I was almost 10 in the 1970s and I remember people living like this, even in my little village and the ones surrounding it. I had friends who lived in so-called flats; merely one house let out three times, 2 singles, no kids upstairs, families with kids downstairs. Even with Dad working they still couldnt afford the electric, even if the house was wired up safely. then, as it is becoming now, you paid your rent, you bought your food, a bag of coal for the fire to cook the food and suffered. I remember people suffering because they couldnt afford to see the Dr, babies and young children desperately ill with scarlet fever, the mumps, german measles, all of these could and often did kill the young due to their poor diet and housing conditions. We had made so many improvements, in housing, in medical healthcare, in the standards of living and in how we treated the poor, the unemployed and the disabled. Now the poor are vilified in the press for something no amount of Minimum Wages can change, families with both parents working are not just struggling to keep their heads above water, many are failing. The unemployed are being used as free labour ; I say free, its not free, you the taxpayer pays for them to work for big business, for what is todays version of the Bed and Board Serf, your dole and Housing Benefit, they are the equivalent of the wage paid to a type of worker known as a Serf, but there was a little bonus back then, Serfs who worked regularly could buy themselves out of their chains and better their lives. The government now pays the Agencies to find the serfs work, then they pay the company for each serf they take on and finally, taxpayers pay their wages. At the end of the serfs so called training with the company they get sent back to the Agency, ready for the next employer to exploit and the first employer gets their next batch. After all, why pay a decent wage when you can get your workers for free and increase profits ? All of this could be solved by enforcing a Living Wage, paid to all workers. This would mean fewer Housing Benefit claims; seven out of every 8 claims are by employed people, fewer Working Tax credit claims and more money going back into the economy. As for the treatment of the Disabled and sick people in this country, words fail me. I simply cannot understand how we could be so cruel as force them to repeatedly go through the stress; for some utter terror, of the Work Capability Assessment when it has been repeatedly proven that they will never be able to return to work. It is almost as if the government has decided to keep putting people through this until they give in, accept the DWPs wrong decision and go try to survive on their own, with-out all of the extra help they used to get so that they could live in dignity in their own homes. When the cost of Appeals and Tribunals became so high that even governmental departments were starting to run scared, IDS decided to cut funding to all agencies that were available to the poor, making it even more difficult for them to make a successful claim. The excuse for all of this is the Fraud that is running rampant on every sort of Benefit claim, from ESA all the way through to JSA and yet the actual DWP figures for fraud stand at less than one percent. So why are we killing disabled people for needing to claim Benefits to survive ? Many have already died at their own hand or because their illness was made much worse by the stress of trying to claim and they were later awarded the Benefit they tried so hard to claim, is this right in your eyes ? Go check the figures on just how much of your taxes actually goes to the DWP, then check the breakdown of those figures, most of it is paid on pensions. Maybe the disabled should all sit on street corners and beg for handouts to survive ? Or should we just build the work-houses now and have done with it ? This idea of paying Benefits on cards is just another way to stigmatize the poor, you can just see those in employment standing smugly behind them. Or we could all just give in and attach a big yellow star to our clothes, announce to everyone how lazy and feckless we are ? It is said, everyone is just two wage packets away from unemployment, better hope you do not lose your job or become unable to work due to disability or illness. There will be no safety net for you to fall through.
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 10:02:12 +0000