Shibboleth

October 31, 2010 in fail

Somewhat in the spirit of this XKCD cartoon. There are memes that allow us to tell if other people are likely to be worth speaking to – like biomarkers for language. For example, someone who disbelieves in plate tectonics probably has a wide range of other weird beliefs.

The latest one of these I’ve noticed is the idea that you have to be unemployed to get housing benefit in the UK. Knobber after horrible knobber shows up talking about claimants “in houses working people couldn’t dream of”. Wrong, wrong, wrong. So unfortunately, I’ve come to the parting of the ways with Tim Garton Ash. In an otherwise mostly sensible column:

It’s surely not right that people can be worse off if they choose to work than they would be on welfare; or that people on inflated housing benefits make rented accommodation in some areas unaffordable for the working poor.

You don’t have to be unemployed to get housing benefit, Tim. I predict bad things.

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