Osborne possibly faces possible reprimand, possibly

The name Julie Brighouse probably means nothing to you. We'd never heard of her until now either. All we really need to say about her is that she lived with her partner for seven months in a house near Tamworth - the trouble is, she was claiming housing benefit and income support during that time and "forgot" to let the benefits agency know she was not living alone. As a result, she was paid £5,329.89 to which she was not entitled.

Ms. Brighouse got caught, and was accused of benefits fraud. Once found guilty, she had to pay back the full sum along with costs amounting to £725 and was also required to complete 100 hours of community service.

You have almost certainly heard of George Osborne, because he's the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, the MP for Tatton in Cheshire and a man who has been the target of more than one article here - we maintain a particular loathing for him as one of Cameron's cronies and make no claims otherwise. Your man Ozzy finds himself standing outside the headmaster's office this morning because Parliamentary Standards Commissioner John Lyon says that he shouldn't have stated the mortgage on his constituency home - which he had declared to be his second home, thus making himself able to claim the mortgage payments on his expenses bill even though the second home allowance is actually supposed to be for MPs to buy a home in London so they can attend debates in the Commons (more about Ozzy's mortgage-related shenanigans here) - was £450,000 when it was, in fact, £445,000.

Citizens of Tatton! Want to see your MP picking the dog eggs off the grass and fishing the Special Brew cans out of the lake in your local park? We thought you might - we would too, even though doing so would mean travelling considerably further north than we're generally comfortable doing (even after immunisation shots). However - you can't. That's because George Osborne is one of the Special People and doesn't get punished for fraud like us common folk.

Five grand doesn't sound a vast amount of cash when we're talking about the price of a grotty council flat off half a million quid. But as Councillor Robert Pritchard of Tamworth Borough Council said following the prosecution of Ms. Brighouse, it's "a considerable amount of money which should have gone to someone who really needed it." As in, not to somebody who has a fortune of over £4 million and stands to inherit both the Baronetcy of Ballentaylor and a tasty share of his dad's profitable interior decor business. In other words, not somebody like George Osborne. With a salary of at least £64,766 he could in all probability be said to be in a position to pay his own chauffeur fees and still have change to buy a couple of DVDs of a speech given by himself, rather amusingly on the subject of value for taxpayer's money.

Now, never let it be said that Acid Rabbi treats people unfairly (even though such an allegation is undoubtedly true). In Ozzy's defence, we'll mention the fact that John Lyon has accepted the MP's claims that everything he claimed he claimed in good faith, having quite rightly sought advice from Commons authorities. We'll accept that - Lyon doesn't seem the sort of chap who will fall for any old bullshit to us. We do wonder, however, if those authorities standard reply to any question that boils (with very little heat) down to "can I rip off the British electorate please?" is: "Hey, why not? Go ahead, and sod the proles!"

Despite all that, Lyon believes that Osborne has not been entirely honest in his claims and, later today, George will hear whether or not he is going to face any sort of reprimand. One thing that seems certain is that he will be required to pay something back, something said by the BBC to be a "relatively small amount of money." Not the full amount plus costs then, like Julie Brighouse? It seems safe to assume you won't be able to see Osborne picking up litter and removing graffiti in any Cheshire parks while doing community service, either. Pity, really - I'd take a few dogs down there the night before and get them to do what dogs do best.

Ms. Brighouse may be a benefits cheat, but we think her punishment was sufficient and we're sure she's very sorry. She really doesn't need to have the obvious fact that MPs are not subject to the same laws to which the rest of us must comply rammed down her throat too.

Immigrants do not jump social housing queues, says EHRC

An Equality and Human Rights Commission study has produced evidence that immigrants in Britain cannot "jump ahead" of residents born here in queues for council or social housing, a widely-held belief much played upon by the British National Party. Once settled here - which means once they are just as liable for taxation as anyone else and thus entitled to the same assistance - no greater percentage of council housing is occupied by immigrants than by any other group.

Immigrants from all around the world have long been contributing to British society and culture.
Royalty-free image by Indeed, found at gettyimages.co.uk.

At present, housing of this type is awarded entirely according to the needs of the applicant and immigrants are not able to claim an occupancy until five years after they have settled here. John Healey, the Housing Minister, said that he believes the miconception that certain groups are favoured and as such have a better chance of finding accomodation is "largely a problem of perception" and that he wanted to "nail the myth" that certain groups are losing out. The commission's study discovered that just 11% of those immigrants to have arrived in Britain - all of them asylum seekers, amongst the most needy people in society - are given help with housing.

Most interestingly, once they have been here for five years and become eligible for help, a mere one in six live in council/social housing - precisely the same amount as people born here. This provides more proof that the BNP's policies are designed soley to pander to common fears, rather than to recognise and solve any real problems in society, in a blatantly cynical attempt to woo voters.

The worry, which may be unfounded but is nevertheless very real, that immigrants are unintentionally preventing native British people from receiving the help they need has been impossible to miss. Certain sections of the media - especially certain tabloid newspapers - have whipped what was once a vaguely-felt worry into fully-fledged racism by printing highly-questionable stories which have resulted in violence such as the shocking attacks on Romanians in Northern Ireland, attacks that deliberately endangered the lives of children.

The Government are to be held at least partially to blame for this, as they have done little or nothing to prevent the escalation of a misconstrued concern into racial, xenophobic and nationalistic hatred other than using the issue as a cheap way to score points and voters as each party claimed to be the only one who will do an ill-defined "something about it." Had they have addressed the public's concerns previously, we would now have a wealth of evidence suggesting that immigrants contribute to and are a positive aspect in society (as an example, while British Asians make up just 4% of the UK's populace, they contribute 6% of the nation's GDP) rather than a drain upon it and its resources, instead of being in the situation within which we now find ourselves where otherwise normal, once-tolerant citizens are now so worried that they are willing to vote for an extremist, neo-fascist organisation that cynically takes advantage of their fears and promises to get rid of the immigrant bogeyman.