Tories want you to believe people choose to be poor and disabled
Perceptive piece by Siobhan Fenton in The Independent:
It’s now been revealed that £12bn worth of welfare cuts will be included in next month’s budget, with even more rolled out in the autumn spending review.
Such cuts are based on nothing more than the Tory myth that poverty is a choice which people can be scared or starved out of. Osborne’s logic appears to be that if the Tories make life for poor people insufferable, they will simply choose to be well-off. As such, poverty is a lifestyle choice or a moral failing.
By framing the issue in this way, the Conservatives have narrowed the conversation, and hope people won’t be able to see the wider structural inequalities and economic failings, for which they are responsible.
But in reality, the reason why there are teenagers who will leave school this year and sign on for Jobseekers’ Allowance – rather going up to Oxford University like David Cameron and George Osborne – isn’t because of choices they made as individuals. They didn’t choose to be born into a family who could not send them to Eton or St Pauls, nor did they choose to be born into the most savage economic climate in living memory.
Nor does anyone “choose” to be disabled. Or to belong to a social class, gender or ethnic group which has been economically oppressed for centuries by the establishment.
Nor do unemployed people choose to not be in jobs which simply do not exist.
Being further deprived of their right to live with basic dignity will not mean that people on welfare will simply decide to become employed or non-disabled. Rather, these welfare cuts will serve to test, punish and degrade them further.
Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
If you have enjoyed this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
Georgy Porgy, Bunkum Smith, will you please explain to me how I can be cured of my debilitating illness? I didn’t ask to be disabled as I had a few years of working life still left, in a job I enjoyed, a job for which I am no longer fit, or any job come to that so why not save yourself and me a lot of trouble and put the gun to my head and be done with it all? Or better still give me a gun and I can do the job myself, just about.
I was born with Aspergers Syndrome. I didn’t choose in the womb to be born with something that de facto means only scammers would want to employ me.
I really hope these evil bastards become sick and disabled very soon and lets see how they like thier own evil rules.
In the end these cuts will impact children in multiple ways. This is a very useful article by a perceptive doctor in the US outlining how trauma severely affects the health of children decades later.
We need to be pushing this with our MP’s as much as we can.
http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/doctor-childhood-trauma-can-destroy-your-health-decades-later-yet-america-ignores-it
It’s amazing when you look through history how for generation upon generation how the children born of poor parents choose to stay penny-less and have short life-spans (there’s clearly some wondrous joy from being so, that I’ve not experienced so far ); whereas, those born into wealth are equally enamoured with their lot, as they too hold on to their position in society for generation upon generation. I just can’t get it, how can this contradiction have lasted almost from the existence of, perhaps, the Norman Conquest..I’m obviously missing something, perhaps, something to do with the operation of power?
It is not a myth that people choose to be poor, sick or disabled.
They have merely made the conscious choice not to have killed themselves yet.
When in-work benefits are cut, savaged or scrapped, the fools who voted for this appallingly kleptocratic kakistocracy will get their reward.
Let the rioting and civil unrest commence…… soon!!!!
The Nasty Party is about to really live up to its name. Very depressing.
We knew all this Mike and the Tories don’t realy give a toss what you think. Here is the reality as things stand today: http://prospect.org/article/political-roots-widening-inequality
” working people in advanced nations like UK & the United States have failed to gain ground and are under increasing economic stress: Put simply, globalization and technological change have made most of us less competitive. The tasks we used to do can now be done more cheaply by lower-paid workers abroad or by computer-driven machines”
Now, a possible solution:
“My solution—and I’m hardly alone in suggesting this—has been an activist government that raises taxes on the wealthy, invests the proceeds in excellent schools and other means people need to become more productive, and redistributes to the needy. These recommendations have been vigorously opposed by those who believe the economy will function better for everyone if government is smaller and if taxes and redistributions are curtailed”
And guess who opposed them?
The current Labour Party.
So, where do we go from here?
They care a great deal what I think!
That’s why they’re spending so much money trying to stop me.
I would like you to know lung damage is no funny, I did NOT choose to have a genetic condition which has caused emphysema, my condition is caused by Alpha 1 antitrypsin deficiency and is progressive which Will worsen not improve, you try living with being breathless and unable to do the things that well people take for granted, it is not nice !!!
I take it you’d like the Tories to know these facts.
It’s believed the DWP monitors this site but they only want to see material that portrays their department in a nasty way so I’m not sure the message will get through. Still, no harm in trying.
So life was great in 1999 I was a serving member of the Royal Navy, married less than a year, just promoted a mortgage on our own house life was good. Then BANG I am diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and medically discharged. Over the next few years I battled the illness and while I was still able volunteered for the MS society which kept me going,but alas my MS progressed to far, but it was only a slow progression until ATOS and the Tories then the stress just speeded things up I now can’t even dress myself, feed myself or even make my self a drink. I can see the only way out with more cuts coming is to end it all, which is what they want and so when that day comes remember IDS and DWP you are to blame. I would like to think reading this would help change things for others for the better but I don’t think these people care,
Best thing to do is not make it easy for them to get what they want. So please don’t do any harm to yourself.