Benefit systems

I've just been reading another meaningless poverty definition in the Guardian. To be fuel poor apparently means 10% of household income is spent on fuel costs.

No account seems to be taken of housing costs and that's bizarre. Home owners with no mortgage could be paying 15% or 20% and be far better off than a household with rent or mortgage to pay but fuel costs of 9%. And it's the better off family described as fuel poor. Idiotic.

There's a fascinating blog going on there too about Universal Benefits v Means Testing. It's all very well to be "right on" and criticise means testing as being costly and intrusive but the alternative does seem to involve spending where it's not actually needed while not meeting the needs of others. Striking a balance is the right thing to do and the UK pretty much had that balance 40 years ago.

The stigma aspect of claiming is easy to address with use of the right terms and advertising. We have Pension Credit now; a nice fluffy name for what used to be called Supplementary Benefit. Now it sounds like a tax adjustment and nobody needs to feel like they go cap in hand anymore.

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Looking forward to Fulham v Roma later.