A letter a day to number 10. No 1,065
Tuesday 21 April 2015.
Dear Mr Cameron,
Margaret Thatcher called workers ‘the enemy within’ and went on to destroy industry in the UK as an act of class vengeance. The nation that birthed the Industrial Revolution was crushed by Thatcher and we have since turned into a consumer, service based nation and our manufacturing and industrial base is now mainly a thing of the past.
Class warfare has, under your government, come crashing centre stage again. When Andrew Marr questioned you about the impact of your policies and the hardship and deaths that have occurred because of them, you expressed no concern other than to justify your policies. The tens of thousands of deaths and suicides related to benefits seem to be regarded as acceptable collateral damage and unworthy of even mentioning, indeed the DWP made it very clear in 2013 that “there is no intention of releasing an updated version of these statistics” related to ‘Death of Recipients’.
When Marr asked you about foodbanks you said, ” One of the things we did was that Labour, because they didn’t like the PR of this, they didn’t advertise or promote the existence of food banks through job centres. We changed that because we thought that was, that was basically sort of selfish and shortminded…” You have no more promoted the existence of food banks than Labour did and yet under your government food bank usage has risen over 2000% and your selfish and shortminded answer was typical of the lies and spin you employ to evade any responsibility for the widespread social catastrophe in Britain today caused by your policies.
David Freud succinctly expressed your parties attitude to the poor when he said, “people who are poorer should be prepared to take the biggest risks as they have the least to lose”. How cheaply he values our lives and so avidly prepared to throw them away. ‘Making work pay’, as your mantra goes, means reducing benefits to a level that denies people even the barest minimum to sustain life, as the Guardian put it, “Suicides highlight the grim toll of benefits sanctions in austerity Britain “. Evidence of the suffering poor was met with mockery and jeering by Tory MPs even in the House of Commons.
You may choose not answer questions and meet them with evasion, lies and spin, but you have a very, very great deal to answer for.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/23/lord-freud-welfare-poor-risk
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/03/benefits-sanctions-leading-suicides-dwp-depression
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/food-banks-debate-video-iain-2941100
Fear and Loathing in Great Britain 