A letter a day to number 10. No 1,059
Wednesday 15 April 2015.
Dear Mr Cameron,
Lord Bichard, an ex-chief of the Benefits Agency, said in 2012 he wanted to introduce forced labour for the elderly, suggesting ‘the same tough attitude towards benefit scroungers should be taken with older people’. In his words, “Older people who are not very old could be making a very useful contribution to civil society if they were given some incentive or recognition for doing so. We’re prepared to say to people if you’re not looking for work, you don’t get a benefit. If you’re old and you’re not contributing in some way, maybe there should be some penalty attached to that”. His idea of incentive or recognition was the use of coercion and punishment.
He joined Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey in spinning sanctions and penalties as extra support.
I confess I do not understand the Tory mindset which can spin crimes against humanity as support and incentives.
Only today I read that Tory parliamentary candidate Chamali Fernando has mooted the idea that people with mental health conditions ‘wearing wristbands indicating the nature of the person’s condition would be helpful to professionals as they often could not explain themselves’.
Given the enormous lengths that you your party have gone to to demonise poor, sick and disabled people, wearing a wristband indicating that I suffer from a mental health condition will, in fact, render me vulnerable and exposed at all times in public. It will have no beneficial effect save possibly on those rare occasions when initially relating to professionals, the rest of the time it would be like wearing a threat to my life and well being on my wrist for any ignorant fool to see.
This is not rocket science, but it does require a modicum of joined up thinking which clearly these people are incapable of achieving.
Naturally I suspect some underhanded motive in all this, it is only sensible to do so, the number of attacks on the lives of the most vulnerable people in society over the past five years is unprecedented. I wouldn’t trust a Tory in a straitjacket in a padded cell with the door welded shut. In fact if any group of people should be wearing wrist bands it is every member of the Conservative party and anyone who votes for you because you are all an active, real and present danger to the lives and well being of ordinary people.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm140710/halltext/140710h0002.htm
Fear and Loathing in Great Britain 