Tories have DELIBERATELY increased poverty in the UK, according to UN inspector

Professor Philip Alston: He came to his conclusions by listening to people affected by Conservative policies on the poor, sick and disabled. Tories implemented those policies by ignoring the very same people – and now they have vowed to ignore Professor Alston.

The United Nations’ special rapporteur on poverty, Philip Alston, has said he believes the UK’s Conservative government deliberately increased poverty in the country, for ideological reasons.

He said the harm done to the poorest and most vulnerable could be reversed with very little investment; all that is needed is the political will. Sadly, we all know that a change of government will be required to achieve this.

The Tories themselves confirmed this, by stating that they do not recognise the findings of Professor Alston’s report. Clearly they will not act upon those findings either.

In an interview with Channel 4 News, he said the following:

And this is from his verbal report:

A wealth of material has appeared about this – mostly on the social media (and we’ll discuss the reasons for this below), so it is possible to put together a good summary of the report, the reaction to it, and wider issues from that. So here are the headlines:

https://twitter.com/DancingTheMind/status/1063423788447092736

Here’s the underlying implication – that the Tory government intended to create this problem for the people of the UK in order to achieve “radical social re-engineering”:

Professor Alston said the situation could change overnight with very little investment, if there was a different government:

But the current government is unlikely to do anything because it is in a “state of denial”:

https://twitter.com/Anoosh_C/status/1063402905569583107

It is well worth noting that Professor Alston used the words “hostile environment” to describe the Conservative government’s policies brings to mind the Windrush Scandal – and the Department for Work and Pensions, which is responsible for so many of the policies which have caused the harm, is now being run by the woman who took the rap for Windrush – Amber Rudd.

The effect of Tory policies on women was highlighted by the special rapporteur:

https://twitter.com/UKDemockery/status/1063451731655385095

This Site suggested yesterday that Esther McVey resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary, not because of Brexit but because she did not want to face the criticism she would receive from Professor Alston. In his report, he revealed that he had met Ms McVey – and her comments were alarming:

https://twitter.com/Anoosh_C/status/1063405551852404736

One can see why she may not have wanted to stick around for the fallout from that. Instead, as Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell points out, they “manipulate statistics” and “refuse to accept responsibility”.

And how do they get away with it? The answer is obvious:

Excellent points. And if you think the BBC isn’t hiding important facts from you, were you aware of the following?

No? Then the BBC, together with other right-wing news organisations, has been hiding the facts from us all.

We need responsible news media, holding the government to account for its actions, and a cabinet minister willing to accept the facts and act on them in the national interest.

We have been given Amber Rudd.

I said it before and I’ll say it again: This would be a farce if not for the fact that people are dying.

13 Comments

  1. Allan jones November 17, 2018 at 7:24 am - Reply

    The Tory’s are half ways there to stopping benefit and even thinking and starting to give up the NHS and put it in private hands so they don’t get any fall out .

  2. trev November 17, 2018 at 10:59 am - Reply

    It’s deliberate alright, nothing less than Class War.

  3. Dave Rowlands November 17, 2018 at 11:18 am - Reply

    The tories are systematically dismantling the welfare state, give them another term in power and it will all be gone.

  4. nmac064 November 17, 2018 at 11:45 am - Reply

    I have always known in my own mind that Tory austerity is a deliberate, nasty and vindictive policy specifically designed to “Put working class people in their place” – just as their education policies are designed to prevent working class students from attaining higher education.

  5. Barry Davies November 17, 2018 at 11:56 am - Reply

    Everyone in favour of the bigoted freedom of movement for white guys from only 27 nations to keep black and coloured citizens from 164 non Eu nations is complicit in this, flooding the bottom end of society leaves more people on low incomes or out of work, but the rich get richer because of this.

  6. Matt November 17, 2018 at 1:12 pm - Reply

    The torries are like the three blind monkeys, only it’s see evil, speak evil & hear evil

  7. Jean Casale November 17, 2018 at 4:44 pm - Reply

    Did McVey resign to avoid dealing with UN report on poverty?

    Abso-bloody-lutely,,,,

  8. J Edington November 17, 2018 at 7:58 pm - Reply

    “But the current government is unlikely to do anything because it is in a “state of denial”.
    No. A state of denial assumes that you believe something to be untrue. The Tories know it is all true because they planned it.

  9. vondreassen November 17, 2018 at 9:44 pm - Reply

    this has always been the English ‘tory’ way – Some of us have never understood how stupid we electorate are; over and over again believing the lies; Remember Thatcher and her Grand \funeral —-amazing that people didn’t throng the streets and throw shit over the womans coffin; She, daughter of a shopkeeper, was merely being used by the so-called elete, An ‘elete’ who have set up a state sponsored and funded private school system aimed at producing little tory voters…..
    .Also a big problem has always been a conniving quite nasty media..Note that now Jeremy Corbyn is showing popularity GLOBAL is leaning to the heavily to the right.

  10. Adrian November 17, 2018 at 10:20 pm - Reply

    I’m 63 seen the 3 day week ! Power cuts the oil crisis pushing fuel costs up 4 fold in the 70s then Mrs Thatcher the almighty free market 2008 the crash billions of pounds to bail out the greedy bankers and who has had to bear the brunt of all this !!! It doesn’t really take much working out does it !!! I don’t see any end to this not for the normal working class the future is bleak !!! This government just does not care about the poverty and inequality they have caused because at the end of the day it’s the old old cry of the Tories (F**K YOU JACK I’M ALRIGHT ) SAD SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS !!!

  11. Ron Tocknell November 18, 2018 at 1:02 am - Reply

    Okay, this is niether an opinion or a theory and I’m certainly not claiming it is a fact. It is just a suggestion that might be worth thinking about… or not.
    Maybe this isn’t about “keeping the working class in their place” or even about impoverishing the poor to enrich the rich. That is certainly what is happening but maybe it isn’t what it’s ABOUT.
    Think about past revolutions and how they eventually panned out. The pattern is consistent in that society becomes a more opressed police state following a revolution whichever way it goes. If the status quo manage to stamp out revolution, laws become more draconian and surveillance is stepped up to ensure there’s no repeat. If the revolutionaries manage to bring down the government, they introduce a replacement regime with safeguards in place to ensure that the new leaders cannot be unseated by the same process. Either way, totalitarianism follows revolution…
    and maybe that is the end game.
    There isn’t the will or the unity in the UK for a full scale revolution so any serious uprising would be well within the capabilities of police and armed forces to quell it… and clear the way for justifications to declare a State of Emergency. Once that happens, human rights go out the window.

  12. Michael McNulty November 18, 2018 at 11:55 am - Reply

    I thought some years ago the Tories were using the welfare state to deter an uprising just long enough to allow the wealthy to acquire the most desirable British assets.

    Now they’ve got nearly everything worth having the end of the welfare state is near, as those with enough money will have bought a foreign retreat to flee to when the people react. They’d like to own the NHS too but they’ll manage without it, like bank robbers who flee the scene and leave the last few banknotes scattered around.

  13. Ani November 30, 2018 at 11:45 pm - Reply

    Very good and accurate article. Thank you and keep spreading this information out. I have shared it.

Leave A Comment