Many thanks @ace108, to me this is steemit behaving like a credit card company. The steem they have unclaimed, they can use this as a liquid asset - long, medium, short and ultra-short trading.
Through getting the community to pay for the filling of the rewards pool (completely unnecessary) at a cost of $210,000 to the community (and no benefit to the community) - now this unannounced change.
If I go off on a trekking holiday for a month, all the accrued rewards are at the disposal of steemit to utilise until I next log in and claim.
We are living in avaricious times.
PS Thank you for the Vivaldi!