THE CONSERVATIVES WAR ON THE POOR VULBERABLE AND VOICELESS

Paranoia,” said the film critic before a screening of Rosemary’s Baby, “is the most prevalent of all contemporary neurosis and the most understandable. If anything things are far worse.”

We will fight them on the estates, we will fight them in the food banks, we will never surrender

This is not a good time to be poor, [1] to rely on benefits, to be homeless, on the margins, or require support or care. The Government is currently waging a sustained and systematic attack on the poor and disadvantaged, it has a strategy and is following it through.

This sounds like hyperbole, but I recommend you look at the website of any broadsheet newspaper, or the BBC website. If you do not find either resource suitably impartial you could read a copy of Hansard.

However just this week we have heard more on:-

1. The Bedroom Tax. This is a measure designed to penalise any one on a low income who consequently requires financial support and who also has any ‘spare’ bedroom capacity. People who have regular access to their children, have relatives to stay providing comfort and support, those whose partners have a disability or sleep disorder, thus requiring an extra room, will all be turfed out. Some who have lived in areas all there lives will be either forced into B & B or re-located miles away, in some cases a great many miles from their roots. The government seeks to sanitise this appallingly cruel measure by affecting to be concerned by under occupancy. The game was given away in the commons debate; it is designed to cut the Housing Benefit bill. This will free up money to allow for the government to cut taxes on the super rich.
2. Benefit cap. Similar to the Bedroom tax this limits the amount any person can claim in benefits, a code for housing costs. This affects inner London more than any other area of the country, with its extraordinarily high rents and is part of a programme of economic cleansing, particularly impacting on Central London. Its effects are similar to the Bedroom Tax (see above)
3. Workfare: This is a scheme by which the government provides free labour to large companies like Poundland and McDonalds, from the pool of the unemployed. The government presents this as ‘training’ and ‘work experience,’ it is nothing of the sort. (I am willing to provide free training to anyone who requires it, on shelf stacking; I envisage this training to take about 15 Minutes with coffee break included). The game was given away by Ian Smith[2] the Work and Pensions Secretary in an all too characteristic fit of temper when he stated, “the days when people could get benefits for nothing are gone for good.”[3]That is, the working class must be punished for being unemployed.
4. The removing of welfare and family law from Legal Aid. Thus at a time of the greatest upheaval in the benefits system since Beveridge the poor are to be denied access to legal support. Lawyers will however continue be allowed to represent crooks, oligarchs, oil sheiks and corrupt businessmen and continue to milk the cash cow of legal aid which has made London the libel capital of the world, the place where the super rich go to use the law, now to be denied to the poor.
5. Capping any increase in benefit payments well below the rate of inflation. This is designed to educate the poor in the realities of the economic situation bequeathed to them by the bankers, who in turn must have their rights to grotesquely inflated salaries and bonus payments protected. The smirks of members of the Conservative party during this debate had to be seen to be believed.

Above I have just plucked out 5 measures there are many more. However if you think that is where it ends you would be wrong. The government is also engaged in a propaganda war against the poor. The poor consists of shirkers and skivers, of benefit cheats and single mums who churn out babies like Cadbury produce bars of chocolate. They are also seeking to change the definition of poverty and try to blame poverty on the poor,* who make ‘poor choices.’ If you thought that the primary problem facing poor people was lack of money you would be wrong. Research by think tanks like The Institute for Sanctimonious Claptrap show that giving the poor more money is like pouring petrol on a fire, it can only make matters worse. As the ISC demonstrates the poor are responsible for making poor choices. They choose to live on rundown estates, they choose to have children, they spend what little money they have on crap food, and of course primarily they choose to live in a country where the government sees the poor and the vulnerable as an unpleasant smell to be dealt with by harsh measures. I mean, how stupid is that?

So next time you read a paper, or look at a newspaper website be aware that what you read about these policies you are not reading about some lack of empathy, the result of the law of unintended consequences or a lack of insight into the realities of what it means to be poor and disadvantaged, you are reading about a plan of campaign to attack poverty by attacking the poor.

*http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9536570/Giving-money-to-poor-does-not-help-them-take-responsibility-for-lives-warns-Iain-Duncan-Smith.html

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[1] Of course no time ever is.

[2] I refuse to use his adopted and preposterous spelling of Iain, nor his insertion of Duncan; these are devices to enhance his self importance.

[3] He ignores the fact that a majority of the unemployed have paid NI contributions into the benefits system.Having visited this page I would be grateful for your feedback, either tick one of the boxes below or make a comment via the comments button.