Tories: Cuts Can’t Be Savage, Because No-One’s died in the Street

Chris Skidmore MP: The b*stard responsible for the above quote.

Be warned about this one: it’ll make you really sick and furious. It’s another piece from Private Eye for the 4th to 17th October 2013, this time from the magazine’s ‘HP Sauce’ column. It reports how members of the Tories’ ‘Free Enterprise Group’ dined out at the Conservative conference that year at the largesse of SAB Miller, a beer company eager for avoiding paying tax.

Aren’t they all?

Much more infuriating is the blasé attitude of the Tory diners themselves to the effect of the cuts, and the complete disconnection from the way they were killing people. Here’s the story.

Conference delegates in Manchester frustrated by David Cameron’s coalition compromises could find a more red-blooded Conservatism at the jam-packed fringe meeting of the Tory “Free Enterprise Group”.

MPs Kwasi Kwarteng, Andrew Leadsom, Chris Skidmore and Dominic Raab talked about the really vigorous cuts they want. Skidmore claimed existing cuts weren’t really “savage” because “no one’s lying dead in the street”, while Raab recommended halving the number of government departments ” because existing cuts were only “relatively modest”.

There was some debate about whether proper free marketeers should be tougher on tax-avoiding, monopolist, “too big to fail” corporations that push around governments, but generally MPs and delegates were less keen on this argument. Perhaps this was just as well; the event was sponsored by beer firm SAB Miller, which paid for the room and supplied many bottles of its own Peroni beer to lubricate the free marketeers’ fervour.

PS: SAB Miller is very keen on avoiding tax, with damaging effects – a 2010 report from charity Action Aid accused the brewer of avoiding £20m of tax per year in Africa alone thanks to its offshore subsidiaries.

Skidmore and the rest of the ‘Free Enterprise Group’ clearly don’t know, and worse, don’t want to know, the devastation their nasty views have caused. Stilloaks and numerous other bloggers have put up a list 45 people, who are known to have either starved to death or committed suicide thanks to the government’s benefit cuts.

There has even been an artwork, War Minister, created by an artist to commemorate the victims. This is a portrait of Iain ‘Underpants’ Duncan Smith, composed of photos of the victims. It’s a powerful and moving piece, which Tom Pride has put up on his blog.

Going further, Mike over at Vox Political, Tom Pride and Johnny Void also recorded the deaths of two men after they were sanctioned by Ashton-Under-Lyme jobcentre. One of the men was homeless.

So, Skidmore, people really are lying dead in the street thanks to your policies.

This is the reality of the current Tory government – people who don’t know, and frankly don’t care, how many ordinary people die, so long as enterprise is free and profits are big. For them.

Vote them out at the next election.

Tags: 'Free Enterprise Group', 'War Minister', Andrea Leadsom, Beer, Chris Skidmore, Coalition, Cuts, David Cameron, Homelessness, IDS, Jobcentres, Johnny Void, Kwasi Kwarteng, Manchester, Offshore companies, Peroni, Private Eye, SAB MIller, Sanctions, Stilloaks, Tax Avoidance, Vox Political