Not Like the Good Old Days

In headier days, Westminster's Conservative council gained a certain notoriety through being run by a supermarket heiress and thieving psychopath who ran a gerrymandering scheme involving social cleansing and the sale of public housing. The present incumbents have attempted to continue this honourable tradition in a more strictly legal fashion, by trying to cut a blind man's social security payments under the provisions of the bedroom tax. Being a barrister, the shirker in question argued that the room in question was not, and never had been, used as a bedroom, and the judge had the temerity to rule in favour of the ordinary English meaning of the word rather than the spirit of Iain Duncan Smith. The council blamed the man's landlord and didn't even bother to attend the hearing; but the Department of Workfare and Privation has said that it may appeal, presumably once the brilliant Duncan Smith has passed an emergency law retroactively defining a bedroom as any room which can be conveniently utilised as an excuse for kicking the disabled.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has courted the ire of the Conservative Party chair and wit Grant Shapps by defending a Brazilian special rapporteur and foreigner. Raquel Rolnik, it may be recalled, provoked the righteous wrath of the Murdoch-Dacre Self-Regulation Squad by criticising the Government's war on the poor. According to an aide of the UN high commissioner for human rights, Rolnik broke no rules and operated within the UN's code of conduct; which of course is just the sort of behaviour that leads to Saddam Hussein. Worse yet, Rolnik's visit was "planned and organised over many months in consultation with the government and in compliance with rules and procedures". Grant Shapps, however, says otherwise; which probably tells us all we need to know about the truth of the matter.