If you ask me, while everyone is getting into such a lather about the “bedroom tax”, soon to be imposed on anyone who receives benefits, lives in social housing, and is deemed to have a “spare room”, I would, instead, like to heartily congratulate the superb work of this Government’s extraordinarily hard-working Department for Making The Poor Poorer, whose sheer genius is beyond doubt, surely.

The Department for Making The Poor Poorer is, for those who don’t know, situated in the Treasury, next door to the Department for Making The Rich Richer, and when civil servants from the Department for Making The Poor Poorer encounter civil servants from the Department for Making The Rich Richer in a corridor, say, or one of those little, communal Formica kitchens with a kettle, they will often high-five each other, and go: “Yay!”, as they both see themselves as working towards a common goal. Indeed, weren’t they briefed by David Cameron himself, who said they could not rest and he would not rest until the gap between rich and poor was so staggeringly colossal it was visible from space, “and we could say, sit on that, Great Wall of China!”.

And didn’t George Osborne add: “There is no greater pleasure than watching that gap widen every single day, and I include counting out my cummerbunds, and sniffing them a bit. Plus, I would also like to say: ‘Sit on that, Great Wall of China!’ one day.”

So, as the Making the Rich Richer department has been furiously working away at letting bankers off the hook while quickly seeing off the proposed mansion tax, the Making the Poor Poorer department has come up with one genius scheme after another: a bedroom tax, doubling the price of lottery tickets, cuts to council tax and disability benefits and, shortly, a “How To” guide on making a week’s meals and all your children’s clothing from next door’s cat, which can be easily knifed and skinned, once you have the know-how. (I have the know-how and have been wearing a hat of cat all winter, which has reduced my heating bills; think about it, you could get an entire onesie from a dog!).

Anyway, I hope you will appreciate the Department for Making the Poor Poorer a little more from now on. Still, if you do have a “spare room” yet don’t wish to downsize to a property that actually doesn’t exist in the current social housing market, you may wish to consider simply bricking it up. This technique has worked before. It could work again.