10 Oct 2012

The Conservative Conference

The government like cuts. They REALLY like cuts. Someone (with a lot more patience than I) has compiled a list of all the cuts here. It makes for disturbing reading. The services that are being cut are primarily in the health, social and education sectors, and almost nobody will be unaffected by them. We're all in this together, according to David Cameron. However, it soon becomes apparent that this Utopia is quite Orwellian. We may be all in this together, but some are more in it than others.

For example, George Osborne wants to cut 10 BILLION pounds EXTRA off the welfare output, to rebalance the deficit. He thinks limiting the amount of children a family on benefits is allowed may help this. How, exactly, I'm unsure. I have two children. They were concieved before I required benefits to live on. If I'd managed to have five children without needing assistance, and then found myself needing it, would I be expected to have a cull? Put some in care, maybe? What is an acceptable amount of children for Mr Osborne? Two, like him? Or four, like Mr Cameron?

This country needs to stop punishing the poor (who are in increasingly less position to be able to contribute to the economy at all) and start taxing the rich. Our economy collapsed due to the greed of bankers, playing games with the country's money, yet mansion tax was scrapped because, apparently, it will soon spiral out of control, and people who have saved and worked hard will resent having to pay for their houses. Their enormous houses, that they cannot possibly NEED, that use up huge swathes of land. A worthy target for taxation.

However, the con-dem party aren't interested in this viewpoint. It is preferable to pretend that the enormous amount of people living in poverty are to blame. Iain Duncan Smith declared that "Now we are toughening up the penalty for failure to seek work." (BBC News). How does he define failure to seek work? There are no jobs to be had for many people, and most jobseeking benefits ARE stopped if you fail to seek work.
He also said "Gone must be the days when governments spent money to buy their way out of a problem." (ibid) but this is the problem. The only way to fix the amount of people on benefits is to invest. Invest in creating jobs, in improving areas of deprivation, in removing social exclusion. A child born into a debt-ridden, workless household will only have that to aspire to, unless social change happens.

This government are deliberately targeting those without a voice, in their benefit cull. The rich spoke out in droves against mansion tax, and were heeded. The poor have no choice but to accept cap after cut, because the government own us. In blaming us for the recession and deficit, the government are alienating and excluding us from society.

However, that's no longer enough and they're beginning to attack the workers as well. The minimum wage for over 21s (because, despite paying tax, you're not an adult til then in the government's eyes) is just over £10k a year. Can anyone live on that, without help? Can anyone support a FAMILY on that, without help? No. Yet, there's no call to introduce a living wage, and working families are resentful of those on benefits because they apparently have more money. This isn't true: for a childless adult, working is more profitable than being on income support. When I was a single, working parent, I got £200 a month more than I do now, overall.
In addition to this, Mr Osborne wants to remove people's employment rights. How humanitarian of him! Instead of allowing people to be protected from unfair dismissal, be permitted maternity leave, training and have a right to redundancy, they will get er...shares in their employing company. Aside from the legal ramifications of trying to enact this, it reduces employees to money-magnets, not people.
The new target is childless people under 25, who dare claim housing benefit. Apparently, these people should continue living with their parents. At what point did 25 become adulthood? At what point did income tax and national insurance start only applying once you reached 25? Oh, that's right, it doesn't.

The coalition government has no sense of what it's like to live in the lower classes. Instead, they fear and blame them and increase the distance between us and them, hoping that nobody notices. Legal tax loopholes mean that the rich are not paying into the economy, only taking from it. There is no push to close these loopholes. Instead, the lowest strata of British people are punished repeatedly, and vilified.This is not an acceptable way to run a country.

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