Make the Children Suffer

What words should we use to describe the people who perpetrate this outrage? Are they callous, unfeeling, psychopathic, heartless, or just plain stupid? Maybe they just hate people – except themselves, of course, and their rich chums, and the corporations in whose pockets they are nestled down so comfortably.

The moral crime that any decent person must accuse Cameron and his posh boys of committing is that of pushing 200,000 more children into poverty. Their squeeze on tax credits and other social security benefits will push a population the size of Northampton – were everyone living there to be a child – into poverty. This will happen as the result of capping most benefits to 1% over the next three years.

Their reason? Get ready for one of the most stupid bits of ‘reasoning’ you are going to hear for a long time.

They are doing this because it would be unfair for working people to have their incomes rise at a lower annual rate than those of social security claimants.

Be careful you don’t fall into their devious trap. Let’s get clear on what that means.

They think it would be unfair for someone on an average income, say, of £26,500 to have that income rise by only 1.5% and a benefit claimant to have their income rise by a greater percentage of say 2%.

The hard-working striver grosses £509 per week, and a 1.5% increase would give them an extra £7.64. Let’s look at the ‘injustice’ of giving the JSA claimant a 2% increase. Well, with JSA at £71 per week, a 2% increase would be £1.42.

So there you have it. In the Einstein-sharp mind of a Tory posh boy, giving the working person £6.22 more than someone struggling on Jobseeker’s Allowance would be unfair.

This nasty, nasty cap of 1% has the sole purpose of dividing one group of people against another group, of trying to stir up hated in working people, who have the luxury of a job, against the unemployed. No doubt some people have fallen for the trick, and no doubt some people now have more hatred glaring from their hard-working eyes than they had before.

But much worse than that will be the effect that the Tories’ pathetically nasty policy has on children. Children are the innocents in all this. They know nothing of scrounging and striving. All they know is that the deeper their families are pushed into poverty, the worse their suffering.

To push through a policy whose chief effect is to hurt children takes some beating. To say that that is disgusting, immoral or cruel, rather misses the point that in one of the world’s richest economies, the multi-millionaire posh boys of Cameron’s cabinet have deliberately pursued a policy one of whose most tangible evils is the hurting of children.


SOURCES

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/17/benefits-squeeze-200000-children-poverty

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20442666

http://www.citypopulation.de/UK-Cities.html