Dear Claire,
I wasn’t going to write
this quickly after yesterday, but reading the papers this morning revealed
something the DWP have sneaked through, hoping it would go unnoticed in the
general post-election noise.
Doctor Death (as I shall refer to IDS from now on) and the DWP has revealed it
is cutting a scheme to help disabled people into work. In an announcement on
its website, the DWP have said they’re ‘looking’ at capping the £108million
Access to Work fund, which helps people and employers cover costs of
disabilities that could be a barrier to work. The biggest single users are
people with hearing and seeing difficulties.
I like the word ‘looking’.
I don’t suppose they’re ‘looking’ at it in order to increase it, do you?
Other things reported in
the paper (The Independent, should you be interested) include raising the 40p
tax threshold to £50,000, as well as scrapping the 45p tax rate for the highest
earners.
So the cleaners haven’t
even finished decontaminating no. 10 after Cameron’s last stay, and already we’re
making life easier for the highest earners, whilst kicking disabled people’s
chances of getting into work into the long grass.
When will the Tories get
it into their expensively-educated thick heads that some of us are fine with
the existing tax laws, if it means there’s more money to spend where it’s
really needed, such as the Access to Work fund mentioned above?
There was a very apt, if
depressing, analogy for someone voting Tory in the paper. If you had a room
with 50 people in it, and you offered all of them £100, or you offered one of
them £5,000, but the rest of the people got nothing, the person taking the
£5,000 would vote Tory.
At a local level, may I
just say how grateful we all are for your winsome little “Thank you” notices
put up over your election banners. We really aren’t worthy, so we’re all
overcome with your generosity of spirit. A nice touch Claire.
Let’s end today’s letter
with a very apt quote from Disraeli in 1845: “A Conservative Government is an organised hypocrisy”.
It’s already started hasn’t it Claire?
Polly
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