Uppal… back on track

Well, my favourite Member of Parliament is back on his hind legs fighting for the downtrodden and wouldn't you know it, he's looking after his own interests once again!

having come across landlords in my past life, I have to say that they are a fairly commercial lot. One thing that they covet more than anything else is security of income.

Er… did you see what he did there? He couldn't quite bring himself to mention that he is a multimillionaire commercial property speculator, and is viewed by the property industry as their voice in parliament. In any case, what landlords 'covet more than anything else' is just plain money. Preferably gained without effort, as Marx makes clear.

The Tories' big plan is to pay for the banking rescue by massively cutting housing benefit payments, making huge swathes of the south unaffordable to large sections of society - and don't forget that the majority of the poor aren't feckless layabouts: they have jobs in our sweatshop economy. When they can't afford private rentals, they'll need state housing. Except that there isn't any. What happens after that is completely beyond my comprehension.

If you're in receipt of housing benefit because you work in the disgusting low-wage economy that guarantees debt and housing insecurity for all, don't go running to Uppal.

However, revelling in the plight of the poor isn't all he's been up to this week. Oh no. We should give him some credit: now that Osama Bin Laden's dead, Uppal has bravely come out as an indefatigable enemy of al-Qaeda.

The Prime Minister spoke about the myth of Osama bin Laden. One of the most powerful recruiting sergeants for al-Qaeda was the idea that he had moved away from a decadent western lifestyle to that of a penitent holy warrior. Is the Prime Minister heartened, as I am, by the truth that he was a hypocrite and that that hypocrisy runs through the core of the ideology of al-Qaeda?

Now some of you may be thinking that this is a meaningless load of toadying, self-promoting piffle designed to ingratiate himself with David Cameron and lacking a scintilla or original thought, but I disagree. Who could deny that al-Qaeda is an organisation of very naughty people indeed? Faced with the scorn of Paul Uppal MP, surely they are entirely vanquished, to be heard of no more.

Thankfully, the Prime Minister recognises a kindred philosopher:

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The idea that bin Laden was a hermit bravely living in a cave directing the insurgency has been given the lie completely, as we see now that he was living in a luxury million-dollar villa in a fairly suburban part of Pakistan. I hope that people who have somehow revered this man will now see the true picture of someone who was hypocritically living pretty high on the hog while expecting others to suffer hardship.

Let us ignore those who might claim that living in a single bare room in a ramshackle (and not a luxury million-dollar villa at all) for 5 years is neither 'hypocritical' nor 'a decadent western lifestyle' and simply applaud Mr. Uppal for his fearless intellect. Truly, Cicero, Socrates and Montaigne would recognise him as one of their own.

I propose some kind of public subscription to raise a statue to this doughty defender of our way of life.