Belfast Telegraph

Monday 17 March 2014

House about that, Nelson

Nelson McCausland

More ridiculous rulings from the Hill this week. Nelson McCausland has said there'll be no holding off in introducing the new, so-called "bedroom tax" next year.

This is the new policy whereby anyone living in social housing and on benefits, will not have their full rent covered by housing benefit, if there are more bedrooms in their house than they actually need.

So, for a single person, that's anything more than one bedroom. Apparently, an extra room is a "luxury".

So what's the problem? Can't all those singletons simply move into one bedroomed houses instead of rattling around in those huge two and three bedroom mansions that litter housing estates here?

Well, yes they could, if there were any one bedroom houses to move into.

When's the last time you saw a one bedroom house anywhere? There are hardly any. So they're penalising people for living in a standard house, when there's nowhere else for those people to go?

It's reckoned this new policy will affect 32,000 tenants. That's a lot of extra hardship, for people who can least afford it.

Honest to goodness, the stuff that government is coming out with now to try to "save money" is becoming so ridiculous it's giving Swift's A Modest Proposal a run for its money.

Latest News

Latest Sport

Latest Showbiz