Lib Dem MPs have just voted to:
Deny benefit to those born too disabled to ever
contribute N.I.
Set a 12 month time-limit on Employment and Support
Allowance to those too sick to return to work, including cancer patients.
We know that many severely disabled people are being wrongly
categorised for the ‘Work Related Activity Group’ so that this time-limit will
apply for any with a working partner – effectively penalising anyone caring for
a disabled partner and putting the whole financial burden for their care on the
family – making it more likely that severely disabled people will be consigned
to institutional care. We already have examples of disabled people committing
suicide because of their guilt at the burden they place on their family. This
comes on top of the privatisation of social care – which leaves care costs at around
£16 per hour, further penalising the most disabled.
To replace Disability Living Allowance with Personal
Independence Payments – bringing in much more restricted eligibility criteria
which will leave many working disabled currently receiving DLA no longer able
to afford transport or other equipment that enables them to work, and leaving
many more unable to work destitute – with little hope of appeal given the
arbitrary nature of the assessment guidelines.
They have voted to triple tuition fees in spite of an
explicit pre-election ‘pledge’ to scrap them (transferring public debt to
individual students). With living costs this puts the cost of a degree at
around £18k pa + interest.
They are signed up to selling off the NHS to the private
sector, bringing in private health insurance schemes and limiting NHS treatment.
They claim to be mitigating the worst excesses of Tory
policy when, in fact, the opposite is the case as their support is facilitating
the most right-wing agenda in living memory. The professed rationale is classic
‘shock doctrine’ fodder – the size of the deficit dictates such policy – TINA.
But there are many other ways of tackling the crisis: increasing employment
through stimulus; closing down tax loopholes which are siphoning billions out
of the economy. One would have thought that targeting the most vulnerable would
be a last resort, not the first item on the agenda. Growing inequality is the
root cause of the crisis – with debt used to paper over the cracks – and yet
the response is to accelerate this process, cutting the income of those at the bottom
of the pile as rewards to those at the top continue to balloon.
They offer no real answer to the growing polarization of
wealth and the corporate takeover of the economy by the financial sector.
And yet, the foot soldiers continue to cling to
the wreckage of the party in some misguided sense of loyalty, renouncing social democracy in the tradition of Hobhouse and the New Liberals
who were responsible for some of the most progressive achievements of the
modern era.
And Chris – seven homes – Huhne still charges the
taxpayer for his hobnobs! http://goo.gl/hSI8Y
Very sad.
