Will Hutton has developed this theme in the Observer this morning. I recommend reading it. One quote here:
It's insane to describe as "help" making an unemployed person wait seven days for a mean benefit they need at a moment of crisis in their lives. And to present "upfront work search" as a pioneering transformation of the jobcentres' operations, already entirely based on making benefit conditional on actively applying for jobs, is to compound the felony.
The logic is, of course, that of Andrew Mellon, quoted by Martin Wolf in the New York Review of Books, here. But as Wolf says:
Mellon thought government should do nothing. This advice manages to be both stupid and wicked. Stupid, because following it would almost certainly lead to a depression across the advanced world. Wicked, because of the misery that would follow.
That's what Osborne is doing.
Ot's not just brutal, it's obscene. And many will suffer for it. It seems Tories think that will be good for them. I just hope those who suffer the pain remember those who inflicted it, unnecessarily.
I'd also have appreciated Labour condemning it. So far I haven't.
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‘Osborne has taken the Orwellian misuse of language to new levels.’
Osborne also suffers from a severe severance of contact with social reality. The idea that someone who suffers from something close to political autism and is in a position of such total economic security can be representing these views ( he’s not actually an economist!) is a scandal of grotesque proportions. The programme of villification of the benefit claimants appears to be working well , so much so, that benefit claimants are starting to feel shame about being unemployed or ill! I know people who tell me that Job Centres are talking to them in a degrading tone of voice and I recently spoke to someone in his early fifties who ‘signed off’ because he was so depressed at the demeaning treatment and the worthless courses delivered by fly by night organisations grabbing Government until they lose the contract. The job Centres should be got rid off now – they are less than useless, the people working in them are often unhappy and brutalised by target setting and take it out on ‘clients.’ Clearly, the British are ‘enjoying’ their slavery to the 1% perhaps it gives them a feeling of psychological security. These policies are popular, believe it or not – we are witnessing our country becoming a moral dustbin.
Nick and Simon… I couldn’t agree more!
What’s also obscene is the yaboo sucks types from the Taxpayers’ Alliance who, invited highly questionably onto Newsnight, cheerfully support the myth that unemployment is always a choice.
The trouble is that the right has sold so many myths that a majority now seem to believe is fact – Goebbels would have been proud of their propaganda. When the right has so overpowered the media that few opposing views are heard, I find it difficult to conclude anything other than that the end result will be very ugly – for both the haves and the have-nots.
Nick, many people are using the word ‘Fascism’ in relation to the aims and nature of the propaganda machine. To turn the unemployed, poor and ill into spitoons for the anger of the populace is something I never thought could happen in my lifetime. I was naive enough to believe that people had reached a level of sophistication not to be taken in by such things. I was wrong! AS the Govt realises that the propaganda is working they are more and more brazen in their delivery of it.
Unfortunately Labour is singing from the same hymnal.
..or clucking from the same chicken coop?
At the moment the Labour Party leadership appears to be drawn from the Mollusks or perhaps it forms a new sub group of the invertebrate family?
Ok I know this is harsh but it is drawn from a deepening well of exasperation!
The question is where can those in the ‘deepening well of exasperation’ as you well put it turn, politically?
There is no stopping them, took this from another forum post…
“Now they are even making the homeless, homeless!!”
“Benefits rule risks closure of night shelters forcing hundreds onto streets
Salford among councils invoking legality that stops housing benefit for nights spent by claimants in emergency shelters”
Full Story here…”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/soci…..t-shelters
Then I came across this!!!…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23122369
Where will it all end ?.
I wish I knew
“Brutalism: the new Tory mantra”
Richard,
Come to think about it, it is also the old “Tory mantra”. No change there then.
After you read the article please read the comments…
http://dpac.uk.net/2013/05/hardship-paymentsbudgeting-loans-and-short-term-advances/#comment-17333
“There but for the grace of God, go I”…and please don’t forget…YOU.