For some of what follows you may require imagination

Let’s pretend you’re skint and lifted for a breach of the peace and you seek legal aid – you need to prove your actual income and capital, your resources, and those are likely to be double checked by ‘the authorities.’ Means testing in other words. And why not ?

You lost your job and apply for benefit – again you need to document your actual financial position, lack of resources and prove how come you cannot sustain yourself.

You’re destitute and require resort to a food bank – so that you can actually live, breathe and survive – again, prove your level of penury before you get a voucher for your next day’s meal.

You guessed where we’re going. 

The rules about how you live and where you can get succour or relief or dodge are written by those who consider themselves in a superior enough position so to do. That’s because you’re a claimant with no status.

But those rules don’t apply to the rule makers – unless they are caught in a web of their own making.

See when you were skint – had you a professional adviser on whom to pin the blame ? Did an apparatchik in the Job Centre hand you a hanky when you were greeting for your bairns? 

But when you’re buying a house worth a fortune you can self certify and get away with it until caught at it – then all of a sudden the snotters descend and it’s someone else’s fault that you made a genuine mistake. I rest my case. In other words – my arse!