A letter a day to number 10. No 1,130
Saturday 27 June 2015.
Dear Mr Cameron,
Britain has a profound and distressing problem. The problem is your government and can be put very simply, Britain is not your feudal fiefdom and we are not your vassals.
I have, in a long and chequered life, had a fair bit of contact with the ‘upper class’, ex-colonials and, to a much lesser extent, the aristocracy and have witnessed and experienced, first hand, the prevalence of the same feudal mindset towards the lower orders. This deeply rooted, historical mindset is alive and well and as impervious to change as only a narcissistic, self regarding, chronic, pathological, bad attitude can be. Working with such people is irritating, grating and unpleasant because their attitude to people like me is condescending, arrogant and rude to an astonishing degree because of their innate sense of superiority, overweening sense of privilege and condescension to anyone not of their class.
It is this attitude that underpins everything you and your government are doing and your policies and austerity are wrong if for no other reason. You treat our taxes as if they belong to you, as if it is government money to use and abuse as you see fit, and not money that has been bought with the sweat of our labour to be held in trust by government for the universal benefit of the nation.
The system of social security has already been paid for through our labour, it is a system of insurance for those in need at any given time and it is a universal system which includes those who through fate, fortune or misfortune have yet to contribute or are unable to.
Iain Duncan Smith’s Universal Credit, claimant commitment contracts and sanctions regime are wrong because people are reduced to, and treated like, vassals in servitude to the state. People are being driven into forced labour (work) for something that has already been paid for by labour (work) and it is being done in the most demeaning, condescending, punitive, way imaginable under the threat of the loss of the means of survival and, despite his ridiculous displays of moral outrage at the suggestion and his refusal to publish the figures, is costing people their lives.
Sadly, many people are inured to class inequality and will even take to the streets and wave flags and bunting to celebrate it. There is even a name for working class Tory voters, ‘deferential voters’, which politicians, the Mail and the Sun knowingly, wilfully and callously, exploit outrageously. The fact remains, however, Tories have no place in a civilised nation.
https://mikesivier.wordpress.com/tag/claimant-commitment/
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/200000-join-petition-demanding-tories-5909676
Fear and Loathing in Great Britain 