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Nope - its the tories.
I have worked in healthcare for 40 years and I have seen the damage they inflict deliberately. I have my disabled friend being forced to be incontinent because of the lack of support. I have seen people crying because they cannot feed their children. I have seen teh deliberate cruelty of benefits sanctions. I have seen the inhumae way refugees are treated caught in a catch 22 where its simply impossible to meet their legal obligations. You have no money, you have been housed in glasgow. You have a perverse decision that you know is wrong. to appeal it you have to go to liverpool. How the eff are you supposed to get there - walk?
Cutting spending as they did meant reduced tax income and did nothing to re-balance the economy
No other country instituted austerity like they did. No other country cut taxes for the rich while cutting services for the poor.
the bedroom tax COST money!
We are the 8th richest country in the world - why do we have people in such abject poverty
At best its callous disregard but I believe it to be calculated cruelty. Some of these things that have happened cannot be by chance or mishap.
Include in this the outright corruption and bribery of the tories by vested interests yes its dressed up and consultancy fees or whatever - but call it what it is - bribery
They are venal, corrupt and deliberately cruel and no member of the tory party escapes culpability
TJ can’t be a racist, he never called me a Sassenach when I met him!
Anyway, when Stewart was justice secretary he said he’d resign the post if violence in HMPS didn’t reduce within 12 (?) months. He didn’t need to.
You're correct, but not in the way you probably wanted to be.
• The rate of assaults per 1,000 prisoners in ten prisons dropped by 16%, from 42.9 in
June/August 2018 to 36.1 in April/June 2019
• The percentage of positive results from random mandatory drug tests (RDMT)
dropped between August 2018 and March 2019.
He is still a politician though, so should be shot anyway.
We are the 8th richest country in the world – why do we have people in such abject poverty
I would like homelessness ended - but unless you are talking about that it's not abject poverty when measured by developing world standards.
The R/P 20% (income inequality between top 20 percent and bottom 20 percent) is 5.4% and for one of those "Democratic Socialist" countries you like to talk about such as Sweden it is 4.6%
I'd wager if you closed that gap you wouldn't notice a blind bit of difference, you'd still be just as angry TJ.
They are venal, corrupt and deliberately cruel and no member of the tory party escapes culpability
https://www.politico.eu/article/ken-clarke-interview-brexit-populism-tories/
If Clarke was back in government he would be advocating the kind of reforms the Yellow Jackets forced upon Emmanuel Macron — tax breaks and welfare increases to ease people’s cost of living.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-45818770/john-major-urges-welfare-reform-rethink
But yes TJ, all evil bastards.
I like you TJ, because you obviously care for the welfare of others - that's a noble thing and part of the reason why I got into the pharmaceutical industry. I do think you are angry with the wrong people and that it's blinding you to how this country could heal in a bipartisan fashion.
TJ and a few others on here remind me very much of a man JB Priestley met in his seminal work, An English Journey:
"The world he lives in is not the sad muddle that most of us have begun to recognise, but is a
mysterious and melodramatic place of vast sinister conspiracies, in which capitalists and bosses and officials plot together to trick him and his mates. Thus, he grumbled and sneered because the concern that employs him has lately been spending money on a certain extension of its premises.
They could not spare money, he complained, to give their workpeople some decent wages, but they could throw it away— just to please a few officials — on these building operations. Now even I, who knew very little about the concern, did know this, that it was spending this money in a
last desperate attempt to get more business, and that the process of finding the money for this extension must have been like wringing blood out of a stone. But this is typical of his
attitude of mind. He did not make this an excuse to attack a muddled wasteful competitive system; which would have been legitimate enough. He saw it as one more example of the conspiracy of bosses and officials.
He thinks that most people are poor because a few are rich. Any man receiving more than a few pounds per week automatically becomes one of the sinister conspiring class. The modem world is to him simply a wicked place, and not, as it seems to many of us, a stupid place.
When he talks of his neighbours or the men he works with, he is a realist, quick to notice their many weaknesses; but when he argues, unconsciously he becomes an idealist and talks about “the workers” as if they were a race of bright beautiful beings incapable of selfishness, indolence, corruption. On the other hand, men of the employing or managing classes are never to him men very
much like himself who, though they may be the servants of a faulty and even cruel system, are honestly trying to do their duty and to be decent and kind and unselfish; they are always sneering cunning tyrants, to whom the very poverty and helplessness of the people are a source of deep satisfaction."
JP
The R/P 20% (income inequality between top 20 percent and bottom 20 percent) is 5.4% and for one of those “Democratic Socialist” countries you like to talk about such as Sweden it is 4.6%
Sorry, ratio - I shouldn't have placed a "%" on those.
Rayban - that just shows how little you know and how little you see and how little you want to understand.; I pity you
jjprestidge
That you can read what i wrote and see that shows just how out of touch you are. Thats just an ad hom attack presumably because it makes you feel uncomfortable to have your cosy assumptions challenged
I find it incredible that intelligent people swallow this sort of nonsense and are so willfully blind to the medacity, deliberate cruelty and corruption of the tories
Poverty in Glasgow
Poverty in the Philippines (Sorry for the bible bashers)
You don't know shit until you've seen it in person.
lets just take one deliberately cruel tory policy and dissect it
The "bedroom tax" ( I cannot remember what they called it)
In hull several tens of thousands of people were affected - mainly those in social lets ie council or housing association homes. These people according to the tories had two many bedrooms - mainly people in two bed social rent flats. How many one bed social rent flats were available - 6!
so that left tens of thousands of people facing sanctions but with no way out other than going into the private rented sector for a one bed flat - which cost more than the two bed social rented flat and of course was ( because of another tory policy) was an insecure let. so people were forced out of cheap secure lets into expensive insecure lets of given benefit sanctions that put them into such poverty the choice was heat the house or eat. - the net result - a larger benefits bill and also people being sanctioned pushing them into poverty.hey even used this to push disabled people out of their adapted homes and to make it impossible for elderly and disabled people to have carers there overnight on sleepovers
the tories were told of all this beforehand but did it anyway
Thats just one example of a self defeating deliberately cruel policy.
So this policy cost money to the taxpayer while forcing people into poor housing or debt
while that was happening they gave the rich tax cuts!
its disgusting and this is just one example.
As I said Rayban - your cosy little existence means all this is hidden from you and you deny it because the truth hurts.
I don't agree with the bedroom tax.
At the same time I don't count those examples you are talking about as abject poverty and I don't believe that all Tories liked the bedroom tax and if they did I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if they have changed their minds about it. Not only that, it will be a requirement to be able to reach out to them in a hung Labour parliament to do any good.
5-6 years ago, me and my wife moved to London with negative 5 grand in our bank accounts, we lived in a single bed together in an overcrowded house and people living in the shed at the bottom of the garden. My parents were musicians.
My life hasn't been "cosy". At every point we were still better off than those mad ****ers in the second video, 99.9999 percent of people in the UK are.
As I said - you have no awareness of the real life many folk in the UK lead, you are in denial and making excuses in your cosy little life.. I pity you in your blindness to what is being done
The tory party as a whole voted for the bedroom tax. Thats just one example amongst many of deliberatly cruel tory policies. they are vermin
There will be no need at all to reach out to them in a hung parliament.
TJ, I hope you manage to let go of that hatred one day. It poisons the soul.
We've had various hung or borderline hung parliaments for a while now, it's the new normal - politicians will have to find common ground with one another to get anything done.
The "we're okay because those people over there are even worse off" is never a good argument.
As for the MPs "As I said. Lying, hypocritical, self centred shits. All of them." that is because those are the people who do the best job in getting people to vote for them.
The MPs who are willing to abuse the voters intelligence/lack of understanding/lack of ability to research etc,. to get what they want are the one that get elected.
It is what is wrong with democracy as it stands today. Yes, you can vote for who you want but it doesn't seem to be working out too well...
I find it incredible that intelligent people swallow this sort of nonsense and are so willfully blind to the medacity, deliberate cruelty and corruption of the tories
Speaking of ad hominem attacks.......
Should we write off the labour and snp MPs based on their voting records too?
From now on I'll be looking at what priorities the MP has. Voting priority should be well being or advancement of citizens, country, constituency, party, self.
Unfortunately TJ is correct when he points out that Tory party policy was designed to kill the sick and poor. We can, as a rich country, afford to carry the unemployable and the handicapped.
And Raybanwomble just because someone has a roof over their head it doesn't mean they aren't suffering. If a parent has to chose between feeding their children or themselves that strikes me as being dangerously poor. One doesn't need to live in a rubbish heap to be grindingly poor.
The property-owning bourgeoisie often seek to align themselves with the proletariat. It is an expression of guilt rather offering any meaningful intent. It brings them solace to suggest that others are the root of evil, rather than acknowledge that their comforts and property are part of the mechanism.
An easy line of argument is to say that absolute poverty has decreased therefore we have no problem. What is crucial is relative poverty as measured by the Gini coefficient (income inequality) and this has increased from 25% in 1979 to 40% in 2015. Anyone (over a certain age) walking the streets of a British city can see that relative poverty has increased and maybe that's why the tories at their conference try not to leave the compound. They feel more at ease surrounded by other fat men with fat wallets in blue suits and pointy shoes standing in action man positions. Stewart may be skinny but he's still one of them.
The “bedroom tax” ( I cannot remember what they called it)
To trace the origins of this, you need to go to The Brown administration of 2008, and the Local Housing Allowance which was the policy that penalised claimants of housing benefits living in the private rental sector. The Under-occupancy penalty introduced by the Tories, extended that to folk in social housing as well. Both policies are cruel
Have a swing at the Tories for extending the policy, for sure, but equally you have to recognise that it was a Labour Govt that introduced the idea that poor people should be penalised for living in decent housing
Final entry for me, Here's your favourite Tory hate figure thinking aloud about enacting a long held Labour and SNP policy
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/09/listen-jacob-rees-mogg-on-the-establishment-and-lords-reform/ .
A second chamber, which I have always been in favour of because of its ability to be deliberative, when because they hate Brexit, they abandon the principle of their existence. You see that reform becomes necessary for their Lordships’ House.
I can imaging your response to JRM*, but imagine your reaction to it, had this been a speech by Nicola Sturgeon or John MacDonald calling for reform or abolition of the Lords. He has a different starting point, and reasoning, but surely reform of the House of Lords? isn't that something that Labour and others have called for for years now, and in principle you'd support?
*similar to most right thinking people, I'd imagine...
The property-owning bourgeoisie often seek to align themselves with the proletariat. It is an expression of guilt rather offering any meaningful intent. It brings them solace to suggest that others are the root of evil, rather than acknowledge that their comforts and property are part of the mechanism.
ISWYDT.
Labour Govt that introduced the idea that poor people should be penalised for living in decent housing
When it was introduced I actualy thought it might have the opposite effect.
If you are on receipt of an ammount of housing benefit then just like those paying their own rent theres an obvious incentive to get the biggest and best house you can for the money. Which creates competition in a market. By then penalizing based on under occupancy the money should in principal go further on smaller but better spec'd houses.
That could have lead to people choosing to live in smaller houses in nicer locations and better schools (better social mobility). Or newer or refurbished houses (better energy efficiency).
There were obvious poor implementations where bedrooms were needed for occasional use etc. Although I have little sympathy for the "grandparents who've lived in this 4 bed house all their lives". The point of social security is to give the least well off a basic level of welfare to prevent poverty, spare bedrooms are not a basic requirement.
The point of social security is to give the least well off a basic level of welfare to prevent poverty, spare bedrooms are not a basic requirement.
True but as a balance, those grandparents may have been in that house for 50 years. Moving them will be to a modern development with none of their friends close by. This in turn leads to isolation, poor health and an increase in public spending on them. Moving the spend from one budget to another does not save money and I wish public servants would grasp this fact.
Good point. But with the undersupply of housing* its closer to a zero sum equation. Do the less tangible benefits to the existing occupants outweigh the very real needs of a younger generation for social housing?
*another government problem
The idea that poorly thought through half baked ideas lead to poor legislation is not a new one, and will only get worse in our increasingly "agenda" driven political debates (that are often held "at speed" on 24 hour rolling news) with the side effect that politicians are often under huge pressure to "Do Something, NOW".
The local Housing Allowance policy for example, started as it was discovered that a family were in receipt of over £150,000 of housing benefits as they lived in a 7 bed house in North London, and rightly or wrongly, many voting and working mortgage and renting families en-masse went "Whaaaat now" Was is OK for the public purse to spend over half a billion on families on housing support when increasingly everyone else found their household budgets being squeezed? With hindsight of how the policy has morphed and developed would probably admit that it's poor legislation, but at the time...Do something, NOW.
I think the idea that one allows one's own chosen party to be "misguided" or ill-judged" but only sees your chosen opposition as "venal" and "cruel on purpose from the outset" is for the birds. As I said before, if you think that, congrats, you've been successfully propagandised at.
that a family were in receipt of over £150,000 of housing benefits
Problem being that it was the owners not the occupiers that were actually in receipt of the money so yet again an example of where property owners are being subsidised...
Problem being that it was the owners not the occupiers that were actually in receipt of the money so yet again an example of where property owners are being subsidised…
Semantics, you'll only convince me the owner was the villain in all this if that was above the market rate* and profiteering. The point being made was that the system had clearly messed up. Are people not supposed to be angry with politicians wasting money on that scale?
*im guessing the council had put them up in a HMO style short term let that was costing £150,000 a year because its aimed at busines people looking for a £400/week pied a terre thats cheaper than a hotel, not long term family housing.
Cool.
Anyway, here’s Rory’s view from the outside packaged up obviously as a bid for mayordom.
The “we’re okay because those people over there are even worse off” is never a good argument.
Yes, but it helps to focus the mind and avoid hysterics. Telling people that we have a big problem with dire/abject/extreme poverty in the UK, when objectively we do not (how many places look like the Glasgow slums in the 70s these days) - fuels white ethnic grievance and is directly leading to this “charity starts at home” bollocks.
Looking at GINI doesn’t tell the true story, Romania has a better gini coefficient for the 20 percent value - guess which has worse poverty?
Yes, but it helps to focus the mind and avoid hysterics.
Don't worry, no hysterics or lack of focus from me.
Anyway, here’s Rory’s view from the outside packaged up obviously as a bid for mayordom.
I don't think I will vote for Rory, I'd rather wait on the fence and see how he develops politically over the next five years.
I am open to believing that he genuinely means what he wrote in that article though.
As I said Rayban - you really have no idea what is going on.
lets have some more examples of deliberate tory cruelty. Deliberate tory Cruelty that Stewart will have voted for
Christmas eve. This family man has lost his weekly paid job. He has attempted to claim universal credit. He is told a six week waiting time for benefits. He is by this time destitute - no money for food even. He has 3 young children. His application for an emergency loan ( not a grant - a loan to be repaid out of benefits) to tide him over is rejected. He walks 7 miles to a advice office where the last person on duty is shutting up for the holidays. fortunately she has some compassion and reopens the office, spends time on the phone, gets him access to a food bank so he can feed his kids and puts him in touch with a charity to provide something for his kids over chistmas.
How on earth can someone who has lost a low paid weekly paid job be told that he has to wait 6 weeks to get any money from a welfare fund intended to help the poor especially over Christmas
Deliberate cruelty. deliberately impoverishing people. Universal credit it intended to be cruel
Or how about this.
Refugees / asylum seekers. Routinely claims are refuse on the first attempt. This then means the serco who has the contract to provide a minimal roof over their head will now change the locks on the doors and these people have no recourse to public funds and no right to work. They have been housed in glasgow. If they want to appeal = which is often won- they have to go to Liverpool in person without any money and knowing that on their return their flat will have been repossessed How are they supposed to get to liverpool to make the appeal? Walk?
A system that is deliberately cruel and intended to make it look like the UK is meeting its legal obligations while actually making it almost impossible for an asylum seeker to exercise their legal rights
Deliberately cruel.
Or how about fitness to work tests. 70% of people fail them. Almost all win on appeal.
A young woman whose progressive disabling condition has by now left her incontinent, unable to walk more than a few unsteady steps, a failing memory and anxiety.
told she is fit to work and her benefits will be stopped. this would mean that her housing association tenancy will be lost and that she would become homeless losing access to the limited support she has. this of course ramps her her anxiety which in turn makes her disability worse.
She of course wins on appeal. But the damage is done, her condition is worsened by the stress
A deliberately cruel system where the private companies doing the assessments are judged on how many clams they reject. A system designed to be deliberately cruel to people as the private company doing them has a financial interest in creating this misery
this woman only had £10 a week left to spend after essentials like food and rent anyway.
It is disgusting you claim that there is no abject poverty in this country when my personal experience is that there is and its rife and much of it caused by deliberate tory policy. tory policy intended to be deliberately cruel
Or how about the rise of food banks as an indicator of poverty?
Until this tory government came in with its deliberately cruel policies food banks were marginal and hardly used. Now they have become mainstream purely as a result of the deliberately cruel polices of the tories.
From that link :
Analysis by the Trussell Trust of food banks that have been in full universal credit rollout areas for a year or more shows they saw an average increase of 52 per cent in the twelve months after the full rollout date in their area, compared to twelve months before.
So that is unversal credit causing people to go hungry - a deliberate policy
~And you try to tell me its hyperbolic to state there is abject poverty in the UK and that the tories are not cruel.
I suggest Rayban you need to go and volunteer for an organisation that deals with the human casualities of this vile tory philosophy so you might learn what its like tobe truely poor in this rich country.
Because I am aware of the casualties of the vile tory policy I have my strong views. If you actually saw with your own eyes the vast human suffering cause by the deliberately cruel policies of the tories you might gain some understanding and compassion.
Tinas - that case of the housing dscussed above - it was not an HMO - it was an ordinary house being let to a council for family accommodation hat a huge amount over market rent because they would let to people on benefits. - the answer to that is rent controls. Rent controls that exist over much of europe and that we used to have but abolished by a tory government. Why were the family put in this very expensive private housing where the landlord was taking advantage of the councils duty to house in non crowded accomodation? Because the council had been forced to sell all its council house that would have been much cheaper to rent and been forbidden to build any more. Why was this situation occuring - you guessed it - as a deliberate result of tory policy.
I could give you many more examples that I and my partner have seen with our own eyes. These are all things we have seen either in our professional lives or private lives
I think tho the point has been made. You and other cosy middleclass people like you have no idea what is going on in this country.
Having seen what we have do you now understand why I say the tories are vermin? I have seen lives destroyed by deliberate tory policy while their pals are enriched thru tax cuts adn thru outsourcing
Most of these examples involve companies run by tory supporters.
Again TJ,
I am well aware of the PIP and DWP idiocy - and the fact that the DWP spent £120 million on trying to deny claimants. Again, it's one thing to claim that a part of the Tory party drove this as a deliberate act and something else entirely to claim that all Tories did it deliberately.
Even the ****ing Torygraph agrees with you:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12197202/Targeting-disabled-people-is-woeful-politics.html
But whatever way you skin it TJ, the actual number of people living in conditions (rough sleeping) similar to developing world extreme poverty is measured in thousands. In the developing world countries measure it in millions. Using terms and catchphrases that create the image of that kind of 3rd world poverty is helping to fuel the white genocide "they care more about thems foreigners" than they do about us crap.
Are you taking a similar stance on Labour due to the war TJ?
I will wait until Rory is on Have I got News for You before I pass judgement..................
Struggling to think how walking across Afghanistan has any relevance whatsoever. Complete and utter rubbish attempt at distraction.
Stewart supported austerity policies and voted for them. Austerity policies have cost significant amounts of lives and denied quality of life to millions more. Anyone who voted for them is below contempt - no matter which party they belonged to.
He's my MP. It's easy to fall into the trap of, "He seems a nice guy, I'd like to go for a pint with him". However, one has to have a quiet word with oneself and remind oneself that he chose to become a Tory and vote for the Austerity measures etc. etc. It's exactly the same with the likes of Ken Clark and Chris Patten. Still Tories and as such, beneath contempt.
It really is a sign of how far we've come that if a Tory MP isn't obviously some entitled, mad, swivel-eyed, completely inhumane husk, utterly devoid of even the slightest shred of empathy, compassion or human decency then its actually quite shocking
I have always though that of Tories since I was a teenager in the 80's.
Judge them by their actions. People who have compassion and empathy simply do not act in the way tories do, believe in the polices they implement and back etc,.
It will make not the slightest difference to my life, but I'll bet Stewart's replacement isn't a moderate ......
Rayban - if you went an volunteered for a charity that deals with people in poverty you might just have your eyes opened and see what is clearly hidden to you now and you would no longer be able to pretend that there is almost no poverty in this country.
Try it. You might learn something.
TJ, I'm not going to try and explain various things that are innacurate with what you've said, because I know it's a fruitless task. Not because of the slightly (massively) extreme examples you are giving, but mainly because I've tried and failed to give a less emotive perspective on this topic before and it's fruitless.
NickC and TINAS have actually provided some more background, if not complete (and that's no critism) but at least show an awareness and explanation of easily-forgotten backgrounds that led to where we are (Stirred up by the media, that now stir up the resulting policies..)
You're clearly on a war path, for whatever reason, but a lot of what you've said is just factually wrong.
As for Rory, Tory, or anything vaguely political, I'm not interested. Just the facts.
Anyhow, they're all on Google 🙂
The examples I have are from personal experience. They are not wrong. Either I or my partner saw them happen.
Yes there is background and yes many of the issues are caused by craven submission to the press but every example I quoted is real and are repeated time and time again.
One of the huge issues is those like rayban and yourself who have no idea what is actually happening.
“Cutting spending as they did meant reduced tax income and did nothing to re-balance the economy“
Sorry TJ but this is complete bobbins on the following counts:
1. Welfare spending rose from 2010 to date - it reached £484B last year. In the early years of the coalition, net payments to those on benefits actually rose faster than inflation - a period when the working population were typically receiving no pay risess.
2. The same is true for the NHS - spending has risen and continues to rise.
3. The majority of families now make no net contribution to the services they receive from the state - the “rich” 10% (those earning over £49k) now pay around 27% of all tax.
4. The economy grew - with a record number of jobs last year and showing earlier and stronger growth from 2010 than many other countries in Europe.
Interestingly, one of the economies that recovered quicker was that of Ireland - where the government implemented significant (up to 40%) cuts in public sector wages.
Lastly, the recent surveys on income inequality / Gino show that its narrowed in recent years and is now lower than it was under the last labour government.
Pass me the Kool-Aid when you have finished with it
Welfare spending rose from 2010 to date – it reached £484B last year. In the early years of the coalition, net payments to those on benefits actually rose faster than inflation – a period when the working population were typically receiving no pay risess.
Sauce?
Its common for the tories to give a figure which includes paid for votes in the form of the tripple lock in this context. It's not an accurate reprisentation of welfare and benefits in the way most people would imagine them (which then leads to a spiral of cuts as the number never seems to drop).
The same is true for the NHS – spending has risen and continues to rise.
Nhs spending always goes up, but its gone up much slower since 2008. Theres a correlation with the flat lining of life expectancy but correlation isnt nesicerily causation.
The majority of families now make no net contribution to the services they receive from the state – the “rich” 10% (those earning over £49k) now pay around 27% of all tax.
Has always been thus.
The argument for it is that if higher rate income tax is dropped it encourages larger pay packets. Whereas ifnit matches corporation tax + vat then the incentive is to grow the business and take the same proportion to get your increased pay.
The economy grew – with a record number of jobs last year and showing earlier and stronger growth from 2010 than many other countries in Europe.
Different measures say different things. Productivity is poor, population growth has driven the increace in numbers in work. The number of people in work is a very poor reflection of how people are doing.
No account of those out of work.
No account of peoples wages in work.