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Taking the social out of social housing

Scared, depressed, resigned, tearful, angry, defiant, resentful, victimised: some of the adjectives used to describe the feelings of those about to be hit by the Government's "spare bedroom tax".

The Queen has 240 bedrooms at Buck House alone and Welfare Minister Lord Freud has around eight in his London mansion but they won't be paying it. Instead, from April Fool's Day, 660,000 social housing tenants, already struggling to stay warm and fed, will lose an average of £728 a year because they are judged to have one or more spare bedrooms. That takes about £70m out of the Scottish economy at a single stroke, including £11.5m from the city of Glasgow.

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Finance

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