Cuts

This won't be a forensic assessment of the numbers because, although I do dazzle myself a bit, its dry and heavy-handed. Ultimately, we need to discuss the impact of the cuts in terms of people, which goes to my first point.

1. Do not make the mistake of assuming that everyone is exactly like you. If someone hasn't worked for twenty years, and you have been fortunate to have remained or thrived in the job sector, and your judgement is based entirely on your subjective experiences, both good and bad then the mistake is yours and you are paddling in the shallow waters of stereotypes.

You project your own experiences onto others and assume that were you in that particular circumstance, that you would behave differently from everyone else in that environment, when your experiences were shaped in a different environment and therefore would not accurately reflect a life lived in said environs. You make the best choices that you have available to you, in any given situation.

2. Now, as you are sat there reading this, let me point out that most of the deficit came from bailing out the banks, bailing them out of a situation that they created in order to make massive profits without any regard for the consequences, and yet it is ordinary people that will suffer for it - policemen and nurses, soldiers and council workers. The financial industry threaten to move business elsewhere if punitive measures are enacted, well call them on it.

3. Disability is something that can happen to anyone of us -either an inherited progressive condition or by an accident. Removing DLA, which is actually paid to people who work as well as who cannot, and goes some way to helping with costs attendant to their disability actually makes it harder for some people to continue working. In addition these cuts ignore the stigma that exists against the disabled.

4. Work should pay more than benefits, but the trick here is that rather than attempt to regulate or insist on a living wage, they are cutting benefits. One side of the equation serves the interest of ordinary people, the other allows the private sector to do what they want. We demonise those who are seen to sacrifice their earning potential to be of service, that somehow they are giving something up when the truth is, is that maybe they are trading temporal gain for something more substantial. When you look at the people who appear in the business pages, the parodies of achievement that populate The Apprentice, and then you look at a nurse or a fireman, who do you think is happier?

5. Do not just take on one opinion, the perseverance of belief can be strengthened in the face of contrary evidence but never take one opinion, even as it might hurt to do so. I have, and still I remain unconvinced that this has done anything than hurt those who have the least and allow those who have the most to keep on living as though nothing has happened - although they will have to fake some sense of propriety.

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Countering-the-cuts-myths

I come from a place of compassion, there are alternatives and I wish that there had fairer, more progressive procedures to reshape the economy into something ethical and sustainable. We live in a world that allows the bankers to pay themselves billions in bonuses whilst millions of people live on less than a pound a day and that to me, is nothing less than a tragedy. There are enough resources for all of us to live comfortably, despite what we have been led to believe - I am more sad than angry, but still angry enough to care.

Single parents, the disabled, the poor, the public servants and the young - these are who will bear the burden financially but socially the cost to us all will be immeasurable. Poverty is corrosive in ways that do not show up on a balance sheet, mental illness caused by stress and deprivation, crime and drug abuse(which I characterise as entirely different from drug use) these are the children of the cuts to come, and we all lose out in real terms when we forget the simple truth of our humanity - that we are all connected on some level and that we all share the same planet. That our perceptions differ is recognised, in that there are those who refuse to recognise this common connection and some of those people are in government, cheering at the potential loss of half a million public service workers - denying that those people are much like them, in their ambitions and dreams.

I could respect conservative ideas more if they were genuinely about offering the least some form of opportunity, but the free market fundamentalism has allowed them to reap the fruits of madness and claim them as something holy.