You know I try. I do. I try to keep a sense of humour about things, especially as us 'bleeding hearts' are often accused of having 'no sense of humour'.
I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. That the Condems aren't just heartless evil bastards who went into to politics to make people's lives worse. Especially those people whose lives are already a tad more challenging that that of an Old Etonian, Oxbridge Binge Drinker par excellence, for example. I try & give them some credit & assume that just because George Osborne looks like the sneering villain from a Victorian melodrama bought through a crack in time & dumped on the front benches with the real world experience of a expensively educated tadpole it doesn't mean that he is actually a total bastard.
Then I read an article like THIS and I am forced to come to the conclusion that they are actually a gang of Satantic time travelling Victorian right-wingers bent on driving us back to 19th century as fast as they possibly can. Probably in a time machine sponsored by Tesco.
Yes, I know that's a rather tediously silly thing to say but what other explaination can fit their behaviour: a rabid commitment to cuts in the face of mounting evidence that all the cuts are doing is making things worse. Even the IMF is standing there now, like a slightly embarrassed colleague watching a drunk falling apart at the office Christmas Party, saying "well when I told him it was a free bar I didn't think he'd get that wasted.". But no it is carry on with Plan A regardless. Hey, George might turn out to be right but it isn't looking good so far is it?
There's been no real attempt to deal with the causes of the financial difficulties. Partly because it might turn out that 'it's the Labour Party's fault' might not stand up to proper, independent analysis and partly because it is hard to be horrible to the people who are funding your party. So let's blame it on profligate public spending shall we. That public spending that George pledged to match until the banking crisis hit. Hey, that's all history now anyway. Let's get on with hammering the real culprits. Those feckless, lazy bastards: the unemployed (hereafter referred to as work shy benefit cheats), the disabled (hereafter the 'not quite as disabled as they look'), the sick (if they can stand up, they can earn their benefits - even the ones that paid taxes for ages as members of the workforce on the assumption that there was a safety net there if something went horribly wrong.)
And that is the worst of it. We're all going to die & for some of us it might be a long, painful process. There might be remissions, recoveries etc. I might want to work to stop myself dwelling on my illness or to prove to people that just because I'm disabled doesn't mean I can't do a job. And that's fine but people who want to work & who can genuinely work should be allowed to & they should be paid a proper wage for doing so. Not hired as free labour for a private company thereby effectively getting the state to subsidise said private company. Something I thought right-wing libertarian types got all hot & bothered about.
So imagine you or one of your loved one gets sick & because you've done a less than fantastically paid job you are forced on to benefits. Then you have to go through a series of tests to prove you are sufficiently disabled/sick enough to deserve said benefit. Having done those tests you're told that your judge fit for work & if you don't take up 30 hrs/week of employment with Tesco, Poundland or whichever vampiric company has decided it wants to benefit from this scheme to save itself a few quid you'll have your benefits cut.
Oh, say the government we wouldn't be as heartless as to stop the benefits of a cancer patient with only eight months to live. And will you put that in writing dear government. Er, no. No. There's no need. It'll never happen. Well forgive me if I fail to trust you then.
And forgive me if I don't think you're a bunch of heartless bastards.
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