All bullies use name calling as their first offensive move against their intended victim, and it matters little if we try to distinguish the difference between the school bully belittling the small child in the playground to the most extreme human atrocities known to mankind such as Hitlers stigmatisation and eventual extermination of millions of Jews in the 1940's, the name calling still has the same purpose and the same reasoning, it's reason is to at first isolate and to separate from the "norm" their potential victims.
If the bully can make us all believe that their intended victims are not normal like us then it follows that it will matter less to us all what is eventually done to them. And if they can make you believe that these"not normal" people are actually acting against our interests, and having it easy whilst the rest of us struggle, then all the better
And so it is that the return in government of the nasty Tory party at Westminster, backed up (like most bullies are) by their yellow bellied Lib Dem friends has led to the current linguistic comparisons between SHIRKERS and WORKERS and SKIVERS v STRIVERS. An us and them society wherein the "them and us" is a definable line between who contributes to society and who doesn't, and so successful have they been since forming the coalition government in peddling this lie that they have actually managed to form and shift public opinion from a position of truth to what is a false perceived truth.
The Independent newspaper published figures last week from the TUC, outlining public attitude and opinion towards those in receipt of welfare payments and the results where very disturbing.
Asked what % of the total welfare budget gets spent on the unemployed the public perception was 41% whereas the actual figure is just 3%!
Asked what % of benefits are claimed fraudulently the people came up with a figure of 27% the reality is 0.7%
Asked what proportion of the those claiming job sellers allowance were still claiming after a 12 month period the answer given was 48% where the actual figure is just 27.8%
And what was frightening but perhaps predictable is that those who gave the most inaccurate and over pessimistic answers were those who were most vocal in expressing the need to strip away the dependency culture.
That so called dependency culture and the continued victimisation of benefit recipients led to the Chancellor George Osbourne saying to the press last week (aiming his comments of course at you and me) that he was on the side of:
"The shift worker, leaving home in the dark hours of the early morning, who looks up at the closed blinds of their next door neighbour sleeping off a life on benefits"
Perhaps now is the time for the Tory party to insist that all welfare recipients now wear cut out white S's on their lapels so that we can all identify the SHIRKERS and SKIVERS and probably SCROUNGERS who are walking amongst us?
But of course in Tory Britain not all welfare recipients are unemployed. And the failure of so many in the private sector to pay a living wage has lead to increasing numbers of those who are leaving their homes in the dark hours of the early morning also being the recipients of benefit in the form of family or working tax credits. In fact because of the freeze on public pay more and more of those on benefit are those paid for by the public sector in the first place!
And so it has come to pass that over 75% of those affected by the governments cuts to welfare payments agreed in Parliament earlier this week are actually people already in work!
And the other real sickener for them and for all of us who still care about such old but still laudable values such as equality and fairness is the government misuse of % rises to justify claw backs on benefit.
"those out of work have seen bigger % increases than those in work" they say in another attempt to divide the nation, but a small % of very little is still, well, very little.
Of course the more you have, the more that % is worth to you in hard cash. For all of us lucky to be working, a small increase in % pay is still a little more on our hopefully living wages. A public employee on £20,000 a year will still take home a modest but just about livable salary before and after their forthcoming 1% rise after years of 0% freezes.
Two wrongs do not make a right so how can we compare the miserable increase in the workers wages with the almost irrelevant increase in some benefits? Britain's growing youth unemployed will care little for their benefit increase on the £56.25 they receive, a 1% will give them a rise of 56p, match it to inflation and it still only rises just above a quid! What they would rather have of course is work.
Think also therefore of those millionaires whose top rate tax dropped from 50% to 45% last April, there 5% was worth as much as £107,000 a year for the 8000 in the UK with an income of £1m plus.
But what about the SHIRKERS and SKIVERS sleeping off their life on benefits?
Let us for a minute put to one side the Tory lies over who will really be affected by these swinging cuts and concentrate on those supposedly laying in their beds all morning!
Well for example Roger from Northampton who is 56 and who has worked a life in the Construction Industry and paid tax for all of those years but who now finds himself on Jobseekers allowance after being laid off as "unfit" Roger is trying desperately to find work despite his tired old body rebelling against him and with him being in more pain for him to bear most days, but of course no where near the new higher thresholds for disability benefit.
Roger's SKIVING sees his rent and council tax paid for him and therefore he can spend the whole of his weekly Jobseekers allowance on himself! all £71.00 of it! of course he is privileged as being over the age of 25 he is on the higher rate and not eaking out an existence for him on the reduced rate of £56.25, no way, he can really spend spend spend.
And next year under the Governments new plans he will get an extra 71p! or he would do if it were not for the fact that his two bed house is deemed to big for him and his daughter who visits and stays over 3 nights a week, so next year he will have his housing benefit docked under the bedroom tax rules and have to make the difference up from his £71.71p
But the 1% rise is only just below 2.2% expected inflation figure right? who are they trying to kid, Rogers gas and electricity bills, now paid on a card due to him not being able to pay the bills went up 9% this year alone and a similar rise is planned next. His expenditure on gas and electric is now around £900 a year well below the £1309 average bill as when he has no money left he has no gas and electric! So there goes £17.30 of his £71.00 before he has even started.
So now lets go shopping with his remaining £53.70 well the average UK spend per person on food is relatively low at around £42 a week on food and £8 on toiletries and cleaning products. Roger of course cannot afford such extravagances and manages to spend only when he needs to and says most weeks he gets by with spending about £30 on both in total (no beer, no fags) , his biggest regret is that he never has the spending power to afford the bulk purchases which often can reduce the bill, he goes to the supermarket once a week for the weekly shop but relies on the corner shop at higher cost when he runs out of bread or milk etc. His prudence leaves him well placed post shopping with a whopping £23.70p left to spend on himself! well that is after the phone bill £5, and a luxury (linked internet) £3, leaving £15.70 in his pocket
He used to have a washing machine but that broke and he can't afford a replacement so now he walks to the launderette and feeds its machines with £3 a week to wash his clothes, down now to £12.70 but of course clothes wear out, but replacing them is almost an impossible task on his income he probably spends on average £150 in total a year on clothes compared with the average of £300 a year in the UK His spend is on Primark T shirts and socks and briefs, shoes coats and jeans are a charity shop purchase or a bargain basement find, but his average £2.88 a week clothing spend needs to come off his ever dwindling total leaving just £9.82 in the kitty
He has no transport bill, no pets to feed, but he does go wild at the weekend and buy a Sunday newspaper, the demise of the Chronicle and Echo has saved him £3 a week but the weekly copy of the Sunday Mirror still reduces his £9.82 benefit bonanza by a further £1 to £8.82.
But he never has £8.82 left in his pocket? so why? Well sometimes I have to buy batteries or a light bulb goes or I get carried away and buy a few sweets for the grandkids, I don't bother with going out these days its pointless, I couldn't afford one pint nether mind a couple, I used to have a ready reckoner (Yankee) at the bookies at the weekend (£2.10) but that went out the window a long while ago.
More often than not Roger will spend any spare cash he has on cheap gifts he sees when out shopping, he knows he shouldn't but he can't afford to spend any different at Christmas time so if he sees items going cheap throughout the year he buys them and goes without himself so that he can keep still keep his dignity and still wrap something up for those close family members around him.
According to the Tory's Roger is living his days in abundance, life is a bed of roses, he is on easy street living a life of exorbitant benefit driven prosperity, it's the good times, the gravy train, and if only he was foreign he could be doing even better for himself, he knows all about this because even though he would never touch the Daily Mail, even the Sunday Mirror keep him informed as to who is getting his share of the country's wealth.
The governments attack this week on people like Roger is a wicked and evil act of bullying, it will do nothing to reduce the deficit caused by the government themselves due to their failure to get the UK economy growing, they have caused the double dip recession, they alone are responsible for the ever increasing welfare bill due to ever rising joblessness. The amount the government is borrowing is rising not falling after two years of coalition incompetence, so someone has to take the blame and its not good enough to kick a man when they are down you also have to denigrate and belittle them amongst their neighbours and friends.
So come on ROGER, stop SHIRKING AND SKIVING and get with the project.
The Tory party to me are not the nasty party, they are simply a bunch of evil, and wicked bullying bastards who care nothing for the lives of those they deem to be beneath them and it's about time the British public woke up to the truth instead of swallowing the governments deceit and making an enemy of their neighbours based on right wing propaganda and divisive lies
Having worked Northampton's Market for over 50 years it is the Green Party's commitment to localism and their drive to "THINK GLOBAL but "ACT LOCAL" that has attracted him to join up.
