DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

"First they came for the JSA, but I said nothing, because I did not claim JSA..."

Could it be that most of the animosity felt towards the benefits system stems from the system being too darned complex for ordinary people to understand, such that they blank out and it all becomes "benefit" and therefore something for nothing, and other popular misconceptions?

IDS did Tower Block of Commons (the one where Nadine Dorries got busted for hiding extra money in her bra) but dropped out a day into it when he got news his wife either a) had a dodgy mammogram or b) was diagnosed with some kind of breast cancer.

Obviously the politicians who bray loudest about making work pay etc. are the ones who are inevitably found to be the nation's biggest freeloaders and this fucker is no exception.

didn't IDS claim a £39 breakfast on expenses once?

the petition is useless unless he's made to do it for at LEAST a year (or preferably for an unspecified length of time), otherwise it'd just turn into a PR stunt for him

there wouldn't for him any of the psychological pressure that makes living on that amount of money in the long term the really horrible thing it is - the endlessness of the poverty cycle, the looming threat of one minor incident putting you deep in the shit and such.

otm

any fucker can live on £53 for ONE week knowing that it's gonna come to an end in a few days

The petition is for a year, but it still doesn't take into account his cultural capital, associations, stuff he can get for free by dint of who he his, location and the resources that are in reach because of that, etc etc etc.

Quite.

the thing that makes me despair most isn't even the apparently endless things This Fucking Government dreams up to fuck the most vulnerable people in the country over, it's the unshakeable suspicion that they're going to get away with it because the central arguments have been won among the general public. if most people actually believe the various myths about welfare that have become entrenched in the political discourse then of course what This Fucking Government is doing will seem logical and sensible

I just keep thinking, at some point the reality of this all will bite and "the people" as a mass will reject it, on some level, Murdoch propaganda be damned. But then I think about the Iraq war and how many people marched against it and how it all happened anyway and how a certain bleak fatefulness infects even the discussion on ILX and it does begin to seem a bit pointless. I said to my partner yesterday, the only way any of this could be "worth" the pain its going to cause is if as a result such right-wing bullshit becomes unelectable (even under the guise of a nu-nu-"Labour") for decades.

I don't know. My dad was kept alive for as long as he lived by the NHS, we were fed, housed and clothed as a family by disability benefits, I was educated for free and was even able to gain a grant for my Higher Education. Much of this stuff doesn't exist any more, and the future of the rest of it seems highly questionable. I feel really hugely lucky to have been born when I was, and really acutely sorry for all those now growing up under similar circumstances to mine, who won't have any of the opportunities to escape, opportunities that were real life-lines to me. It's sickening to me, to see it all destroyed, and under the vestiges of making good on the debts incurred by those at the top.

Call me naive but I have detected a slight softening in attitude amongst the public... or am I sad deluded fool?

Softening towards the gov or those being steam-rollered by them?

The flattened victims. There's a reason the Tories are worried about the "nasty party" tag and I think they are worried that these reforms might be seen as too harsh, if not now then once the bodies start piling up.

I do feel like they've somehow skipped ahead to Poll Tax era Thatcher hatred/Back2Basix-era Major incompetence without any post-Falklands afterglow to bask in.

Not that I would recommend the Daily Record for any startling political insights but they had a headline at the weekend, "Worse Than Thatcher". By the way, don't know if people in England are aware that the SNP have switched to a Vote for the Union/ Get the Tories strategy.

General consensus (i.e. overheard on the bus/street etc.) is that Benefit Scroungers are getting what they deserve. Because it's a uniquely British thing to find a convenient scapegoat (unemployed/sick/immigrants) to cover up their own incompetencies, i.e. "I'm lazy and have rubbish ideas and worse opinions, so I'm leaving this country because you can't start a business here anymore with all the skivers and the health and safety and the asylum seekers and the EU and the terrorists and it's everybody else's fault my life is crap, never my fault."

... which was always the only reason to vote for independence anyway as far I can see (xp)

By the way, don't know if people in England are aware that the SNP have switched to a Vote for the Union/ Get the Tories strategy

???

I'm really uncomfortable with such anecdotal evidence to be honest, Marcello, as I find its often skewed by the nihilism of those who collect it.

Yes I'm not convinced that it's that black and white vis a vis the GBP's attitude. Also not uniquely British but recognisably British for sure!

By the way, don't know if people in England are aware that the SNP have switched to a Vote for the Union/ Get the Tories strategy

As in best way to avoid having to endure the Tories is to vote for independence

... in so many words that is

ah i see

What the British public does or doesn't think about welfare cuts (and that will change over the next two years anyway) won't do the Tories any good if they somehow manage the get through the remainder of this Parliament without delivering any growth.

What will do them good is if Labour can't come up with a plausible alternative.

By the way, anecdotal evidence can be very powerful; it's all most people have to go on.

Powerful, yes. Accurate, not so much. Delusions can be powerful, but are ineffective unless shared by many.

I actually think attitudes will change because this is going to be a bloodbath, there's going to be a lot of casualties

depends how the bloodbath is reported tbh

The thing is that many people in Britain - arguably most people in Britain, but somebody else can do the stats - do share this view, just as they shared similar views in the Thatcher eighties. Unless the Left can communicate with them on this very basic, elemental level then they are not going to persuade them to change their minds.

On a separate note: it's all very well George Monbiot saying let's give everyone in Britain a non-means tested basic income but how is it going to be paid for?

But I think this is going to be worse than the Thatcher years, and that the bloodbath is going to be harder to wall yourself away from.

Anecdotal word on the street/bus/pub round my way is nothing like Marcello's.

I doubt there will be a bloodbath. Most people will shrug their shoulders, quietly go "grrr" and go about their way. It is Britain; the absence of a written constitution and a tyranny as such gives its people no overt reason to revolt.

I'm sure the word on the street in Scotland is completely different, just as it was in the eighties.

guessing what people think is probably a waste of time. what do non-nihilists think will be a politically plausible reaction to the impending bloodbath? i.e. what policies are likely to be proposed and enacted by whichever opposition gets elected next go round?

I'll be honest I'm not hearing much "These benefit scroungers don't like it up 'em" where I'm working at present. Not that people know much about the the details of the reforms, though everyone has heard of the Bedroom Tax and everyone refers to it as the Bedroom Tax.

my old man, who's crept steadily rightward in his old age, was talking about despicable this is, and for the last few years he's usually been all about them terrible workshy scroungers

Well, Tories just sent up another shit balloon about possibly freezing or even reducing the minimum wage as a way to kick-start growth. RRRRRRAGE.

On a separate note: it's all very well George Monbiot saying let's give everyone in Britain a non-means tested basic income but how is it going to be paid for?

the land value tax? think these ideas are more palatable than communism but no more plausible.

Jesus, took marcello to inject sense itt. If only labour were in govt to.......make exactly these decisions, what a comfort that would be to the masses, god bless em.

What's going to be most visible is when families from London and other expensive cities start appearing throughout the country, who know's what's going to happen then. Universal Credit is an administrative clusterfuck waiting to happen as well.

What will do them good is if Labour can't come up with a plausible alternative.

I don't disagree, but at the same time things are so finely balanced that we could quite easily end up with another hung parliament next time over. The Tories are unlikely to win enough votes to win the election outright so anything could happen really.

I thought he'd think via the land value tax, but as that's taking toys away from rich people it'll never happen.

Britain's a global (tax) haven, so we'd better get used to being the world's butler.

Trying to gauge the nation is a fools' errand; I can screengrab people I was at school with saying awful things about immigrants and dole-scum and benefits scroungers all day long, and screengrab people I follow and who follow me on twitter being outraged that the Bedroom Tax is inhumane til I'm blue in the face. If I was to make any guess it would be that the nation is pretty split on this, but that most people probably aren't in full possession of the facts, because getting in facts is far harder than getting anecdotes.

Nothing in that Telegraph piece about the minimum wage being cut, as opposed to being capped or frozen.

Facts are complicated, therefore not a good story, and that's all British people want.

I can screengrab people I was at school with saying awful things about immigrants and dole-scum and benefits scroungers all day long, and screengrab people I follow and who follow me on twitter being outraged that the Bedroom Tax is inhumane til I'm blue in the face.

then we can argue whether nothing will change because people are inherently infected with some kind of original sin of apathy, or whether the best we ought to hope for is a slight recorrection in favour of the poorest under the auspices of the politico-economic system that created this situation in the first place, or whether it don't matter because London will be a sizeable lido within the next 100 years anyway

but most of all, let's be realistic, cos nothing succeeds like realism.

I'm afraid I agree with what is said here.

But last is the nagging worry that perhaps such vile conduct persists because it is not simply an NHS problem, as it was never purely a workhouse problem. That it is, instead, a human problem, not wholly eradicable by a restructuring here or a systems tweak there. Awful to contemplate, but perhaps this is what human beings will always do to those who are weak and vulnerable and in their power, unless actively constrained not to.

Perhaps we are all innately good but constrained to do horrible things to one another thru societal pressure and programming. Awful to contemplate, but perhaps my theory is as completably stupid and untestable as Jonathan Freedland's except without the apathetic "huh, human nature eh?" shite at the end.

I haven't seen very much proof to the contrary.

it's not provable is it? unless you can find some test subjects who have grown up without belonging to any kind of society whatsoever.

Calling anthropologists.

so "human nature" becomes a tool of those who want the world to not change, who want everybody to believe it cannot change because original sin is locked into our DNA and we are vicious vengeful apes incapable of cooperation or altruism. except if you look at other species of apes, they appear to be capable of cruelty and cooperation.