UN reports on poverty in the UK – and the Tory response is WORSE than expected
Remember when I responded to news of a UN investigation into cruel and inhumane treatment of disabled people by stating, “The UN will release a damning report stating that the UK’s Conservative government tortures disabled people, and the UK’s Conservative government will ignore it.”
The government’s response to UN expert Philip Alston’s report on poverty is, if anything, worse.
Mr Alston, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, accused ministers of being in a state of denial about the impact of policies, including the rollout of universal credit, since 2010. He accused them of the “systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British population” and warned that worse could be yet to come for the most vulnerable, who face “a major adverse impact” if Brexit proceeds. He said leaving the EU was “a tragic distraction from the social and economic policies shaping a Britain that it’s hard to believe any political parties really want”.
And what was the Conservative government’s response?
Amber Rudd plans to lodge a formal complaint with the UN.
According to The Guardian, “Rudd will argue that Alston is politically biased and did not do enough research. The minister is seeking guidance from the Foreign Office on the best way to respond after Alston compared her department’s welfare policies to the creation of Victorian workhouses.
“In a statement, the government said his report was ‘a barely believable documentation of Britain based on a tiny period of time spent here” and “a completely inaccurate picture of our approach to tackling poverty’.”
Typical blinkered Toryism.
If they didn’t have their tame journalists in the partisan “mainstream media” to defend them, they would have been ousted as the charlatans they are, long ago. Look at the way Jo Coburn on the BBC’s Politics Live tried to deflect blame onto the Labour Party – the party of opposition that has absolutely no power to change anything – for the details of the damning Alston report:
UN report slams the Tory government for trashing the social safety net, spreading misery, & creating "workhouse like conditions".
Watch this hyper-partisan BBC hack casually try to deflect blame for this Tory misery & chaos onto the Labour Party.pic.twitter.com/RoK2YB7Vri
— Another Angry Voice (@Angry_Voice) May 22, 2019
In fact we know that Conservatives have spent the last 40 years systematically destroying every element of society that could give poor and working people a chance at a better life. Why do you think Margaret Thatcher destroyed our industrial base, back in the 1980s?
Their denials don’t ring true.
And if she goes through with it, I hope anyone seeing Amber Rudd in the streets will have the courage to call her out on it: “Amber Rudd – shame on you.”
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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What an evil, evil hag, dismissing the UN & in denial of course . . . yes I watched PMQ as I always do (that’s the only BBC I watch) she just sprouts out the usual crap, it’s embarrassing to watch her tbh . . . & blaming Labour .. for the 2008 crash that the banks created & so put all us poor people on austerity to pay for it while the banks & certain MPs eat lobster..
JC4PM
Aktion t4 rolling along without much of a ado I’m only following orders was the cry
In one way Alston is incorrect – the Tory policy makers are not in denial, they fully well know the effects their policies are having, and to them, they are working just as planned. The Tories that are not policy makers, just MPs that soak up the anti-Labour vote and/or the gravy train, might well be in denial, but ideological obedience to party seems more important to them.
Just the same as some Tories (and other neo-liberals) want climate change to happen (so that resources can be extracted from the poles) the Tories (and other neo-liberals) want austerity to happen, so that the resources of the poor can be extracted. That some of those same poor then die is merely a positive policy outcome. The fact that they know of the death rate, but yet carry on with policies of austerity, proves that it is deliberate.
Austerity wouldn’t be as bad, if, your average Joe could live off-grid, like some do in America and Australia. Due to the way land is owned, and the monopolies on energy supply, it is virtually impossible to live off-grid in the UK. We live in a monied society, where it is impossible to survive without money. To then deny people money via Universal Credit, sanctions and benefit caps is then, in essence, a death sentence.
And it is not just Tories, it is right-wing factions of the Labour Party, the Lib-Dems, the Faragians and Tommy Robinsons of the world, that think austerity is a good thing. Remember that when you vote today. And in the next time you get to vote. If the Faragians of the world get elected, it will probably the last time you get to vote.
Hi Mike I’ve been pushing this out for the past week nobody wants to touch it barely any MSM and not one TV news station or site there’s also a link to the BMJ on it so I thought I’d try you
MSM trending slapping Farage Boris et al for taking money all but a few newspapers Not one TV news station has touched this
Big tobacco secretly bankrolling anti-NHS think tank whose bosses donate thousands to Tory leadership contenders, an investigation reveals
British American Tobacco is funding the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has called for the NHS to be abolished, while previous funders include sugar and soft drinks companies
https://twitter.com/liddlelur/status/1131463369452642304
I’ve already published two articles about this:
https://wp.me/p4Sru1-c7U
and
https://wp.me/p4Sru1-c8c
Thanks pushed the first out again I don’t get why Labour and the other parties aren’t all over it – The BMJ article has a bit more traction
I think I may have pointed this out before, but in one important way the current regime is actually a lot worse than the unlamented workhouse system.
There was no legal provision under the New Poor Law of 1834 for anyone who entered a workhouse voluntarily to be denied a bare minimum of food and shelter. Breaking the workhouse rules was treated as a criminal offence and the offender would be taken before a magistrate in a proper court – the usual sentence would be something like a month’s porridge. Once in gaol, of course, that basic minimum of food and shelter was still guaranteed, and as the workhouses were so grim doing bird wasn’t much worse if it was any worse at all.
Compare that to the current shambles where people can be left utterly destitute for months or even years on end at the whim of a faceless and unaccountable “decision maker”. Nearly two centuries on from the workhouses we seem to have gone backwards rather than forwards.
Dealing with poverty is not part of the present government’s agenda.
Indeed, Jeremy Hunt recently came up with the lunatic idea of a massive increase in the UK military budget—already one of the highest in the world.
He criticised NATO countries that spend 1-2% of their GDP on the military when the US spends 4%.
He did not say how he would pay for it.
Perhaps the US spends too much, Mr Hunt.
This is why we need to make a stand against the far right that are destroying this country…we need stop the Tories and Farage