Ever since the Tories came to power in May 2010, aided by the Liberal Democrats, who, sadly, demonstrated that everything they professed to believe in could be discarded if it meant being in government, the very fabric of civil society in the UK has been faced with extinction. This is a country that has developed a welfare safety net to protect the most vulnerable members of society and those who have fallen on hard times, and one that has guaranteed healthcare for its entire population, through the NHS, paid for through general taxation, but the Tories are determined to destroy it, and far too many people have been fooled by their poisonous persecution of the poor and disabled, and their ideologically motivated “age of austerity,” which continues to ruin any chance of economic recovery, while plunging millions of people further into serious poverty.

On Monday, April 1, multiple welfare cuts hit hundreds of thousands of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, and although two newspapers led with the news on their front pages — the Guardian (“The day Britain changed”) and the Daily Mirror (“D-Day for Savage Con-Dem Cuts”) — there is no sign that the British people, in general, have woken up to the full ramifications of what is being done in their name.

From the beginning of the Tories’ attack on the state, the government and large parts of the media have successfully lied about the unemployed and the disabled being scroungers and shirkers, creating a climate of mean-spiritedness and hatred amongst my fellow citizens that I have found to be both shocking and disgraceful, because the blunt truth, which anyone could find out if they could be bothered, is that there are around 2,500,000 people unemployed but only 500,000 job vacancies. Read the rest of this entry »

Hurrah for Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat MP for Brent Central, and the minister for children and families in the Tory-led coalition government until September, when she was sacked.

I was sorry to see Sarah under the yoke of this hideous government, because she clearly had more humanity than all the other ministers, and, although she undoubtedly was trying to do her best for those in need, it was also clear to me that she would be unable to do anything much that was worthwhile in a government so dedicated to making the poorest people in society suffer as much as possible. I knew of her humanity, and of her dedication as a constituency MP, because she had very actively campaigned for one of her constituents, Jamil El-Banna, a prisoner in Guantánamo who was released five years ago, and I had met her during that time.

On Sunday, Sarah Teather broke her silence in fine style, telling the Observer, in no uncertain terms, that the government’s welfare reforms are unacceptable, and that, in particular, the one-size-fits-all benefit cap, being introduced in April, is cruel and immoral. Read the rest of this entry »