If the UN thinks Britain is so ghastly, why does half the world want to live here? The Guardian's main front-page story yesterday was an "exclusive" interview with the United Nations" Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing as a Component of the Right to an Adequate Standard of Living and on the Right to Non-Discrimination in this Context. I wouldn't want to be the news vendor who had to shout that one out at King's Cross railway station. Read all about it! The Special Rapporteur, etc, Raquel Rolnik, had denounced the Coalition's so-called 'bedroom tax' as a fundamental breach of international human rights and called for it to be scrapped Yes, I know this snappy job title sounds like one of those daft public sector appointments that used to be advertised in The Guardian during the Gordon Brown "gravy train" years. But bear with me. Given that Labour leader Ed Miliband had been addressing the TUC conference, diplomats were trying to prevent the Syrian chemical weapons crisis from escalating into World War III and the Commons deputy speaker had resigned after being charged with homosexual rape, what was it about this interview that warranted Page One splash headlines? Savage Tory chairman Grant Shapps dismissed the report as an 'absolute disgrace'and categorically denied Miss Rolnik's claims that she was here at the invitation of the British Government The Special Rapporteur, etc, Raquel Rolnik, had denounced the Coalition's so-called "bedroom tax" as a fundamental breach of international human rights and called for it to be scrapped. For the uninitiated, the "spare room subsidy," to use its official name, is being withdrawn from council tenants who no longer need the space. The aim is to encourage them to downsize to free up homes for larger families who are living in overcrowded accommodation. Most people would agree that it is a sensible, well- intentioned measure designed to ease Britain's desperate housing shortage and reduce the nation's debilitating welfare bill. Not The Guardian, obviously. Or the BBC. To them it's just another example of the heartless "savage cuts." And now they had an ally, complete with the full authority of the United Nations, no less. Miss Rolnik, an Esther Rantzen lookalike in a pair of Dame Edna Everage's pink spectacles, declared that the policy would hit "the most vulnerable, the most fragile, the people who are on the fringes of coping with everyday life." She told The Guardian: "I was very shocked to hear how people really feel abused in their human rights by this decision and why - being so vulnerable - they should pay for the cost of the economic downturn, which was brought about by the financial crisis. "People in testimonies were crying, saying "I have nowhere to go" and "I will commit suicide."" Listening to Miss Rolnik expand upon her views on the BBC's Today programme, which naturally takes its Pavlovian lead from The Guardian, I felt like taking my own life. She had based her opinion on "confidential" interviews with unnamed individuals in Belfast, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh and London, where she visited food banks, council estates and homeless crisis centres. My guess is that her interviewees were supplied by the same Left-wing agit-prop groups who provide the BBC with their never-ending conga line of "victims." The BBC did at least offer the Tory chairman Grant Shapps the right of reply. He quite rightly dismissed the report as an "absolute disgrace" and categorically denied Miss Rolnik's claims that she was here at the invitation of the British Government. The 'spare room subsidy', to use its official name, is being withdrawn from council tenants who no longer need the space Shapps intends to lodge a formal complaint with the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Who can blame him? Not that Shapps can expect much of a sympathetic response. The UN has plenty of previous when it comes to this kind of stunt. Earlier this year, another UN representative - a Left-wing French academic from central casting - turned up at Dale Farm, in Essex, to denounce the eviction of gypsies illegally squatting on the site for ten years as a "violation of international law." Shapps has said he intends to lodge a formal complaint with the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon There is a tendency in certain circles to fetishise the UN as the sole arbiter of truth and justice around the globe. In reality, it's little more than a hideously expensive bureaucracy that allows political pygmies to posture on the world stage. The UN is like Fifa, without the football. Most of these organisations are. Take the Council of Europe's Special Rapporteur on Climate Change, none other than our own, oafish former deputy prime minister. Two Jags celebrated his appointment in 2009 by flying first-class to China to deliver a lecture on carbon emissions. Any notion that the UN gives a monkey's about "human rights" was blown out of the water in 2003 when Libya - at the time still being run by terrorist sponsor, torturer and mass murderer Colonel Gaddafi - was elected to chair the UN's Human Rights Council. Then again, when it comes to upholding "human rights," most supranational organisations have a risible record. Britain is regularly called to account by unelected European judges from states such as Russia, Albania and Serbia - all of which have a recent history of totalitarianism and genocide. Notorious So who is Special Rapporteur, etc, Raquel Rolnik? She's a leading member of Brazil's Workers" Party, which is closely allied to Fidel Castro's Cuban Communist Party. Rolnik also served as National Secretary for Urban Programs of the Brazilian Ministry of Cities between 2003 and 2007. She does like a grand job title, doesn't she? So she should be something of an expert on housing. A recent report estimated that 50 million Brazilians live in shanty towns, such as Rio's notorious favelas, where crime, poverty and gang murder is rife. In urban areas, 23 million are without running water, 83 million are not connected to mains sewage and 14 million have no refuse collection service - not even once a fortnight. And where did these figures come from? A report in The Guardian, dated January 3 this year, that's where. Funny, they forgot to ask the saintly Miss Rolnik about the problems in her own country. The government of which she was a member had the opportunity to alleviate much of that poverty. Instead, it chose to lavish $1 trillion on hosting the 2014 football World Cup. Brazil is also guilty of myriad human rights abuses, from unlawful killings, torture and detention without trial to the exploitation of children sexually and in the workplace. Yet the UN has the gall to send a Brazilian "human rights" activist to condemn Britain for abusing the "vulnerable." Generous We know we've got an acute housing problem. Hundreds of thousands of people are living in cramped bed-and-breakfast accommodation, camping out in cardboard cities and being crammed into converted coal bunkers and garden sheds. We also know why we have a housing crisis. It's because our overcrowded island has been inundated with mass immigration from around the world, as a result of Labour's cynical decision to dismantle our borders. Once migrants have arrived here, it is almost impossible to deport anyone, thanks to The Guardian's and Raquel Rolnik's beloved "human rights." And still they keep coming. Among them, there are estimated to be at least 250,000 Brazilians living in Britain, a vast number of whom have overstayed their visas rather than return home. They come here because they know their "human rights" are guaranteed and there is a generous welfare system to fall back on. Even if housing conditions aren't always ideal, they are generally an improvement on the country they have left behind. Or, at least, worth enduring when the alternative is returning to a life of oppression. Here's a question The Guardian and the BBC should have put to Special Rapporteur, etc, Rolnik: If Britain is so ghastly, why the hell does half the world want to live here?