving their salaries is a very public rebellion. Don’t hold your breath.  That they are watching their beloved party collapse around them and still remain silent just shows the cowardly heart that beats in the chest of every Liberal Democrat.

It may yet be Boris who proves Cameron’s undoing.  If the Bullingdon Boy rival remains popular whilst Cameron remains despised, there will undoubtedly be calls for Boris to challenge for the leadership before the next election. Despite being a darling of the Tory right, Boris is far too much of a dick to ever actually be Prime Minister.  But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want it.

Cameron recently stated that he believes children should stand up when an adults enters the room.  When Tories are in trouble they go ‘back to basics’.  If David Cameron seems out of touch now, a lurch to the traditionalist right will see him made a laughing stock.  Tory MPs bleating about Tory values, such as not letting gay people get married, shows the rump of the party hasn’t moved on one inch from the fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists which infected the party in the 1990s.

This election was a clear vote against austerity.  George Osborne’s ideological crusade to line the pockets of the wealthy at our expense has not only wreaked devastation on people’s lives, but has driven us into the longest recession since the 1930s.  Yet the Tories will plough on with more of the same.  Out of ideas and in the pockets of the super rich, there’s no turning back for Cameron now.

If he flinches then the Tory right will destroy him and crown Boris.  If he carries on he will plunge the country into further chaos.  He’s choosing chaos to save his own skin.  Only two years into this toff Government and already it’s every man for himself.

John Major presided over the self-destruction of the Tory Party in the 90’s, behaving like a rabbit in the headlights as sleaze, scandal and bitter in-fighting wrecked his Government.  But even Major wouldn’t have slipped up over Cornish Pasties.  John Major’s ill-fated traffic cones hotline seems positively competent compared to the Tory’s recent performances.  And once more the Tories are finding themselves mired in sleaze, as Leveson and cash for questions reveal that envelopes stuffed with cash and dodgy deals remain at the heart of all Tory Governments.

Cameron like Major, is letting his temper get the better of him.  John Major kept his outbursts behind closed doors.  Cameron prefers to expose his fury in the House of Commons, telling older MPs they should retire or insulting and patronising his own female MPs.  There has rarely been such an arrogant little posh boy in Government.

The truth is, just like John Major, he’s no good and won’t get any better.  The elections show the country is fast waking up to this.  Many in the Tory Party always knew it but chose to remain silent.  Until now.  That a floppy haired clown like Boris should be the greatest political threat to the Prime Minister just shows how bad things have got.

None of this is of any comfort to the millions facing poverty, ill health and homelessness due to this Government.  The Westminster soap has little impact on our daily lives.  Even the Mayoral election has been little more than a boring version of X Factor.  If the Tories collapsed tomorrow the grinning idiot Milliband would be no better.  The gaggle of public school boys in all parties are determined to steer us into neo-liberal hell.  The only opposition is us now.

Half A Million Children Condemned To Poverty At A Stroke

Almost half a million children have been condemned to lives of desperate poverty with a stroke of George Osborne’s pen.  Figures released yesterday reveal that 450,000 children are to be affected by changes to Working Tax Credits, which will see part time workers stripped of vital benefits.

Families have lost up to £73 a week due to changes, which came into force at the beginning of April, and mean that people working under 24 hours a week are no longer entitled to Working Tax Credit.  Around 200,000 families could find themselves better off on benefits due to the changes, the precise opposite of Iain Duncan Smith’s lie that the Tories will make work pay.

The deluded toffs have claimed that hard working parents should simply ask for more hours to ensure they keep the benefit.  Only people who have never had a proper job could think that workers can simply demand more hours if they need more cash and bosses will be only too happy to comply.  The latest Government figures show that only around 5% of families have been able to increase their hours to satisfy the new conditions for Working Tax Credit.

Time and time again out of touch millionaires tell us we need to work harder to stay out of poverty, as if soaring unemployment and the record rise in part time workers is down to laziness on the part of workforce.  Sick and disabled people are told to simply get a job by lying ministers who pretend there’s no discrimination in the work place and jobs are falling out of the sky.  Sacked Remploy workers are lectured on the need to re-integrate into the mainstream workforce, a noble aim, yet there seems to be no rush by employers to recruit disabled workers.  People on the dole are being forced to work for free, yet there is little chance even this will help them find work.

It’s hardly surprising that clowns like Boris Johnson and David Cameron are so out of touch.  Boris Johnson claims the quarter of a million a year he earns for his shit column in the Telegraph is chicken feed for a task he knocks out on a Sunday morning.  David Cameron probably wouldn’t even notice if his income was cut by £73 a week.  Yet these arrogant posh boys give themselves tax cuts whilst the rest of the country is forced into hunger and homelessness.

Boris is around £16,000 a year better off due to Osborne’s tax give away.  That’s over 200 times more than the amount being cut from the weekly incomes of the country’s poorest families.  And it’s not just Working Tax Credit.  Many families will already be struggling with the cuts to Housing Benefits, sickness benefits and Educational Maintenance Allowance, along with soaring food prices, fares and utility bills.

The Government of privileged little rich boys are unleashing poverty on millions of families on a scale that is unprecedented in modern history in the UK.  They claim to be cutting the debt our children will be forced to pay off, yet they are doing it by taking food from their bellies now.  And still the debt rises as austerity pushes us into the longest recession since the 1930s.

David Cameron will never know the stark cold terror of realising you don’t have enough money left to feed the kids.  He will never experience the panic of the pre-pay electricity metre plunging your home into darkness unexpectedly.  He can’t know what it’s like to be forced to visit foodbanks, or to wander round the supermarket wondering if you dare steal anything just to put food on the table.

Yet for millions of people this is the reality of everyday life and still these toffs want to take more from us.  Will they not be happy until our children are begging on the streets for food?

The Government is doing the exact opposite of securing the UK’s future by creating this social time bomb.  Millions of children growing up with nothing will enter adulthood feeling they have nothing to lose.  Shanty towns could emerge as tens of thousands of people lose their homes over the next two years.  Crime will soar and even more pensioners will die alone, unable to keep the heating on.  Riots like those seen last Summer could become an annual event.

Working Tax Credit has been a sticking plaster for the shamefully low wages billionaire bosses pay their workers.  Housing Benefit is a subsidy to landlords so eager to profit from the decimation of social housing in the UK.  Meagre benefits end up in the pockets of Tesco share holders or energy company bosses.  The vast bulk of the Welfare State not only subsidises the rich but protects them from being murdered in their beds.  The last time social inequality was so out of control Europe was plunged into a state of near revolution.  Only nationalist wars could protect the ruling class.

Nationalism isn’t so fashionable these days.  David Cameron’s class war may yet come to look more like civil war.  The effete little posh boys in Parliament won’t look quite so fucking cocksure when their mansions burn.

Boris Johnson – The Joke That’s Not Funny Anymore

It’s now over two years since Boris Johnson claimed he would not accept ‘Kosovo style social cleansing’ on his watch and then proceeded to do fuck all about it.

For new claimants the Housing Benefit caps, which place most London rents out of reach of the low waged, the unemployed, disabled people or pensioners, have now been in place for over a year.  This effectively ended the safety net of the Welfare State for Londoners in the private rented sector.  Under this toff Government, should you be made unemployed, or become sick or disabled, then in all probability homelessness will follow.

Street homelessness is already predictably soaring.  Charities claim this is just the tip of the iceberg with thousands of young people sleeping on friend’s sofas, in hostels, squatting or living in night shelters.

The Government’s response has been to introduce legislation to ban squatting, whilst Boris has raided the budget allocated to rough sleepers for five million pounds.

In January the Housing Benefit caps came in for existing tenants, forcing thousands of people from their homes.  This is precisely the kind of ‘social cleansing’ Boris promised wouldn’t happen.  It’s happening.

The bungling Mayor didn’t even appear to notice until someone questioned him about it yesterday when he blustered that he would intervene.  Whatever he attempts now will be too little far too late.  Even if he scrapes the election, it’s unlikely he will do anything about the housing crisis in the city.   He never does anything.  The problem is set to get far worse next year when the £500 a week benefit cap is brought in.  Boris won’t do anything about that either.

It is a national scandal that unscrupulous landlords in London have made the capital unaffordable to anyone but yuppy scum and Russian billionaire gangsters.  But Boris shouldn’t be squeamish about supporting high Housing Benefit payments.  After all, he earns quarter of a million a year writing his shit column for the Daily Telegraph.  A sum he describes as chicken feed.

It is no surprise that rents are soaring in places like Newham who are attempting to re-locate their poorest residents to Stoke.  The Olympics is undoubtedly one reason.  A far bigger factor is the number of tenants forced out of Central London Boroughs into the outer regions.  This has sent demand soaring in the outer London boroughs with rents predictably rising as a result.

Council Tax rises are sure to follow.  The experience of Stoke should serve as a stark warning to the leafy Home Counties:

“We have seen in the past relocation putting strain on other services because the medical, education and justice systems are unprepared for an influx of very needy people.

“The result was huge, unplanned pressure on local services, the collapse of already vulnerable neighbourhoods and the rise of divisive right-wing extremism.”

The Stoke Housing Association asked to house London’s poor has predictably told Newham Council to fuck off.  It is the outer London Boroughs who will bear the brunt of the problems outlined above.  Any pretend cut in Council Tax that Boris has promised will be obliterated by the social costs of exporting thousands of London’s poorest residents out of the city centre.  Surrey could come to resemble the ghettos of Paris as a result.

With tube and train fares also set to rocket, hitting hard pressed commuters the most, the cost of the Tory Mayor and his party’s policies will prove disastrous for outer London.

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has tried to distance himself from the chinless idiots currently plunging the nation into economic chaos.  But he is cut from the exact same cloth as Cameron and Osborne.  A true blue toff, his Dad was a Tory MEP who worked for the World Bank.  His brother, Jo Johnson is a Tory MP for Orpington.  Just like Cameron, Boris went to Eton and then joined the odious Bullingdon Boys at Oxford.  He is as out of touch and clueless about how most people live as the worst of the chinless knobs in the Cabinet.

When London was burning during the riots last year Boris couldn’t even be arsed to come back from his holiday.  When he finally turned up in Peckham he was jeered by locals.  Central London residents already think Boris is a twat who knows nothing of their lives.  His crude ‘water melon smiles’ racism and comparisons of gay marriage to bestiality have not been forgotten by those in the heart of the city.  Boris has tried to laugh off his past bigotry.  He’s little more than a posh Jim Davidson.

After eight years of Ken’s joyless scab junta it’s unsurprising that London elected a comedian to London Mayor.  But the joke has worn desperately thin.  Boris treats the job as little more than an excuse to quaff champagne with bankers and flatter his ego by waving his crap floppy hair about for the cameras.  And he only bothers to do that part time.  All Boris has come up with in his four years as Mayor are a few embarrassing looking bikes that weren’t even his idea and a couple of buses.

Boris earned over a million pounds last year.  He seems to care far more about increasing his riches than actually doing any work for Londoners.  Boris will do nothing to help ease the housing crisis should he be elected.  He will bluff and bluster whilst Council Tax, rents and fares soar in outer London.  And he is likely to be a national fucking embarrassment come the Olympics.

Boris should have served as a stark warning of what happens when arrogant little posh boys are given political power.  Lazy, brutal and incompetent, no-one sums up this current Government better than Boris Johnson.  He was never even really that good on the telly.  There will be no relief from the mass homelessness, social cleansing and desperate poverty emerging in the capital if Boris is re-elected.  And no amount of Boris’ spiffing japes will change that.

Disclaimer:  In the interest of balance it should be pointed out that Ken Livingstone, Brian Paddick, Jenny Jones, Lawrence Webb, Siobhan Benita and Carlos Cortiglia, are also cunts.