£530 HB cut for 200,000 households by Christmas and why Owen Smith couldn’t lead a dog …

Today I was reliably informed the cut in the overall benefit cap figures of 11.5% in London and 23% in the regions will begin on Monday 7 November.

The average housing benefit cut per week is just under £76 per week and this means some 200,000 new families will see a cumulative £530 cut in their housing benefit by Christmas Day.

But hey let’s not be negative and say enjoy Christmas because its the last one you will spend in you current home as you will undoubtedly be evicted because of it before next Christmas – and probably well before Easter by which time your housing benefit cut will be at least a further £1000 on top of this.

Almost four in five of you will NOT live in London as the reduced benefit cap of £384 per week in the regions sees it impact most there.  So can we please stop with the London, London, Bloody London only focus the benefit cap receives which angers the hell out of me.

Of course that anger is nothing compared to the additional minimum 500,000 children and perhaps as high as 750,000 children the reduced overall benefit cap will see evicted and made homeless by Christmas 2017.

If you want the detail to all of the above statements – and it is very involved and complex detail that I have been producing on this for over four years when it was first mooted – then see here here and here and in many other posts I have drafted about what may as well be called the Fritzel policy as the cap does fit!

Those of you who are wondering why one of the links above is in red (while the others are in blue) is because that link discusses the Labour Party and what it has said about the reducing overall benefit cap.

The Labour Party supported its reduction and even included it in their last general election manifesto AND perhaps more significantly it reveals everything you need to know about Owen Smith who is on record as (a) being in favour of the household benefit cap, and (b) takes the view that Labour cannot oppose this because the policy is ‘popular!’

I have never voted Labour and never will yet when the Labour Party takes a position that we will not oppose the Tories overall benefit cap policy because it is POPULAR despite it leading to at least 500,000 more children being evicted and having their life chances irreparably damaged then the Labour party and the Labour movement is dead.

It means that Owen Smith will say anything to get elected and will not hold any form of basic humanitarian principle because it would not be POPULAR.  It means Owen Smith is a fraud with the thinnest veneer of superficiality coursing through every one of his overtly ambitious veins.  He is a charlatan.

Corbyn has and did say he would scrap the overall benefit cap at the TUC conference last year  and on the very same night his Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the minister responsible for Labour’s policy on this Owen Smith flatly contradicted Corbyn’s policy on BBC Newsnight!

Owen Smith’s blatant contradiction of Corbyn’s policy statement that Corbyn as leader will scrap the overall benefit cap you can see here on Newsnight and you can read here in the Guardian which also includes the words Owen Smith used:

“We are very clear that we are in favour of an overall reduction in the amount we spend on benefits and we are in favour of limits on what individual families can draw down because I don’t think the country would support us saying we are in favour of unfettered spending.”

The policy is popular and we (meaning Owen Smith) will not argue against a policy because is considered ‘popular’ and even when it will make at least 500,000 more children homeless.

This is abject defeatism and says it is too difficult for Owen Smith to counter so instead of even trying Owen Smith will condone half a million additional children being evicted and made homeless with their life chances well and truly fucked over rather than risk his personal ambition!

I correct myself reader, this is not just abject defeatism and overt personal ambition it is the predetermined policy of a shithouse who has no place in ANY political party even the most rabid right wing variety.

In an article for the New Statesman back in January Owen Smith once again flatly contradicted the position that Corbyn pledged at the TUC conference in September 2015 over the overall benefit cap:

Smith announced that he would soon begin a review of social security policy for the party. Corbyn has pledged to abolish the household benefit cap but Smith said that the current limit of £20,000 (£23,000 in London) should be reformed, rather than scrapped. “We’re in favour of there being a measure that would guarantee that you couldn’t have unlimited benefits for one household, I think there has got to be some means of doing that,” he said.

So where is this review Owen Smith?  You were the Shadow Secretary of State for DWP up until June this year and yet in that time we see no mention of any such review, no policy idea from any such claimed review and not one bloody word about this specific policy – the OBC reduction – which you will have known will see at least 500,000 more children evicted and made homeless at the time you penned this article in the New Statesman.

You have never issued one word in public about what the reduced overall benefit cap for individual households will manifest.  Not one word about this policy creating a minimum of half a million children homeless despite being the Labour Party’s responsible minister for this Tory policy.

You are a coward, a charlatan, a fraud, a career politician who cares only for his own personal backside even when it means half a million children will be evicted and made homeless.  Owen Smith is spineless and always has been yet in today’s highly charged political atmosphere any criticism of Smith or Corbyn brings howls of derision from the polarised supporters of each, yet there is no doubt that Owen Smith is spineless and in the lay language of any Labour supporter a shit house.

Before the usual suspects and the Owen Smith cronies and all the anyone-but-Corbyn brigade spit out their proverbial dummies and open their mouths before putting their brain into gear think on this …

… if Owen Smith is not prepared to stand up for or lead on such a grave and known humanitarian crisis of 500,000 UK children being made homeless and says nothing because this Tory policy is apparently “popular” he is not fit to lead on anything is he?

Corbyn needs to assert on this policy too and bloody quickly.  In just over 3 months time this policy begins and it will see at least 500,000 new children being evicted and made homeless and compare that to the current figure of around 100,000.  Any and every member of every party including the Conservatives who came up with this deluded ideological fuckwittery of a policy should call for it to be scrapped.

The leader of the Labour Party even if the British Labour Party was led by Genghis Khan should be screaming opposition to this policy from the highest height.

Corbyn’s instinct or even knowledge (who knows he may have read one of my scores of detailed blogs on the subject!) was right when he stated that Labour would oppose the overall benefit cap reduction in September 2015 and changing the Miliband policy of supporting it from 6 months earlier in the 2015 election manifesto, or maybe he was just lucky but who cares.

Corbyn needs to scream his and the Labour Party’s opposition to the overall benefit cap policy and reduction and the fact that in doing so he exposes Owen Smith to be unfit to lead a dog is a bonus for all Labour Party supporters.

The Tories under May have quietly backtracked on the roll out of the Universal Credit policy of ‘the last lot’ which now applies to Cameron’s administration clearly and quietly is the operative word here as Theresa May’s administration could quietly bring back hanging and no one would notice such is the free ride the media are giving her due to the pantomime that the Labour Party has become.

Its a minimum 500,000 additional children that will be evicted, made homeless and have their life chances irreparably damaged by the way.  Just think on that whether you vote Tory or Liberal or SNP or Plaid Cymru or Green or any political party and even if you would kill for either Smith or Corbyn!

Children for fucks sake!