Forgive me if I am wrong. But I was under the impression that the run up to an election was the time for politicians to come up with the giveaways and promises that were designed to buy votes. Not turn potential voters away.
Yes, its cynical I know. But very few of us could honestly say that we expect anything from politicians of any of the political parties we know today.
Deep down, we all know, that the messages, soundbites and slogans are typically aimed at the many of us who aren’t really asking questions, in the hope that we will mindlessly walk to the Polling Station at some point in the coming months and hand our vote to politicians who really shouldn’t be anywhere near public responsibility of any kind.
However, without real alternatives, that’s exactly what the next General Election Day promises to be. The chance for us either to refuse to vote, because there’s no real public representation to vote for, or to vote for the Political Party that we currently believe is most likely to do us the least harm.
Yet Friday showed us all something different.
What we heard from the Prime Minister went way beyond the desperate words of someone leading a party that has been trusted with the responsibility of government for too long. Forlornly doing the best they can to limit the scope of the coming electoral disaster.
Rishi Sunak’s speech on Friday heralded a level of ignorance, cold-heartedness and outright hatred of others, who our politicians identify as not being the same as themselves, now being manifested in a way that we might not have seen in the UK since the Victorian era or perhaps even before.
Don’t be mistaken. The so-called attack on sick culture, those who supposedly live on benefits as a lifestyle choice and people with disabilities, whether they be physical or of the mental health kind, may indeed be a popular policy amongst those who are still earning enough to cover the unstoppable inflation of prices for every basic essential that every human being needs, to remain human.
But the number of those who have more than enough is dwindling all the time. And if they are not already, many who are already working full time jobs will soon be asking themselves how long it will be until they have to reach out to ask for benefits, charity from somewhere like a food bank, or most likely use a credit card or some other financial device like a loan and go into debt, just to pay the bills, have food on the table or sit on a winter evening with light and enough heat.
Creating the idea that nobody should take more than 12 months to get a job really would be quite an insulting suggestion – even if it were meant to be a joke.
But to suggest that the way to tackle the mental health issues that those claiming unemployment related benefits suffer is to push them into work, tells us all too clearly, either a) how ridiculously out of touch or b) how inhuman or actually evil, the people running the UK today really are.
Being in Poverty today
As someone who grew up in poverty, I experienced all the stereotypical issues that the majority of today’s politician’s actions would suggest qualifies someone like me for life’s dustbin.
Last Autumn I found myself at the end of a long journey, studying a postgraduate course in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security and visiting a local Food Bank to undertake research and relate my own experiences from childhood in the 70’s and 80’s to what those with a comparable life experience have to deal with today.
What I found was extremely sobering, when put in the context of how poverty is considered by decision makers and those who formulate public policy.
Whilst a technical awareness and therefore systematic approach to provision for the poor has existed in some way for much longer than many realise, the dynamics of poverty are continually changing. Yet ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’.
The only way that any of us and especially those who should be making provision to help those in need could do so in a way that goes beyond basic giveaways or cash handouts – as is how the benefits system really operates right now, would be to gain a direct understanding of what it is really like to be at the mercy of the welfare and benefits system today. And for as long as the problem exists, to regularly revisit and keep tangibly in touch.
Everything that government and the public sector provides through welfare and the benefits system today is focused upon dealing with the effects of the problem. Rather than doing even the slightest thing to address the causes of the actual problem itself.
Taking benefits away without addressing this will not encourage anyone to help themselves. It will just remove some of the help that is already nowhere near enough and condemn countless more to worse than anything anyone in living memory has seen before.
Being out of touch is no excuse for any politician. Least of all a British Prime Minister
The underlying message that anyone paying close attention would have understood from Sunak’s speech on Friday was This is the fault of the people who are in this situation.
They are the guilty bastards here and helping them beyond what we can get away with means we are throwing money away that we could spend on something that will help us get elected again.
That a Prime Minister of the UK could be a former banker and billionaire who has never wanted for anything and has absolutely no idea of the hell that people on the breadline experience every day, whilst politicians and the media gaslight us with messages like ‘INFLATION IS GOING DOWN’ is bad enough.
But to stand there and tell the Country that there is no excuse for not working when people cannot support themselves when they do, is frankly beyond absurd.
The problem that politicians helped create and won’t tackle. But are happy to blame on anyone else
It should be obvious to the political classes that anyone who can work and earn a wage that covers their costs without them needing to claim benefits, call upon charity or go into debt is usually happy and unlikely to cause any form of social problem for anyone else.
It should be just as obvious that when a benefits system that does everything that it can to devalue those seeking support, to the degree that claiming benefits is a cause of mental health issues for many in itself, that switching from being fully dependent upon benefits and other help, to then being dependent upon benefits, other help AND working perhaps full time, doesn’t offer a genuine incentive for anyone who is already feeling like the world is against them.
Working full time in any job that doesn’t pay the employee enough to survive independently and without support may be considered legal by today’s politicians and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
But it is also morally and ethically wrong.
The reality that even those surviving on todays minimum or living wage of £11.44 per hour face, is that in exchange for a 40-hour week, this is still too little to live independently on
Those working on today’s minimum wage are experiencing slavery in a morally corrupt and sanitised form.
We need leaders. Not morally bankrupt politicians who see the workings of the world in purely financial terms
The majority of those on benefits today and the increasing number who are set to join them, as technology like AI takes over jobs, are all victims of the current system of governance and leadership which is wholly money-centric and facilitates a public sector that is financially and materially self-obsessed.
People and the humanity that governs real life no longer matter.
Because money has become god and an increasingly dehumanised set of values has been inserted and taken its place across our culture and within daily life.
If we remain on the pathway and the trajectory that politicians have set us upon, the levels of poverty that we are experiencing today are set to get exponentially worse.
It doesn’t need to be this way. It never should have been
Every function of business, or government and any not-for-profit organisation has benefit or service to people or human beings at its core.
The function of every action taken in the world should therefore always be with people and the benefit to humanity in mind. Rather than being the upside-down system that it has become, where everything every decision or action is based purely and unequivocally on what profit can be made or carrying out any necessary task for the absolute minimum that those in charge believe they can afford.
This is why prices, and the cost of living, are out of control. Everything else we are told is just another excuse.
The reason that politicians will not even acknowledge this, is because the blow-back or retribution that would come from the businesses and the elites that fund them, that they look up to and whom they wish to emulate or be, would be ruthlessly destructive.
Fulfilling the role that we are correct to expect of our politicians could easily lead them to being the future benefits claimant they are so happy to make it so difficult to be today.
That’s why no matter what they say, nothing they do will ever lead to meaningful change.
The Basic Living Standard
People on low wages and benefits cannot afford to survive or function independently and without help today.
Because making a profit for those who control and influence the system has become far more important than ensuring that life for everyone within the system is something that each and every one of us can afford.
Nobody has the right to make a profit.
Yet that is exactly the message that we can all see and hear just as soon as we begin to understand how business, money and government really work.
Facts are facts. And if we were to change, transform, reform, renew or reset the whole system, so that we put the ability of the lowest paid to support themselves independently at the heart of everything and what everyone does, rather than funneling everything towards wealth accumulation in a system that only ever works out well for the few, the problems that society faces – that the rich caused and now want to punish us all for – would quickly disappear. Along with the majority of the other issues that are causing such deep division and unrest within these very turbulent times.
Making it a legal requirement that everyone working a full working week must be paid enough to cover the costs of all essentials and basics, without the need for benefits, charity or going into debt does of course sound impossible at first glance.
But that is because the system has now reached the point where it is so skewed, the messages in every direction are screaming at us that real life is no longer something that everyone can afford and that by creating a situation where others gain, you will inadvertently create circumstances where you will be losing yourself.
However, for some to be rich doesn’t mean that others must be poor, and we now need leadership that is prepared to put the needs of humanity first. Rather than continuing to suck up to and pay homage to those who are obsessed only with the bottom line.
None of the politicians we have to choose from today are even in the room with the changes that now need to be made.
It is unlikely that they even understand the realities of what needs to be done.
It is highly regrettable that we have reached a point in human history where it has become culturally acceptable, and it is therefore considered ‘normal’, for others to be poor and that we overlook or just accept this as long as we continue to be doing alright for ourselves.
That’s how our leaders view everything today and how every one of us who isn’t being touched by the realities of the cost-of-living crisis and the explosive inflation that the elites have created but tell us in the same breath doesn’t exist, still believe.
Would it be better for us all to care about each other and enjoy the benefits of what it is to be truly human? Or spend every minute that remains of our lives building layer after layer of protection around ourselves and the fake money that only we believe in, so that everyone else exists in misery and pays a very real, but nonetheless incalculable cost for our greed?
“The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
Adam Tugwell 