It’s truly remarkable that whenever we have a Conservative government, we suddenly witness media coverage of an unprecedented rise in the numbers of poor people who suddenly seem to develop a considerable range of baffling personal ineptitudes and immediately dysfunctional lives.

We see a proliferation of  “skivers” and “scroungers”, an uprising of “fecklessness”, a whole sneaky “culture of entitlement”, “drug addicts”, a riot of general all-round bad sorts, and apparently, the numbers of poor people who suddenly can’t cook a nutritious meal has climbed dramatically, too. We are told that starvation is not because of a lack of money and access to food, but rather, it’s because people don’t know how to budget and cook, that’s according to the Conservative Baroness Jenkin of Kennington.

She recommends that poor people stop avoiding porridge, since it only costs 4 pence a bowl.

The alarming rise in numbers of adults who have suddenly forgotten how to cook and eat porridge since David Cameron took Office, up to last year.

The very fact that people suddenly and worryingly forget these crucial life-skills under every single Conservative government, but most particularly under this one, provides a darn good reason to vote them out on May 7th, 2015, I should say.

Iain Duncan Smith added: “People are going to food banks because they get divorced, ill or addicted to drugs,  it is “ridiculous” to blame the Government.

It is really rather ridiculous to assume that that every single reason that someone is going to a food bank is down to what the Department for Work and Pensions does.

The report itself today and other reports are also clear and they show there are often people with very dysfunctional lives, people who have been caught in drug addiction, family breakdown, people who have gone into serious illness that aren’t claiming benefits and come into difficulty.”

Gosh, such a massive rise in “dysfunctional lives”, divorce, family breakdown, serious illness and drug addiction, and all since 2010 – even more reasons to vote them out. This Government has clearly created a tide of social problems, as very few people were incompetently hungry and desperately silly enough to need food banks under the last government. In fact I didn’t even know they existed back then. But that’s the “Big Society” for you. What a bright idea to replace welfare with charity. It’s just like the good old Victorian days. Hurrah!

I mean it’s not as if wealthy people ever suffer from messy divorce, serious illness, family breakdown and drug addiction. That must be why we never see them at food banks.

These people simply need to stop being seriously ill, divorced and all of that, that’s what I say.

A lot of people who specialise in studying poverty have said the welfare “reforms” are behind the rise in food bank use, as well as rising benefit sanctions, low pay and ever-rising living costs. But Iain Duncan Smith seems to know what he’s doing, especially when it comes to talking about “fairness”. Or statistics, for that matter.  You never hear about people starving who don’t have a messed-up life, after all. The man has solved that cause and effect dilemma conveniently and to his discredit, very cheaply. Bravo. We should give him a break, as the poor, inadequate vicious bully defensive man can’t even afford to buy his own underwear.

It’s just a coincidence that the Tory austerity measures have been targeted at the poorest, after all. Nothing to do with those draconian, punitive fair and much-needed cuts to people’s lifeline benefits.

Meanwhile, I’m delighted to see the rise in tax-avoiding, sanctimonious kindly wealthy people preaching Victorian values of thrift, self-help and morality, but only to the poor, of course. We really must learn to manage how to not have the basic requirements for survival better, after all. We’re just going about being paupers all wrong. We all know that increasing absolute poverty is an indulgent lifestyle choice. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to have such an easy time of it, languishing in all of that deprivation, a shorter life and constant cold and hunger? Not to mention such a special social status. It’s so important to know one’s place.

Yes. Poor people are just so incompetent at being impoverished. How utterly selfish. We really ought to make much better use of our absolute poverty. Perhaps we should learn how to announce a flounce from the country, like many of the tight-fisted, selfish, personality disordered,  socially irresponsible hard done by millionaires do, at the prospect of social policy not going quite their way. Some of them were very cross indeed about the very idea of contributing to our economy, and who can blame them. After all, it matters not that poor people starve, as the most important and useful thing for this country is the accumulation of more wealth by an already very wealthy minority. The destruction of our country’s economy, public services, welfare and so many lives is a sacrifice the wealthy are more than happy to pay.

Good thing that David Cameron has obliged their generosity. Phew. The alternative just wouldn’t bear thinking about for those poor millionaires, who are, after all, victims of terrible discrimination, and inequality. Someone has to be, apparently. It’s in the Tory social order rule book. Still, at least we are all better off than Iain Duncan Smith. Most of us are still capable of managing coherence, as money can’t buy that. So we can be cheap and cheerful.

But the rich have obviously forgotten the virtues of porridge and thrift, too.

Perhaps the poor could run budgeting classes for poor, needy millionaires. It seems not many people know that porridge provides the way out of grinding, long-term material deprivation and helps to prevent terrible social problems. Better safe than sorry, I say.

And David Cameron says rich people need looking after. They must be very vulnerable and fragile. I’m sure it will make the mansion tax more palatable, too, for the tax dodging unbearably tortured souls that may have to dip their hands in their vast vaults and pay their way for once endure it. They didn’t mind the bedroom tax, though, despite it being a breach of human rights, and they even managed to stay calm and silent at the destitution and deaths it has caused: they didn’t complain once, bless them. So perhaps they’ll cope with the mansion tax after all.

There’s no porridge on the House of Lord’s menu, either. I feel so sorry for them:

See what I mean? An example of Baroness Jenkin’s “budgeting skills”, which are subsidised by UK tax-payers. The House of Lords’ 760 peers benefit from an £84 discount on their food every week. The generous cut is more than the weekly Jobseeker’s Allowance, which is just £71. And the subsidy comes on top of the £300-a-day “subsistence” given to peers for each day they attend the Lords, to cover food and accommodation. How do they endure it?

And thinking about it, isn’t it odd that whenever we see the curiously abrupt forgetfulness and sudden ineptitude on the rise amongst the poorest members of the public and their increasingly chaotic, difficult lives, it coincides every time with a significant increase in poverty, inequality, politically manufactured unemployment, a significant rise in the cost of living, poor working conditions and lower wages, and welfare “reforms”.

And a bunch of selfservatives in Office. There’s a correlation there somewhere, isn’t there?

Latest foodbank figures top 900,000: life has got worse not better for the poorest in 2013/14, and this is just the tip of the iceberg – The Trussell Trust.

Executive Summary of Emergency Use Only Report.

The just about surviving report

 

Thanks to Robert Livingstone for his excellent memes