bedroom-tax special by spark up! legal correspondent: miss jacquetta oven-baked

beware, iain can-can smith's claim that he could get-by on 53 quid-a-week is probably a seasonal april fool's stunt, but nevertheless it admirably demonstrates his complete and utter lack of sympathy for the poor old job-seeker's predicament. our esteemed minister is right, of course - if forced into that deeply undesirable situation, we could all probably just about scrape through on 53 quid-a-week, with a few spadesful of initiative and a little benefit-regulation-bending help from our friends, yet as i say, the miserly old muppet misses the point altogether, because one of the main hurdles facing the unemployed welfare claimants is the emotional and psychological abuse hurled at them by cruelly condescending and sadistic jobcentre staff, by self-righteous parasitic work-programme advisors, by patronizing free-loading private landlords (who grasp even more rent off their housing benefit tenants than their cash-paying ones), and by the secretary of hate for work and pittances himself.

obviously were the incredibly dodgy sociologist to be set-up in the artificial position of making-do on 53 quid-a-week by some reality suppressive tv-show, he would, being the original mr smug, always know in his heart-of-hearts that he was the millionaire minister of preaching-to-the-poverty-stricken and would chirpily cheap it out for a couple of weeks - possibly periodically popping over the garden-fence to the fully-loaded in-laws for rounds of cucumber sandwiches and bridge...

...however, surviving long-term on benefits for year-upon-miserable-year, whilst observing all the nitty petty life-restricting rules and supporting young children, is a different cup of tea altogether...

...so what would be really nice, would be to find a means of levying a surcharge on the mad-cap minister so as to recover the millions of pounds of tax-payers' money which is currently being mindlessly squandered defending iain's elasticated ego in the british courts - because then he could be bust-to-rights, bankrupted and have his mock-tudor homestead seized by the council in order for it to be relet back to him for the tidy sum of say £5300-a-week rent...

...and naturally, the accidental indigent would have deductions made to his jobseeker's allowance for each and every unoccupied room which anti-socially graced his grandly state-subsidized mansion.

ping.