Fighting our corner

As I've mentioned various times on this blog, the word "fair" is overused by politicians and often done so without thought for what it actually means. The trouble is, the left have been allowed - primarily by the media, but with the implicit consent (and now the explicit consent) of the Conservative party - to corner the market on who decides what is and isn't fair.

So I was delighted to see the Taxpayers Alliance come out with all guns blazing on Channel 4 news last night. Confronted with Jon Snow at his foaming mouthed liberal best (or worst, depending on your outlook) demanding from a TPA spokesman whether it was "fair" that "poor people" will be "deported" as a result of housing benefit changes - the TPA spokesman first chided Snow on his use of the word "deported".

Snow backtracked claiming that he meant "deported from London". This in itself reveals that the modern liberal is either an ignorant dunce (deport means to expel from a country and London is not a country) or an unprincipled stirrer who will abuse the language and rhetoric to inflame and aggravate a situation.

Having made Snow to look like the bigoted idiot he is, the TPA member then asked Snow whether it was "fair" that hard working taxpayers should be forced to pay the housing costs of people in homes that those taxpayers themselves could never hope to afford? Snow, of course, had no answer and ignored the question - but the TPA member reiterated the question and Snow's bluster and fake anger blew itself out into babbling, incoherent nonsense.

I couldn't help applauding the TPA member for the way he handled Snow - he made the veteran leftie look like a fool and it was well overdue. What is more, the point he made is one which I've been saying for years - that why is it fair that honest hard working taxpayers are bled dry to feed the habits of the workshy and feckless? How is it fair that someone should receive free and without any effort on their part, something which those who are paying for that could not expect to acquire themselves?

The fact is that housing benefit it totally out of control in Britain and the decisions made by the coalition will do little to stop that - but even such a modest attempt to get to grips with something which is nothing less than a national scandal is derided by the left as they attempt to ring fence their captive clientele.

The truth is that £400 quid a week is still a damn sight more than most of us taxpayers could afford to pay each week in rent (it's only marginally less than I pay monthly for my mortgage). If we can't afford to live in central London then why should anyone else? What gives them that right?

Incidentally, the old garbage about "not enough homes being built" was also trotted out last night. This isn't true. The problem isn't that there aren't enough homes being built, it's that those we already have aren't being used correctly. There are estimated to be upwards of one million homes lying empty and unused - largely due to a taxation system that rewards people for keeping them empty and unused.

If we made better use of our existing housing stock and stopped importing foreigners while paying British people to sit on their backsides all day then there wouldn't be any housing shortage at all - but then neither would house prices have risen at such a rate and that is a central pillar of our economic policy (debt based on property value).