Voting Tory is an endorsement of their systematic abuse of sick and disabled people

If you watched BBC Question Time on Thursday November 9th 2017 you will have seen a Tory plant in the audience bridling with faux outrage at the accusation that the Tory government is responsible for the mistreatment of disabled people.  Here's a clip of the encounter.

The absolute state of this: A Tory plant in the BBC Question Time audience outright denying the Tories horrific mistreatment of sick and disabled people. pic.twitter.com/0NFQntHuot

— Tom (AAV) (@Angry_Voice) November 10, 2017

The audience member in question is the Tory councillor for Horley Central in Surrey, although he used to be a Ukipper until he saw the political tide turning and opportunistically jumped ship to join the Tories.

The Ukipper-turned-Tory (blue-kip) councillor furiously condemned Aditya Chakrabortty as "the Donald Trump of the left" for daring to highlight the Tory track record of mistreating disabled people.

Given that the Tory plant in the audience was basically trying to deny the appalling Tory track record of mistreating sick and disabled people as "inflammatory rubbish", it's obvious that he's actually the one using reality-denying Trump-style rhetoric to render uncomfortable truths as "fake news". But by now we should all be well aware that accusing your opponents of what you're guilty of yourself has always been one of the classic right-wing propaganda tactics.

Here's a list of issues that the Blue-kip plant in the BBC audience was trying to publicly deny.

• The Tory government's own figures admit that thousands of disabled people have died within six weeks of being declared "fit for work" and stripped of their disability benefits by the Work Capacity Assessment (WCA) regime. The Tory government desperately tried to hide these figures by refusing to comply with Freedom of Information requests.

• The WCA regime was declared unlawful for the way it discriminates against people with mental health conditions, but the Tory government carried on regardless.

• Appeals against botched WCA rulings have been costing £50 million a year. The Tory government have ensured that this cost is paid for by the taxpayer, not the profiteering corporations that made the botched assessments in the first place.

• The WCA disability denial regime costs way more in corporate outsourcing contracts to administer than it will ever save in reduced disability benefit payments, meaning the Tories are forcing the taxpayer to subsidise their systematic abuse of disabled people.

• An incredible 420,000 disabled people were hit by the Tory "Bedroom Tax", many of them for "spare" rooms used for medical equipment, or for carers to sleep in. The financial stress caused Stephanie Bottrill to commit suicide leaving a note blaming David Cameron and the Tory government.

• Tens of thousands of disabled people were forced onto the Tories' shambolic Work Programme, but the outsourcing companies running this scheme knew they could never make a profit from helping "difficult to place" clients, so disabled people were just "parked" while the corporate parasites focused on cashing in on easy to place clients. Just 8% of disabled people to be put through the Work Programme end up finding jobs!

• A United Nations investigation into the treatment of disabled people in the UK found that the UK government was committing "grave and systematic violations" of disabled people's rights.

• In March 2016 309 Tory MPs voted to cut the Employment and Support Allowance by £1,500 per year. Not a single politician from any other party voted in favour of these cuts. As a result of this brazen economic assault on disabled people, several Tory MPs were sacked as patrons of disability charities.

• The Tory party claimed to be scrapping the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and replacing it with Personal Independence Payments (PIP) in order to make sure the money went to the right people, but in April 2017 they slashed PIP payments by 33% using the perverse excuse that this would incentivise them to find work (despite there being no evidence whatever to back up this claim).

• Disabled people undergoing PIP assessments have routinely been asked "why haven't you killed yourself yet?" by their assessors.

• An incredible 65% of PIP decisions that go to appeal are overturned, yet the profiteering outsourcing corporations making these botched assessments (Atos and Capita) just had their contracts extended by two years by a no-bid process!

• The Tory party constantly claim that the purpose of their disability cuts is trying to get disabled people into work, but they deliberately laid off 1,500 disabled people by shutting down Remploy factories, many of whom are still out of work years later.

• Despite constantly going on about the importance of helping people with mental illnesses, the Tories have been doing precisely to opposite; slashing funding for mental health services and actively instructing it's corporate army of disability assessors to discriminate against people with mental health conditions.

• Since 2010 the Tories have had seven different disability ministers in seven years, with most of them using the position as nothing more than a stepping stone to higher positions in government, rather than doing anything to actually help disabled people. The latest Tory disability minister Sarah Newton has a shocking track record of voting against the interests of disabled people. 

• The Tory government are confiscating an astounding 900 adapted motability vehicles from disabled people per week. In one case they confiscated the motability vehicle to save £6,000 and then agreed to pay £65,000 in taxi fares so that the disabled person could continue going to work!

The mainstream media has given this disgusting Tory track record only a tiny fraction of the attention it deserves, so people can be forgiven for not knowing all of it. However, you would have to have spent the last seven years living in a lead box to not be aware of any of this stuff.

The fact is that when it comes to election time, Conservative voters are aware that the most vulnerable people in society suffer under Tory rule, but in the grim amoral calculus they perform in their minds, the suffering, destitution and actual deaths of disabled people are somehow a price worth paying for whatever (probably imaginary) benefit they think they'd be getting by electing a Tory government.

Of course the majority of the blame is shouldered by the Tory politicians who voted in favour of these horrifying policies, and cynically used the role of Disability Minister as a temporary stepping stone to other things instead of trying to actually help disabled people, but Tory voters are not exempt from blame because by endorsing the Tory party, they're complicit in allowing this disgraceful systematic abuse of disabled people to continue.

It doesn't matter how much blustering faux outrage and denials of reality people like Chris Stevens utter, the fact is simple: People who vote Tory are guilty of voting in favour of more suffering for sick and disabled people.

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OR

Are "bomb them" or "do nothing" really the only options?

Witnessing the Prime Minister David Cameron and his warmongering foreign secretary William Hague receive a bloody nose from parliament was a refreshing surprise. To witness the gracelessness of their defeat has been more than that, it's been hilarious.

Cameron and Hague come out of this with no credit all, they look like a pair of desperate warmongers, too inept even to convince their own MPs to support their "rush to war". If the 30 rebel Tory MPs hadn't voted against their own government and just abstained instead, Cameron would have got his beloved war, despite Ed Miliband's demands that believable evidence is presented first.

Instead of petulantly hurling unstatesmanlike abuse at Ed Miliband for defeating their "rush to war", perhaps the Tory warmongers should focus on their own roles in this debacle, and ask themselves why 30 of their own Tory MPs voted against their plans, and why countless more Tories deliberately abstained. If anyone is "to blame" for them not getting their beloved war, it is themselves, for failing to make the case so bloody badly that their own MPs rebelled against the party whip to vote against it.

Both Cameron and Hague have been pushing for war in Syria for years (here's an article I wrote almost a year ago), so anyone with even the slightest grain of intelligence could see that they were simply using the shocking chemical weapons incident in Ghouta as an excuse to push an agenda they supported months and years before the attack even took place. Their demonstration of contempt for the evidence, contempt for the United Nations weapons inspectors, feigned moral outrage and their blatant capitalisation on the horrifying deaths of so many civilians in order to push a pre-determined political agenda, was so distasteful to behold that even a large proportion of their own MPs voted against them.

The leader of the opposition comes out with a little more credit. No matter what his political motivations, without Miliband taking the stance he did, the UK would now be rushing into a conflict without proper evidence, without public support and at a time when countless libraries are being shut down and thousands of police and army personnel are being laid off because we supposedly "can't afford them".

Ed Miliband has been taking a barrage of criticism from the press for his role in stalling the Tory rush to war (the media love a good juicy war don't they?) but to me, even if he fluked himself into holding what appears to be a sensible position on this issue, that must mean that he is due at least some credit. Still, being less of a warmongering dick than William Hague or David Cameron is hardly worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize though is it?

As enjoyable as this democratic resistance to Imperialist "interventionism" was, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't look set to make a lot of difference. As it stands, the US are still mad keen to start a bombing campaign against the Syrian government, despite the loss of their craven sidekicks in the UK, the flawed evidence and the inherent risks involved in interfering militarily in a volatile situation (they could make the whole situation a hell of a lot worse, particularly for neighbouring countries).

That parliament reached their decision to veto military action, despite the insidious war-drumming of the press, is an all too rare testament to our antiquated and unrepresentative political system. There are countless examples of this insidious pro-war slanting, but for me, one of the worst came from the BBC when William Hague was spoon fed a ludicrously loaded question on the Today programme, in which the case was made to Hague that the only possible options were to launch military strikes, or to do nothing.

This question was a clear example of a false dichotomy between the stance of the government and a straw-man position held by virtually nobody. The only people counseling for us to absolutely nothing are the extreme-right Islamophobes who hold all Muslims in contempt, and seem utterly unaware of the numerous other religious denominations that have existed in Syria for Centuries (including many Christians), many of whom are absolutely petrified of the thought of Syria being ruled over by the Saudi Arabian and Qatari financed Islamist fanatics that have flooded into the country to fight against the Assad government (Islamist fanatics that Cameron, Hague and Obama are keen to fight alongside).

The premise that the only two choices are launching cruise missile strikes and "doing nothing" creates an absurdly over-simplified loaded question, one that was clearly asked in order to benefit William Hague's case for war by allowing him to favourably contrast his policy of lobbing cruise missiles into the conflict zone with the ludicrous straw-man stance that we should do absolutely nothing.

There are obviously countless alternatives to these two extremist stances, some of which could be:

• Wait for actual evidence of who was responsible for the chemical weapons deployment in Ghouta before launching military strikes (what Ed Miliband was arguing for).
• An increase in the amount of humanitarian aid for Syria, and the neighbouring countries which are receiving hundreds of thousands of refugees.
• A debate with Russia and China on what actions relating to Syria they would actually approve of at the United Nations (a UN mandated ceasefire perhaps?).
• The development of a negotiation strategy between the opposing forces.

In my view, far from "not being an option", as the BBC would have us believe, a negotiated settlement is actually the only viable option if the objective is a peaceful resolution to the conflict (rather than some imperialist empire building project, or a deliberate attempt to destabilise the region).

I realise that I'm just a blogger with no real political influence, but I'll spend a few moments to set out the kind of strategy I would be calling for if I did have some influence.

1. A ceasefire between the two sides, with UN peacekeepers if necessary.
2. Negotiations to begin, with something along the lines of Assad to resign in return for the disbandment of the Islamist militias and the expulsion of foreign fighters from the country.
3. Moderate elements from the Syrian opposition to form a government of national unity with moderate elements of the regime.
4. The government of national unity to work on reconstruction and reconciliation projects, and towards development of a timetable for democratic elections.
5. Proper investigations to be mounted into numerous war crimes, such as chemical weapons attacks, civilian massacres and the execution of clearly surrendered prisoners, with suspects from both sides to stand trial at the International Criminal Court.

Even though the corporate media, the BBC and the Tory warmongers would love the British people to think about the situation in simplistic binary terms (bomb them or do nothing), in my view the idea that the appalling situation in Syria can be improved by firing a load of cruise missiles into Damascus is as ludicrous as the idea that the only other option is to do absolutely nothing, and I'm determined to maintain the stance that the best possible solution would surely come about through a negotiated diplomatic settlement.

The problem with promoting peace negotiations of course, is that a negotiated diplomatic settlement would suit neither the interests of the media nor the establishment. The media love nothing more than a "lovely juicy war" to sell more copy and the establishment clearly hanker after the days of imperialism, when Britain could bomb and invade countries at will, even if they can only get away with it these days by piggybacking on American imperialism. It's simply not pragmatic to argue for the only sane course of action, because the people with the power to make it happen, have absolutely no interest in doing so. So little interest in fact, that they'd have you believe that it doesn't even exist as an option.

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What is ... a Justification Narrative?

                  

David Cameron and the lucrative Syrian blood pie

After visiting the middle east the UK Prime Minister David Cameron has announced his intention to overturn an EU ban on sending arms to Syria. He has stated that he wants British companies to arm the Islamic rebels in order to help them to overthrow the Syrian regime. According to the Guardian newspaper, Tory party officials stated that the Prime Minister now wants to put every possible measure to remove Assad "back on the table".

Cameron was in the region on a mission to hawk military hardware to middle eastern despots when he visited the Zaatari Syrian refugee camp in Jordan.  Cameron cited the "appalling stories" of suffering as his reason for trying to escalate the bloody civil war by selling British made weapons to one side of the conflict.

There are so many problems with this "we must arm the rebels to end the suffering" justification narrative it is literally mind boggling.

The unarmed prisoners of war in this picture were machine gunned to death.
 The UK Prime Minister David Cameron now wants to allow British arms companies
  to provide weapons to the Islamic fanatics that committed this war crime.

The first criticism is that funnelling arms into a conflict zone in order to put an end to human suffering is akin to pouring petrol onto a campfire because you don't want the wood to burn. You would really have to be an idiot to be taken in by the argument that arming one side of a conflict would reduce the level of human suffering more than efforts to enforce an arms embargo on both sides and to seek diplomatic solutions. It is repeatedly claimed that Iran and Russia are arming the Syrian side, however little mention is made in the western mainstream media of where the rebel forces are obtaining their weapons (or their soldiers for that matter). The fact is, that the rebels are being funded and armed by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey (all recipients of British arms). Any attempt to bypass weapons embargoes to provide British arms directly to the rebel forces would certainly give a strong and clear signal to Assad's allies that openly supporting one side of the conflict with weapons is now a completely legitimate strategy.

The next criticism is that the argument that the UK should be providing arms to the rebels shows a distinct lack of understanding of (or concern about) who the rebels actually are. The rebel forces do have many Syrian fighters, but there are plenty of foreign Islamic militants too, including Iraqi Al Qaida, and Islamic militias from Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. It is truly remarkable to see the UK lurch from "The War on Terrorism" to arguing in favour of providing weapons to exactly the same international terrorist brigade, this time engaged in a bloody civil war that the Assad regime rightly describe as a terrorist insurrection led by foreign Islamic militants.

It shows a disgraceful level of British hypocrisy that our leaders would engage in a decade long occupation of Afghanistan in order to "stamp out terrorism", then fund and support terrorist groups in Libya and argue the case to do exactly the same for the Islamic terrorist groups in Syria. This is not to say that I support the fallen Qaddafi regime in Libya or the dictatorial Assad regime in Syria. It is a simple observation that when Islamic militants fight against British and American interests, they are "terrorists" that must be eradicated, but when they fight against Libyan or Syrian interests they are "heroes" that must be armed and supported. If Cameron can't understand how ugly this hypocrisy looks to the Islamic world, he must be suffering from some severe form of DoubleThink.

So Cameron's "argument" is that because he has heard first hand accounts of the suffering of anti-Assad refugees in Jordan, the right course of action is to arm the anti-Assad militants and, in theory, bring an end to the conflict. I've already explained why this strategy would probably just end up escalating and intensifying the conflict by giving the green light to pro-Assad outsiders to openly arm the Syrian regime too, however there is another important factor, and one that Cameron and the mainstream British media tend to overlook. There is plenty of suffering on the other side too. Take the postal workers that were thrown off the roof of a high rise building in Aleppo or the bleeding and clearly tortured prisoners that were machine gunned to death in front of a baying mob of Islamic fanatics there in July (WARNING direct link to graphic video). There was another brutal execution of clearly surrendered prisoners in Saraqeb, which happened just a few days before Cameron started demanding that British arms companies be allowed to provide weapons to the very groups responsible for these grotesque massacres. The UN have described these extra-judicial killings as war crimes, yet David Cameron is desperate to allow British arms companies to sell weapons to the people responsible. Are we sure that arming war criminals that have engaged in countless massacres of surrendered prisoners and civilians is actually going to "reduce the suffering"?

We should fund the Islamic militias in Syria
because funding the Islamic militias in Afghanistan
during the 1980s worked so bloody well didn't it?

Another factor to consider is the disastrous consequences of previous attempts by western forces to provide arms and support to Islamic fanatics. In the 1980s the CIA funded the Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan in order to fight a proxy war against the Soviet Union. One of these Mujahideen fighters was a certain Osama Bin Laden, who was still being lavishly praised by the Western media in 1993 as a freedom fighter and a hero. This case alone is enough to make a strong argument that the direct provision of arms and support to Islamic fanatics can have extremely serious unintended long-term consequences. To see the UK and the USA engaged in supporting another proxy-war (via the western client states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey) because the interests of the Islamic militias once again align with the interests of the West should be utterly shocking to anyone that still believes the absurd "War on Terrorism" narrative. What level of cognitive bias does it take for someone to support the campaign against Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan and to also want to provide material support to an Islamic terrorist uprising in Syria?

Another argument against Cameron's "we must arm the rebels to end the suffering" narrative is that the story of Cameron becoming overwhelmed with sympathy for the plight of the Syrian people is just not believable. Given that his government is steadfastly refusing to stop the Atos DLA disability witch-hunt, at least until an inquiry has been held into the fact that 73 disabled people a week are dying after being declared "fit for work" shows that he is not even capable of empathy towards the most vulnerable of his own countrymen and their families. What would make anyone believe that he is capable of greater empathy towards a bunch of foreigners?

Cameron's lame justification narrative for his desire to arm the rebels is so full of gaping flaws (including the fact that it doesn't even make sense at the most fundamental level) it is astonishing. The narrative that "we must arm the rebels to end the suffering" is clearly just a hastily cobbled together smokescreen to obscure Cameron's real reasons for wanting to bypass the EU arms embargo.

When we consider what Cameron's real motivations are, it is important to remember exactly what he was in the region to do. He went to the middle east to help British arms companies broker contracts with pro-western despotic regimes such as the UAE, Oman, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. That last name is very significant, as mentioned earlier, Saudi Arabia is one of the major sources of arms and funds to the Syrian uprising.

This brings us to Cameron's real reason for wanting to fund the rebels. He's seen what an enormous amount of money is flowing into Syria from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with the blessing of the United States, and he wants to ensure that British arms dealers get a lucrative slice of this disgusting Syrian blood pie.

See also 
  
What is... a justification narrative?
 

  Tory policy: All narrative, no substance
   
The contrasting fates of Alan Turing and Lord Sempill
  
What is... confirmation bias?