If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The aim of the benefit cap, according to the government, is to promote fairness between working and non-working adults by targeting workless adults. But the reality is that it is children who will be paying the price.
The curious thing about Thatcher was not so much that she was divisive, but that in a funny way she actually united people around the idea that politics and economics were important again.
There's no feeling like owning your own home - a retreat from the rest of the world, a safe haven, a place where you can fully express yourself. Does that feeling of satisfaction double when you have two or three properties?
As we approach the annual spring meetings of the World Bank and IMF this weekend in Washington, there remains significant uncertainty around the globe on economic growth and the soundness of our financial system.
Equality of opportunity is the key to Conservative politics and to a Conservative election victory. Tony Blair stole this idea from the Tories and the time has come to seize it back, but this will never happen as long as David Cameron remains Conservative leader.
Thatcher's Britain was one that lauded individualism, conspicuous consumption, and the fetishizing of creature comforts. It unitised the world around us, and made a virtue of economic hubris, cleverly rebranded as "freedom', no doubt with the help of an advertising agency.
Being encouraged by Cameron et al, to celebrate the life of Mrs Thatcher an apparent champion of freedom, while the current PM and his expensively educated brethren seek to implement their equivalent of Thatcher's poll tax is just adding insult to insult.
The ability to discuss and debate freely, without the threat of illiberal libel action hanging over us, is a fundamental freedom that we must defend - should the Defamation Bill be amended as proposed, progress towards that freedom will suffer a substantial blow.
The people throwing street parties shouldn't be condemned, they should be listened to. Is it any wonder, at a time when we are being told we need to tighten our belts that during Thatcher's funeral which will be funded by the state, many people are planning to turn up and protest? The dismantling of the welfare state and the NHS at present is the Conservative party's continuation of Thatcher's ideology of yesterday.
This is not a story that can be understood from headlines alone, partly because in Britain the headlines have so often wildly distorted the truth. Despite what you may have read, there is no threat by British politicians to interfere with press freedom. There is, however, a powerful consensus for change.
So who are the people on benefits, really? The answer actually seems to be most of us. 64% of families, and about 30million individual people - half the total population of the UK. The people on benefits are our friends, colleagues and neighbours, our families, ourselves.
Thatcher's stance in 1978 was to condone, and empathise with public fears around black immigration, warning that people would feel 'swamped', the British character would be lost, and that the white British public would be hostile to those coming in from the Commonwealth and Pakistan.
Thatcher's real legacy is that self-interest has become the driving force, socially and economically, for everyone regardless of whether they are on the left, the right or that irritating bit in the middle.
Thatcher's legacy is potent and ironically it has the potential to win the Conservatives the next election. At this point Labour has very nearly left it too late to convince the public of a clear direction. The Conservatives can retro-fit her legacy to give their current policies some meaning and identity.
Over the last few years YouGov has asked the British public many different questions about Margaret Thatcher and her legacy. For example, more than once we have asked people their opinion on who was the greatest of the post-war prime ministers. Margaret Thatcher wins by some distance. We have also asked who was the worst. Again, Margaret Thatcher comes out on top.
People aren't celebrating the fact that an old woman that they never met died this week. People are celebrating because they feel that there is closure on a sh*tty decade during which rich people got rich and poor people got bummed with anti-lube.
