Twisted words and starved of benefits... welcome to real hell
I’VE never been to hell although I have stood in a Zara returns queue for an hour.
It’s not a place I want to visit, especially now Donald Tusk assures us it could soon be home to the likes of Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Gove. Imagine the difficulty in choosing which one to withhold your pee from if they were all on fire?
Of course, the Eurocrat’s damning words about the people who “promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely” have been twisted to make it sound like he wants to give a one-way ticket to Satanville to all 17.4 million leave voters. But there’s nothing new in that.
Twisted words, half-truths and outright lies are the weapons that have kept this country locked in a state of arrested development for the past three years as all political energy has been spent on failing to deliver an imaginary freedom from invented tyrants. Meanwhile, the issues that affect the lives of the vast majority living in the real world are ignored, leaving the weakest to go to the wall. Hence the mass use of foodbanks becoming an acceptable part of life in the world’s sixth biggest economy. Who could have read The Mirror’s shock report on homelessness across Britain without feeling immensely saddened and angry?
I was one of 16 reporters who spoke to some of the thousands of people forced to live on our freezing streets every night. The reasons behind their soaring numbers are complex but the scourge is beatable. And surely every rich and civilised country wants it beaten?
But what happens when your country is made poorer and less civilised due to devoting its resources to solving one political party’s insoluble dilemma? On Wednesday, the Commons rose at 3.27pm instead of the usual 7.30pm due to MPs running out of things to debate. As Shadow Commons Leader, Valerie Vaz, said: “This Government has no vision, no new ideas and crucially no legislation to fill the parliamentary timetable.”
In the past three months alone, the Cabinet Office has handed £14.6 million to outside consultancy firms helping them with Brexit. How many people could that have taken off our streets?
Most local councils are doing their best to meet the homeless crisis headon, but when your funding from Westminster has been decimated it’s left to volunteers, charities and the goodwill of the public to take up the slack.
Who could have failed to be angry looking at the photo of the skeletal 64-year-old Stephen Smith, who, despite having multiple debilitating illnesses, weighing six stone, and barely able to walk, was denied benefits by this Government and deemed fit for work.
It was only when he went for free advice at the CASA community centre in Liverpool, where volunteer advisers appealed and won his case, that he received the benefits that kept him alive.
There was a typically rabid response from the right in this country to Tusk’s remarks about those who sold Brexit without a trace of a plan deserving a place in hell. But many of us agree with him.
Because they are the dangerous ideologues behind the three years of political paralysis that has made life hell for those who least deserve it.
‘‘ Advisers appealed and won his case and he got the help that kept him alive