Daily Express insults millions of families hit by bedroom tax

If you see this man, fuckin' punch him

Today, Express journalist and all-round shitbag, Patrick O’Flynn used Labour party ‘opposition’ to the bedroom tax as a foil to rebuke the millions of adults and children about to be thrown into chaos by the government’s back-of-an-envelope legislation.

Cognisant of a shift in public opinion, which had previously given the green light for the Tories to commence their attack on working class people, the Express and it’s chief political filthbag, O’Flynn, gave out a clarion call to suppress this growing working class camaraderie.

O’Flynn spins out the semantic trick that so many tory trolls have been using lately to pooh-pooh the bedroom tax: “it’s not a tax it’s a reduction”, they exclaim. This is because they know tax-memes spread fast and could potentially damage the government, and by extension their grotty little cut of the City pasty.

Any tax is a reduction and any reduction is a tax, whether that be a tax on the amount of space you inhabit or a reduction in the amount of income you receive. What ghouls like O’Flynn do is attempt to make a distinction between deserving and undeserving. If you’re the former, then you are a hard working, law-abiding tax-payer; if you’re the latter, then you aren’t accorded the same ‘respect’ and can be treated contemptuously. Fact is, they treat all working class people with contempt full stop.

Conservatives are desperate for the bedroom tax to be viewed as a reduction because this fits into the rhetoric of reducing the housing benefit bill —and by extension welfare, which feeds into the fallacy of austerity.

The Bedroom Tax affects nearly 1.6 million people in the UK. From the 1st of April 2013, tenants of housing associations & social landlords will be hit by a possible 25% cut in their housing benefit if they under-occupy their home. This means: 1 spare room will see a 14% reduction in housing benefit; 2 spare rooms will see a 25% reduction in housing benefit. Many tenants will be expected to uproot their families, move away from their communities, their support networks and downsize to properties that simply do not exist

When scolding tenants for occupying properties they call home, nowhere does O’Flynn mention that there is a chronic lack of 1-bedroom properties to downsize to, as admitted by the DWP, effectively stranding tenants in properties even if they did want to move.

When complaining about social sector tenants, nowhere does O’Flynn mention that the housing benefit bill will rise as a result of the bedroom tax because those forced to downsize into the private rented sector will be charged higher private sector rents. In fact, the government is paying private landlords 2.2 billion more per year than it does to the social sector.

When ignoring the chaos the bedroom tax will bring to millions of lives, nowhere does O’Flynn mention the complex fabric of needs and requirements of tenants in the social sector, preferring to lump social sector tenants altogether as the undeserving causers of the public sector deficit.

Nowhere does he mention the plights of families soon to be torn up by the bedroom tax; of those suffering a recent bereavement; of those wanting to die in their homes with dignity; of those children about to lose their room because they don’t meet the requirements of the government’s legislation.

And all to score brownie points with the cronies that bankroll his and his papers drivel?

You heartless piece of fucking scum.