The aristocracy, the extremely wealthy and the socially
advantaged have always been disproportionately represented in government and
that can be said of all parties, even in modern day politics. However, over the years that has not
necessarily meant that they have all used their elevated status to better
themselves, their kin or their contemporaries; especially not to the direct
disadvantage of those less fortunate.
There are numerous examples of politicians who have used their
privileged positions as the means to improve the lot of the disadvantaged or at
least for the betterment of the nation such as Winston Churchill, William
Wilberforce, Tony Benn or William Gladstone.
However now wherever you look along the front benches of parliament you
see rows of millionaires and nary a face amongst them there for selfless
reasons.
The recent parliamentary expenses scandal exposed the
level of greed and even dishonesty amongst those chosen to represent us and you
would imagine that the publicity would have convinced the most avaricious ones
to crawl chastened back into their hides.
That is clearly not the case with some resorting to any means to wring
the very last possible drip out of the public purse. For example, we read of a minister claiming
pennies in expenses for a journey of a hundred yards. Everybody knows that it must have been a
fraudulent claim; not least of all because I doubt that any MP could park a car
within a hundred yards of their workplace if they wanted and even if they could
it would take longer to retrieve the vehicle than it would to walk to their
destination. As far as I am aware we have
no disabled ministers at the moment, so one is left to conclude it was either a
fraud or the minister involved is the laziest public representative on record
or perhaps both.
On 24 May 2011 the
Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) was made responsible for
determining MPs' pay and setting the level of any increase in their salary; and
since May 2010 IPSA has been responsible for the regulation and payment of
expenses to Members of the House of Commons.
That we were assured would put an end to unreasonable salary increases
and unfair or fraudulent expenses claims and yet that is clearly not the case. Still we’ve an MP claiming expenses for
before he was elected and who now serves as a minister in the Department of
Justice and several others claiming for fuel bills of two houses. When IPSA recently announced the next round
of pay increases for MPs at 10-11% (in spite of many having had their pay
frozen or even cut over recent years), many parliamentary incumbents insisted
that they deserved it. Some even claim
that they have no choice but to accept it.
All that is common knowledge of course as is the Salary of the Justice
Secretary £220,000 and the £40,000 per year he pays his wife to act as his
secretary (not bad for a bit of diary management, opening letters and answering
the phone).
Whilst the avarice of
these people is disgusting and enough to make you scream; it somehow seems so
much worse when seen in contrast to what they are doing to the very people who
they are employed to represent. The
extraordinary arrogance of these people who smile into cameras and compliment
themselves about what a good job they are doing. They do this whilst completely ignoring the
hardships being caused not just by the prevailing economic circumstances but by
the actions they say they are taking to remedy the problems. ‘We are all in this together’, they told us
when they were elected. How does that
pan out when we have a front bench that looks like a Who’s Who of millionaires
with second and third homes awarding themselves above-inflation pay rises and
expenses for things that the rest of us have to pay for ourselves. With several of them claiming fuel cost for
two homes, last time I looked it was not possible to be in two places at the
same time so how they justify that is beyond me. All the while they are developing policies
that further impoverish and/or oppress those who they might regard as at
the bottom of the food chain and unworthy of their compassion.
The Spare Room Subsidy
otherwise known as the ‘Bedroom Tax’ is forcing people to leave homes they may
have lived in for decades; as many are already barely managing to keep their
heads above water the alternatives are to run up debts or go without food or
heating. This would be bad enough but as
there is a shortage of smaller homes for these people to rent and therefore
have no available remedy to their problem.
Needless to say the private landlords are laughing all the way to the
bank because the additional pressure on the small home market pushes rent up so
even if they do find a smaller home then the rent will be as much if not more
than where they came from. If the
victims of this vicious policy go to councils or housing associations for help
they are told they are not entitled to help as they are regarded as
‘intentionally homeless’.
Disability Living
Allowance has been withdrawn along with other welfare payments and replaced with
something called ‘Universal Credit’.
Former DLA claimants have all been reassessed to re-evaluate their need
and eligibility for assistance. The
government outsourced the £400m medical assessment contract to a company called
Atos Healthcare, their doctors’ role was to advise DWP ‘decision-makers’ about
the level of disability of claimants. Needless
to say the whole process went wrong from the outset with hundreds tales of
bizarre assessment results such as; amputees being told their condition may
improve or people who are able to walk 20 metres must be able to walk 100
metres and therefore are fit to work. Atos
is now routinely described as ‘a disability denial factory’, although they have
now withdrawn from large parts of the contract and now only advise the DWP on
terminally ill claimants leaving the medically untrained ‘decision-makers’ to
make their own minds up on all the others.
It is superfluous to say that this whole process is causing very real
hardship and no small amount of stress to disabled people.
There are many more
examples of how this government is surreptitiously destroying the welfare state
without any mandate from the electorate.
They do it of course in the guise of saving the economy. However, many of these changes have actually
ended up costing more which begs the question, ‘why do they do it?’ I will address this question in Part II,
coming to my blog shortly.
