It’s a common belief that inhumane Tory policies – which are directed at taking money and support from the most vulnerable citizens – have happened because of a kind of naivety, lack of experience, or a simple egocentricity of the privileged. Or general incompetence.
These certainly may well contribute to the obvious lack of joined-up thinking, apparent when we step back to consider that the most vulnerable citizens in our so-called civilised society are suffering and dying as a direct consequence of recent legislations and “reforms,” but it certainly doesn’t explain why the Tories persistently and historically CHOOSE to continue to ignore any other account of social reality but their own. That implies some intentionality, to me. Selective perception involves a certain degree of free will. And choice.
So we are now almost through the doorway to the “mad or bad” debate.
Tories also reduce every single human deed to an underlying motivation of greed for financial gain, no matter what the circumstances. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Some would argue that this is classic Freudian projection. But that doesn’t account for the fact that the Tories normalise and make a virtue of the financial gain principle, for the wealthy, big business and of course, the Tories themselves. That corrupts government policy and our democracy.
These motivations are held to be universal, and are translated into a vice when it comes to ordinary, everyday people, or in particular, poor and vulnerable people. That doesn’t hang together coherently at all, nor does it corroborate the view that the Tories are simply out of touch with everyday experience, since there is a deep and fundamental – and very apparent – contradiction here. It is a very significant flaw in their ideological grammar.
Human beings are not static when it comes to ideas and beliefs: we are capable of learning, and in a variety of ways: though experience, through the experience of others, through historical accounts, evidence and so on. The Tories simply choose to overlook the need. They prefer, instead, to stay put, or regress, and simply insist that they know best. Challenge a Tory, and they often believe that simply talking louder, and over the top of you will somehow make what they are saying “right.” They are not called “Conservative” for nothing – they do like to maintain a status quo and resist progressive change.
Tory notions of change apply only to their idea of how a society ought to be, hence the proliferation of legislation these past couple of years. The Conservatives are unravelling the progress we have made as a society, because they prefer the simplicity of basic feudal relationships. I’m not really joking here, unfortunately. The Tories are re-privileging the privileged and reinforcing a traditional hierarchy.
It’s as if the clocks stopped the moment the Tory-led Coalition took Office, and now we are losing a decade a day.
The truth is that austerity is NOT about deficit-cutting. It’s just the cover for Tory ideology. It is actually about shrinking the State and squeezing the public sector until it becomes marginal, then non-existent, in an entirely market-driven society. The banking crisis-generated deficit has been a gift to the Tories in enabling them to launch the narrative that public expenditure has to be massively cut back, which they would never have been able to get away with without the deficit-reduction excuse in the first place.
Austerity won’t benefit the economy: it will damage it further, since the cuts will reduce the income of those that spend proportionally the most money and add to the economy – the poorest. Taking more money out of an already struggling economy and impacting local economies will simply exacerbate the problem. In the longer term, the Tories will destroy our prosperity as a nation, because they are disaster capitalists. Worse, they don’t care if citizens die as a consequence.
“We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had too much” – John Kenneth Galbraith
Nope, that hasn’t happened, the Tories are still taking money from the poor and handing it to the wealthy. Why? Is it because the Tories are phenomenologically impoverished and incapable of learning, ever? No, I don’t think so.
I think it’s much worse than that. I think that the Tories DO understand the consequences of their ideologically-driven policies, but they don’t care. Money for the wealthy has to come from somewhere, after all. The whole “out of touch/lack of experience” proposition overlooks the fact that the Tories refuse to listen, quite deliberately, they exercise authoritarian tactics to shut people up – such as excluding those people from debate who oppose their views – witnessed during the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill, for example. Then there is the “monitoring” of the media for alternative political “biases.”
That is a quite deliberate narrowing down of experience, not naivety, based on a lack of understanding. That’s deliberate, calculated and certainly bears all of the hallmarks of authoritarianism. That’s the wilful imposition of a pre-moulded, dystopic Tory version of reality onto a largely unwilling population.
The propaganda regarding unemployed, ill and disabled people is not based on naivety either: it is deliberate, and calculated, a horrible and wicked attempt to justify their small state ideology and punitive approach to stripping welfare provision from the poorest, and from vulnerable citizens to redistribute funds from the public purse to the already wealthy.
David Cameron, Iain Duncan Smith and Chris Grayling have all contributed a selection of propagandic pieces of work to the press – largely the Sun, Express and the Daily Mail. The language they use – words like “scrounger” “fraud” and “workshy” and the implied “burden on the state,” together with their knowledge that so-called benefit fraud was a mere 0.7% (and that includes DWP’s own errors, too) indicates clearly that the policies aimed at removing welfare provision, and the propaganda campaign that has led to an increase in hate crimes directed at sick and disabled people, are absolutely intentional.
10,600 chronically ill and disabled people died last year between January and November, many within six weeks of their ESA claim closing. It’s very telling that the Department for Work and Pensions do not monitor or account for just how many of those were passed as “fit for work” by Atos, or awaiting Appeal.
Furthermore, this Government introduced targets which were written into the Atos contract when they renewed it in 2010: 7 out of 8 sick and disabled people to lose their benefits.
Bearing in mind that those targets exist BEFORE those ill and disabled people are assessed (and the Government have also redesigned the work capability assessment to make sure that there is a heavy bias towards withdrawing people’s support) then we can reasonably infer that the Government see those deaths – that have happened as a result of absolute poverty and extreme distress, some of our most vulnerable citizens have had their means of meeting their basic survival needs removed – as an intended outcome.
That the Government have not acted upon the high number of deaths associated with their welfare “reforms” is truly outrageous, and also indicates quite plainly, to me, that this “outcome” is not simply a by-product of their legislation, or incompetence, or lack of experience: it is calculated and intentional. All policies are intentional.
This is much, much worse than a little “Tory egocentricity,” incompetence, phenomenological ineptitude, or naivety: this is the deliberate, calculated and wholesale destruction of every State mechanism of support for the most vulnerable citizens as well as for the “ordinary” person. If people cannot meet their basic needs – food, warmth, shelter and so on, they die. That is fact, it’s common sense, something that everyone knows.
Yet this Government are taking away people’s only means of support. Social security, the safety net paid for by the tax paying public to ensure no-one dies of starvation or exposure. This Government have stolen our collective funds for social security, and blamed those they have stolen it from for their deed.
They blame the poor for poverty. They blame the unemployed for unemployment. But we know that the Government are to blame. Have you ever noticed that, historically, whenever poverty grows and inequalities become wider and deeper, look to the helm and lo and behold, we have a Tory-led Government steering the way. We need to put this Government out of our misery.
Every single “reform” has been about taking money away from the poorest and some of the most vulnerable people. The fact that the Legal Aid Bill has been timed for implementation next year, when the horrific consequences of the welfare cuts, the bedroom tax and the new council tax will become very apparent, as well as the Health and Social Care reforms, indicates quite plainly that these policies have been planned and coordinated for a long time.
The Legal Aid Bill means that challenging the Government regarding the reforms will be very difficult. Indeed, the Coalition have been steadily removing the essential democratic processes that safeguard our human rights and enable us to challenge effectively.
This is certainly an authoritarian Government.
We should hang their heads in shame.
It’s truly despicable. How utterly horrifying that they are getting away with it. There is an increasingly discernible taint of eugenics embedded in Tory ideology. This, and the propaganda, smoke and mirrors, media scapegoating diversions and theft from the poorest to handout to the wealthiest – these actions are intentional, calculated and are being increasingly inflicted and administered, whilst the general population waits passively in the wings, shrugging off the blow by hammer blow accounts: more bad news of further Tory cuts, more devastating consequences. More preventable deaths.
Too many people are finding temporary distractions, watching the idiot box, hoping quietly that those things they can see from the corner of their eye are not real.
Oh, but they are.
Hanlon’s razor is an eponymous adage that allows the elimination of unlikely explanations for a phenomenon. It reads: “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
However, I always considered intentional malice and stupidity to be strongly correlated characteristics.
Politics and Insights 
Yes indeed. And it’s your last paragraph that is so chilling.
Most people simply can not grasp the enormity and reality of what this Coalition is doing, and has done… and the rest are simply distracted.
And those who are telling it like it is, are treated with anger and disbelief.
My hope is that, when everything we know about our Britain of the last 60 years has gone, we will be able to remember what it was like for long enough to work towards bringing it back.
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Yes, all those hard earned rights, and post-war settlement social programmes to support us in times of need were a triumph and represent the very best of us. Those 60 years were such a wonderful achievement, and based on the fact that we are each of equal worth, that every human life is precious. That’s enshrined in our human rights. Those 60 years were a fine moment of our collective history. Social evolution. I weep almost every time i think about what is being greedily dismantled and heartlessly demolished by this corrupt and greedy hate- filled Government. And for what? So the wealthy can have some more of what they don’t need, taken from those who do need it, to survive? Money can’t buy you everything, but being poor sucks. It’s terrible. And poverty is a political crime: it’s economic terrorism.
Nobody expected a British Government to behave like this – you are so right about people struggling to grasp the enormity of it. And yes, those telling the truth are treated with anger – rather like Cassandra, no-one believes, and furthermore, no-one wants to believe. I am reminded of Martin Niemöllers’ verse :-
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
We are fighting, some of us for basic survival now, as well. One of my deepest wishes is that one day I will tell my grandchildren how we almost lost our civilisation, but won it back from an evil authoritarian Government, led by a psychopath. And how we have learned to make sure it NEVER happens again.
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out of touch they out in space as their policys are killing those on benefits and do they care nah its just us the scroungers but hold on i done 3yrs forces and worked till 56 and fell ill and now find myself on 33 pounds how can this be right when i worked putting into a pot for a day like now ,nah its ok for them to pay their mates monies like emma who awarded herself 8.6million extra every little bit helps oh for a little bit but no we are the scroungers hangers on goodbye jeff3
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I agree that the Workfare corruption and high bonus paid to Emma whatserface was disgusting. I also agree that these policies- the welfare “reforms” ARE killing people, with sick and disabled people dying at a rate of between 32 and 73 per week. I am so sorry to hear about your own circumstances Jeffrey, and that also happened to me last year. Ironically, if you are on basic rate ESA and awaiting Appeal, you have less housing benefit as well. I won my Appeal, was awarded the full rate, and low and behold, my housing benefit went up too. But for 7 months, i was hungry and almost evicted from my home.
And yes – you make an excellent and important point Jeffrey. WE paid for welfare provision from taxes, very few people have never paid into the public fund. But for those who are unable to, as a civilised society, and as decent human beings, we ought to support any vulnerable citizen, irrespective of their financial status or contributions. All human life is precious and each person is of equal worth. Money is not, and never ought to be, considered more important than human beings. But the Government think otherwise, of course.
This Government treat the public purse – OUR taxes and money – as their own. Welfare provision (or the NHS for that matter) isn’t theirs’to take money from, and to redistribute to Fat Cat Private Companies, Tory sponsors, and the elite Tories themselves, of course. (via business interests and investments.)
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Having encountered a lot of right-wing people in my time (I’m a politics graduate), I also find that a lot believe, quite sincerely, that they are better off because they are actually superior, more ‘fit to rule’, more intelligent, harder working and morally better. By contrast therefore, the poor are not only less able, they are feckless, morally inferior and generally deserving of their fate. This is not just conservative, in the same of maintaining the status quo of this century, its a view I suspect the Norman Barons would have been familiar with. They’re the barons, we’re the peasants: the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate. It’s not that they hate the poor, they’re just better than the poor, they believe.
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Excellent observation and analysis succinctly expressed and with which I wholeheartedly agree. Incompetent and shambolic they are certainly not, indeed it suits their purpose for this to be believed. Many years of detailed and meticulous planning have gone into ensuring that this wretched coup will endure.
But alas, my pencil sharpener is too blunt these days and I will have to do some homework on phenomenological impoverishment. Will start by looking under B for ‘bastards’.
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Kittys Jones; this’s such a trenchant analysis, and I’ve not heard anyone making these points anywhere; well done and thanks for your insights; I just feel that the Tories are leaving the oldies out for the moment possibly b’cause they might conform their most consistent group of voters, devoted Thatcherite; Tories are trying to manipulate them against the undeserving poor, the migrants, the Muslims…; BUT if the Tories won the 2015 the Oldies will come in for a surprise, and see their state pensions shrink, their pension premium soar along side heating +caring bills.
Those who are too ill-informed or too distracted or too lazy to try and understand what is really going on in the UK deserve everything that’ll flatter them in the near Tory future…
Tragedy is that’ll affect all of us, and the only way left is out… mass emigration as it happened through the 18th and 19th centuries..
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100% correct Kitty. The problem is that many people (possibly the majority) would prefer to believe that the people they have elected are stupid and incompetent, rather than acknowledge that it is possible for people quite as callous and evil as Cameron, IDS, Osborne and the rest, to actually be voted into power in a democracy.
The electorate can be divided into four groups at the moment: First, the group of people who realise what’s happening, realise what is motivating the Conservatives (the Libs have to go along because they know they will annihilated at the next General Election), and are actually trying to convince others and oppose this vicious government. Secondly, there are the people who can see what damage is being caused but prefer to think it is incompetence that is causing. Third, there are the people who don’t give a toss as long as Eastenders and X Factor are going along ok, and fourth there are the people who actually support what the Tories are doing.
We certainly can’t do anything about the fourth group, the third group probably won’t be motivated to vote anyway, or will vote UKIP because they don’t realise quite how mad most oftheir policies are. The second group HAS to be the target, if enough of them are motivated to vote that will be enough, especially taking into account the apathy of most of the other group. The best way to do that is to keep pointing out the lies and attacks on the weakest in our country, I wish you good luck in that.
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Francesca – “and I’ve not heard anyone making these points anywhere; well done and thanks for your insights”
Your view represents that of so many people, and sadly, it worries me that so few people, never mind commentators cannot see this for themselves. My thoughts on reading this were – “Finally. Someone else who sees the reality for what it is.”
Kitty – I thank you for the article – not because you have told me something I was not aware of.But that at least someone is actually pointing out the reality of what is going on, rather than simply ascribing this to sheer incompetence.
Yes – there is incompetence on a huge scale. But more so, there is deliberate malice, and a deliberate dismantling of the welfare state and driving of the peasantry back into the slums, where they deserve to be. The modern Tory party is behaving absolutely true to form, with a near pathological hatred of those who do not belong to their caste. And here is one reason alone, why Clegg and his party are so utterly odious to me. That they can support such a government – not just an incompetent one, but one which is so filled with hate and deliberate malice – solely for the sake of being near to the centre of power, shows such moral bankruptcy as to be quite mind-blowing.
Such is the ongoing theft of the commonality of the people that, should there ever be a properly educated future generation able to look back on what is happening now with an objective viewpoint, they will equate this with the enclosures, when the aristocracy basically stole the common land of the people – in part, during the 18th & 19th centuries, to drive the rural populations into the newly burgeoning cities to provide the labour force for the manufactories of the nascent industrial revolution. This is another revolution by the landed classes. And so far, we are losing.
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BROKEN BRITISH POLITICS-PROPAGANDA CONDITIONING
The basis of Conditioning was started by a Russian physiologist called Pavlov,his experiments with Alsatians was basically to train them in certain behaviours and reward them for achieving the desired result.All Humans are conditioned whether you like it or not.Joseph Goebels was a past master most Politicians are the modern Day Equivalent .He ‘conditioned’ the German population especially the Army that all Jews were less than Rats ,and systematically ‘proved ‘it by their Public Violent Abuse and Humiliation by Authority figures.
If we were taught the harsh realities of life at School instead of the emphasis being on societies behaviour and the pecking order we would have more free will and not be so susceptible to Political influence. The majority of us have all had a relative that ‘served’ the Country in two World Wars ,they laid their lives on the line for their Country Democracy & Freedom for all .
The appalling conditions they withstood physically and mentally. Friends being killed beside you ,returning home to devastated streets loved ones missing or dead.
They did not fight for a Privileged Minority to rule as a Regime with a Totalitarian severity that witnesses Poverty and Charities taking on the Role of Basic Welfare because the Regime deem it so.Similar to Goebels Cameron,Osborne and especially Smith they have tried to Condition the Public that those receiving any type of Welfare are Scroungers,responsible for the Economy,Unemployment and any other issues they have mismanaged .We owe it to those that laid their lives down for us to rid this Country of the Political Dross in Power.
http://brokenbritishpolitics.simplesite.com
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I would add one thing. This government know exactly what they are doing AND are being handsomely rewarded for it.
The worst example is the involvement of the US insurance company UNUM in setting welfare policy. They provide all the “research” the DWP uses to “justify” their decisions, they provide all the “expert” advisors, they hold regular seminars and conferences at which politicians are lavishly entertained whilst being force fed propaganda in favour of dismantling the benefit system. They pay generously to provide evenings of “debate” on welfare policy at party conferences. They also stand to make literally billions as working Britons are scared into taking out private unemployment insurance plans because they can’t see how it is possible to survive on state benefits.
Then there’s Grant Shapps, as housing minister he received 6 figure sums from the National Federation of Housebuilders and a large property development company. When challenged on the conflict of interest his reaction was to attempt to hide the information.
This is the most corrupt UK government of modern times.
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Yes, I totally agree, and well said.
It’s also an authoritarian. government – a theme which I explore in later blogs, this one was the very first one I ever wrote, and was concise (well, for me!)
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Not only the most corrupt government I have known, but they don’t even try to hide their criminal corruption.
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Google “mindspace” and look at the Institute of Governments report about how psychological techniques can be used to place opinions into people’s heads. The most stunning example of this is the £26,000 benefits cap.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the cap itself, the practical result is that in the national news the terms “£26,000” and “benefits” are constantly used next to each other. And, as mindspace points out, simply showing images of two things in proximity is enough to associate them in people’s minds, particularly if the juxtaposition is constantly reinforced.
I am not aware of any opinion polls having been done in which people have been asked how much (in total) they think the average benefit claimant gets, but it would be interesting. I would not be surprised to find that most people named a figure which was far closer to £26,000 than the real figure. (To be honest I don’t know how much the average benefit claimant gets – are their figures anywhere?)
And next time you read any newspaper article on disability or benefits, check out whether it is accompanied by a picture of a fat person. I suspect this a deliberate attempt to associate being overweight (or obese – a condition most people regard as self inflicted) with being disabled and claiming benefits. (None of which are necessarily liked.) And they are often accessorised by either a baby or a flat screen TV BECAUSE that ups the emotional impact of the picture. Both babies and TVs stir up a mix of envy and disapproval, driving home the unconscious associations. Accidental? Read the mindspace report.
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I read the MINDSPACE report last year, I had linked welfare sanctions to the psychobabble theory of “loss aversion” and wrote a lengthy critique more generally of behavioural economics and the new anti-democratic “libertarian paternalism”, I loathe the Grudge Unit and all it stands for. “Behavioural insights” are simply techniques of persuasion ordinarily reserved for the tacky end of the advertising industry.
Excellent observation, Angela.
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Reblogged this on nearlydead.
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They’re doing the worst thing possible for the economy, as raising VAT makes everything more expensive so stops people spending money which causes business closures. They didn’t even do anything useful with the VAT as spent the same amount on giving millionaires tax cuts. Then they get idiots to repeat propaganda in Tory newspapers that it’s all the fault of the poor and vulnerable.
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Still, I’m not sure what use writing article for left wing publications that only get read by people who agree with it anyway, when there are many idiots believing the Tory propaganda in mainstream newspapers.
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It gets read widely, including in other Countries, more than a million people have read posts on this site, and it counters the mainstream propaganda. Organisations such as the UN, and others use the empirical evidence on some of the articles for inquiries.
We could say the same thing about the usefulness of sharing posts and commenting on Facebook. The alternative is what? Give up? I don’t think so.
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Small steps however no doubt right wing friends on left wing friends pages all contribute and the glaring injustice that hits the next rung up the financial ladder will always push right into left.If they are as purposeful about the social cleansing and forced suicides protest or petition will be ignored and military crackdowns will follow.This would represent the first wave of a fascist dictatorship spawned in USA by Rothschilds empire.
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Not many people know that subliminal advertising was made illegal way back in the late 50s.
Yet now we have a clutch of psychopaths driving their product of hatred home via subliminal mind control in all media outlets.
If you get the chance read Will Black’s book.
‘Psychopathic Cultures and Toxic Empires ‘
It provided, for me, the missing bits of the jigsaw.
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Yes I agree. But what do we DO about it apart from waiting until the next election to vote them out? It might be too late by then. Spreading the word is useful of course, keeping up the opposition, but most of the time I feel angry but powerless.
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I’ve spent a lot of time lobbying the opposition as well, with others, and to good effect
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excellent piece will reblog at VitalVote.org
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As J. K. Galbraith once said, “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
The irony here is that the nasty who is the driving force behind the oppression of the poor, the sick and the disabled is Duncan-Smith who, back in 2003, should have been investigated by the fraud squad and put before the Courts for criminal offences of embezzlement, after he invented a fictitious job for his millionaire wife. He then claimed additional parliamentary expenses to pay her so-called salary. The woman didn’t have any job at all and a number of reliable witnesses testified to this fact, including Duncan-Smith’s constituency agent. It was before the main expenses scandal and all that happened is they got rid of him as the Tory Party leader. The man is nothing more than a thoroughly dishonest common criminal – and an incompetent one at that.
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The Tories are getting the welfare state ready for privatisation. The insurance companies want it but won’t take it in its current format, give it ten yrs and it’s going to be run by private insurance companies and conditionality for pay out will be extreme. There will be no local jobcentres apart from one which will deal with face to face interrogation of “customers”, everything else will be online and will have to be tick boxed and a computer will scrutinise all the conditional requirements and raise sanction doubts. The public will pay for this to be developed and once its ready, it will be sold on as cheap package for their buddies to pick up and fuck people over for a tidy profit. Who cares if it costs more money ? The Govt don’t give a fuck how much public money goes to private sector, in fact that’s there job. All the chat about shirkers and skivers is just whistles and bells to cover up what they are really up to and so many people are falling for it.
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Reblogged this on stewilko's Blog and commented:
I love this article, it’ approach to facts, the true picture of the selfish face of this governments sickening ideological attempts to demonise the disabled. The disgraceful, I suggest that lightly and with a sickening view of the Conservative attempts withdraw needed financial support from the weakest within society. From those who, at their best, have neither the mental capacity nor physical strength to fight back. Because of the withdrawal of legal aid, and the much needed support like community care grants. The poor and disabled have neither the money nor legal advice they need to fight back. Today, following two years of Tribunals and thousands of documents I received my DLA back. After fighting, I believe an unethical, illegal and unwarranted medical assessment. The disabled, unemployment or those who are working and receiving benefits are fighting against a state bent on removing the very small amounts of money needed to survive.
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Thanks stewilko, it was the first article I ever wrote on here
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Its the least I could do. I enjoy your blog, you give a great deal of information. You inspire me and the knowledge and discourse you present is factual. You present your findings backed with evidance. Don’t thank me, it is me and thousands of others who send a big thank you to you for your blog
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I think it’s time we made a concerted effort to ditch the terms welfare and benefits. Talking about cutting benefits makes it sound like a few nice to haves are being removed, it is not the same image as talking about slashing people’s social security. I’m sure that there is probably a better descriptor if we put our minds to it and it would be good to find one that evokes a really powerful image.
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Whilst most people seem to accept that politicians often lie, there seems to be a lot of reluctance to accept that one of the things they lie about is what a policy is intended to do. If you cut out the rhetoric, ignore what they claim their policies are for, and just look at what they actually do, it is very clear that the actual aim of pretty much every policy is to fill the pockets of ministers and the wealthy who back them and their parties. They are VERY competent when it comes to ripping us all off.
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Absolutely, Eric
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Brilliant example of taking money that’s meant for well being of all the people being funneled into upper echelon tory pockets in the Birmingham Post. http://www.birminghampost.co.uk/news/regional-affairs/questions-over-95-birmingham-events-7028090
Though I take issue with the tone of some of their articles, the numbers on this were just shocking.
Birmingham council was once split in a pretty strange fashion between LibDem and Tory, each taking control of different depts. As the Tory guy went out he agreed to spend 95% of the annual events budget on one Tory conference (the one you probably heard about at symphony Hall) leaving the new mp Sir Albert Bore with only 5% for everything else. The torys argument? That all these rich people will spill out into City Centre and spend their big bucks only its been shown that that rarely happens. Symphony Hall is linked to a hotel/spa/more restaurants via a Bridge making it ideal for visiting delegates who may have security concerns. It is perfect for those who DON’T want to have to venture out. Besides which, even if it did create revenue many question the logic of spending 95% of the budget on any one event.
This sort of petty ‘up yours’ gestures were frequent between libdem and tories depts, but the impact is irrelevant to them.
When Sir Albert Bore said implementing cuts would mean further job losses, Cameron’s answer? That there is no need to lose frontline staff to make these cuts. What joke world are these people living in??? The other way is instead of hiring less people you just help less people, care and support for example.
The amount of a councils budget that they are able to make any changes to is around a third (I think) and the rest are ring fenced. From that they are restricted what can be taken where and what’s usually left that can be cut is what benefits the vulnerable. Or the isolated. That’s why housing related support may soon disappear but the golf courses are still (last I heard) being maintained.
I’m lucky. It’s hard to argue with my condition so I got my dla etc without appeal or interview but everything else? Treatment, care, support, education, leisure have all had to stop. I stay home. Alone. Pay a private firm to clean once a week and that’s it. No one’s budget can stretch to accommodating an electric wheelchair user or money isn’t being spent on accessibility anymore, or budgets are so tight they just make it so impossible to apply for help that you fall between the cracks knowing I’ll either ‘get better’ or come back round as an emergency if ‘I’m really that bad’
(They say a+e are the nhs’ warning light but now it seems it’s social services diagnostic tool. If you don’t bounce back through as an a +e referral you obviously got better or didn’t need the help.)
A hms report showed every pound spent on housing related support saved 2 from statutory services. The tories started this because we couldn’t afford to carry on spending like this blah blah. When asked about the rising costs of their welfare reforms? Ah well, it’s about getting people out of this poverty trap. I’m only trapped by poverty if you take my care and treatment away. I won’t suddenly stop having a connective tissue disorder because my money’s been capped. I’m trapped by a lack of clean, reliable, ACCESSIBLE public transport, by a lack of effective dda legislation, by the hateful attitudes of those that believe tory rubbish. Poverty only traps you when the world stops helping. Starvation never got cured by less food or blaming the dead. Poverty is a sign our economy is failing it’s most vulnerable. Not a sin perpetrated by the poor.
My rant over heh.
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Outstanding rant! You should blog it 🙂
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The Nasty Party is living up to its nasty name. They are determined to take this country back to the 19th century or even further if they are allowed to get away with it.
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Reblogged this on markcatlin3695's Blog and commented:
I’ve thought for a long time now that the cruelty inflicted by the Conservatives isn’t all about incompetence, but a malevolent attempt to take this country back to a feudal time when the vaunted rich run roughshod over everyone not lucky enough to be born into wealth.
In my humble opinion (for whatever that’s worth to you) This blog’s excellent and well worth reading.
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Thank you Mark. They are definitely feudalists at heart – “The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate…”
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Reblogged this on Britain Isn't Eating.
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I have only today come across this and all I can say is WOW Nail Meet Hammer.
For too long I have felt as if I was ‘crying in the wilderness’, preaching to the disinterested re the ripping of the fabric of our society
Thanks for restoring my confidence
Can I also share this, written two months before the Scottish Referendum of 2014
https://justinfayresweeklyrant.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/the-ghost-of-christmas-future
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This was my first ever blog. 🙂 Thanks
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It stems from the way they were conditioned as children/young men. Sent away to boarding school to deprive them of family love, then encouraged to burn money in front of the homeless, smash up family-run businesses, shout fucking plebs at people, etc. It was all designed to teach them nothing but contempt for “normal” people. Put those people in positions of power and it shouldn’t come as any surprise the sort of things they will do.
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Reblogged this on dainagregory.
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I wrote some time ago about the Power Inquiry, and the Constituency from which it emerged – the Community Voluntary Sector. A constituency that has at least 4 decades of self governance, treasury management, fund raising, service provision based on clients stated needs, evidence based policy formulation, community ventures …..
A constituency that has had to develop the tools of self governance and deliberative democracy whilst the rest of the Nation ignored these, because they had no need. For the ‘majority’ mainstream, things were just fine.
I asked someone recently, how can we expect teens to participate in deliberative democracy when they have spent their entire lives, for the most part being told what to do, think and wear and being sanctioned and bullied for any dissent?
How can we expect adults who have endured that environment, which they find replicated in the work place Hierarchies, yet who have not resolved it, to seek self governance based on deliberative democratic processes?
Those who have, due to circumstances, been pushed into self governance in order to meet local needs are a larger group than ALL political party memberships. As such they are perceived as a direct threat to the Power Establishment.
There was no comparatively effective analysis of Power emanating from the ‘intellectuals’, the Labour Party or any other arena of political power. The Power Inquiry stood as the first psycho-social analysis with practical application, and stands as such to this date….
Big Society was and remains a 3 prong assault on that constituency – removing support systems aka ‘austerity’, privatization of voluntary provision and reductions in social care programs, designed to exhaust the community voluntary sector, and dissolve that as a political base.
The cruelty involved is incidental, in that those who rule do not care about the harms they cause, it’s not that they enjoy cruelty or subscribe top eugenics…. it’s that ANY price paid by the public is justified by the power establishments sense of entitlement, which goes right back to William The Bastard.
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I disagree that the cruelty involved is incidental. Policies are founded on political intentions regarding how society is structured, organised and funded. That isn’t incidental: it’s calculated, purposeful and deliberate. And the fact that people claiming benefits have recently been restricted to claiming welfare for just two children indicates a clear eugenicist strand of thinking, too. It’s evident in other social Darwinist-inspired policies, also. The Conservatives have always envisioned society as being a steep hierarchy, and have always ensured a grossly unequal distribution of wealth, resources and opportunity via their policies.
The cruelty is very apparent when we are confronted with the uneddifying spectacle of Tory MPs laughing in parliament when presented with the accounts of suffering that their policies, such as the bedroom tax and welfare “reforms,” have caused.
Indifference to suffering that has been inflicted because of one’s own actions is also cruelty, btw.
But I agree with most of your analysis – especially regarding deliberative democracy, btw. I was in schools delivering alternative education and out in the communities delivering dialogical programmes that were distinctly inspired by Paulo Freire, a few years ago. I also agree that: “It’s that ANY price paid by the public is justified by the power establishments sense of entitlement”, as you say. But my point is that austerity policies and the broader neoliberal agenda is harmful to the public, and the government know this, it is therefore implemented with intent. That is cruel.
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Reblogged this on seachranaidhe1.
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