Benefit caps - just change the damn laws in London!

Make no mistake, capping benefits at £26K is popular, and capping them at less than £26K would most likely be even more popular. Everyone who walks around with their eyes open knows who is on the receiving end of these above average income payments. It's those annoying people who have loads of kids and no job.

£26K after tax is like £34.6K for a single, childless worker who pays tax. The vast majority of folk in the UK, me included, earn considerably less than this. With child tax credits and child benefit factored in, earning £34K for a childless man is like earning £26K for a bloke with 5 kids.

Now the crunch comes when you factor in private sector rents. A fairly liberal (on a good day) northerner, like me, baulks at the idea of simply handing someone this much cash on a plate. Whereas a fairly liberal Londoner thinks it's 'fair' because of the rents in London.

Northerners who lose their job in London do tend to head back up North, and in fairness, they bill the jobcentre for travel to job interviews in London. Proper Londoners don't really have the option of heading 'back' up north do they? So what to do? Should the coffers/taxpayer fund their high rents? For how long?

Well, in my view, the problem here is that London has been politically divided into 33 'Boroughs'. No other city exists like this, even Birmingham has just one city council. The simple answer is to change the housing laws in respect of London. Forget the 'Paris doughnut' bogie, all cities have their depressed areas.

While we're on this, can anyone explain to me how someone with hardly any connection to the UK, let alone London, can turn up at the housing office in a Zone 1 London Borough and get put straight on the housing list? I suspect corruption and backhanders are rife here - this needs to be investigated - and London housing laws need changing, perhaps with a greater role for the elected Mayor.

Why not simply merge all the LB internal audit departments into the Mayors office, with some new blood, and root out (and deport where appropriate) the fraud?