Welfare for despised minorities

Thanks you Alison.

I don’t know who you but you were the voice of moderation, sense and decency on the BBC Wales phone-in today.  I was summoned to take part half an hour before the programme was due to start.

Howard Flight’s gaffe has inevitably churned up the bigots and myth swallowers.  Scroungers are one of most persistent myths that generations have loved to believe. Of course, there are people who cheat the system but there are not great hordes of them undermining our economy.

In 1920 a book titled ‘In search of a scrounger’ was published. There was one captivating fictitious tale that was retold by a Prime Minister and half the population.

‘An elegant women, dressed in a fur coat, was seen climbing out of her limousine to collect her dole at the Labour Exchange.’

The same woman was observed in every parish in the country from John o Groats to Land’s End.

In the fifties, every one knew a person in a council house with a colour television and a Jaguar parked outside. On today’s programme, one caller said he heard a woman in a fish and chip shop saying she hoped her boyfriend would make her pregnant soon so that she get more benefits.

These apocryphal anecdotes spread like a contagion and are endlessly repeated.  They appeal to the worst side of human nature. They excite the malicious tendency to believe the worst of other people. Inevitably some of the myth-spouters unloaded their trash over the airwaves today. But then Alison called. Calm and reasonable, she spoke for millions whose lives are made bearable by benefits.

The old chestnut about those who are better on benefits was rolled. Sadly this is nut that’s very difficult to crack. But it’s a monstrous lie to say that Labour did nothing to eliminate it. We introduced the minimum wage and tax credits to make work pay.  They did not get rid of all anomalies’ Sadly, nothing will.

Another woman rang up and said that I am ‘lovely’ (absolutely right! ) but why do I not do more to help pensioners.  It’s difficult to get across the functions of a National Insurance scheme to an audience whose minds have been warped by Daily Mail thinking.

500,000 pensioners lose up to £35 a week because they do not claim the Income Support (IS) that would top up their basic pensions to the level of the Minimum Income Guarantee (MIG). Why? They see IS as a handout. Their pride tells them that they have worked all their lives without taking handouts.  They have paid for their basic pensions with their contributions. They are not going to start taking handouts now. The remedy to end the stigma is to raise the basic pension to the level of the MIG.

Taking Child Benefit from rich families will stigmatised it into a handout. The Tories want to degrade the National Insurance that covers everybody to a Poor Law charity for despised minorities. If they succeed they will undermine 60 years of a welfare state that has served us well.

The mask of smiling, compassionate, ‘we are all in it together’ Toryism has slipped. Howard Flight flaunts the true ugly face of millionaire Conservatism contemptuous of those on average or low incomes.  This is not a new idea for the Tories. Keith Joseph and Leo Amery previously argued for limiting the ‘breeding’ of the working classes.

Howard Flight, Cameron, Osborne and most of the Cabinet are millionaires – most from birth. They are victims of their environment.

Why should we expect them to understand the real world?

 

Political Earthquake

Today's by-election result in Donegal will un-nerve all European Governments.

In three years the ruling Fianna Fail's vote has fallen from 50% to 20%. Sinn Fein beat the combined votes of Fianna Fail and Fianna Gael.  The Coalition has successfully peddled the myth that Labour in the UK caused the financial crisis. Consequent events will demonstate that the calamity is world-wide. No-one has blamed the Labour Party for the crises in Ireland, Iceland, Greece, the USA or Portugal. Yet. That would be too big a whopper even for the Tories.

Donegal's result proves how far voters can fall out of love with a Government.

 

 Truth threat

A flurry of diplomatic activity on new Wikileaks revelations threatens the unity of the NATO coalition in Afghanistan.

On Sunday the truth may be revealed on what the USA thinks about its allies.

No coalition can stand too much truth.

 

Comments

[Kay Tie]

"Scroungers are one of most persistent myths that generations have loved to believe. Of course, there are people who cheat the system but there are not great hordes of them undermining our economy."

There are four million workless households in this country. Few will be cheating, many will be doing nothing to get work, since it doesn't pay. And yes, there are plenty of ways to avoid the poverty trap. Not that your party cared a whit when in government: you took ever more tax from working people and gave it to people that you held in a permanent state of dependency. All so that they would vote for a pig with a red rosette.

[Paul Flynn]

Trying to bed provocative Kay Tie.

You have ignored the Minimum Wage and the Tax Credits. How would you remove the incentive to avoid work? There are only two ways. Higher wages or lower benefits.

[Ad]

‘Scroungers are one of most persistent myths that generations have loved to believe. Of course, there are people who cheat the system but there are not great hordes of them undermining our economy.’

No there aren’t. It goes back as far as the poor laws, workhouses etc. in the 19th century. Dickens described the boastfulness of the government for helping people at all coupled with terror of the 'professional pauper' resulting in a failure to help the 'deserving and unfortunate'.

It’s the way of the world that wealthy people who have only known plenty are prone to arrogance, haughtiness and will hug themselves whilst trampling on and insulting the poor.

Leaving aside this ‘scroungers’ nonsense, I consider that the great majority are more accurately described as the oppressed.

Just because someone has gained authority, it doesn’t follow that they exercise good judgement. There is clear distinction between the rich and powerful and the poor and oppressed. Therefore we see a constant encroachment against the poor. They take away the rights of others thinking it will secure their own posterity. The rich man takes from the poor man.

So if the poor man has some rights, some property, the rich man can find some cause to take it away from him, and the poor man cannot contest it.

'500,000 pensioners lose up to £35 a week because they do not claim the Income Support (IS) that would top up their basic pensions to the level of the Minimum Income Guarantee (MIG). Why? They see IS as a handout. Their pride tells them that they have worked all their lives without taking handouts. They have paid for their basic pensions with their contributions. They are not going to start taking handouts now. The remedy to end the stigma is to raise the basic pension to the level of the MIG.'

So the pensioners aren’t receiving their dues because they feel it would be begrudged them. This is far more I am sure than what is lost to, 'the scroungers’, which I think says it all. It cannot be believed that the utmost is being done to help these pensioners.

Howard Flight flaunts the true ugly face of millionaire Conservatism contemptuous of those on average or low incomes. This is not a new idea for the Tories. Keith Joseph and Leo Amery previously argued for limiting the ‘breeding’ of the working classes.

'Howard Flight, Cameron, Osborne and most of the Cabinet are millionaires – most from birth. They are victims of their environment.

Why should we expect them to understand the real world?'

Yes, the insults are constant and given at all opportunities. They WANT people to think that they have to feel ashamed for claiming their due. Big men that they are they love to make fun of people, make fools out of them and get one over on them if they can.

Those pensioners losing their entitlements have no doubt been scared away or shamed by the contstant threats to 'get tough on scroungers'. This is in fact a great laugh to certain people.

What are the poor to them? They make a pledge to them to them and then rob them. They will squeeze the poor even of their basic needs.

These millionaires won’t even allow workers a real wage. They give them nothing! Working people are suffering too.

‘those who make oil within their walls, and with a great deal of toil labour at the wine-presses, yet suffer thirst’

[rwendland]

LA Times has a story today:

"U.S. now in Afghanistan as long as Soviets were"

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghanistan-russia-20101127,0,6158149.story

Milestone, or a millstone?

[Paul Flynn]

Greatly appreciate your analysis Ad.

[Paul Flynn]

Thanks Rwenland, We learn nothing from history.

I have given my fellow MPs a great deal of earache on the similarities of the Russian and Nato invasions. I was told by a member of the Russian Duma in 2001 that the result would be the same.

How do we spin our exit into a victory?

[Kay Tie]

"How would you remove the incentive to avoid work? There are only two ways. Higher wages or lower benefits."

Such lack of imagination!

A Citizen's Basic Income. Lots of work on this has been done. The numbers work out. Huw thinks it's a left wing idea, and I think it's a right wi g one. Which tells me it ought to have wide appeal.

The fact that it's ignored indicates that no-one wants to solve the problem.

[valleylad]

"If they succeed they will undermine 60 years of a welfare state that has served us well." so just a continuation of the far right zanu labour government. Whilst I despise the current administration (after all they are tories) what I really want is vengeance in spades against the last lot.