A letter a day to number 10. No 1,241
Monday 26 October 2015.
Dear Mr Cameron,
One of the major problems we face in Britain today is cognitive dissonance, the difficulty of holding and resolving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviours. We are all subject to it in a complex world, including the police as I found out on one of my attempts to bring charges against Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Freud for breaches of the human rights act, for forced labour (Workfare) and the right to life (sanctions). Without looking at my evidence I was told, the government wouldn’t do this, they are there to look after the people, thus touchingly putting a personal belief before evidence. Not a very objective approach to law and order.
I find it astonishing and dismaying how difficult it is for so many to face facts and to even acknowledge being conflicted even when the evidence is overwhelming. Instead of building houses to meet the housing crisis you chose to penalise people for living in their existing homes. You chose penalty over provision in your vicious and unjust bedroom tax which despite your promise to parliament that disabled people would be exempt, disabled people have been disproportionately targeted, not least those with specially adapted homes.
You have cut legal aid which specifically attacks poorer people’s ability to gain access to justice and over which the legal profession has taken to the streets in protest. You have increased court fees allowing judges no discretion and over which 50 magistrates have already resigned. Those who plead guilty at magistrates court must pay £150 but if they are found guilty in the high court the fee is £1,200 raising real concerns that people will plead guilty rather than defend their innocence in the high court. As Alistair MacDonald QC put it, ‘No one should be influenced by the extent of a court charge in making their decision about whether to plead guilty or have a trial’.
The list is endless, ending the Independent Living Fund, cuts to tax credits, forced compliance and forced labour under threat of benefit sanctions, attacking junior doctors, breaking up our NHS, the proposal to charge for NHS treatment and to move to a US style insurance scheme. Thousands of disabled people losing their Motability allowance. The disastrous rise in food bank use. Disabled people being forced off disability benefits now that Iain Duncan Smith has decided that work will make them well. Student debt, the PFI scandal, destabilising the NHS, the DWP mishandling benefit claims and bogus claims for over payments of benefits. Tax breaks for the rich, £93 billion in corporate welfare.
Just how much evidence does it take to pause and think and maybe get the merest glimmer of an idea that you do not mean us well? Working class people voting Tory are walking up to a scaffold and putting their own heads in a noose for you to come along and kick the chair away. And you say Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is ‘now a threat to our national security, our economic security and your (our) family’s security’. Forgive me if I die laughing of grief.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bedroom-tax-prime-minister-david-2874744
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/richard-grimes/government-moves-to-consider-nhs-user-charges
http://www.trusselltrust.org/stats
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-26954901
https://www.rt.com/uk/261093-largest-nhs-trust-inadequate/
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/top-tories-want-more-tax-5955749
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/07/corporate-welfare-a-93bn-handshake
Fear and Loathing in Great Britain 