Let's Stone The Poor!
There’s a trend emerging in the media and current ideology at the moment in the UK, and I feel moved to write about it as it seems so very patently obvious to myself (and hopefully will to you!) but yet seems to be seeping into the cultural mindset of many of the sheep that make up the majority of the general public.
The trend is thus-
Let’s throw stones at the Poor! Or, alternatively, “Help the Rich, Hate the Poor!” (A slogan I admit I stole from my latest New Internationalist magazine...)
All of a sudden we are hearing stories of “welfare scroungers”. We are constantly bombarded by the tales of people who have claimed benefits which they were not entitled to; of how “lazy” and undeserving” these people are. We are shocked by the Philpott case- the so called “product of the welfare state”? That awful term “taxpayers” money is being bandied about left right and centre, igniting self righteous anger among many working people. People who in all fairness do have a right to be angry at someone or something.
But are you seeing what I am seeing? Are you noticing the distraction techniques here?
The government are financially in a very tight squeeze. They need money. And with the advent of the “bedroom tax” and other insidious and subtle cuts they are gradually taking this money that they need. But as ever, they are taking this money from the weak, the vulnerable, and the poor. The very people who need it most and who for the most part are genuine.
Amongst many perfectly normal people fallen on hard times there will always be dysfunctional and often borderline mentally ill people at the very bottom of the pile. A minority of them may indeed be benefit scroungers. However the scale of the monies involved are nothing to the scale of the money lost by the previous malpractices of the banks and the incompetence of the government.
They are, as usual, passing the blame onto a group of people whom it is all too easy to despise and whom do not have either the resources or intelligence to stick up for themselves. They are scape-goating the poor and underprivileged and justifying the deeper and crueller cuts that they are no doubt going to make in the near future.
The scariest thing of all is that – they are succeeding.
They are carrying the general public with them. In forums and even in newspapers I would have thought better of, there is a sly and unsavoury slant. It is the poor! It is the scrounging welfare scum, the chavs (Council Housing Association Vermin- my God!), the skivers who don’t really need disability benefits at all who are to blame.
As a German Graduate I am struck by the similarities between this sort of scape-goating and the scape-goating of the Jews and other minorities in the build up to World War 2 as the poverty caused by inflation began to really bite. We all know how that ended...
It is a dangerous government distraction technique to dislodge the blame from themselves as they are forced to scrape back money wherever they can, and to create a feeling of unity and common hard done-by-ness amongst the most influential sections of the general voting public.
I will say it once and I will say it again. And again. And again.
· Welfare fraud is nothing compared to the tax avoidance of the rich, the incompetence of the government, and the reckless disorganisation of the banks.
Tell this to anyone who’ll listen- before we start deporting the unemployed, ill and socially disadvantaged to *work camps...*
Okay I’m being sensationalist...More probably, but no less degrading; demonising them, giving them food vouchers, working them to death when they are ill, and taking away the benefits many so desperately need more than ever.
