https://weegingerdug.wordpress.com/WGD is always eloquent. Even in this howl of anger, he is eloquent. "Tories are fucking bastards" is eloquent, in fact. It is "the best words in the best order", which is one definition of poetry.
If you have ever wondered why it is that violent revolution happens; why there comes a point when ordinary people despair of politics and turn to the bomb, then I think that piece is helpful.
If you have ever wondered why neoliberals corrupt the values of the society they feed on; why anyone ever considers that violence is justified, you need look no further.
Violence in such a society is not "terror": it is self defence.
In saying that I put myself beyond the pale of civilised discourse, naturally. The violence perpetrated by the state against its citizens is not violence at all, of course. That is "reform". It is "encouraging people to do the right thing". It is a "recognition that we are living beyond our means, and we must make tough decisions".
Those are the lies which embody what our masters are pleased to call "British values". This is what they mean
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bruta...raceful-6302099Note that the evil cannot be justified in terms neoliberals can understand. The money to adapt the house has already been spent. The saving is pitiful, in the scheme of things. Indeed there is probably no saving at all: private renting is very expensive in this country. The rent is paid by the state, and goes straight into the pockets of the landlord: who just happens to be someone who can afford to buy a house he does not need to live in and who is a model of enterprise and wealth creation, or so we are invited to believe. The housing benefit bill is enormous, but in all the talk of "cutting public spending" that fact is seldom to the fore. We are not cutting it: we are diverting it, merely. Just like we are diverting spending on health care to the private sector party donors, and their politician beneficiaries. Many of those beneficiaries have direct interests in those private companies: but the concept of "conflict of interest" is beyond them. Apparently it is beyond the electorate as well
DWP has this week withdrawn some propaganda. They had been issuing leaflets which used "case studies" to show that the withdrawal of the most minimal state support for the poor is justified. There were pictures of people who had been "sanctioned" accompanied by heart warming wee stories about how denying them the means to live turned their lives around: and how grateful they were to have been faced with starvation. I am not making this up: we were expected to believe this.
A Freedom of Information request led DWP to admit that there were no such people. None. The pics were stock photos; the stories were fiction from beginning to end. And in response to this DWP withdrew the leaflets. And in their defence they said that the stories were "illustrative" only. Which has now come to mean "outright lies", apparently. I can't keep up with this nuspeak world; as WGD says, they are killing my language: and it is the only one I have.
But the minister responsible for this has made no statement, much less been under pressure to resign. It is our old friend Ian Duncan Smith: a man who is a stranger to the truth in every aspect of his life and work. And by now many shrug and say " well that is what you would expect: if you believed those stories you are hopelessly naive, and so why get into a froth".
Well the erosion of trust in government and the civil service does matter: and the step by step destruction of that trust is not a trivial matter at all. For society is a contract, in one sense, and you cannot break one side of a contract and expect the other party to keep their end of the bargain. They do for a surprisingly long time. But not forever
The contract reads: you, the government, state honestly what you intend to do and do it honestly and in the interests of the whole people: and in return we obey those laws you pass and refrain from hanging you from lamp posts.
When we get to the point of hanging them from lamp posts, the poor suffer more than the rich. So it takes a lot to kill a society. But it can be done. This government and its opposition are going the right way about getting us to that point.
