Tory policy is viciousGuest assault on the needy Slaying a few myths about saint George
Last October, on a radio phone-in programme, I heard a call from a landlord called Dan who was worried that Universal Credit was causing one of his tenants severe mental distress.
This week Dan called the London station again with the news that the tenant had killed himself.
Any Tory loyalist reading this will immediately press the denial button, accuse the landlord of “outrageous allegations” or find a neat way of redirecting the responsibility to the dead man.
Designed by Iain Duncan Smith, this fiendish new benefits system has cost £1billion-plus and is delivering misery with great efficiency but failing in every other way.
Way back in 1997, Anne Widdecombe said Michael Howard, her boss at the Home Office, had “something of the night about him”. So does Duncan Smith with his stubbornness, cruelty and unconcealed contempt for the needy.
Since the policy was introduced, we’ve heard appalling stories of severely disabled people and lone parents victimised by the system.
On Thursday, the High Court ruled that two men experienced unlawful discrimination when their benefits were savagely reduced after moving on to Universal Credit.
One is a Cambridge graduate who worked in the City. In 2016 he was diagnosed with a terminal
illness and became dependent on the state. The other is 36 and has severe mental health problems.
Then on Friday, the National Audit Office savaged Duncan Smith’s hyped benefits scheme: Universal Credit is saving no money, is not encouraging the unemployed to seek work and has left countless claimants in terrible hardship.
Margaret Greenwood, shadow work and pensions secretary said: “The Government has shamelessly ignored warning after warning about the devastating impact its flagship welfare reform has had on people’s lives.”
And how, pray, did this Government react? Ministers breezily claimed everything was working wonderfully well and that the NAO was wrong – an independent body which examines Government policies and spending is not to be trusted because it has exposed a Government folly. We really do live in a post-truth world.
Tory politicians, with the help of right-wing papers, sell us lies and and expect to get away with it all.
Even more disturbing is the disconnect between welfare recipients and government ministers.
Those who run the country have no idea at all what it is like to be poor, to live with insecurity and hopelessness.
Almost all cabinet ministers are millionaires. Smith is to the manor married – his wife’s family own an estate where they have a fine old country house.
What can they know of poverty, those who never want for anything?
The next generation of Tories are worse. Last year leaked WhatsApp messages from a group of young Tories joked about “gassing chavs” and “shooting peasants”.
Austerity is based on this horrible hatred. So why do so many of those worst affected by unfair rules still vote Tory?
One can but hope that growing anger about Universal Credit will make voters realise the master class does not know best. That Tories really are the enemies of ordinary people.
This spring, Black Panther smashed all box office records. No other film has ever done as well in its first weeks of release. Its top stars are all black, among them, the beautiful Lupita Nyong’o.
Now it looks as if the female-led Ocean’s 8 is set to rocket up the charts too. The white men who run Hollywood and the British film industry must be shell-shocked.
Having kept black and female talent down for so long, and ‘for commercial reasons’, they are waking up to the huge appeal of diverse casting.
Maybe these two successes will be game-changing. If not, we will know for sure the gatekeepers are both useless and incurably prejudiced. Gina Miller – the indomitable Remainer – and I were recently told by tweeter @stgeorgeiscross that, being ‘foreign’, we had no right to speak out on Brexit. Most historians think the real St George’s father came from Cappadocia in central Turkey and his mother from Palestine. He himself moved between the countries in the vast Roman empire to make himself a better life. He served in the Roman army and ultimately died in modern-day Palestine. So, England’s patron saint was both brownskinned and a migrant. Take that Mister@ stgeorgeiscross. And go educate yourself.