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If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
There can be no doubt who is the hardest hit by the cuts - it's disabled people (and that includes many of our children, our parents and our grandparents). Again the question must be asked - did the government know what it was doing when it focused the cuts on social care and benefits - or is this just some thoughtless accident?
It is important, particularly as families and children form the largest groups that will be affected by Universal Credit's introduction, that the government uses the pilots to identify and address any harmful effects they may experience.
As I stood in the driveway of a seemingly vacant mansion, the bodies around me began to shiver in the cooling air and newly falling drizzle. There was a gentle breeze of hope. The atmosphere was positive, friendly, and constructive, the movement had a sense of confidence.
The coalition government have, up to now, been fastidiously careful not to rattle the cage of a section of society well-known for its mainly Conservative leanings. It seems likely that any dent in this traditional groundswell of support could have disastrous consequences for the Tory Party's chances of remaining on the political map come 2015 and election time.
New research by national sight loss charity RNIB has revealed that 17,000 vision impaired people of working age look set to be displaced from their homes as a result of the Bedroom Tax. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, they will have to choose between relocating or losing a portion of their benefits (which will be on average £14 a week; a sizeable sum when you are already struggling to make ends meet).
£53 a week. Could you do it? Most people think not. Interestingly, those on higher incomes are more likely to think that they could do it than those on lower incomes.
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.
A common rhetorical trick for politicians is to talk about 'looking after the tax payer'. However the reality is that they are often only really concerned with particular tax payers - the electoral groups that determine the outcomes of elections - often people on middle-incomes.
On Monday the Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, was challenged by a northern market stall trader to live on £53 a week. This concept caught fire as an online petition was set up and quickly received over 450k signatures.
There are problems with the welfare system in the UK. Nobody is saying that there are not. There are some people who see it as a meal ticket which saves them from having to do some real work, but they are not the majority.
Eight days ago I started a petition hoping for a few thousand signatures. The petition is now not much shy of half a million. Yesterday I handed it into the Department for Work and Pensions. This is my short account of what happened.
This week accusations flew, rhetoric abounded and, with the Philpott case, one newspaper made a particularly grotesque leap to try and paint this convicted criminal as a poster-boy for what they decried as the welfare "lifestyle". Meanwhile, on the ground, huge changes are taking place to benefits that will affect millions of ordinary - and, dare we say it - hard-working families.
Iain Duncan Smith was riled to be "ambushed" on a radio programmed (not guilty) and challenged to survive on the £53 a week that a benefit claimant said he had to subsist on. It was not really an ambush as such - Iain's job is being a politician, and so talking to people who might not agree with his every utterance and who might have issues with his policies and the direction the government is taking is, sort of, his job and deliberately going on a radio programme to talk about benefit scroungers does rather leave one open to that sort of thing.
Why do those on benefits have to be caricatured or characterised in one way or another at all? There are thousands of decent, 'normal' people who are genuinely impoverished, and try to make ends meet as best they can
Perhaps instead of complaining, MPs should be a little more proactive when it comes to their mealtimes; after all, London may be an expensive city, but it's not hard to find affordable meals. It took me all of 20 seconds to find 118 restaurants within a stone's throw of Parliament that offer a wide range of two-course meals - complete with free delivery - all for under £15
It's time to deliver a dose of reality. A good start's been made by the more than 350,000 people who have told Iain Duncan Smith to try living on £53 a week ... But we need to go further. We need to deliver a message to every Cabinet member, every member of this fantasy land government.
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