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That was interesting. I’ve just delivered our old Belling oven to its new owner, a 19-year-old girl moving into a council flat who’d seen our advert in the Post Office window.

Why she’s qualified for her flat, I don’t know. I didn’t ask because it felt like prying and I’m not a journalist any more. But what our chat did reveal was that she’s broke; the flat’s a bit damp and crappy and poorly maintained; she has a very dependent sense of entitlement to better; and she works. Hard. (She’s a care worker).

She’s not scrounging by any stretch of the imagination – but at the same time she expects more from the council. It’s summed up in the attitude to the £200 in vouchers she’s been given with which to move into the empty flat. My first reaction would be to say “thanks”. Her reaction is that £200 is not enough. 

(She’s right, actually, when you think about it. The council, for example, insists that any electrical work has to be done by a fully qualified and certificated professional. Quite rightly. But the council’s £200 would barely pay for half a day’s work by an electrician. So what does she do?)

She’s tracking down second-hand buys like our cooker and an old sofa. She’s calling in favours and help from friends and family. She’s saving for wallpaper and hoping to make the best of things. And she’s doing it all while working, of course.

I mention all this because of today’s news that the number of working people claiming help with the cost of their housing is soaring – up 85 per cent since 2009, an extra 417,000 families receiving aid for which the total bill, by 2015, will be £25billion. Raising the rent means different things to landlord and tenant.

And here, once more, yet again, is a classic example of economy creating expense. We stop building or improving social housing to save money; we hand over lots of responsibility for providing housing to private landlords, who, because they are not bound by agreed notions of fairness and decency, keep ramping up the rent; therefore, more people ask for help; therefore, it costs us as a society more to keep private landlords rich than it would to provide a decent state subsidised housing system. (Ah, but you say, wealthy landlords pay us back in taxes. To which I say: eBay, Starbucks and Osborne’s cut in the top rate of tax blow that sorry argument out of its stagnant water).

My friend will doubtless cut corners with her flat because she has no money; she will doubtless ask the council to effect repairs and tackle the damp; we will pay for this.

Wouldn’t it have saved us all money in the long run to have ensured the flat was in a good state before letting it, to have helped my friend to have decorated and furnished it, to have provided a council subsidised work team to ensure all essential work was done to a high standard that would cut down the risk of future problems, repairs and expense?

Wouldn’t it save us all money if we were able, as a country, to help young people live in safe, warm homes at a subsidised rent, freeing them up to spend more money in shops, which would employ more people, so more tax could be earned and less benefit paid?

It all seems so simple, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I wished my friend luck and left her to it, grateful that I’m not in her situation and aware that she will continue to be demonised by the Daily Mail reading classes as a scrounger.

The truth about benefit claims is, of course, far distant from the “truths” peddled by right-wing politicians and their house newspaper.

The website Red Pepper often offers useful myth-busting. It helps us, for example, to understand that single mums claiming housing benefit and workshy scroungers on the dole are not the drain on the country’s resources that they are claimed to be.

The largest element of social security expenditure (42 per cent) goes to pensioners. Housing benefit accounts for 20 per cent (and about one fifth of these claimants are in work); 15 per cent goes on children, through child benefit and child tax credit; 8 per cent on disability living allowance, which helps disabled people (both in and out of work) with extra costs; 4 per cent on employment and support allowance to those who cannot work due to sickness or disability; 4 per cent on income support, mainly for single parents, carers and some disabled people; 3 per cent on jobseeker’s allowance; and 2 per cent on carer’s allowance and maternity pay, leaving 3 per cent on other benefits.

Maybe we could bear that in mind as we leave my friend in her new council flat, clutching her £200, wearing her care worker’s uniform.

Maybe we could bear all of this in mind as we have a Starbucks coffee before going home to buy something on eBay: while people in work have to claim support to live, Starbucks and eBay pay pennies in tax on their hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds of income.

The wretched Osborne may rise from his first class seat for long enough to point out that if such companies had to pay tax like the plebs, they may not favour us with their kind presence in this country.

To which we all say: “Well, sod off then.”

My dear old things

Off we went to enjoy the company of Blowers at the theatre. Henry Blofeld was delightful: two hours of anecdotes and reflections delivered in the most immaculate manner by a great raconteur able to delight an audience with nothing more than the power of our language and his great wit.

We loved his stories and his phrases: I particularly liked his description of a man of different sexuality as somebody who was “taking guard an unfathomably long distance outside off stump”, and of some young gentlemen friends of Noel Coward’s as men “who took guard somewhere between fourth slip and gully”.

Anyway, good old Blowers dealt with the question of euchre as raised in my little extra blog in the most charming manner.

Old Father Cullingham and I offered a sketchy explanation of what all this euchre business was about. Blowers had a chuckle and very kindly signed a 9 of diamonds card (“the curse of Scotland”) sponsored by Brother Hamster.

The card will now be framed and mounted on the wall of the Church House Inn, and a facsimile will become the Henry Blofeld Trophy competed for at the World Euchre Championships (Linkinhorne Rules) on December 1.

And if you get the chance to catch up with Blowers at one of his theatrical evenings, do take it. You will have a splendid time.

 

Notes and Queries

Brother Lockett greeted the demise of Andrew Mitchell in the right and proper low-key fashion with the comment: “Now for Gove.” Amen, Brother.

Sister Wizard Woman thinks it is about time this blog ‘did’ Nick Griffin, and I shall attempt to oblige in the coming weeks despite her unkind remarks about my grave sufferings.

I must although thank this MotersRUs chap, who I am sure bears an uncanny resemblance to Brother Stents’ un-Blowerslike grasp of the English language, for suggesting that what I needed was a shot of redex up my exhaust pipe. Matron!

And I must note that even David Cameron has been repelled by the utility companies and their ongoing blackmailing of their poor customers. Though I do find it sad that he hasn’t the wit to realise that if he forces them to charge customers their lowest tariff, that lowest tariff will very quickly bear a remarkable resemblance to the highest amount of money they think they can get away with. So there’ll be no change there.