Tag Archives: Benefits

Bedroom Tax Claims Its First Confirmed Victim

Posted on 11/05/2013 | 4 comments
Stephanie Bottrill: No Hope

Stephanie Bottrill: No Hope

Stephanie Bottrill was a 53 year-old grandmother who had lived in her terraced house in Solihull for 18 years, bringing up her children as a struggling single parent, nurturing the cherished back garden which was her pride and joy. Here she’d buried the pet cats she had loved; here was the area of calm she called her “special place”, where she could feel at peace. Then the Bedroom Tax bill arrived, and Stephanie knew she would have to pay £20 extra a week or find somewhere smaller. So, she sadly packed her bags ready to move, but nowhere suitable could be found. Resigned to her lack of options, Stephanie Bottrill sat down and wrote notes to all her family, dropped her house keys through a neighbour’s letterbox and walked down to Junction 4 of the A6 motorway where she stepped into the path of a northbound lorry and was killed instantly. She had become the first confirmed victim of Iain Duncan-Smith’s ill-advised and hated Bedroom Tax policy.

The notes that Stephanie had left behind were notes of love for her family, beseeching them not to blame themselves for her decision to end her life. She just wasn’t strong enough to carry on, she explained, and nobody was to blame but the Government. Her family have reacted with despair and disbelief that anybody could be driven to such lengths. But really, this tragic event was to be expected. A government that formulates a policy that leaves its most vulnerable citizens with nowhere to turn, no options to lead their lives in peace and security, must expect an outcome such as this. Realistically, as appalling and dreadfully sad as Stephanie Bottrill’s fate may be, she will almost certainly not be the last person to give up on life, to snuff out their own life. In the face of this Government’s callous and uncaring determination to visit all our economic ills on the heads of the poorest and least able to pay, it is horrifyingly likely that the death toll will rise, unless those in power can be persuaded to wake up, and smell the coffee.

It is difficult to imagine a more ill-conceived and irresponsible policy than this notorious and discredited Bedroom Tax. It is a policy that places those least able to cope directly into a Catch-22 situation. Unable to find the extra money levied each week – £20 is a frighteningly large amount out of a meagre weekly income. Unable to move either, because of the lack of suitable smaller properties. What is one to do? Discretionary payments can be applied for, but the budgets for these are laughably small; in practice only those with the very severest of disabilities in the most deprived of circumstances will have any chance of qualifying, and then only for a limited time. Maybe a move to the private sector rental market, but there is no security there, rental contracts are for months, not years. You are simply existing from month to month, or if you’re lucky, from year to year; you’re not living in your own home. Do the politicians who draft these measures, and who live in mansions and never worry where the next meal is coming from, have any real idea of how this might feel? The heat or eat dilemma? The pain of having to move out of a place where your children grew up, somewhere you’ve invested years of your life to make a house a home? Do they have the remotest clue?

It’s equally difficult to speculate as to what the reaction will be of Cabinet Ministers hearing news like this. Will they feel the pangs of conscience? Will they allow doubt to enter their educated and sophisticated heads as to whether these policies are really right? There is absolutely no sign of any such response. The issues confronting the poor, the dilemma of those faced with paying up or shipping out when neither is a feasible option – and there are thousands of people in precisely that situation – are a closed book to people who are in power and yet completely out of touch with the nitty-gritty of everyday life for the most vulnerable in society. That much we can say with confidence; the evidence for it is irrefutable. But an even more worrying question is: do they even care? Does anyone in this Government actually give a damn?

Stephanie Bottrill seems to have concluded, in the face of all the information available to her, that – in undeniable fact – nobody in Government does care. Nobody was prepared to lift a finger to help her in her no-win, zero-options situation. Most of us – fortunately for our peace of mind – cannot imagine the despair, the desperate loneliness and lack of hope that goes hand-in-hand with a conclusion like that. We can only accept that Stephanie’s state of mind, as she made her solitary walk to a death she felt was her only way out, was of a resolve born of her absolute conviction that the Government had abandoned her, careless of her fate, indifferent as to whether she lived or died. She made the awful decision to act on that conviction, alone and with her own indomitable brand of courage. Stephanie chose to abandon the world she felt had given up on her.

Can any of us say with any confidence that she was wrong?

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Duncan-Smith Appeals Politely To Finer Instincts of “Rich Pensioners”

Posted on 28/04/2013 | 2 comments
Duncan-Smith: "Polite"

Duncan-Smith: “Polite”

Iain Duncan-Smith, having pandered for so long to the Daily Mail-reading citizens of leafy suburbia, gladdening their hearts with his continual broadsides aimed at “shirkers” or those allegedly living the high life on munificent benefits may just have made a tactical error, thereby rousing the ire of the comfortably-off grey vote. Perhaps encouraged by the willing acceptance by the rich elderly of the picture he has so assiduously painted of a benefits dependency culture, IDS has finally dared to think the unthinkable, hinted at just possibly touching the untouchable – even if, as it turns out, this would be consensual touching.

The suggestion of the beleaguered Work and Pensions Secretary seems, on the face of it, quite mild – especially when compared to his scathing rhetoric directed with such concentrated fire at the unemployed, the disabled and other “benefit dependents” (especially if they dare to have – horror of unjustifiable horrors – a spare bedroom!) He has only said, in a really quite wheedling, come-on-now-you-chaps sort of tone, that the “wealthy elderly” might like to do their bit and return some of the universal freebies currently available on grounds of age alone – and regardless of what might be piled up in the bank. He would, he offered, “encourage” people who do not need this type of financial help to “hand it back.” Not exactly, on the face of it, a draconian move – but it seems likely that certain Disgusted of Cheltenham types will feel betrayed by the Minister, despite his carefully-couched and indeed almost pleading remarks.

The coalition government have, up to now, been fastidiously careful not to rattle the cage of a section of society well-known for its mainly Conservative leanings. It seems likely that any dent in this traditional groundswell of support could have disastrous consequences for the Tory Party’s chances of remaining on the political map come 2015 and election time. Even now, with this hesitant suggestion of self-sacrifice for the old and rich, IDS has been quick to provide reassurance that there are no plans to introduce a means-test to exclude wealthier pensioners. What Duncan-Smith is appealing to is the theoretically noble spirit of the rich: come on, guys, let’s play our part and show those nasty little oiks down at the bottom of the pile just what the Dunkirk Spirit is all about. The thing is, he may have misjudged the mood.

I only heard one caller to a late-night BBC Five Live chat show debating this story. That was largely because this one chap was so irate, so indignant, that it proved extremely difficult to shut him up long enough to cut him off without appearing terribly rude to a nice old man. The level of animosity generated by this single outraged pensioner was a marvel to behold – it was only radio, but you could almost hear the veins in his temple throb. I was quite worried for his health, and the presenter seemed loath to provoke him further, lest he should bring on apoplexy. If that caller was in any way representative of his wealthy co-recipients of government largesse, then it could turn out that IDS has had another Bad Idea. It may be an old and fairly wizened tiger he has by the tail, but the teeth and the claws would appear to be in full working order and ready to turn on the hand that’s been feeding them.

The worrying thing (as far as this citizen is concerned) is the marked contrast in tone and approach, depending on whether IDS is imposing swingeing cuts on people whose incomes are already stretched to snapping point, or making sweetly suggestive noises about how noble it would be to forego the £300 winter fuel allowance when you have £150k in the bank. And really, the contrast could hardly be more marked, and therefore it could hardly be more repellently disgusting. The clear implication behind such radically different ways of dealing with different sectors of society is that the government view of those disparate groups is polarised to such an extent that one might almost doubt we are talking about members of the same species. The rich are to retain a choice over whether their income should remain at a level far in excess of their needs – even if a proportion of that income comes from an over-stretched welfare budget that is already pushing people – working people – into reliance on food banks. The poor have no such choice. Stringent measures are being taken, and the Untermensch at the bottom of Society’s league table can like it or lump it. There is a nasty assumption going on in Tory heads that they can trust “our sort of people”, but that the peasants have to be kept in line; give them an inch and they’ll take a bally mile, old boy.

This attitude pervades our current national mindset; even to the extent of sparing the rich the visitations of Justice when they’ve been naughty – if they happen to be well enough placed to make reparations. If two people are caught out in the same level of benefit fraud – for instance – and one can afford to repay the whole amount they’ve diddled out of the state, but the other can’t; guess what happens. It is open for the decision makers to spare the person who can repay any actual prosecution and probable criminal record. The one who can’t repay within the time limit stipulated – it’s off to court with you, and a blot on your record that will dog you for years – and you still have to pay the money back, out of whatever pittance you have left. And yet the crime is identical. That’s the only definition you’ll ever need of unfair, unjust and a travesty of the equity of treatment that should be any government’s minimum aim. It’s happened under successive administrations of whatever persuasion, and it’s a blot on our notion of fairness.

It may well be that IDS has committed a gaffe here, but equally it’s possible that, on sober reflection, the elderly rich will decide that they aren’t after all being threatened with imminent penury. And unwilling as I am to give much credit to a Minister with such an appalling record on his treatment of those who can’t fight back, I actually think this is something of a tiny step in the right direction. It is time the wealthy did more to show that they share the responsibility we all have to get out of this mess. I just wish that there wasn’t so much carrot on the one hand, and so much stick on the other.

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Widespread Disgust as the Coalition and Press Lurch Further Down the Path of Herr Doktor Goebbels

Posted on 05/04/2013 | Leave a comment
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The not-so-good Doktor

For some time now a lot of us out here in Leftie-Land have been worrying out loud, and in print, at the direction this Coalition Government are taking. We have concerns over their policies and the way they’re being presented; we have concerns over their rhetoric, directed invariably at sections of society against whom they wish to justify savage cuts; we have concerns about the very language they use, language calculated to stir up hatred in the less intellectually-acute of their supporters, terms such as “shirkers”, “malingerers” and “something-for-nothing culture”. I’ve written myself about the transparent desire on the part of Cameron, Gideon Osborne and their colleagues to divide and rule, and the way in which they’ve spread malicious falsehoods about the targets of their policies, lies that have been eagerly taken up and spread far and wide by the right wing coterie in the Press. I compared the phenomenon of their wilful deceit to the “Big Lie” technique employed by Josef Goebbels for the embryonic Nazi party in the late 20’s and early 30’s. Basically, if you repeat a lie often enough – and the bigger the lie, the better – it will seep into the public consciousness and be accepted. I feel that the Government’s endorsement of this tactic is the fair and obvious conclusion to draw from the way they have relentlessly sought to paint the poor and helpless as a malign, self-seeking and parasitical section of society.

The turn of events this week, though, has taken even the most cynical and suspicious of us by surprise. In a shocking and rather sinister plunge towards the gutter-end of their ideology, the Government and certain sections of the press have decided to use a criminal case which concerns the unlawful killing of six young children as material for a further attack on their hated and hapless targets at the bottom of the economic pile. In the wake of the conviction of Mick Philpott and his accomplices for the manslaughter of six out of seventeen children, the lamentable Mail has – without allowing a decent interval to elapse, indeed hardly pausing to draw breath – launched a bitter front-page broadside against a welfare state which, it astonishingly contended, was at the root of the whole Philpott tragedy. This blatant tarring of all benefit claimants with the brush of a sociopath/psychopath like Philpott predictably and quite rightly brought vilification from proper newspapers and media outlets alike. Scandalous, opportunistic, tasteless, vile, they screamed, accusing a bang-to-rights Mail of making cheap political capital out of the deaths of innocents. Quite so.

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Silly Gideon

But then, whose trotters did we hear, galloping over the horizon as he raced to dump his porcine carcass on this timely bandwagon? None other than Gideon Osborne; failed Chancellor, shameless blagger of disabled parking spaces and determined first-class rail traveller (albeit with only a standard-class ticket.) Such is the measure of this vapid man; his brainless arrogance leads him to believe that what he wishes will naturally come to pass, that ordinary conventions are for ordinary people and not for such bright shining stars as Gideon. Now he could hardly wait to endorse the Mail’s bile-ridden outburst in his haste to appeal to little Hitlers everywhere and further perpetuate – indeed enlarge – The Big Lie. He was swiftly backed by his boss, Cameron, a beleaguered PM whose eggs are now clearly all in one basket. Shocked and horrified, the rest of us were left gaping at the sheer, malevolent viciousness of it; the appalling timing, the unwarranted slur on people who wouldn’t dream of harming a fly, the public-school adolescent nastiness of it. What to do?

Well, some thought they might try a little satire laced with logic, a standard procedure for putting in their place those of arrogant stupidity. By your own arguments, it was forcibly and eruditely pointed out to the Gruesome Twosome, the crimes of Peter Sutcliffe could be laid at the door of the Road Haulage Association; those of Harold Shipman at the feet of the NHS and provincial medical practices everywhere; while the evil-doings of Fred West are to be blamed on private enterprise and aspirational construction workers throughout the land. The effect of all this admirable logic? Negligible at best. Those who are currently on the attack and have the poor, disabled and vulnerable in their sights are in talk mode, with a view to draconian action. They are not for listening. And readers of the Sun and the Mail are likely to listen, sadly enough, only to other such readers – or perhaps to like-minded know-it-alls down the pub.

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The Offensive Daily Fail

In the absence of many other practical options, I’ve made my views known to the Press Complaints Commission. I’m not exactly holding my breath for a positive response though, as high-ups at the Mail are also influential in the PCC, so it’s a little bit like complaining to your mother-in-law about your wife’s nagging. But something clearly has to be done; this is not the kind of “politics” that can be taken lying down. The utter, untimely viciousness of it, as well as the blatant opportunism, leaves a rancid taste in the mouth. It’s easy to forget in these alarming times that this is a coalition we have in charge, with – supposedly – a restraining, moderating influence ready built-in as it were. The shocking lack of balls displayed by the Liberals in matters like this and many others will — if there’s any justice* — contribute to their deserved annihilation at the next election. But that’s not going to come soon enough to protect this country from a Tory Party that seems to be diseased at the very top, intoxicated with the sickness of megalomania and determined to visit their own brand of evil on their own chosen targets.

The spirit of Josef Goebbels is alive and well in the corridors of Tory High Command as well as in the editorial offices of our less salubrious newspapers. Those of us with opposing views – those who are resolved to speak out for the helpless and vulnerable – had better make sure we speak loudly and constructively enough to be heard over the brazenly unashamed rhetoric pouring like so much liquid sewage from the lips of Osborne and Cameron. If we don’t, we’ll simply be begging for more of the same, and worse.

*There isn’t; so don’t hold your breath there, either.

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Will the New ‘Personal Independence Payment’ Actually Deprive Disabled People of Their Independence?

Posted on 27/02/2013 | 4 comments

As a former Welfare Rights Worker with C.A.B. in Pontefract and Wakefield in West Yorkshire, I’ve retained an interest in social policy developments in general, and Welfare Benefits legislation in particular. You may take the boy out of advice work, but you can never quite take advice work out of the boy – and the Citizens Advice Bureau ethos of aiming to ensure that people are not disadvantaged for a lack of help and representation still means a lot to me.

This is particularly so now, at a time when a lot of vulnerable and helpless people are being targeted by a government apparently determined to make budget savings at the sharp and painful end of life. With the intention of keeping myself up-to-date, I do plenty of reading – and this includes a lot of anecdotal experiences. The feeling out there right now appears to be one of near panic, and a hideous insecurity over what plans are being drawn up to dump the chronically sick and disabled on the scrapheap of dependence upon others, in the name, ostensibly, of prudent public spending.

One of the major worries is the forthcoming replacement of Disability Living Allowance by the new “Personal Independence Payment” (PIP). It’s a snazzy new name for a misleading product, conjuring up, as it does, an image of a newly-liberated individual, spreading metaphorical wings and savouring the new-found freedom liberally bestowed by a benevolent government. Sadly, the reality is likely to be somewhat different, as Linda Cox explains in an article – quoted in full below – which was originally posted on the Facebook page “The People Vs The Government, DWP and Atos“. Linda is a carer, and she sets out in graphic terms some likely consequences of these benefit changes, which will be taking effect in a phased introduction from April of this year:

The musings of a pissed off madwoman/wife-of-a-wheelchair-user

Say someone applying for PIP has a made to measure, lightweight wheelchair, which they paid for out of their DLA, so they can self propel, as opposed to the wheelchair clinic issue, which is a really heavy, cumbersome, monstrosity of a wheelchair, which has to be pushed by a carer.

If you can propel your lightweight wheelchair 20 metres, you fail to qualify for PIP.

So, you will need to use this chair as your only transport, as you have no benefit for a travel budget. Your chair gets used over all kinds of terrain (gravel and cobbles are the most fun), for miles as in losing your PIP, you can’t pay for your car and it is taken away. Wait… you can’t self propel as far as the local shop (and it’s uphill), let alone for over a mile into town. But as long as you can propel for 20 metres (the length of two buses)… the world is your oyster… apparently.

How do you pay for the maintenance of said wheelchair? £200 for a replacement seat, £100 for a new set of front wheels, £40 for new tyres…. all needing more frequent replacement, because of the extra usage. Where does this money come from?

I guess you could always use the hospital issue chair.. then you would need a carer to push all the time, but wait… your carer has lost their allowance, because you lost your PIP… in fact, your carer is on workfare now…. or if lucky enough, in full time employment.

Damn… this is getting complicated.

So, a wheelchair accessible cab is rare and has to be booked well in advance in order to get one…after all… there are so many wheelchair users no longer qualifying for PIP, so lots of competition for cabs now. A return trip for town is £15, that’s a lot of money to find out of well… nothing.

Let’s grab a bus… yes; buses have ramps and wheelchair spaces now! Great. Except the wheelchair spaces are all full of pushchairs. Damn… wait for the next bus. Oh dear, the next bus isn’t accessible. No point in going home in between because just getting to the bus stop has knackered you out… it’s further than 20m away and you had to keep stopping and resting on the way.

It’s pouring down with rain… not unusual in the UK… you can’t self propel in heavy rain as your tyres get slippery. Damn. Stranded. Just sit here and get soaked then and hope it stops… which it doesn’t sometimes.

Sod it. Just stay in. Who needs to see a doctor or a dentist or go to a hospital appointment… or shop for food (you can’t carry much in a wheelchair anyway – it makes it too heavy to self propel on the back and it slides off your lap…. especially on cobbles… I mentioned cobbles already, didn’t I?)

Can anyone explain to me, how when you have kept your independence, because you had DLA, the assessment for Personal Independence Payments penalises that very independence and you end up penniless and housebound?

Don’t tell me this is unintentional.

Thank you for reading.
~ Linda ~

That accusation of a new benefit, actually containing the word “Independence” in its title, yet having such a devastating effect on the hard-won independence of disabled people, who have hitherto managed alright for themselves due to their current DLA entitlement – that is deeply ironic. It’s also scandalously wrong, and potentially tragic – but sadly it remains a fact that people will believe what they are told, if they are told it often enough, no matter how outrageous the deception – as I’ve mentioned before, it’s The Big Lie in action.

These changes will happen; the determination of Cameron’s Coalition to follow their chosen course has seen to that. But this doesn’t absolve us as citizens from our responsibility for those unfortunates who will be most severely affected.

Should the disabled pay the highest price? I really don’t think so.

Surely, it’s time to stand up and be counted.

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The Big Lie – David Cameron’s Divide And Rule Strategy

Posted on 08/02/2013 | 7 comments

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The concept of The Big Lie as a propaganda technique has a long and well-documented, though tragically chequered history.  It was a charge leveled at Jews by Adolf Hitler, with chilling irony as it turned out, accusing them en masse of laying the blame for Germany’s defeat in World War I at the feet of German General Erich Ludendorff.

Hitler’s definition of the Big Lie in his infamous “Mein Kampf” referred to a lie which is “so colossal that no-one would believe anyone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”, and which would therefore, paradoxically, be accepted as true.  “Mein Kampf” was published in 1925, but history tells us that both Hitler and his loathsome creature of propaganda, Josef Goebbels, would use the Big Lie technique in an attempt to justify the persecution and mass murder of six million Jews, many of them German citizens, during World War II.  Historian Jeffrey Herf maintains that the Big Lie was employed by the Nazis to transform a long-standing antisemitism into a culture of acceptance for a programme of genocide, at least among the thousands of people required to collaborate or actually undertake the mass-slaughter of so many fellow human beings.

The Nazis’ euphemistic reference to a “Final Solution” was intended to mask a foul crime, perpetrated on a vast pan-continental scale, and justified by the Big Lie.  It is the most extreme example conceivable of what can happen when such an effective propaganda tool is deployed and redeployed, over and over, a drip-feed of hate-fueled misinformation which sinks deeply into the public consciousness and breeds uncritical acceptance of dogmas that might otherwise be hotly disputed.  But the identical technique continues in use today, and while the end result is not comparable to the fate of the Holocaust victims, the thinking behind modern propaganda, with its intent of marginalising an entire section of society, is directly analogous.

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Enter the Big Liar

The current Government’s presentation of its policies to tackle a massive public debt is an object lesson in the effective use of the Big Lie.  Pathologically opposed to any measures which might unduly affect the “wealth-creating potential” of the better-off, they are nevertheless determined to make massive reductions in public expenditure, and have targeted the Welfare Budget as a potential source of great savings.  The impact on household budgets, of which every penny is already earmarked, is readily foreseeable.  Once you cut to the bone, any further cuts are likely to lead to collapse, and fears are being expressed by voluntary organisations like the Citizens Advice Bureau that the consequences for the poorest will be grave.  It’s also realistic to fear that the creation of a sub-culture, helpless to resist the diminution of its resources and likely to be forced into dependence on food banks, is inimical to prospects for national recovery.  Looked at in that light, how can such policies be presented as The Answer To All Our Problems?

Enter the Big Liar, stage right.  Since the formation of Cameron’s Coalition ConDem government, it’s been noticeable how much we’ve heard, via every mouthpiece and interface of the media, about Benefit Cheats.  Benefit Fraudsters.  Welfare Scroungers.  Shirkers, Not Workers.  Now, any government worth its rhetorical mettle is good for the odd sound-bite, but Mr. Cameron’s administration are as hot as any in peddling its preferred take on the “issues that face us all”.  And after all, who could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously?  So it must be true, then.  Meanwhile, those responsible for the banking crisis, the Libor scandal, and other examples of fat cats acting criminally – or merely irresponsibly – in their frantic scramble to get even fatter, must be very grateful for where the spotlight is currently shining.

You have to listen very patiently to the more serious news outlets to hear about the depredations visited upon us by the rich and greedy. But it’s open season on those hampered by disability, poor employment prospects, sickness, infirmity and grinding poverty.  Soft targets all, and there are plenty of establishment-friendly tabloids happy to feed us a daily diet of how tax money is wasted on affording such ne’er-do-wells a life of luxury, and the privilege of snoring behind drawn blinds whilst the industrious head off to work.

So how do these stories stand up to closer examination?   Well, hardly at all, in truth.  The “shirkers, not workers” myth is easily exploded – merely by looking at the proportion of the welfare budget spent on in-work benefits.  These are benefits paid to those who have a job, but one where the wage is so pitifully low that it’s impossible for the family to subsist without an income supplement.  Hardly shirkers, these people – exploited?  Yes.  Scroungers?  It’s the Big Lie in action.

What about Benefit Fraud, then?  Again, you’d be surprised to read the figures, given the loud and plaintive trumpeting of this “scandal” by the likes of the “Daily Mail”.  It appears the Great British Public believe that 27% of the Welfare Budget is claimed fraudulently.  The official UK Government figure?  0.7%.  2-0 to the Big Lie.

The latest manifestation of the way in which a section of society is marginalised now rears its ugly head.  Thousands of people currently entitled to Disability benefits due to their care or mobility needs are going to be re-assessed under notably harsher entitlement tests, over the next few years.  No improvement in their condition, no lessening of their needs will be required for their benefits to be stopped.  The goal-posts are being moved, and a lot of helpless people, who previously managed to conduct their own lives assisted by the benefit payable for their condition, will be shown the red card and banished to the hinterland of dependence upon others.   Extreme examples of families on £20,000 a year in benefits are quoted to justify swingeing cuts.  Believe me, you just don’t want to know how disabled you’d have to be to qualify for anything like that level of help.  The Big Lie rides again.

This administration is unfocused and incompetent, thrashing about horribly in its desperation to somehow prove itself worthy of re-election.  A shoddy, unattractive and vindictive lot. riven by internal strife and barely suppressed internecine warfare, far more concerned by partisan interests than fair government for all.  But, hey – credit where it’s due:  there’s not a whole hell of a lot that Josef Goebbels or Adolf himself could teach them about propaganda, oppression of the vulnerable and the Big Lie.

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The Big Lie – David Cameron’s Divide And Rule Strategy

Posted on 08/02/2013 | 1 comment

Image

The concept of The Big Lie as a propaganda technique has a long and well-documented, though tragically chequered history. It was a charge leveled at Jews by Adolf Hitler, with chilling irony as it turned out, accusing them en masse of laying the blame for Germany’s defeat in World War I at the feet of German General Erich Ludendorff.

Hitler’s definition of the Big Lie in his infamous “Mein Kampf” referred to a lie which is “so colossal that no-one would believe anyone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”, and which would therefore, paradoxically, be accepted as true. “Mein Kampf” was published in 1925, but history tells us that both Hitler and his loathsome creature of propaganda, Josef Goebbels, would use the Big Lie technique in an attempt to justify the persecution and mass murder of six million Jews, many of them German citizens, during World War II. Historian Jeffrey Herf maintains that the Big Lie was employed by the Nazis to transform a long-standing antisemitism into a culture of acceptance for a programme of genocide, at least among the thousands of people required to collaborate or actually undertake the mass-slaughter of so many fellow human beings.

The Nazis’ euphemistic reference to a “Final Solution” was intended to mask a foul crime, perpetrated on a vast pan-continental scale, and justified by the Big Lie. It is the most extreme example conceivable of what can happen when such an effective propaganda tool is deployed and redeployed, over and over, a drip-feed of hate-fueled misinformation which sinks deeply into the public consciousness and breeds uncritical acceptance of dogmas that might otherwise be hotly disputed. But the identical technique continues in use today, and while the end result is not comparable to the fate of the Holocaust victims, the thinking behind modern propaganda, with its intent of marginalising an entire section of society, is directly analogous.

Image

Enter the Big Liar

The current Government’s presentation of its policies to tackle a massive public debt is an object lesson in the effective use of the Big Lie. Pathologically opposed to any measures which might unduly affect the “wealth-creating potential” of the better-off, they are nevertheless determined to make massive reductions in public expenditure, and have targeted the Welfare Budget as a potential source of great savings. The impact on household budgets, of which every penny is already earmarked, is readily foreseeable. Once you cut to the bone, any further cuts are likely to lead to collapse, and fears are being expressed by voluntary organisations like the Citizens Advice Bureau that the consequences for the poorest will be grave. It’s also realistic to fear that the creation of a sub-culture, helpless to resist the diminution of its resources and likely to be forced into dependence on food banks, is inimical to prospects for national recovery. Looked at in that light, how can such policies be presented as The Answer To All Our Problems?

Enter the Big Liar, stage right. Since the formation of Cameron’s Coalition ConDem government, it’s been noticeable how much we’ve heard, via every mouthpiece and interface of the media, about Benefit Cheats. Benefit Fraudsters. Welfare Scroungers. Shirkers, Not Workers. Now, any government worth its rhetorical mettle is good for the odd sound-bite, but Mr. Cameron’s administration are as hot as any in peddling its preferred take on the “issues that face us all”. And after all, who could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously? So it must be true, then. Meanwhile, those responsible for the banking crisis, the Libor scandal, and other examples of fat cats acting criminally – or merely irresponsibly – in their frantic scramble to get even fatter, must be very grateful for where the spotlight is currently shining.

You have to listen very patiently to the more serious news outlets to hear about the depredations visited upon us by the rich and greedy. But it’s open season on those hampered by disability, poor employment prospects, sickness, infirmity and grinding poverty. Soft targets all, and there are plenty of establishment-friendly tabloids happy to feed us a daily diet of how tax money is wasted on affording such ne’er-do-wells a life of luxury, and the privilege of snoring behind drawn blinds whilst the industrious head off to work.

So how do these stories stand up to closer examination? Well, hardly at all, in truth. The “shirkers, not workers” myth is easily exploded – merely by looking at the proportion of the welfare budget spent on in-work benefits. These are benefits paid to those who have a job, but one where the wage is so pitifully low that it’s impossible for the family to subsist without an income supplement. Hardly shirkers, these people – exploited? Yes. Scroungers? It’s the Big Lie in action.

What about Benefit Fraud, then? Again, you’d be surprised to read the figures, given the loud and plaintive trumpeting of this “scandal” by the likes of the “Daily Mail”. It appears the Great British Public believe that 27% of the Welfare Budget is claimed fraudulently. The official UK Government figure? 0.7%. 2-0 to the Big Lie.

The latest manifestation of the way in which a section of society is marginalised now rears its ugly head. Thousands of people currently entitled to Disability benefits due to their care or mobility needs are going to be re-assessed under notably harsher entitlement tests, over the next few years. No improvement in their condition, no lessening of their needs will be required for their benefits to be stopped. The goal-posts are being moved, and a lot of helpless people, who previously managed to conduct their own lives assisted by the benefit payable for their condition, will be shown the red card and banished to the hinterland of dependence upon others. Extreme examples of families on £20,000 a year in benefits are quoted to justify swingeing cuts. Believe me, you just don’t want to know how disabled you’d have to be to qualify for anything like that level of help. The Big Lie rides again.

This administration is unfocused and incompetent, thrashing about horribly in its desperation to somehow prove itself worthy of re-election. A shoddy, unattractive and vindictive lot. riven by internal strife and barely suppressed internecine warfare, far more concerned by partisan interests than fair government for all. But, hey – credit where it’s due: there’s not a whole hell of a lot that Josef Goebbels or Adolf himself could teach them about propaganda, oppression of the vulnerable and the Big Lie.

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Unity, Not Division – The Lessons Of The London Olympics.

Posted on 02/01/2013 | 1 comment

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times…“

Charles Dickens’ summing up of one particular period in history could serve very well as an epitaph for many years in this century, or any other – but few more so, surely, than 2012 – a time of unity, yet a time of division.

This was a year of high peaks and deep troughs. From a United Kingdom perspective, we can look back with pride on a triumphant staging of the Olympic Games and the Paralympics in London last summer. Rarely can a sporting spectacle have so united people; many who would normally fail to show a flicker of interest in sport were swept along on the wave of enthusiasm generated by the performances and achievements of our gallant competitors.

Sport in a wider sense came to the fore as a catalyst for optimism and togetherness. Andy Murray had his best Wimbledon ever, won over cynical hearts with his tears after narrowly losing in the Final, and then swept to Olympic gold and – at last – won a Grand Slam event, the U.S. Open. The Ryder Cup golf team, having dug themselves into a frightful hole, emerged gloriously as winners in the end, a comeback as miraculous as any other in that competition’s history. Even the Test Cricket team, having started the year poorly, ended it victoriously, winning in India for the first time since 1984.

As we are always being told, though, sport isn’t everything. In a wider sense, the news has not been so good. Austerity continues to cast a shadow over all of us – though that shadow appears to be significantly longer for some than for others. The mantra chanted by our rulers is “we’re all in it together”. But the question of just what we’re in, and to what depth, is left open.

What seems undeniable is that there are unsettling signs of division being created in society as a matter of policy. Divide and rule, as the old saw has it. The arithmetic of recovery seems to dictate that the way forward is belt-tightening all round. But some sections of the population are in danger of ending up so emaciated, that however much tighter they might fasten their belts, they’re still liable to be caught with their pants down when the bills fall due.

People claiming benefits – even the majority who claim in-work benefits – are being cast as the villains of the piece when culprits are sought for the mess we’re in. The marginal effect of cuts to income at this end of the scale is far greater than could be perceived by – to pluck an example out of thin air – a City banker. But such cuts are proving to be a popular measure, and this is due largely to the rhetoric directed against those whose circumstances force their reliance on state benefits. And let’s not forget that many of these citizens are just as industrious as anybody else, but are forced by low pay to seek financial assistance from the benefits system. Then of course there are the genuinely disabled. Who’s the real villain here?

Benjamin Franklin, prior to signing the U.S. Declaration of Independence, memorably stated “Gentlemen, we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately”. The message that no group of people can succeed and prosper who are divided against themselves, applies equally to society at large. We must beware the toxicity of creating schisms among our populace, however pragmatic an approach this might appear in Whitehall or Fleet Street when harsh measures need to be justified.

The feel-good factor of 2012 was all about unity and pride in the nation and its achievements; anybody who witnessed the Olympics, or Wimbledon, or indeed the traditional Last Night of the Proms could bear witness to that. The contrast with this current process of division is stark, and telling. Any policy that promotes whispering campaigns, suspicion and dislike of any group of people, merely to popularise draconian financial sanctions, is negative and unjust in the extreme. We must surely look to the good of last year, to unity and positivity, as embodied when the nation as a whole got behind our athletes and parathletes. This is the ethos that should drive any programme of recovery, not a selective demonising of a whole, hapless section of society.

If we really are all in it together, then we have to stick together, and succeed together. Surely that is the best lesson 2012 has for this New Year.

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