I always worry when David Cameron or Iain Duncan Smith use sentences like: “We will embark on an all out assault on poverty”, because what they actually mean, as past and recent history informs us, is an all out state assault on the poor and further attacks on our social security provision.
Benefits were originally carefully calculated to meet only basic needs. Welfare was designed to provide the minimal amount for food, fuel and shelter to ensure that those unable to provide for themselves didn’t fall into absolute poverty. The amount was based on “the amount the law says you need to live on.” This has been steadily eroded by the welfare “reforms” – cuts. The severe and punitive welfare sanctions have normalised the idea of people having no welfare support at all, pushing the normative, moral, ethical and rational boundaries of ordinary people steadily, incrementally, in the same way that all tyrants do when they want to take away public rights and freedoms.
The Tories have a plain intent to completely dismantle the welfare state, step by step, using justification narratives that stigmatise and scapegoat the poorest people in order to harden public attitudes, diminishing empathy for the poor, and above all, to get their own way. All of this comes down to nothing more than traditional Tory prejudices towards poor people and their “small state” ideology.
People need welfare support when they become too old to work, lose their job, become injured at work, become disabled through illness or are disabled and can’t find suitable employment. All of these circumstances arise through no fault of th people experiencing these difficulties, and such difficulties may happen to anyone, including you, your children, grandchildren, other relatives and friends. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the greatest welfare expenditure includes in-work benefits and pensions.
We have ALL contributed to paying for social security, and our parents, grandparents and great grandparents fought for our right to it, as part of our post-war settlement. It isn’t the government’s to take away.
It’s ours, and a measure of how decent, compassionate, civilised, developed and democratic we are as a society.
Pictures courtesy of Robert Livingstone
Politics and Insights 
Very true, and superbly put, Sue. If only we were reading this in the press every day instead of the propaganda.
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Reblogged this on sdbast.
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Reblogged this on campertess and commented:
Very well said.
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The Tories want just a small number of people who are not privileged to survive this social genocide (at the end of the day that’s their aim) so they have just enough to service the state and the money earning businesses. ,the rest of us can starve or rot to death due to the Illegal immoral Sanction’s , or do I believe the conspiracy theories???
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People are dying as a consequence of the collective Tory welfare “reforms”. The government have been made aware of this, and presented with evidence, which they have chosen to ignore. Furthermore, they have refused to carry out a cumulative impact assessment of their reforms, choosing instead to leave policy outcomes unmonitored.They have also gone to some lengths to stifle debate about this issue and withhold evidence that validates the critiques of Tory policy.
If there was no political intention behind the deaths, I believe there would have been concern and an inquiry before now into the actual cause of those deaths. Instead we are presented with aggressive and remorselessly indifferent denials that there is a link between policy and the suffering and deaths. That isn’t conspiracy, it’s fact.
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We have a massively dumbed down population that doesn’t help. Singing on ice dancing competitions watching DIY paint dry on the telly believing everything they are told to believe feeling for people they are told to feel for whilst ignoring others in much worse situations …. it’s madness! The age of self along side the age of ignorance and indifference is quite frightening. People attacking the homel;ess and the disabled people supporting Tory policies till they themselves are affected … tax credit girl on telly comes to mind. The general population are to thick to care and that’s the bottom line and the Tories know it.
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its time those biggotted toffs understood where THEIR millions came from. they had to start being accumulated somewhere at sometime way back through the anals of time and my guess (plus historically) is, it was on the backs of their workers in the mines and factories their forefathers built and owned. nuff said.??
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Nuff said, and may I add, very well said
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Funny how whenever the Tories are in power the way poverty is defined changes to suit Tory rhetoric, we now have the middle classes blaming the working classes for their lack of opportunities! The Working classes blaming the unemployed ,and the unemployed blaming the Disabled ,and the pensioners actually seeing it for what it is in reality! We are being pushed into attacking those less fortunate than us because the Tories want us to fight /blame each other so as to keep the onus off of those in government is Tories with their agenda to enrich themselves and their big corporation’s at the expense of all those not in their Clique! In the process destroying all that is good in what was once Great Britain,notice we are not even called the United Kingdom on foreign news casts now it’s just Britain or England??? So those who vote Tory go figure why you are afraid of losing your job your home and your savings (George Osbourne has just dropped the amount of your savings that were protected if the bank crashed!! Not much been said about that on mainstream media has there??)
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Nothing to add to this. Poverty is redefined – as many times as neccessary to pull the wool over the eyes of anyone not actually in need who might vote at the next election.
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Yes indeed Cameron’s money came from his forefathers (they were slave traders) money that was paid by the government at the time as compensation for the loss of their business due to the abolishment of slavery. Remember why slave ownership was very uncommon in England was that there was already an effectively slave force in place i.e … the working classes which was more entrenched and already completely subservient, And by the way often worked harder and for less than their African counterparts in the USA.
The tory mission to bring us back to Victorian Britain is to subjugate the commoners once again. Upstairs downstairs if you are lucky. I reckon latter day workhouses and workfare too on the way. Immigrant labour is fuelling this. This is why they want to stay in the EU but without the human rights clauses and court which he will try and negotiate out of.
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It’s like watching a bulldozer drive through the Welfare State.
What the Tories have actually done is bad enough. Yet they still think they can get away with a blatant campaign of false information and propaganda to justify it. Remember, these are the people who think there is no connection between benefit sanctions and foodbanks !
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Reich Minister of Propaganda
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Reblogged this on wgrovedotnet and commented:
For those who have paid in over 38 years it is an insult to call it “welfare” and for those people also, they paid because it was the right thing to do, for all of society not just the lucky few.
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Reblogged this on paulh121.
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