Betsy Duncan Smith: More cynical Tory manipulation?

Last Updated: January 17, 2015By

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Why has Betsy Duncan Smith started talking about her cancer – no less than six years after her diagnosis?

Can it be yet another cynical attempt by the Tories to manufacture sympathy among the lower classes – “Oh, look, they’re human too.”

Mrs Duncan Smith is the daughter of  the 5th Baron Cottesloe. She’s married to Iain Duncan Smith, and they live rent-free in a country house belonging to her father’s estate in Swanbourne, Buckinghamshire, at a time when people are being pushed into debt to pay for social housing that he says has too many rooms for them, despite having had no alternative option. Humanity has nothing to do with them.

Both the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph are carrying sickeningly sychophantic stories about Mrs DS’s struggle with cancer – a disease for which the National Health Service in England, under the control of her husband’s Conservative Party, has cut no less than 25 treatments in this last few days.

This suggests a strategy by leading Conservatives similar to that carried out with Tory leader David Cameron’s late son Ivan; his disability was used as a shield against justified claims that Duncan Smith was attacking the disabled; his policies killing them off by the thousands.

Are we really stupid enough to be taken in by this transparent duplicity?

According to her husband, she would have been fit for work throughout her treatment.

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28 Comments

  1. Steve Grant January 17, 2015 at 7:39 pm - Reply

    I do not believe in mocking anyone who has cancer but I also think it abhorrent that the lady be dragged into a perverse exercise to try and secure votes for probably the most destructive political party ever to be allowed to run this country.

    • Mike Sivier January 17, 2015 at 8:07 pm - Reply

      Exactly. It’s not about attacking her for having had cancer – it’s about attacking her for letting the Tories use it for cynical electioneering.

  2. aturtle05 January 17, 2015 at 7:53 pm - Reply

    Hmm Father to a disabled child that uses the memory of his son in every disability argument hires the husband to a wife in remission from cancer and cuts cancer care.

    Are we all in this together? I think not!

  3. casalealex January 17, 2015 at 8:16 pm - Reply

    Only due to Labour’s NHS cancer policy was I able to survive two separate cancers in 2007. I was diagnosed and operated on within three weeks each time, which was Labour’s objective. I am still here! Gawd help me if I get a third under these killers!

    If IDS’ wife had cancer six years ago, it would have been when we had the same Labour government that had the cancer policy which saved me, so she too was lucky that it was then and not now!

    When I have seen many references to IDS’ wife’s story on FB I too could not help but reflect on Dastard Dave’s blatant use of his son’s fateful disability to gain political sympathy too.

  4. Terry Hackman January 17, 2015 at 8:59 pm - Reply

    Tory Oil & Gas [ reg. company ] to frack own wives and children to find reservoirs of voter sympathy. Ministers said to expect ” years ” of victimhood could be discovered under sitting M.P’s.
    Population to be asked ” grin and bear it “

    • Mike Sivier January 17, 2015 at 9:33 pm - Reply

      I don’t think many Tory MPs would consider themselves to be victims. Objectifying their own spouses and children just to get a few votes makes them abusers, in my opinion.

      • Terry Hackman January 18, 2015 at 10:39 am - Reply

        I like your comment.
        I think I was trying to suggest (clumsily / at a tangent) that in an abusive relationship, [ as IDS has with how many people in this country ] , the abuser will play the victim if it offers an advantage.
        I don’t think many tory mp’s consider themselves victims , but it’s in the PR armoury if needed.

  5. Nick Sans Pasty January 17, 2015 at 9:54 pm - Reply

    Anyone who has had or is struggling with this illness always has my sympathy it’s one of the worst things that can happen to someone and their family, but this is weaponising the NHS in a more underhand way than Labour ever have, the same way Cameron used his son.

  6. Smiling Carcass January 17, 2015 at 9:56 pm - Reply

    I’ve no sympathy for her or him.

    There comes a time when your love of individuals must be subservient to your hatred for a type.

    My love for my fellow man is subservient to my intense hatred for her and her ilk.

  7. Jane Hartley Jacques January 17, 2015 at 9:58 pm - Reply

    My sympathies to anyone who has had cancer, and the worry, pain and stress this causes. This worry will continue for long after she is declared free of the disease according to my friends who have had cancer. What the above patient will not have had is the added stress of worrying about money and wondering what will happen to the house and where food and heating etc will come from, and maybe what will happen to their job. Then what will happen to welfare claims and PIP claims and the long delays.

    So I am sure it has been awful for Ms Duncan Smith, as all cancer patients, but the added day to day living stresses which makes life so hard for many people will have passed her and Mr Duncan Smith by. Did he ever have to have time off work to be her carer?

    • Mike Sivier January 18, 2015 at 2:26 am - Reply

      Yes, he had paid leave while remaining an MP, if I recall correctly.

      • rosemaryuk January 18, 2015 at 1:55 pm - Reply

        “In the event, he didn’t return to work for more than six months”.

        http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1295830/Betsy-told-cancer-words-took-breath-away-Ian-Duncan-Smith-talks-time-wifes-illness.html

        I don’t intend to make any comment about their coping with a diagnosis, and then treatment of cancer, lost too many of my own family and friends to the disease to do that.

        However, it is the day to day circumstances of living that they don’t understand. How many family carers would struggle to take time off from work? If they did no job would be kept open as long for them to return. Plus it would not be paid leave for such a long period of time.

        The fact is, that from day one of his welfare reforms, IDS has failed to address any of the financial issues faced by family carers. He is not alone, govts past and present are to blame. No doubt as we head towards GE15 we will again hear many platitudes. There will be promises that, like with previous times, will be broken.

        Carers prop up both the NHS and social services. They are a solid foundation that all else relies on. This short sightedness from ALL parties to fully address the many issues carers face will have catastrophic results long term. We are already witnessing the breakdown in many services.

        x

  8. Andy January 17, 2015 at 10:44 pm - Reply

    Manipulation and spin in it’s lowest form, disgraceful. IDS trying to deny us a good health system, if control the health care system was taken away from the state and we paid insurance either through mutual schemes or local taxation then people have the power to decide what is need locally and when local need is satisfied then contribution to centres of excellence would be decided. We take away the power of the state to cut services on a ideological whim. We are the ones who decide. The problem with top to bottom funding is it can be taken away as fast as it is given. We need to raise peoples earnings in real terms from the bottom up to take them away from dependancy. Maybe a bit more pre-distribution of wealth rather re-distribution. When people are dependant on the state they have us by the balls!

    • Mike Sivier January 18, 2015 at 2:28 am - Reply

      That looks like complete and utter rubbish of the worst possible kind.
      Are you seriously advocating ending the National Health Service and turning healthcare into a postcode lottery?

      • Andy January 18, 2015 at 9:40 am - Reply

        Thought that would get you. I’m not saying that the state should not have overall stewardship of the NHS. Although ‘NHS’ really is just the badge on the front of the building. If you get your car fixed the mechanic or garage you pay is a human being and he is accountable to you. The NHS, even though there are local trusts, has lost, or perhaps it never had, accountability. Trusts are just becoming underfunded monopolies in themselves. If more of the funding came from the bottom up, (we have many services mostly funded by Council Tax), without increasing the overall tax burden, and if we didn’t have huge monopolistic trusts trying to centralise as much as possible then we might just have a more democratic service. Where I live (Eastbourne) the town as been fighting to keep its maternity unit and not have mums-to-be traveling either 20 miles to Hastings or 25 miles to Brighton. I think that a decentralised NHS would bring accountability and thus democracy. If we try and create a society where people are able to live well and not be dependant on the state (I do not advocate making anyone poorer to achieve this) ultimately people have more power over their own lives.

        • Mike Sivier January 18, 2015 at 11:57 am - Reply

          Ah, but you don’t need to privatise it to decentralise it.

      • Andy January 18, 2015 at 9:18 pm - Reply

        It’s a long read but you may find this interesting…

        http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/anarchism-and-the-welfare-state-the-peckham-health-centre

        And although you will not agree, I think you’ll better understand my reasoning.

        Keep up the good work Mike, I really enjoy your Blog. Thanks.

        • Mike Sivier January 18, 2015 at 10:43 pm - Reply

          Okay, I’ll have a look later.

  9. Stephen Bee January 18, 2015 at 12:24 am - Reply

    And all this just after the government has cut 25 life saving cancer drugs available..maybe someone should send her a sympathy card and point out how lucky she was to have had NHS available to her!

  10. Mr.Angry January 18, 2015 at 9:03 am - Reply

    You’re all wrong, the “Sympathy” word does not exist in the tory vocabulary, so they can’t use something when they have no idea of its literal meaning.

    • Mike Sivier January 18, 2015 at 12:00 pm - Reply

      They’ve heard of it and it seems to work. What else do they need to know?

  11. jray January 18, 2015 at 9:23 am - Reply

    I wonder if she will have to undergo an ATOS/WCA assessment?

    • Mike Sivier January 18, 2015 at 11:58 am - Reply

      She didn’t at the time.

  12. Neil Mac January 18, 2015 at 9:34 am - Reply

    Ah yes, Betsy Duncan Smith, …the woman who, in 2002/2003, colluded with her unpleasant husband and invented a fictitious job in order to get public money in the form of expenses for her “wages”.

    • Mike Sivier January 18, 2015 at 11:58 am - Reply

      … Allegedly. He was cleared a few years later (by Cameron).

  13. Mr.Angry January 18, 2015 at 5:21 pm - Reply

    Cameron playing at being God yet again, judge and jury over all he rules, Moron

  14. Tony Dean January 19, 2015 at 9:07 am - Reply

    I suspect Betsy never had to experience a “Work Capability Assessment.”
    Has she done so she would now be divorced.

  15. Tony Dean January 19, 2015 at 10:12 am - Reply

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