LABOUR councillors continue to get little help from their counterparts at Westminster.

It will be left to our local representatives to explain the wisdom of cutting benefits to some of the most vulnerable residents in the borough in the run-up to next year’s boroughwide elections.

This week Labour’s frontbencher Stephen Timms referred to benefits on TV as a “financial bonus”, while Torsten Bell’s self-assured style didn’t quite come across he might have imagined when he said he couldn’t live on £70 a week because “I’ve got a mortgage to pay”.