The Judge RANTS!
Date: 04/02/12
The Death Of Decency
The major problem I have with writing about something which truly angers me is that that self-same anger which drives me to write also prevents me from being able to think straight and put things exactly as I would wish. Also, my typuing foes all iver the placefg...
Such is the case when considering the Régime's 'reforms' of the benefit system as they apply to the sick and disabled. That one of the richest countries on the planet could even contemplate having the chronically ill and crippled in dire material straits in the first place, let alone deliberately planning to make their situation even worse is surely a stain on the conscience of anyone who is part of that society...except that the propaganda war has been fought with characteristic viciousness by the State and by media who have now - more than at any time in living memory - become nothing more than 'embedded' reporters to the forces in power at any given moment. That war has led to claimants being decried and dismissed as 'malingering scroungers', and to a concomitant increase in verbal and physical attacks on disabled people.
As I said, I lack sufficient detachment to be able to do justice to my anger with - and contempt for - those who are pushing these wicked measures through, and to those amongst the media (print and broadcast alike - shame on you forever, BBC!) who have enabled them.
Fortunately for me, there are those in the forefront of the campaign against this rampant inhumanity who can write with passion about what they are in the midst of. Kaliya Franklin is one of those who spent many months putting together a report (officially called Responsible Reform, but known colloquially as 'The Spartacus Report') which exposes the lies behind the Régime's policies.
As the votes to stop those odious policies failed this past week (the Régime using a procedural device called 'financial privilege' - as compact a summing up of Conservative Party ideology as anything - to overturn amendments made in the House Of Appointees), in the following piece Kaliya, with a combination of passion and utter despair, provides us with a summing-up - and a dreadful warning. Read it. And then weep for what we have allowed our society to become:
