Day 16 - In which hope for a fair society is pretty much abandoned.

Dear Claire,

The first signs of the Tory's new government policies are slowly and stealthily being drip fed to an increasingly dispirited and disenfranchised public.

We watch, with incredulity, as rumblings about increased interest being taken in people that are operating within the law, but not saying what the government would like to hear.

We struggle to understand why the Tories want to withdraw from the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) and scrap the Human Rights Act. This is supposed to be a prerequisite to EU membership, but then of course Dave Snooty is mixing it up with the EU big cheeses currently, trying to get them to agree to him changing the rules.

We see the endless statements about cutting taxes for the hard-working, reducing the threshold for inheritance tax, removing the top rate of tax, increasing the threshold at which people pay the higher rate of income tax. What isn't mentioned is the impact these changes will have on people claiming benefits.

Let's recount the tale of a mother whose son gets a glimmer of hope in the shape of a job:

"They did that to my 20 year old son. He's desperate for a real job and yet they keep sending him on "work experience" and work based "trials", where they work him like a slave then, funnily enough when he's proved his worth, they haven't got a vacancy at this time. Really?

"Then they found him a "job" so he happily signed off and was really excited to start work at last as a landscape gardener. He started on a Monday, on a self-employed contract, which had him digging 12 foot wide 7 foot deep trenches for garden ponds, lifting rocks into skips, but he was happy because he had a job. The following week he was fired for no apparent reason. The employer saying he was in his rights to terminate my son’s contract any time he liked .. Then we found out a week later that this employer had had 3 other lads from the job centre, and he did the exact same thing to them. He gets them to do all the donkey work. The thing is, because my son signed off, it'll take weeks for him to get any money off the DWP, in addition to which they have dealt his self-confidence a massive blow.

"People only see it when it's happening in front of their eyes I suppose ... I feel crushed for him every time he gets a knock back even though they had no intention of offering jobs to any of these lads in the first place ... Disgusting... They should be ashamed but they couldn't give a damn about us."

So when Iain Duncan Smith talks about more people ‘setting themselves up in business’, this is what he means. They’re forced to go self-employed, so the employer pays no NI for them, and the employer can use them as slave labour, and then cut them adrift before they have to make any sort of commitment.

You know this is happening, as do all of us Claire. Your hands, and those of your government, are covered with blood.

This will be my last letter to you, but you can rest assured I will not give up the fight to hold the toxic legacy of this government, in both its first and its second term, to account.

Let's leave this now, so I'll end with the Tory party ABC. Maybe this could be taught in the schools. I'm getting this printed on a tee shirt. Would you like one?

It’s the Tory Party A B C!

A is for Austerity

B is for Benefit sanctions

C is for Corporate tax evasion

D is for David Cameron’s morally bankrupt government

E is for EU referendum disaster

F is for Five more years of this shit

G is for Gideon Osborne’s fiscal incompetence

H is for Housing being sold off

I is for Iain Duncan Smith’s genocide

J is for Justice Secretary Gove wants to bring back hanging

K is for Key policies of evil

L is for Lies in the Manifesto

M is for Murdoch lying in the press

N is for Neoliberalism

O is for Opposing fairer electoral reform

P is for Pickles spending £10k a year on biscuits

Q is for Quietly removing benefits

R is for Removing basic human rights

S is for Slave labour compulsory for benefits

T is for Tax cuts for the wealthy

U is for Unregulated city banks

V is for Voting irregularities

W is for Work capability assessment

X is for eXpenses fraud

Y is for Young unemployed forced to do community service

Z is for Zero hours contracts

That's it Claire, no more letters from this blog, but you haven't heard the last of me, I promise you that.

Remember that lad mentioned above, being dumped in it, by employers using the DWP free labour scheme to get people off benefits, then screw them before they have to make a commitment. Remember him as you fall asleep tonight in your country pile.

Polly