The extraordinary gullibility of the extreme-right

Anyone who is familiar with the Britain First Facebook page will know that when they're not busy trying to scam money out of people, they fill their timeline with outrage inducing content designed to stir up hatred against Muslims, the EU, lefties, liberals, refugees ... all the usual scapegoats of the right-wing press.

In March 2016 Britain First really surpassed themselves by posting an obvious spoof article about how the EU is supposedly forcing the Essex villages of High Easter and Good Easter to change their "offensive" names.

The musings of the right-wing permanent outrage brigade

Hundreds of Britain First followers shared the article as if it was a serious story and hundreds more left furiously outraged comments, spewing their reactionary bile and hatred for Muslims, the EU, immigrants, liberal, and lefties.

The fact that the right-wing permanent outrage brigade are so intellectually challenged that they fell for a spoof article is matched by their pitiful attempts at spelling, grammar, punctuation and coherent criticism. Here are a few examples from of the hundreds of outraged comments:

"Wonder who it offends ?? Could it be the work shy moaning mussies ??"

"Who the hell is running this country, bloody muslims, these little .jobworthys ought to be sacked and deported to who they work for anybody bar the english"

"We should complain and get all mosques closed down. They are offensive to look at. I bet the council would not even consider it! Time to start doing 'things' ourselves."

"Muslims get out of our country now, we are so weak to these invading foreigners"

"Things are going to far taking everything that's British away from us next will be the English breakfast"

"These f*cking PC nutter's want naming and shaming for trying to erase culture and heritage of High Easter and Good Easter. To think the people who live there are paying for these idiot's golden plated pension's through their council tax."

"Offensive to who..??certainly not the English the rightful indiginous population...whose customs rights and religion are engrained.in our souls our characters..our religion Christianity is what out countrys laws and Western way of life is based on..Any other religions or ideologies in our country.is and allways has been forign to our native country and any acceptence of their requests and implimenting them is totally illegal to artical 61 in The Magna Carta."

"These liberal fools. ... Unreal."

"well islam offends me. lets outlaw that."

"I bet no one has complained, its the spineless lefty toads complaining on behalf of people who dont have a problem, that would be my guess" 

"Bloody redicklos" 

"It may upset certain types but there not to quick to not take benefits or houses" 

" ... stop this cultural genocide"

"And I say to Connor wibbly we are a christian country and we have christian values. It's not forced down our necks we enjoy it. Are you going to demonstrate to have mosques removed ?"

There are some real gems of foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing idiocy in this tiny selection of the hundreds of outraged comments, but the last one is a real peach. The name-drop shows that the guy who posted it has actually read the article where the only quoted sources were Dr Malcolm Touchi (supposedly "an expert in Domicile Perception Law from the University of South Thurrock"!) and Connor Wibbly (who was quoted as saying "there will naturally be plenty of critics, but I have one question to ask them: How many towns in the UK have the word ‘Hannukah’ or ‘Ramadan’ in them? Hardly any is the answer!") and concluded that it wasn't a spoof article.

If the ridiculous names, occupations and quotes weren't enough, the amusing conclusion that the town of Christchurch would be facing double the "compensation payouts" for containing two Christian words was surely such an obvious clue that the article might not be entirely serious that only the deeply credulous (or those who didn't even bother to read the article before writing outraged comments about it) could ever fall for it.

Britain First weren't the only ones to fall for it

It's probably no surprise to find out that a UKIP page also posted this spoof article as if it was a serious news item, and that it provoked a slew of outraged comments from 'kippers too. The UKIP Warrington page that posted it is an extraordinary page that spews a cognitive dissonance inducing bombardment of anti-European, anti-Scottish, anti-austerity (they like sharing UK Uncut infographics), anti-Muslim, anti-Tory (several articles from the left-wing news site The Canary) and anti-refugee posts.

Here is a selection of outraged comments from Warrington 'kippers:

"We are losing all our christian identity and for what to be taken over by extreemists who probably do not pay anything into the county only take what they can. Right lets see what affends me Burka,Mosques, praying with their asses in the air in the street can we have all these banned please"

"if this country changed our bennifits to merry xmas bennifits,and easter bennifits, do you honestly think it would stop them from claiming them!"

"So are we supposed to wipe this old village from the map to satisfy fanatical terroist and invaders ?? be better and more useful to eject the invaders and block the benifits and forign aid"

"political correctness kills"

"If we carry on like this there will be a civil war"

"we are a christian country not a muslim country or seihk country .and they have had this name for centuries .this is political correctness gone mad .another reason to leave eu ."

"The leftie fascists are winning."

"Most councils now have muslims this should not be alliwed in the UK."

If anything, this outpouring of extraordinarily gullible and hate-filled comments from UKIP Warrington followers displays even more shocking levels of intolerance and atrocious writing skills than those from the Britain First lot.

How did it come to this?

It's tempting to just laugh at the gullibility of the right-wing permanent outrage brigade because it is pretty funny that so many of them fell for such an obvious spoof, but there is actually a serious issue to consider.

Britain First now has over 1.3 million followers, and literally millions of people see the shameless ideological shambles that is UKIP as a serious enough political party to actually vote for them in elections!

Of course a few people are following the Britain First page just to laugh at the idiotic comments, a few more were duped into liking the page with cynical honeytrap images, but the majority clearly like their daily bombardment of extreme-right hatemongering.

Back in the 1930s the British people rejected Oswald Mosely and his British Union of Fascists (even though he was strongly backed by the tabloid press). In October 1936 the people of London came together in solidarity to give Mosley and the BUF a kicking they never recovered from at the Battle of Cable Street. Then the people of Britain spent years and made countless sacrifices in the Second World War during the fight against fascism on the Continent.

Despite all of the bravery and sacrifices of our forefathers, the extreme-right is undeniably back in fashion, so how did it come to this?

In my view the answer is twofold. The first is the way the English education system teaches kids that easy answers are dripped down from authority to be rote learned and regurgitated on demand. Only a tiny fraction of the 93% of us who go to state schools end up with anything resembling a decent education in vital subjects like critical thinking, philosophy and basic economics that would allow us to see through crude political propaganda (or to spot an obvious spoof article for what it is!).

The second factor is the dominance of the right-wing press. The UK has the most right-wing biased press in Europe owned by a tiny bunch of extremely right-wing tax-dodging billionaire sociopaths.

Our right-wing tabloids, which are still read by millions on a daily basis, are deliberately written in childishly simplistic language and feature the repetition of familiar recurring tropes over and again (like children's television does). They are written like this so that even the most intellectually stunted people can read, absorb and repeat the propaganda themes they contain.

If you take a huge demographic who have been badly failed by the education system and then drip feed simplistic right-wing tropes for decades, the obvious consequence is that they're eventually going to be attracted to the even simpler offerings of outright fascism.

Once the political establishment decided that the best way to keep the British public passive and servile would be to systematically deny them the thinking skills they need to see through the right-wing political propaganda they're being drip-fed, it was only ever going to be a matter of time before someone else (like Britain First or UKIP) comes along with even simpler and more enticing right-wing propaganda narratives in order to turn this demographic against the political establishment that wanted them that gullible in the first place.

Now that it's becoming obvious that this is happening, the political establishment has the choice of either moving further towards outright fascism in order to appease this huge demographic that they deliberately created, or doing something to begin trying to undo the immeasurable damage that has already been done.

Given the appalling legislation on the table (new spying powers that would have made the Gestapo turn green with envy, economically insane deportation policies for working people, a massive crackdown on the feeble vestiges of trade union power, abolition of the right to free speech, the banning of intellectual opposition to the government, numerous forced labour schemes and the forced privatisation of the entire English education system into the hands of unaccountable private sector pseudo-charities, all of it backed up by a barrage of shockingly Orwellian propaganda) it's absolutely clear which direction the Tory party have decided to move in.

Conclusion

I guess the best conclusion I can offer is an apology. I'm sorry that I've taken something that's actually pretty funny and pointed out the deeply sinister undertones.

I guess one small way that we can fight back is by actively confronting our Facebook friends if we ever see them sharing extreme-right or UKIP posts. 

Another way to fight back would be to confront any Tory voting friends and family with some of the disgusting policies they've been pushing (see the list above) and asking them to actually defend them (without resorting to tiresome "but Labour ..." whataboutery).

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About that banned Church of England advert

Someone at the Church of England had the bright idea of creating a short advert about praying to be shown in cinemas before the new Star Wars film this winter. The advert is nothing more than a selection of people saying one line each from the Lord's Prayer and then some publicity for their Just Pray website.

Unfortunately for the Church of England, the company that runs advertising in most of the cinemas in the UK decided to ban the advert on the grounds that some cinema goers might be offended by it. DCM (the company that made the decision not to show the advert in their UK cinemas) said that it's their policy not to show adverts from religious groups because "some advertisements - unintentionally or otherwise - could cause offence to those of differing political persuasions, as well as to those of differing faiths and indeed of no faith". That's a pretty clear explanation that the advert will not be shown in case it causes offence.

It's not so much the policy of not allowing religious groups to buy advertising space that I object to, it's the justification of that policy on the grounds that people might get offended.

I've included an embedded video of the advert so you can make up your own mind if it's offensive, then beneath it there's some further analysis.

The first thing to note is that the advert is clearly not even remotely offensive. There is nothing inherently offensive about The Lord's Prayer, praying in general or a peaceful organisation trying to spread public awareness of their work. Anyone who gets all offended by this must be the kind of permanently offended attention seeker who pisses pretty much everyone off, and so often give liberally minded people a terrible reputation with their unwarranted whinging into the bargain.

I'm pretty surprised that I'm actually in agreement with two people I often strongly disagree with. Richard Dawkins (the famous atheist and Twitter shit-stirrer) said that the advert should not be censored and that anyone who gets offended by the advert "deserves to be offended". David Cameron has also spoken out against the ban. It's pretty rare that I agree with either of them, let alone both of them at the same time!

I'm not, and never have been a member of the Church of England, however I do know and respect several people who are. I remember resenting being made to actually say the Lord's Prayer in school because I didn't think anybody should be forced to say anything against their will, especially not kids in publicly funded schools. However this advert doesn't force anyone to actually say the Lord's Prayer, so I have no objection to it at all.

What I do have a strong objection to is the commercialisation of Christmas, and the ever increasing duration of the Christmas advertising period. I'm irritated by the idea that we have to endure Christmas advertising from all manner of rapacious corporations all the way from the end of October (or even earlier) through to January every single year, while we're now prevented from seeing an advert that actually references the belief system that actually underpins Christmas.

I'm not saying corporations should be banned from making Christmas adverts, of course they shouldn't. But what kind of insane society are we living in where corporations can use a Christian festival to make juicy profits for themselves, but actual Christians are prevented from spreading awareness of their work with just about the least offensive advert imaginable?

Conclusion
  
As I said before I'm not a member of the Church of England. In fact I'm often a vocal critic of organised dogmatic religion. However I'm not happy about the way this advert has been banned because not only does it seem to be an attack on freedom of expression, but also because it paints a depressing picture of an insane society where Christianity is egregiously commercialised in order to sell products and make profits, but cannot be expressed in and for itself.

I think it's unlikely the cinemas groups will overturn their decision to censor the Church of England, so probably the best thing to do is leave a link for the Just Pray website that these major UK cinema groups don't want you to know about so that you have the choice to check it out for yourself if you want to.

It doesn't matter if you're not Church of England, or not religious at all, some of the countless prayers people have left on there are worth reading. Even if you don't find any of them moving, they'll definitely provide an interesting insight into the mentality of people with religious faith. 

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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The Tory ideological mission

  

The God Debate Flow Chart

Theology is a fascinating subject, especially because those that believe that they have all the right answers are the ones that are clearly doing it wrong.

Although the subject of faith is serious, this flow chart is meant as a bit of fun.

In theology things are obviously a lot more complicated than a simple flow chart with just eight final categories.

Which category did you end up in?

Were you classified as rational or irrational?

Do you agree with your classification, or are you annoyed by it?

 Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for  Another Angry Voice  is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.

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The "Golden Hammer" of neoliberalism
                   
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Obnoxious Atheism
                   

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Iain Duncan Smith's "profound moral mission"

I've written before about the Orwellian Tory assertions that Iain Duncan Smith's ideological attacks on the social security system represent some kind of "moral mission" (here). However I'm going to address the subject again, but this time I'm going to examine the thoughts of people that are delusional enough to believe this ludicrously Orwellian distortion.

The primary piece of evidence I'm going to refer to in this piece is an utterly ludicrous piece in the Daily Telegraph by Peter Oborne, which was published in the first week of April 2013, which was the most symbolic week of Tory malice. That was the week in which they introduced "Bedroom Tax" designed to further impoverish hundreds of thousands of the poorest people in society, whilst simultaneously handing a £100,000 per year tax cut to the 13,000 income millionaires in the UK.

The mind-boggling title of Oborne's article is "George Osborne can’t claim credit for Iain Duncan Smith’s virtuous reforms" so lets have a quick look at some of these supposedly "virtuous reforms".

Bedroom Tax: This malicious policy was introduced in the very week that Oborne penned his article. I've written about "Bedroom Tax" several times (here, here, here and here) but perhaps the most damning evidence is the death of Stephanie Bottrill, who committed suicide after being driven into debt by "Bedroom Tax". It was only discovered months after her death that "Bedroom Tax" had been implemented in such a cack-handed way that, like some 40,000 other victims, Stephanie Bottrill should have been exempt all along.

What kind of Orwellian definition of "virtuous" would you have to be using to apply it to a "Bedroom Tax" regime that was implemented so incompetently that it drove someone to suicide, even though they should never have been made to pay it?

Forced Labour: Another one of Iain Duncan Smith's favoured "welfare reforms" is the economically illiterate policy of using the unemployed as a source of free labour, often for highly profitable foreign corporations. The hundreds of thousands of people that are herded onto these schemes under threat of absolute destitution, are removed from the official unemployment numbers, despite the fact that they have no paid work and are they still in receipt of unemployment benefits. After Iain Duncan Smith's workfare schemes were declared unlawful by the courts, he had the law retroactively rewritten, so that his schemes would have been lawful had the law been written that way at the time. This grotesque abuse of parliamentary process was carried out in order to stick two fingers up at the courts and keep the estimated £130 million he stole from his victims.

What kind of Orwellian definition of "virtuous" would you have to be using to apply it to Iain Duncan Smith's Stalinist Workfare schemes, and his "I'm Above The Law" retroactive legislation?

The Atos WCA regime: Iain Duncan Smith's forced labour schemes are not the only parts of his supposedly "virtuous reforms" that have been condemned on multiple occasions by the courts. The Atos administered Work Capacity Assessment regime has been condemned by the courts as discriminatory on two occasions, yet Iain Duncan Smith, the DWP and Atos have carried on with their discriminatory regime regardless. The WCA regime is notoriously inaccurate, the constant flood of bad decisions made by Atos have resulted in a cost of £50 million per year in appeals, which is borne by the taxpayer (rather than the company that made all of those inaccurate assessments in the first place). Yet another consideration must be the 10,600 people that died between January and November 2011 within six weeks of being declared "fit for work"by Atos. Unfortunately it is not possible to provide more up-to-date death statistics since the Iain Duncan Smith and the DWP are stonewalling numerous Freedom of Information requests to release the data for 2012 and 2013.

What kind of Orwellian definition of "virtuous" would you have to be using to apply it to the discriminatory WCA regime, that results in countless thousands of people being told they are fit-for-work within weeks of their death and costs the taxpayer £50 million per year to deal with all of the appeals against these disgustingly inaccurate "fit for work" judgements?

Sanctions: The number of people being stripped of all all of their social security payments (often for absolutely ludicrous reasons) has risen to an all time high of 874,850.  Between 2010 and 2013 Iain Duncan Smith and the DWP repeatedly lied to parliament and the public that there was no such thing as Sanctions League Tables. In March 2013 (a month before Oborne declared IDS's reforms "virtuous") the supposedly non-existent Sanctions League Tables were leaked to the press. DWP whistleblowers have explained that the sanctions regime resulted in the unintelligent and mentally ill being tricked into committing sanctionable offences, whilst the small minority of hardcore benefits cheats were left well alone (because more often than not they know the rules better than most of the DWP staff). One of the most shocking cases is that of Mark Wood, who starved to death four months after being declared fit-for-work by Atos and being stripped of his benefits.

What kind of Orwellian definition of "virtuous" would you have to be using to apply it to a sanctions regime with targets to drive vulnerable people off benefits, resulting in people actually starving to death?

Wasteful spending and mismanagement: One of the most ludicrous aspects of Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reforms has been his ludicrous profligacy with taxpayers' money. His Universal Credit scheme is way behind schedule and way over budget. Already £120 million has been written off on botched IT procurement and staff working on Universal Credit have described working on the project as "soul-destroying", "unbelievably frustrating" and "a complete nightmare". Other staff complained of "a near complete absence of anything that looks like strategic leadership in the programme" and "a divisive culture of secrecy" [source]. Another area of extraordinary waste is Iain Duncan Smith's Work Programme, in which private companies are paid ludicrous bribes for finding people work. It has been shown over and again that these companies claim their bribes from the taxpayer even when their clients found work entirely independently of, or even despite their interference. If it were a Labour minister responsible for this kind of grotesquely incompetent financial mismanagement, Peter Oborne and the Daily Telegraph would be screaming blue murder, but because it's Oborne's mate IDS, it is instead described by them as "wonderful and virtuous"!

What kind of Orwellian definition of "virtuous" would you have to be using to apply it to welfare reforms which ensure that ever larger slices of the welfare budget end up in corporate pockets, instead of in the pockets of the people the welfare system was actually designed to help?

So now to Peter Oborne's ludicrous Daily Telegraph article. Here are some selected quotes, and my responses:

"At the heart of Mr Duncan Smith’s programme is a profound moral vision"

The only way that these welfare reforms could be considered "moral", is if you are the kind of ruthless Social Darwinist that believes that the poor and vulnerable should be hounded to death like Stephanie Bottrill, Mark Wood and the countless other victims of Iain Duncan Smith's "virtuous reforms".

"I can confidently assert that Mr Duncan Smith’s inspiration is less political than religious."

If Mr Duncan Smith's inspiration is religious, then it is certainly difficult to figure out what religion is responsible, given that there has been a chorus of condemnation of his "virtuous reforms" from all kinds of denominations, including the Catholic church, the Church of England, the Quakers, the Church of Scotland, Unitarians, the Baptist Union, the United Reform Church, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Moravian Church and many more. It is absolutely clear from this chorus of condemnation, that the teachings of Jesus Christ are fundamentally incompatible with modern Conservatism. The truth is that Iain Duncan Smith is driven more by his ideological adherence to neoliberal pseudo-economic dogma than anything derived from the teachings of Christ.

"Mr Duncan Smith fully accepts that a civilised society must always extend a helping hand to those who, often through no fault of their own, fall on hard times or are genuinely in need"

In my view, Iain Duncan Smith's reforms demonstrate precisely the opposite. They demonstrate his determination to distribute ever more of the welfare budget to corporations and the idle rentier class, instead of to the people that have "fallen on hard times or are in genuine need". As the welfare budget has been ruthlessly cut, the amount paid out as subsidies to private landlords via Housing Benefit has continued to skyrocket, and the amount being paid out to parasitic corporate outsourcing companies (Atos, A4E, Ingeus,  G4S, Serco, Avanta, Seetec ...) has also skyrocketed. If the welfare budget has gone down, yet private landlords and corporate outsourcers are getting more than ever before, it is beyond obvious that the people the welfare system was actually designed for must be the ones losing out.

"All of Mr Duncan Smith’s changes reflect a determination to enable everyone to live free and morally autonomous lives."

What could possibly promote less "freedom and morally autonomy" that Iain Duncan Smith's Stalinist Workfare schemes that work on the assumption that the labour of the individual is a commodity which belongs to the state which can be extracted, under threat of absolute destitution, by the state for distribution to highly profitable foreign owned corporations like Warburg Pincus, the giant US based private equity firm that operates Poundland. It is absolutely clear that this is another attempt by Oborne to dress up brutal Social Darwinism and ruthless exploitation of the vulnerable as something "moral".

"Mr Duncan Smith is in the process of making a series of momentous and inordinately ambitious reforms to our welfare system. They bear comparison to Margaret Thatcher’s great economic reforms because they involve a recasting of the relationship between the individual and the state."

They certainly do bear comparison to Margaret Thatcher's destructive economic reforms. Just as she used the power of the state to crush British industries and transfer ever more wealth from working people to corporations and the idle rentier class, Iain Duncan Smith's "welfare reforms" use the power of the state to crush the most vulnerable in society in order to transfer even more wealth to the corporations and the idle rentier class.

Conclusion

By describing Iain Duncan Smith's brutal ideologically driven welfare reforms as "a wonderful and virtuous idea", Peter Oborne is one of the people that feeds into Iain Duncan Smith's psychotic delusions that his "war on the poor" is some kind of virtuous moral crusade, rather than a disgusting Tory project to divert funds that are meant to protect the vulnerable into the bank accounts of corporate outsourcing parasites and the idle rentier class.

Iain Duncan Smith is clearly a dangerously delusional individual. However, in my view, the people that actively feed into his delusions like Peter Oborne are even more contemptible. The evidence is absolutely clear that the Tories know how incompetent Iain Duncan Smith is, because they didn't dare let such a cognitively illiterate charisma void lead their party into the 2005 General Election.

It illustrates exactly how much contempt the Tories have for the poor, vulnerable and disabled they now champion the man that they didn't trust as steward of their own political party with such Orwellian superlatives, when his track record of failure, incompetence, malice, arrogance and obfuscation is so incredibly clear.

 Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only sources of income for  Another Angry Voice  are small donations from people who see some value in my work. If you appreciate my efforts and you could afford to make a donation, it would be massively appreciated.

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 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 

                   
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The incompatibility of Christian ethics and modern Conservativism

On Easter Sunday 2013, the day before "Bedroom Tax" was to be rolled out, Paul Morrison from the Methodist church, speaking on behalf of a coalition of churches (Baptist Union, Methodist church, United Reformed church, Church of Scotland) spoke out against the economic attacks and the propaganda war against the poorest and most vulnerable people in society being conducted by the current government. He was highlighting a report by these churches called "The Lies We Tell Ourselves: Ending Comfortable Myths About Poverty" (which is well worth a read).

This criticism of government welfare policy comes just a couple of weeks after the new Archbishop of Canterbury slammed the government for their policy of inflicting real terms cuts on benefits for the unemployed and the working poor alike (and their families) in a letter to the Telegraph signed by 43 of his Bishops.

Paul Morrison raised a number of important issues. Here are a few selected quotes:

"The British public has come to believe things about the poorest in our society which are just straightforwardly not true. The public believes that the major cause of poverty is laziness, yet the majority of people in poverty work. How can that be the case?"

"It is an understanding of people that they somehow deserve their poverty, that they are somehow 'lesser', that they are not valued. The churches believe that they are valued and we believe that they should be treated much more fairly than they are being."

 "We saw that people who we value, who we believe God values and God loves, we saw them being insulted day in and day out in the media, and that needed to stop. The consequence of the attitudes towards the poor is that welfare cuts like this become more acceptable, so it's right that we criticise that too."

Whatever your stance on God and organised religion, it is worth noting that these churches have collaborated to do what they think is right. They have decided to put their doctrinal differences aside and collaborate in order to defend the poorest and most vulnerable people in society, not because of a tribalist desire to protect their own kin, but because they believe that they have a moral obligation to do it.

The Tories obviously countered these criticisms with a load of cherry-picked statistics, "making work pay" narratives and "scapegoating of the workless" aimed at building public support for their malicious economic attacks on the weakest members of society.

Using the technique of stirring a sense of injustice that "layabouts" are getting more than hard working people is an effective (if utterly revolting) propaganda technique because the sense of injustice is one of the most powerful human emotions. Telling working people that they are getting less than a bunch of "idle scroungers" is a deliberate attempt to build support for their economic attack programme against the poor by stoking the sense of injustice. People become so incensed at the cited unfairness, that they don't even bother to think about the implications of real terms benefits cuts for everyone of working age, before deciding their approval. Many people allow themselves to get so caught up in the injustice of "idle scroungers and hard workers" that they'll approve cuts to their own family budget, since the vast majority of welfare payments go to ordinary working families (Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, Housing Benefit, Council tax Benefit, Child Benefit, Maternity Pay, Paternity Pay, Sick Pay). People allow themselves to get so wound up about a tiny minority of "idle scroungers" that they don't even consider that the right-wing "scrounger narratives" are being used to justify much wider real terms cuts to all of the aforementioned benefits which largely go to the working poor.

The "making work pay" narrative is utterly flawed becuase the vast majority of benefits being cut are benefits that are paid to the working poor! By thrusting the working poor deeper into poverty with their real terms cuts to working benefits, they are actually reducing the incentive to work!

Another problem with these lame Tory ripostes was actually raised by Paul Morrison in the comments that the Tories were trying to rebut. Responding to a statement that the majority of people in poverty (and receiving benefits) are not unemployed, but actually members of working families with yet more "scrounger narratives" and scapegoating of the unemployed, is beyond disingenuous, it's an implicit acceptance that they have nothing to offer the debate but more of the same kind of propaganda that is under criticism in the first place.

Another problem with the Tory appeal to unfairness in order to build support for their "slash benefits to make work pay" strategy is that the best way to "make work pay" is actually to ensure that working people get a decent living wage. If the government increased the National Minimum Wage to make it a living wage, they could cut £billions from the welfare bill through reductions in subsistence benefits for the working poor (Working Tax Credits, childcare subsidies, Housing Benefit...). The reason the government won't take this common sense approach is obvious, they won't enforce decent living wages in order to cut the welfare bill, because making corporations pay decent wages would conflict with the true Tory party agenda of serving corporate interests.

The Tories won't increase the National Minimum Wage in order to reduce state subsidisation of the corporatations that pay poverty wages, just as they won't reduce the state subsidisation (via housing benefits) of the private rental sector by introducing rent caps and forcing private landlords to comply with the same regulations as the social housing sector. Their agenda isn't to reduce welfare spending at all, it is actually to ensure that ever greater amounts of state spending go towards the subsidisation of wealthy Tory voters and especially the millionaire financial backers of the Tory party.

The most grotesque element to the government loading the poor and vulnerable with the burden of their failing economic austerity experiment, is that with the other hand they are lavishing the already wealthy with tax cuts, corporate welfare schemes and tax loopholes. All of their rhetoric about the importance of cutting welfare is not only invalidated by the dodgy and inaccurate rhetoric they resort to, it is invalidated by the fact that at the same time they insist that welfare must be cut, they are planning ever more handouts to the wealthy. In the very same week that the collective punishment of social tenants ("Bedroom Tax") is initiated, the 13,000 highest earners in the UK are to be handed a £2,000 a week tax cut.

It is absolutely obvious that Christian ethics are fundamentally incompatible with modern Conservativism. It would take a mind-boggling amount of cognitive dissonance to believe that it is possible to follow the teachings of Jesus (charity, equality, compassion...) yet approve of hardline greed worship and materialism in the form of neoliberal economic doctrine as adhered to by the Tory party.

The various churches haven't been so bold as to state the obvious; that the Tory government is brazenly serving the interests of the rich at the expense of the poor and vulnerable and that modern Conservativism is fundamentally incompatible with the teachings of Christ. But it is still a noble endeavour to defend the interests of the poor and vulnerable and to counter the propaganda strategies of the Tory party and the baying right-wing press. 

Even though, in my opinion, these religious condemnations of the Tory agenda doesn't go far enough, it is great to see that these various religious organisations have finally begun waking up to what the current government is doing, and stirring themselves into action.

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The Church of England and poverty

I'm an opponent of the Church of England stance on many things, but on the subject of poverty I strongly agree with them. The following letter (original source) signed by 43 Bishops is an example of religion standing up for the poor. Even though the Church of England is an integral part of the archaic and pseudo-democratic UK establishment system, in this instance they are standing up to the government in defence of the poor and the young by presenting compelling evidence that government policy will directly impact the lives of the poorest and youngest in society.

Sir, Next week, members of the House of Lords will debate the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill.
The Bill will mean that for each of the next three years, most financial support for families will increase by no more than 1 per cent, regardless of how much prices rise.
This is a change that will have a deeply disproportionate impact on families with children, pushing 200,000 children into poverty. A third of all households will be affected by the Bill, but nearly nine out of 10 families with children will be hit.
These are children and families from all walks of life. The Children’s Society calculates that a single parent with two children, working on an average wage as a nurse would lose £424 a year by 2015. A couple with three children and one earner, on an average wage as a corporal in the British Army, would lose £552 a year by 2015.
However, the change will hit the poorest the hardest. About 60 per cent of the savings from the uprating cap will come from the poorest third of households. Only 3 per cent will come from the wealthiest third.
If prices rise faster than expected, children and families will no longer have any protection against this. This transfers the risk of high inflation rates from the Treasury to children and families, which is unacceptable.
Children and families are already being hit hard by cuts to support, including those to tax credits, maternity benefits, and help with housing costs. They cannot afford this further hardship penalty. We are calling on the House of Lords to take action to protect children from the impact of this Bill.

Rt Rev Tim Stevens, Bishop of Leicester
Rt Rev John Packer, Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
Rt Rev Graham James, Bishop of Norwich
Rt Rev Paul Butler, Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham
Rt Rev Richard Frith, Bishop of Hull
Rt Rev Nick Baines, Bishop of Bradford
Rt Rev David Rossdale, Bishop of Grimsby
Rt Rev Alan Smith, Bishop of St Albans
Rt Rev David Walker, Bishop of Dudley
Rt Rev Michael Langrish, Bishop of Exeter
Rt Rev Humphrey Southern, Bishop of Repton
Rt Rev Chris Edmondson, Bishop of Bolton
Rt Rev David Urquhart, Bishop of Birmingham
Rt Rev Jonathan Clark, Bishop of Croydon
Rt Rev Trevor Willmott, Bishop of Dover
Rt Rev Adrian Newman, Bishop of Stepney
Rt Rev John Wraw, Bishop of Bradwell
Rt Rev James Newcome, Bishop of Carlisle
Rt Rev Peter Burrows, Bishop of Doncaster
Rt Rev Keith Sinclair, Bishop of Birkenhead
Rt Rev Clive Young, Bishop of Dunwich
Rt Rev Tim Thornton, Bishop of Truro
Rt Rev Steven Croft, Bishop of Sheffield
Rt Rev Jonathan Gledhill, Bishop of Lichfield
Rt Rev John Inge, Bishop of Worcester
Rt Rev Peter Price, Bishop of Bath and Wells
Rt Rev Stephen Conway, Bishop of Ely
Rt Rev Alistair Redfern, Bishop of Derby
Rt Rev James Langstaff, Bishop of Rochester
Rt Rev James Bell, Bishop of Knaresborough
Rt Rev Mike Hill, Bishop of Bristol
Rt Rev Christopher Chessun, Bishop of Southwark
Rt Rev Nigel Stock, Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich
Rt Rev John Pritchard, Bishop of Oxford
Rt Rev Ian Brackley, Bishop of Dorking
Rt Rev Jonathan Frost, Bishop of Southampton
Rt Rev Stephen Platten, Bishop of Wakefield
Rt Rev David Thomson, Bishop of Huntingdon
Rt Rev John Holbrook, Bishop of Brixworth
Rt Rev Tim Dakin, Bishop of Winchester
Rt Rev Peter Hancock, Bishop of Basingstoke
Rt Rev Andrew Proud, Bishop of Reading
Rt Rev Anthony Priddis, Bishop of Hereford

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Another Angry Voice is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for Another Angry Voice is the PayPal donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.