Posted by Jake on Tuesday, April 23, 2013 with 2 comments | Labels: benefits, Big Society, budget cuts, housing, inequality, NHS, property, taxation
Osborne and Cameron see the light?...
SOURCE BBC NEWS: Prime Minister defends plans to get trainee nurses to first work as healthcare assistants, washing and feeding patients. The Royal College of Nursing called the idea "stupid".
GUARDIAN: Iain Duncan Smith calls petition for him to live on £53 a week a stunt
Work and pensions secretary insists he has twice lived on breadline after online petition secures nearly 300,000 signatures
OUR RELATED STORIES:
I keep seeing calls like this. But the fact is that they'd always know that it was for a limited time, and that their mansion and BMW were waiting for them at the end.
ReplyDeleteTo really understand my situation, for example, you have to know that illness leaves you no way out, and no hope of recovery. There is no light at the end of the tunnel and it will probably get worse with age. That takes about 5 years to sink in, but that only brings numbness not relief.
I might adapt to this shit, but I'll never be any better than I am today: in pain, struggling, locked into unsuitable housing, subject to humiliation by the gatekeepers, and constantly being told that I'm a bad citizen for being ill.
A year of living on reduced income is not even the half of it. They should be made to wear a large ball and chain, bandage one of their hands up do it can't be used, and wear a sign that invites people to shout abuse and throw missiles at them. They should have to regularly visit bureaucratic offices where they must fill in 50 page forms asking the most intimate questions, knowing that the amount of support they will get is dependent on getting the answers right according to secret criteria and that the form will be evaluated by someone with no medical training that never meets you. Never has to face the consequences of their decision. Every month they should visit a GP to be prescribed drugs with powerful sides that make them feel ill. They should be publicly humiliated to the point of traumatisation a couple of times a year.
They need to get to the point where it seems that everything and everyone is against them so that they start to wonder whether they might not be better of dead.
That would be more like it. Chances of any of these thought experiments happening. Zero. So why are we wasting time on it? People in government are privileged and wealthy, and out of touch with people.
The only way to change this is to have different people in parliament. Candidates with life experience instead of a trust fund, a BA in PPE from Oxford, and an internship with the party. Let the parties put real people in responsible positions, instead of the usual debating society twits. These people are not going to change; thus we need to swap them for others with different characteristics.
We hear you. Amen to that!
Delete