New Book on Foodbank Britain

Also going round the bookshelves in Waterstone’s on Friday, I found a book with the title, Foodbank Britain, or something similar. It was about foodbanks, and people’s experiences of using and working on them. This is interesting and very much needed. I’ve reblogged pieces before now from the website, Diary of a Foodbank Helper, as has Mike over at Vox Political and a number of other great, leftwing bloggers. ‘Diary of a Foodbank Helper’s’ written by a lady, who, as her blog’s title says, helped out at her local food bank. She describes the people she encounters, who come for its aid, and gives their often heartbreaking stories. These are hardworking people, who’ve been made redundant, or been forced to leave work through invalidity, who’ve found themselves sanctioned by the DWP under any one of the various petty excuses they use to make sure people can’t claim Jobseekers Allowance. Or else they’ve been declared ‘fit to work’ by ATOS/ Maximus, when they clearly are very much unfit for work.

Against this, we have the continued lies of the Tory party, particularly the heads of the DWP Damian Green and Iain Duncan Smith, and poisonous former ministers like Edwina Curry. They repeatedly refuse to release the statistics showing how many people have died after being declared fit for work, and when they’ve been finally forced to release them, have fiddled them to make them misleading. They also repeat the lie ad nauseam that no-one in Britain is really starving, and that people are using food banks voluntarily, because they’re a source of free food. This has shown to be a lie over and over again, but they keep on repeating it. They’re all students of Goebbels, who said that the secret to successful propaganda was repeating the lie again and yet again, until enough people believe it. And aided by an equally lying and mendacious press and a disgracefully biased Beeb, people will.

I didn’t buy it, as I’ve bought several books recently on poverty in Britain. But I thought this one was a useful addition to the armoury of books criticising government policy and the mass poverty its created. Unfortunately, I think we’re going to need many more of them before we can break the lies that supports the mass starvation food banks are intended to alleviate.

Vox Political on the Tories Gradually Stripping the Elderly of their Pensions

Mike over at Vox Political has this article asking the question Cameron promises to protect pensioners’ benefits. Do you believe him? Mike points out that Cameron broke his election pledges not to introduce means testing for certain benefits, and to the NHS. He stated that spending on the Health Service was to be ring-fenced against cuts.

He broke these promises, and is set to break his promise to protect pensions.

The pensionable age is being raised. Firefighters will be sacked, and thus lose their pensions, if they fail the fitness test. Francis Maude wishes pensions to be accessed only through the internet, which will prevent many pensioners from getting theirs. The Tories are also going to end the protection for those on Pension Credit, and Iain Duncan Smith is mooting ending the free TV licences, bus passes and winter fuel allowance as part of his benefit cap. And pensioners will definitely be subject to the bedroom tax.

Mike’s article begins

Why should you believe a word David Cameron says?

He has repeated a pledge not to introduce means testing for benefits such as bus passes, TV licences and the winter fuel allowance, if elected (not re-elected; he didn’t get enough support for that in 2010) in May.

This is the man who “looked down the barrel of a camera” (as he describes it) in 2010, promised to protect the NHS, and to tell any cabinet minister proposing cuts to frontline services that they should go away and think again.

He is denying the state pension to increasing numbers of people with a staged plan to raise the pensionable age. Members of Parliament, meanwhile, will receive transitional protection as the pensionable age rises – meaning they won’t miss out. Members of the public fund 60 per cent of Parliamentarians’ pensions.

The article is at: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/02/23/cameron-promises-to-protect-pensioners-benefits-do-you-believe-him/.

The Republicans in America were moaning under George ‘Dubya’ Bush about how greedy senior citizens were. They would very definitely have liked to cut their pensions, but were well aware that if they did so, they’d lose vital electoral support. And so they complained bitterly about their greed and how selfish they were, when everyone else was having to tighten their belts.

The Tories have copied much of their rhetoric and strategy from the Repugs. There can be little doubt that like the Republicans, they want to get their hands on senior citizens’ pensions and cut them.

Do not trust anything Cameron says, and do not give him your vote.