A letter a day to number 10. No 1,328
Wednesday 27 January 2016.
Dear Mr Cameron,
Here’s a cosy little conundrum for you. On a balance of credibility and probability, who is more likely to be telling the truth, you and Jeremy Hunt (parliaments best known typographical error) using statistics to scaremonger the nation for political reasons, or 59 of Britain’s top stroke doctors who accused Hunt, and thus you also, of “misrepresenting statistics”?
It’s a pity that Hunt’s department refused to accept the eight foot mock-up of Trisha Greenhalgh’s book ‘how to read a paper – the basics of evidence-based medicine’, delivered by protesters to his department. It might have served a useful purpose as a daily reminder that politics is the greatest game in town for liars, cheats and thieves.
Imagine if computers had been designed by politicians, we’d never have got past the blue screen of death.
Having spent £53,000 of public money to fight a High Court battle in an attempt to keep the benefit cap on carers, a U-turn would have been quite sufficient from Iain Duncan Smith and David Freud rather than the spin they indulged in. The resignations of Smith, Freud and Priti Patel would, however, have been more appropriate.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) claim that the decision was to honour the “hugely important contribution carers make to society”. Let’s face it the DWP don’t have any honour and nor do they care for the well being of vulnerable people. Baroness Pitkeathley told Freud: “The value of unpaid carers’ support to the economy is £132 billion every year – the cost of a second health service.” The DWP would have been very aware of the contribution carers make to the country before they decided to attack them.
It does not seem that the same ‘value’ is being extended to vulnerable people who need extra support and sheltered housing and who still face the benefit cap, which will force the ‘closure of many schemes like women’s refuges, specialist dementia accommodation and veterans’ services’. Perhaps the NHS protesters could have also included a mock up of something like ‘The Idiots Guide to Joined up Thinking’ to parliament as well as ‘how to read a paper’, but I fear you are all too far gone in your ideological war on the poor and should all just be booted out on your backsides, never to darken the corridors of Westminster ever again.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/furious-junior-doctors-deliver-giant-7221155
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-cameron-repeats-inaccurate-stroke-7198483
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tories-spare-carers-benefit-cap-7248097#ICID=sharebar_twitter
http://24dash.com/news/housing/2016-01-26-Most-vulnerable-to-lose-68-a-week-in-housing-benefit
Fear and Loathing in Great Britain 