Tories – ‘the party of working people, offering you security at every stage of your life.’

A letter a day to number 10. No 1,175

Tuesday 11 August 2015.

The letters with links are also available at ‘Fear and loathing in Great Britain’ https://fearandloathingingreatbritain.wordpress.com/

Dear Mr Cameron,

As I have said many times, the deceit that you are making work pay is in exploiting people for more profit, making work pay for employers and not employees. George Osborne raising the minimum wage to £7.20 from next April and rebranding that as a living wage, when the living wage is currently at £7.85 an hour nationally and £9.15 an hour in London, is not making work pay for employees, it’s just more exploitation of workers, giving them, in the real terms of a living wage, a negative pay rise. Raising the minimum wage to £7.20 would be welcome, but not when it comes custom wrapped in a lie.

When you launched the Tory manifesto for 2015 you announced, “At the heart of this manifesto is a simple proposition. We are the party of working people, offering you security at every stage of your life.” I think you missed some words out, “At the heart of this manifesto is a simple proposition. We are the party of ‘betraying’ working people, offering you ‘no’ security at every stage of your life.” Your idea of the “good life” at any stage of our lives would be better presented by the grim reaper.

Employment Minister Priti Patel, or the latest DWP attack dog as I like to call her, said your speech was not about making cuts, but about changing the culture of a “broken system”. “This is about reforming welfare so that we have the right employment opportunities, we invest in people, we get them off benefits, which will battle the culture of welfare dependency that trap people into poverty, into deprivation.”

I hate it when you right wing ideological terrorists come out with utterly bizarre, senseless and meaningless, statements to justify your attacks on ordinary people. Reforming welfare to have the right employment opportunities? Sanctions! Ok, that’s a twisted employment opportunity. We invest in people? Sanctions! As we all know, investments can go up, or down. We get them off benefits? Sanctions! Yep, you surely do. Which will battle the culture of welfare dependency that trap people into poverty, into deprivation? Oh god have mercy! Ask Harry Leslie Smith what life was like before we developed a system of social security. Ask him about poverty. Ask him about the violence of poverty. Crawl back in history and ask the Navvies about a life building roads, ask them what happened when they got sick, ask the Irish about the Irish potato famine in a land of English gentry owned plenty, ask the poor of the Victorian workhouses as Britain led the industrial revolution and became the wealthiest nation on Earth. The poor always pay!

Disabled people are the hardest hit by your Welfare reforms, sanctions and your privatised benefits denial pogroms. Welfare dependency isn’t a culture, it’s a lifeline, a survival issue, and too many have already given up the real battle facing us, merely to survive. And you have the unmitigated gall to suggest you’re offering us security at every stage of our lives? Ask Iain Duncan Smith about benefit related deaths because he won’t tell us even though he’s been ordered to do so by the courts.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/08/budget-2015-uk-gdp-other-rich-nations-george-osborne

http://www.livingwage.org.uk/what-living-wage

http://news.sky.com/story/1464642/pm-promises-good-life-for-working-people

https://www.politicshome.com/economy-and-work/articles/story/david-cameron-criticises-tax-credits-merry-go-round