Are they joking? UN poverty expert thought Tory response to his report was a ‘spoof’
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 are complaining because Mr Alston hasn’t done the same.
At a time when we are all taking a long, hard look at the Conservative government of the last few years, this is damning.
Philip Alston, the New York-based human rights lawyer and United Nations rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, has responded with disbelief after the Tories responded to his report on poverty in the UK.
“I thought it might actually be a spoof,” he said after ministers claimed that his report was “a completely inaccurate picture of our approach to tackling poverty” and that the UK was among the happiest countries in the world.
“The statement is as troubling as the situation,” he said. “There is nothing that indicates any willingness to debate over issues which have generated endless very detailed, totally reputable reports across the political spectrum in the UK. All of these are dismissed.”
Alston’s report compared Conservative policies to the creation of Victorian workhouses. Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, said she felt it was politically biased and alleged that Alston did not do enough research, only visiting the UK for 11 days.
Alston retorted that the government response amounted to “a total denial of a set of uncontested facts”.
Particularly contentious was Mr Alston’s claim that the Department for Work and Pensions had created “a digital and sanitised version of the 19th-century workhouse”.
Tory apologists rushed to rubbish the claim, like historian Dominic Sandbrook, who wrote in the Daily Mail that it was “simply ridiculous” and “an insult to our national intelligence”.
“I think breaking rocks has some similarity to the 35 hours of job search [required per week to receive universal credit] for people who have been out of work for months or years,” Mr Alston responded. “They have to go through the motions but it is completely useless. That seems to me to be very similar to the approach in the old-style workhouse. The underlying mentality is that we are going to make the place sufficiently unpleasant that you really won’t want to be here.
“Is it the case that 14 million people do not live in poverty? Do they contest the child poverty predictions? That is what it seems to be.”
Rather than addressing the substance, the UK government has sought to distract from the troubling findings of this report by misrepresenting the process behind it. This is disappointing, if predictable. https://t.co/ZWNVHFv8bk
— Philip Alston (@PhilipGAlston) May 22, 2019
It seems clear that this man will not be backing down.
As long-term readers of This Site will appreciate, that is a stance with which I can sympathise.
And it really is the only position to take with a government of bullies like the Tories, who deliberately (it seems) ignore the facts in order to continue pursuing malevolent policies of hate towards the poor and vulnerable.
Sadly, as I mentioned previously, the UK government may merrily ignore the findings of the United Nations report, without suffering any adverse backlash.
We know the Tories are wrong because we can see the evidence all around us. We know they are driving the entire country to ruin.
But they refuse to see it. Their attitude is symbolic of the pig-ignorance that came into office with David Cameron, back in 2010.
Source: UN poverty expert hits back over UK ministers’ ‘denial of facts’ | Society | The Guardian
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Not ignorance, but deliberate vindictive and evil cruelty.
Aktion t4 rolling along without much of a ado
The UN is angry because they’re trying to push a politicized definition of poverty and correctly being ignored.
What are you on about?