I see that our Home Secretary is at it again, battling to end rough sleeping.
Her solution is to propose banning homeless people from using tents. I find it hard to think of how you can even dream up such a policy but Ms Braverman is hoping to go further, she wants to fine homeless charities that give out tents to the homeless.
This is all apparently part of a reform of the 1824 Vagrancy Act.
200 years on and we have a Home Secretary who makes the Victorian Poor Law look like enlightened, Beveridge inspired compassion.
At any other time in the last 200 years a Cabinet minister who wanted to prosecute charities for helping the homeless would have been run out of office.
But we currently have a Tory government that is packed with third raters on a messianic mission to be “tougher” and more “Thatcherite” than each other.
Why?
Because they know that is the way to the top of the greasy pole, what their membership drools over, and their ambition is so naked and shameless that they are willing to compete to fine charities for keeping the homeless dry and warm.
Look out the window and try to imagine living on the streets in this weather, then try to imagine the police turning up in the rain to destroy your tent and demanding to know where you got it, so they can go after the charity involved.
Try to imagine fining charities so they have less money to deal with the homelessness you are responsible for causing.
But please don’t try to imagine being the person who could even suggest such a policy.
That way madness lies.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
I have sometimes tried to reconstruct the mindset of those politicians who in the 1840s argued against relief for the starving millions in Ireland. I struggle no longer.
Tents are far more visible too.