Polly loses the plot

Polly Toynbee has written an engagingly mad article in the Guardian entitled As the scales tilt in Labour's favour, this is a pivotal moment for ED Miliband.

If she's as far off in the title as she is in some of the details of her analysis, Labour will be out of power for twenty years as they richly deserve.

As an example of the sheer insanity of her arguments I give you this quote:

"Arguments can be turned: a cap of £26,000 on total benefits sounds eminently reasonable – but less so once people know most goes straight to landlords, often rack-renting slums at shameless prices."

Excuse me?

Let's get this straight Polly - you've noticed that much of the money handed out in benefits goes straight to landlords, sometimes the worst kind of Rachmanite ones.

* And that the effect is often to put the price of rented accomodation up to ridiculous levels.

* You might have added that one knock-on effect of this is to similarly boost the price of entry level owner-occupied homes to unaffordable levels.

* Hence finding affordable housing is made much harder for large parts of the population.

* So having established that higher levels of these benefits means taking more money from taxpayers, including lower-paid taxpayers, to go straight into the pockets of landlords while distorting the housing market so as to crucify the young and the low-paid, you actually imagine that the majority of taxpayers and people looking for homes will see this as an argument AGAINST capping those benefits?

Now where did we put those forms for detention under section 2 of the Mental Health Act ....

Comments

JAK said…
Hear, Hear. - Well said.

I'm just wondering where we would get the money to fund those extra benefits to pay nasty landlords from? - Perhaps we could borrow it [facepalm].

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