The Telegraph deserves some credit today. It runs a heartbreaking story about the reality of life on benefits, of the sort both the Conservative and Labour parties want to be “tough” on. It’s a piece of gripping, truthful and hard-hitting journalism, highly and properly critical of the party the paper steadfastly supports. Hats off to the author.
Then you read the comments.
“How sad! To think that some of these people may actually have been tempted to look for work! Unconscionable! They are not getting enough free money! How sad. Perhaps we could encourage them to commit suicide.”
“Why not go abroad to work? I did. Use some initiative. Stop waiting for the govt to do everything for you.”
“The cause of her problems is a lack of job. The lack of a job is thanks to the minimum wage, which basically prices her out of the (weak) local job market. New Labour knew this of course, and implemented the national minimum wage in order to win votes from thick but well-meaning lefties in London at the expense of labourers in the North. They let in the foreigners to work in the grey economy for less than the minimum wage in order to keep up the pretence.”
“Bet she has a TV Licence and probably Sky.”
“My generation relied on family if they were in dire straits. The family then ”helped” them back into employment pdq. Why do people expect total strangers (ie struggling taxpayers) to deny their own children’s needs to pay claimants to do nothing?”
“The obvious way to do this is introduce caravan sites for the low-paid or workless.”
“So she had a subsidised house for two years and lived with a partner for decades, both major money savers. And she didn’t save a bean? No sympathy.”
“Why doesn’t she join the RAF Reserves for extra money…stop wallowing in self pity and get off your arse.”
“This is what being a Tory is all about.”
“It is uncomfortable to live on £53 a week? Good.”
“Fifty pounds a week is ample for an adult and three small children to eat excellently and have clothes replaced.”
“i feel really sorry for those in dire need of money to survive what i have a problem with is those who will not work or try to work we have all met them in the local pub on the weekend getting pissed out of their brains i know people who claim incapacity for being too fat to work and one who gets disability for being a heavy drinker? i do not pay my tax and ni for these people do we allow these types to plunder our money????”
“If we didn’t have millions and millions of “new settlers” we might stand a fighting chance!! If only!”
“The problem that people in this type of situation seem to have is a complete lack of initiative. They can’t expect other people to find or create work for them but need to identify their talents and go to market and flog them to people willingly buying them.”
“I am sorry for any genuine unemployed. But remember the grasshopper and the ants. It was all such fun out every weekend or more pissing it up on drinks at £x a pop. Off to warm climes to behave like a yob for several weeks a year. No saving. No longterm view. Ahh youth. Then no job. ” I havn’t got any money, Nanny State please help” Sorry, no.”
“What a load of rubbish, if Ms Garrity has a 2:1 degree in health and social care why is she sitting watching the traffic go by? If my local paper is anything to go by the country is crying out for people with her qualifications and as for getting only £53 per week to meditate, yeah, right!”
“it’s the classic bleeding heart story you see at times like this – find the most extreme case you can and make as if this were the norm. It’s the sort of stuff you get on the BBC quite frequently.”
“Get a job. then it wont be £53 a week will it ?”
“having worked my entire life I struggle to see the difficulty in getting a job! I dont believe anyone when they say they can’t. Where I come from jobs are a plenty if your prepared to get your hands a bit dirty!”
“Beveridge meant that welfare to be a temporary measure for those who are sick or unemployed and have paid contributions. Now it is a lifestyle choice for millions who have paid little in or nothing at all and for the Labour party who gain their votes. Just like the Mafioso who control millions in other countries.”
That’s just from the first few pages. Comments are pouring in faster than we can read them, most in similar vein. And remember, this is the Telegraph, the relatively human end of the Tory spectrum. Imagine what it’d be like in the Express or the Daily Mail, then tell us again how Scottish social attitudes aren’t different to English ones.
As someone once said – we’ve got to get out of this place.
You been under a rock? Telegraph has comments every bit as bad as the mail. Rothschilds will be invoked if not already.
There is a certain irony to the Telegraph finally picking up there are real issues to these reforms – issues that will impact very badly on the middle classes, who now only need one earner to fall seriously ill for them to fall without a safety net, as well as the already-poorest. But also on the business classes, who rely on people spending money to keep them in the lifestyles to which they’ve become accustomed. Only to find it’s too late as their readers, tabloid readers, and people generally are now so ill-informed – by them – there is no pulling them back
These reforms are economically and socially illiterate, as well as amoral and the product of supreme ignorance and arrogance from the very richest among us. They will have huge repercussions on many of the same ignorant bigots who read the Telegraph and Daily Mail. To be honest, that’s the only consolation in them.
I agree with everything except for “sub-human” in the title I would replace it with “sociopathic” Regrettably they are all too human.
The most depressing thing about the sample of comments is that these can’t all be the work of so-called ‘trolls’. These attitudes are sincerely held by ‘real’ people who feel no shame in attaching their names to such filth.
They’re more to be pitied than condemned – can you imagine seeing the world, as they do? Looking upon fellow citizens as nothing more than a disposable annoyance?
We have a chance to prove that ‘common decency’ is alive and well in our communities – the proof, when it comes, will be emphatic.
The benefits comments are horrendous and make me feel sick that these people call themselves human,thecomments aimed at the Scots are also ignorant and insulting. Very very anti Scottish yet they still make Scots the bad guys with their supposed anti English. How can we class ourselves as British when thank the Lord we would never treat fellow humans down on their luck in the same disgusting tone as many of those down south. That’s why we are Scottish,not British.
How do you know commenters are all English?
“How do you know commenters are all English?”
As already noted on Twitter, I’m not going to waste my breath trying to reason with anyone so epically stupid that they think I’m a misogynist homophobe. Because if you’re prepared to believe that, any sort of logic is going to be lost on you, and I’m not in the mood for idiot trolls.
Yep, disgusting. Maybe Alex Salmond should introduce emergency legislation giving the Scottish Parliament ( if it doesn’t already have it) the power to override local authorities, on this issue, to compel them not to evict.
No doubt some would brand him a dictator (again) but I think he would attain Kudos from the majority of Scots. He could state that Labour run councils have had ample opportunity. If Lamont can’t/won’t control their own people, then he will, for the benefit of the most vaunerable in society.
Shocking. Absolutely shocking.
Also I think the title is very apt. For blue, red and yellow tories.
Very shocking indeed. I just hope none of the commenters get made redundant. Then they could be subject to the bedroom tax and realise it is not a lifestyle choice for millions.
Rev – I get where you are but getting angry will not help anyone, it only increases prejudice, jealousy and hatred – getting in the way of any coherent and inclusive solution to the real problems in UK politics – that bascially UKOK politics are now verging on a fascist plutocracy.These people are ignorant, angry and scared, they do not understand why and so it is much easier to scapegoat someone else to project their own fears onto. Blaming someone else is always far ‘easier’ than accepting you are part of the cause for other’s suffering and pain. This article rips at their self belief that people bring poverty on themsleves, the poor are ‘scroungers’, they should just ‘get on their bike and find a job’ even if it renders them homeless.It is highly dangerous to them as it directly attacks their unfounded prejudices and asks them to question their politics of greed.
Yup! These are the very same people that elect “our” government!
I have a friend who may shortly become an ex-friend. He is a shop steward with the GMB. I have no doubt that he would agree with most of these comments. L
The comments are awful and indicative of how this ‘great union’
of ours has changed attitudes since the 40’s & 50’s.
Rather than be supportive and sympathetic towards those
in dire straits we have become this bitter and twisted nation
of condemnation of the poor, weak and vulnerable.
That these comments come from (as already mentioned)
so-called ‘normal’ people leaves me disgusted.
I only hope that despite all the odds (lies, scaremongering etc)
that the people of Scotland wake up and vote Yes in 2014.
It is so much more than party politics that we need to do this
as these appalling, wicked comments show.
Slightly O/T ,but only slightly , one of the biggest obstacles to Independence and ridding our selves of the Tories forever is BBC Scotland.
Newsnet in its leading article today is promoting a march in May to demonstrate not against the bias (whatever you do ,do not mention the bias is the line) instead to complain about job cuts in BBC Scotland.
I have expressed my disgust at this cowardly action , we Nationalists have too often tip toed about matters so as not to offend and hope that by being good guys the MSM and BBC will suddenly behave in a fair and balanced manner.
That is a nonsense they will never be anything but biased against our movement and our aims.
Nicola Sturgeons fantastic slap down of Jackie Baillie last week is exactly the type of attitude we should start showing.
Let us stop being nicey nicey to these dishonest broadcasters and media outlets.
I am on a limited income and would like to be able to donate to all the Scottish blogs.
I am glad when I made my choice, I chose WOS over Newsnet which more and more is becoming a replica of all that it and the rest of us in Independence movement despise in media coverage.
I will march in protest against BBC bias every day of the week .
I will not march like a goody two shoes, sycophantic, nicey nicey sweaty sock to help keep in work the very people who daily are complicit in lying about my nation and the YES Campaign.
“These reforms are economically and socially illiterate, as well as amoral and the product of supreme ignorance and arrogance from the very richest among us. They will have huge repercussions on many of the same ignorant bigots who read the Telegraph and Daily Mail. To be honest, that’s the only consolation in them.”
Exactly. And when these “repercussions” come for them, there will be no one left to speak out. Only the very wealthy elite will be immune and the rest of us better get used to erosion of pay and working conditions, nose-diving living standards and dwindling public services. There is part of me that would love to see their faces when the penny drops that the elite see them in the same way they see “welfare scroungers”. However, most of all, I would like to see Scotland tell these Tories to GTF for good and we can build a Scottish society that supports its people rather than one that sees some as being more worthy than others.
Roll on September 2014.
Yes, go out and find a job, I went into the Jobcentre to ask if there were jobs with them as I had an extensive knowledge of work requirements. I was told they were shedding 50000 jobs over the next two years, now how am I supposed to compete with that?
I worked all my life until I injured my knee which stopped me climbing ladders, walking up and down stairs, walking over rough ground and kneeling down, a basic requirement for an Electrician.
Since then I have lost all my savings, most of the possessions I had gotten through working for them, all trying to keep up with the bills. I was made homeless and only because I have more health issues now, than I can count, I got a one bedroom ground floor flat (Like hens teeth around here). I get £71 for everything, electricity, insurance, food etc (I don’t drink alcohol or smoke, I cant afford it) and the government think I have money left over to gallivant around the countryside looking for a job. I cant even get on my bike as I cannot ride one due to a gas explosion injury. I want a job, but even though the government declare me “Fit for Work”, I am not fit too work.
Forty two years working and for what to sit here freezing my nuts off because I cant afford to buy enough electricity (I pay 1.69ppu more than the rest of the UK and my power comes from water) to do all I need, so I Heat or Eat and the warmest places in my house is in the shower or in my bed.
We keep getting told we are Better Together, well your not doing a very good job convincing me, we are!!!
You may want to add your signature to this petition.
https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/iain-duncan-smith-iain-duncan-smith-to-live-on-53-a-week?utm_source=action_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=21842&alert_id=eSvrMIKqSL_uoPPuMEYDF
“You may want to add your signature to this petition.”
I signed that when it was still below 1000 😀
I was reading a book on Keynes recently, and it was interesting to read that there has not been full employment in the UK since the 1970s. Therefore, in effect there has been structural unemployment since then. However, since that period we have had almost constant tabloid campaigns denigrating the unemployed and poor as scroungers and benefit spoungers. Why has there not been more debates about the lack of jobs? I can only assume that the neo-Liberals in the Conservative and New Labour parties are happy for the denigration of the most vulnerable and the least powerful in society to continue.
Scottish people are not that different.
My daughter has had various periods of unemployment over the past 30 years. I’ll give you some of the things said to her in the streets, offices, and meetings around Glasgow.
*You won’t get a job until you get some education*
*Don’t you want to work?*
*Haven’t you thought about immigrating? Why don’t you do that?*
*If you got yourself a degree, you’d get a job easy*
*It’s your own fault you haven’t got a job. You should just lie on your CV*
*Your problem is you don’t know how to write a CV. Do you have one? I’ll show you. *
*Your lazy. You get plenty on the dole, that’s what’s wrong*
*Can’t be bothered?*
*All you have to do is apply to the police force. *
My daughter, decided all on her own at 13 she’d get a weekend job. From the day she was legally permitted to do so, at 14, she had a job. At 16, she got herself a full-time job. Then she was made redundant. What did my daughter do? She was out and at college before the redundancy notice of 90 days was complete. Before we knew it, she was accepted by one of the best universities in the world. She slogged her backside off to the extent we were worried she’d make herself physically ill with the long long hours she put in to her studies.
While she was at university, she managed to find herself a position in a lab for a summer. This wasn’t part of her course. She simply wanted to experience what it was like to work in a well-funded lab, unlike the labs we have here in the UK. When she graduated, she was offered 5 different PhD places. Graduate unemployment was sky high that year and my daughter feared she’d be on the dole, all those years of study wasted. She took up one of the offers. The long long hours continued – a 60 hour week for my daughter was a *light week* When she graduated, again, graduate unemployment was high and she couldn’t find an employer willing to hire her in the UK. Did she sit on her backside? No. She immigrated. Most people didn’t want her to go. They told her and told her to stay but she went saying the UK didn’t want her working, and the UK didn’t want her on the dole; There is no pleasing people, and those people never have the decency to ask my daughter what would please her.
When her contract in the States ended she came home. Guess what she got? Another slap in the face of high unemployment. And worse, every employer told her she was *too clever* or over-qualified.
She went back to uni, knowing employers would likely punish her for it, but felt keeping her brain functioning was far better than rotting on the dole.
With three degrees under her belt, my daughter ultimately rotted on the dole for two years before she finally found a job in Scotland. A minimum wage lacky job where she was relentlessly bullied. That company folded and my daughter was back on the dole. The dole offered to send her on a course to learn to use a computer – as she says *Mum, scientists in Scotland obviously have never seen a computer – we need a guy wi no Highers – up the dole to tell us what those things we buy for our own homes in the 1980s are!* A senior member of staff at the dole office spent an hour trying to convince my daughter part time work making pizza was a *fabulous career*. All my daughter could do was sit there and nod – if she’d disagreed, she’d have been sanctioned, left to starve in Scotland for daring to know better than what is no more than a nasty immoral woman we pay to bully the poor. A couple of weeks later, was the cherry on the pie. The people at the dole office offered my daughter a course in basic literacy *you never know it might help. Don’t you want help?* was the day my daughter signed off the dole, decided to take up an offering Africa. Better to immigrate than have people who can not read a CV, who have no idea what a PhD is, who have no idea what science is (and this, in Scotland too!) drive you to the depths of misery and depression. Within weeks she had her bags packed and was off to Africa. My daughter has gone to volunteer in Africa. She earns nothing more than her keep, but at least she is out of the poisonous atmosphere of the UK.
A significant number of my daughter’s graduates have left the UK and will never return. My daughter will never be back. I’ve lost a daughter, my daughter has lost her career in science, her dreams and any sense Scotland and the UK is a decent, progressive talented country (she says Scotland does nothing but beat the crap out of people because the people in Scotland are too unwilling to consider doing anything else) and Scotland has lost yet another damn good scientist.
No one in the UK deserves my daughter or her friends in the science world. She’s IS absolutely too good for this rotten little island and the countless mindless morons who inhabit it. To go from academic research in science to being judged illiterate simply on the basis of not having a job. Enlightened nation? Obviously not.
Yes, I am angry and I am disgusted and I do miss my daughter more than anyone will ever know.
“Scottish people are not that different.”
There are absolutely such brainless bigots in Scotland. But I think it’s fair to say there are fewer, because we haven’t voted Tory in 60 years. That Labour are no better now isn’t the electorate’s fault – for UK elections there’s simply no alternative. But Scotland never asked for Thatcherism, and has never endorsed it.
Telegraph sales in rest of the UK aprox. 530,000, telegraph sales in Scotland approx 20,000, rough estimate on the back of a fag packet, 96% of the comments are not from Scotland.
“Telegraph sales in rest of the UK aprox. 530,000, telegraph sales in Scotland approx 20,000, rough estimate on the back of a fag packet,”
Yep. Actual figures are 541,000 to 18,000. Around 3% of the Telegraph’s sales are in Scotland.
If money really is the “be all and end all” and if it is such a problem that the unemployed get “so much” when compared with someone who works then why don’t they bring in the Living Wage? Surely that would address both problems at the same time? Or is it just elitism and they really don’t give a f***!
Hail Alba.
@Bob Howie
@Ellen
Thanks to both of you. Thanks for sharing that. It could not have been easy for either of you. I just wanted to offer my sympathy and to wish both of you good fortune in the future.
Your comments should galvanise every right thinking person to push for a huge Yes vote in 2014.
Tories do not live in the real world.
A lot of these people are probably not wealthy Tories but only a couple of steps away from being in the same boat themselves. It is a strange phenomenon.
It reminds me of the scene in Mississippi Burning when Gene Hackman’s character is talking about how important it was for poor white people to feel they were better than poor black people, that was what got them into the KKK. Basically the line he used was if you’re no better than a nigger then who are you better than?
I think it’s the same mentality. It’s aspirational politics gone horribly wrong, when people aspire simply to be better than the people who are only marginally different to them but who they freely categorise as scum.
To divide and conquer the population you set them against each other. A hopeless underclass is being created because the hopeless don’t vote. And those who are upwards of working but struggling, do vote, are being told to hate the hopeless. A club is being created where if you’re working and paying tax then there is a promise that your life is going to better. But to be in that club then all compassion for the poor and hopeless must be replaced by hate, animosity and even cruelty. The promise is a vote for the government that will ensure that your tax money won’t go to the hated poor, it will be invested in making you and your family’s life better. A sort of twisted jam tomorrow with a boot in the face of the poor for good measure. Less people who are inclined to vote the better, they just want make sure it’s the right kind of people who are willing to vote.
It is only a matter of time before we have mass social unrest and riots …
It will only take a final straw such as a state funeral for Thatcher costing millions… She must be about 88 now. Or for Westminster to do something underhand that causes a problem for Sep 2014 or for Salmond.
Independence and a Socialist agenda are converging.
So, we have a very angry people on one hand.
And manipulative, hegemonic Unionist parties and government on the other.
It’s a recipe for anarchy.
I think the YES voters / organisations are seriously underestimating the lengths that Westminster will go to, to ensure Scotland don’t achieve independence. The UK cannot afford to let Scotland go.
@Ericmac …
I can’t see social unrest happening. In Scotland we have a real choice, independence next year with a competent government. In England the SE bubble continues to be backed unequivocally by the Tory government and I can’t see any unrest happening in the nothern cities any time soon because Labour have the same policies as the Tories and Lib Dems and the electorate really have no choice but to bear it. One thing that Blair did was to turn most of the English population into Tory voters whether they realised it or not.
I quote, from the comments:
”
ronald alexander mcdonald says:
6 April, 2013 at 2:22 pm
Yep, disgusting. Maybe Alex Salmond should introduce emergency legislation giving the Scottish Parliament ( if it doesn’t already have it) the power to override local authorities, on this issue, to compel them not to evict.
Well, does’nt this say everything?……..even now, the Scottish Goveernment has certain emergency powers, it could use, the question is, !Why Not”?
We need to know why not.
Thanks to both of you. Thanks for sharing that. It could not have been easy for either of you. I just wanted to offer my sympathy and to wish both of you good fortune in the future.
Your comments should galvanise every right thinking person to push for a huge Yes vote in 2014.
This.
And the depressing observation that any of the commenters on the Telegraph article would simply dismiss both cases as one-offs and insist that everyone else on benefits was more like Mick Philpot.
@Ericmac
I have to disagree with Dcanmore. When there is no longer any reason or purpose to express yourself at the ballot box. When the media is demonising you. And you have nowhere left to turn you get very angry. Civil unrest becomes an attractive proposition. The final straw need not be anything like a state funeral for Thatcher. As demonstrated by the last round of riots south of the border anything can start them off. Although I would not wish any harm to befall our friends south of the border. However bearing in mind that they at least get the government that they vote for. I can see England becoming a tinderbox this summer or the next. I only hope that here in Scotland we can contain the anger. We are very lucky in that we have at least some hope and a sympathetic government.
If on top of riots we have Westminster up to its old tricks. As in some scandal or other. And let’s not forget their capacity to shock us. If they put as much imagination and effort into running the country as they do stuffing their own pockets with our money we would not be in this mess in the first place.
If these events were to unfold in summer 2014 I think there would be large shift to the yes vote.
“Events dear boy Events” as I think Harold Macmillan once said.
@Jiggsbro
So sad but true!
I’m not generally a conspiracy theorist, but I reckon it’s possible that there’s a bit of concerted astroturfing going on.
The Tories seem determined to make the British public regard all benefit claimants as “undeserving parasites”. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me to find that party activists are feeding the mythology to the commentariat .
If this was the first time I visitted this blog it would be the last and I wouldn’t have got past the headline. Word to the wise Rev., choose your words, anything inflammatry will detract from the well researched content in here and possibly deter floating/prospective yes voters.
Word to the wise Rev., choose your words
I agree: there was no need to label these people as ‘Tory’. That’s simply offensive. </irony>
“There are absolutely such brainless bigots in Scotland. But I think it’s fair to say there are fewer, because we haven’t voted Tory in 60 years”
Have to say, I disagree with this Rev. I support independence for Scotland for a lot of reasons. But “we’re much more left wing” is one that’s depressingly not really one of them. Of my various Facebook friends (OK not entirely scientific) who are clearly angry and share a lot of anti-welfare articles, are almost all in England. My Scottish ones are frustratingly and depressingly a-political, especially given the independence referendum.
Sure, we vote Labour, but to me that is a decades old “divide and rule” tactic by Westminster. Labour have a hegemony over Scotland, and Westminster can guarantee apathetic Scots will troop out and vote for them, regardless of how dreadful, how corrupt, how right wing. They’re “not-Tory” therefore OK. You can see that in how angry both Labour and Tory are now at the upstart SNP daring to disrupt their cosy little club.
Most of my social group are middle class and working, and they don’t give a fuck about bedroom tax, and will happily spout the same crap as the Daily Telegraph readers, eg “I’ve worked hard and only have a one bed flat”. Never mind that “one bed flat” is a posh West End tenement costing ten times that of one in an east end estate.
Scotland needs independence. But more importantly, we need a press that isn’t dedicated to demonising the poor, and we need political education on a grand scale. Independence without that will potentially see a Scotland that isn’t much better than the UK. This is one of the big problems we will face post indy, but potentially also in securing indy. Don’t simply assume everyone in Scotland will have sympathy with your headline – most probably won’t, and many may be turned off by it.
btw, I don’t think people generally, in either Scotland or England, would support what was happening if they really knew the truth. This hatred of the poor has been whipped up by politicians and the media. I do think, if Scotland was independent, we wouldn’t have such bloody evil and out of touch politicians as the UK Tories. But I just don’t know. People seem depressingly easily manipulated by right wing shite.
What we need is some decent leadership, willing to stand up and tell people the truth. Thankfully we do have the SNP and radical independence folk up here, and the Scottish government are using guys like Stiglitz. What we need is to hear a lot more from these folk, from Labour for Indy,from persuasive, articulate people putting the other side.
I’ll tell you Rev. Stu how were different! Just like everyone I met at SoSayScotland event we all declared the same things:
a fairer Scotland…
When will we see poverty under our noses? especially child poverty! When will we see a benevolant Scotland?
Only when we vote Yes in 2014.
The other thing I would add is that, as someone frustrated with the left/right; rich/poor; divide and rule politics of the UK, one of the things that appeal to me about the SNP is that is appears to point to a different path – one we cannot take unless or until we are independent.
That is the Nordic model, where you accept that a strong welfare system is vital for business, but the economy is also vital for a strong welfare state. This is what the UK is missing, with setting everyone against each other. It’s also what depresses me about the left wing anti-indy argument that “a shopworker in Glasgow has more in common with a shopworker in Manchester than he does with the banker down the road”. I disagree with that. We are all far more connected to, and reliant on, our neighbours. Whch is why income inequality is so bad.
We need to move away from this left/right Tory/Labour nonsense. So I don’t think this kind of article helps. Lets have some articles about the impact of welfare reforms, including how slashing what little the poorest have to spend will cripple the economy and local businesses. Let’s not add to setting people against each other.
It’s quite incredible that anyone – in light of what the topic is – could possibly raise any objection to the headline being used here. I’ve heard punters on the street using ‘worse’ language in relation to local councillors, none of whom is Tory.
The whole argument around ‘bad’ language is a knackered chestnut – if anyone wants to waste time swapping quotes from Kelman etc, let’s go over to Quarantine and do it properly, but please, please let’s get above this anal twitching whenever language is being used to try and convey how much characters like Osborne and his ilk are genuinely despised in Scotland. When it comes to communicating how intense – for some of us – that feeling is right now? the headline could be even stronger.
Cath – My friends north and south, and until recently myself, are all in well paid middle class professional jobs and recognise the ‘bedroom tax’ for what it is as well as the wider mess that is ‘welfare reform’. Maybe when it all affects your friends and their families they’ll change their minds rather than immediatly recognsing the glaring unfairness of it.But tell me are they some of the few scottish tory voters or just well insulated from reality or without empathy for other humans. As someone who has just returned from 20 years down south I can assure you there are many who resent the last and current lot of hateful, spiteful bastards inhabiting the media and politics.
“are they some of the few scottish tory voters or just well insulated from reality or without empathy for other humans.”
Just ill-informed as, sadly, many people are. I don’t think I know any Tories – north or south of the border. But many, many folk really don’t appreciate how people on benefits live and seem to have bought the “they’re all at it” line. And, more worryingly, that includes many on benefits!
It was noticeable working in Citizens Advice that people, when told after years of work and NI they were entitled to nothing at all, would spout tabloid bullshit about how “immigrants” and “others” were getting mansions, flat screen TVs etc and get angry rather than realise that, actually, it’s all bullshit.
In terms of right vs left, if you plot vote shares versus party stance for past elections using the political compass (down the bottom for historical):
link to politicalcompass.org
You will find that Scotland is generally centrist and modestly liberal as has been that way since at least back to WW1; by that I mean left vs right, libertarian vs authoritarian always have it hanging around the middle. Which is, incidentally, like Norwary and Scandinavia historically. It has good left-right balance. SNP thus represent it very well being a centrist (slightly left-leaning) reasonably liberal party.
In contrast, England is more right-authoritarian (explaining the higher tory vote), however not nearly as much as the governments it (the UK) UK gets.
This is reflected in Scotland being a more equal country than the UK as a whole, as shown by it’s historically lower GINI equality index numbers.
link to scotland.gov.uk
I don’t think you could argue that Scotland is naturally more (left) centrist than England as it is hard to say what causes this, but it is more centrist/left and liberal for whatever reasons. That’s why it doesn’t vote Tory in a big way.
But more importantly, we need a press that isn’t dedicated to demonising the poor
True, but we also need politicians who don’t demonise the poor either. Lamont’s ‘something for nothing’ nonsense was just jumping on the Westminster neo-liberal, scapegoat the victims, divisive, destructive bandwagon. Plenty of SLAB MSPs look south, see what works for Labour down there and are happy to adopt their style and rhetoric. I’m hoping that making North British Labour into genuinely Scottish Labour might change them for the better, but I think it will take a while for them to adapt to the new realities.
Ok, this has been asked before, but here it is again:
How do you KNOW these comments are from Tory voters?
How do you KNOW these comments are from English people?
How do you KNOW they are even from people who even buy the Telegraph?
For that matter, how do you KNOW they don’t emanate from a reverse-astroturfing op being carried out by the CyberNat community?
“True, but we also need politicians who don’t demonise the poor either.”
Agree totally. And we need a media and politicians that aren’t in each others bloody pockets. We need both to hold each other to account where they are out of line, and to provide leadership against each others interests and propaganda.
For that matter, how do you KNOW they don’t emanate from a reverse-astroturfing op being carried out by the CyberNat community.
Don’t worry; you’re not paranoid. They are out to get you.
😉
“How do you KNOW these comments are from Tory voters?”
They could as easily be from Labour voters or politicians. That’s the depressing thing.
“For that matter, how do you KNOW they don’t emanate from a reverse-astroturfing op being carried out by the CyberNat community.”
I suspect Cybernat Black ops are far too busy being Better Together right now.
Hermione
How does one KNOW (your emphasis) anything EVER? In context, the comments are anonymous online offerings in a Tory-leaning site, reflecting an English (see circulation) ‘right-wing’ view of the world. They are also in keeping with other Telegraph comments threads.
KNOWING exactly who wrote them is less relevant than the fact they reflect that sad way of thinking and the visceral reaction is understandable.
You are technically correct that we know not who wrote these specific posts, but it does not negate the message.
Scottish Conservative Unionist Member
Southern Conservative Unionist Member
They are all SCUM to me
@Hermionie
You are good at asking questions. How about answering one. I posted the following question to you on the Bombs not benefits article. I would like for you to give your comment here and now.
The Man in the Jar says:
4 April, 2013 at 9:42 pm
While the Archdeaconess is here. Would she perhaps like to comment on George Osbournes linking of the Philpot Murder trial to “benefit scroungers” using the deaths of six innocent children to score cheap political points. Come on Hermionie. You’re a good Tory please give us your opinion.
@ Jiggsbro
Lamont’s ‘something for nothing’ nonsense was just jumping on the Westminster neo-liberal, scapegoat the victims, divisive, destructive bandwagon
I agree but more than that I honestly believe that her cuts commission is all about getting her boss elected in England. Bring Scotland into line with England so that they can spout their One Nation shite.
We’re not one nation we are a collection of four nations each with distinct histories, politics and cultures. If Lamont and the British Labour Party get their way we will be well and truly anglicized.
Lamont opposed devolution, people shouldn’t forget that.
@Doug-
I suspect Hermione is trying to suggest that WE (as nasty cybernats) sent those comments into the Telegraph.
Sorry to post unrelated message but I haven’t seen any comments on this site re the FAC protest today – got quite a prominent placing on BBC and Herald newspaper. 3000+ supposedly attended, and lots of anti Scottish Government future Fascist state comments doing the rounds on certain message boards and comments threads. Anyone fancy writing an article on this and relevance to independence vote? Is it relevant?
“Anyone fancy writing an article on this and relevance to independence vote? Is it relevant?”
Only in as much as a bunch of hot-heads seem to be being used by those who want to ignite sectarianism in order to better divide and rule and keep Scotland in its place. If anyone knows better, I’d like to hear it.
would generally agree, but it does worry me slightly. Tribalism is pretty deep rooted in the human psyche as I discovered in Lebanon and very easily leveraged it seems.
Further to my previous comment posted at 8:30pm. Still no answer from Hermionie.
I would like to add however. I notice that Cameron has backed Osbourns linking of the Philpot murder trial to benefit cheats.
The slime just drips off that pair.
Four adults on a quiz show[tonights bbc 1 lottery show]Question: Countries beginning with the letter S,not one answer was Scotland.They would have given a wrong answer if they did, according to Whitakers Almanack 2012.I find this very strange that four people who enter a quiz,with an easy answer knew that this answer was wrong[according to said almanack].
Ianbrotherhood
I knew what she meant 🙂 Just meaning it was a poor deflection. “if it looks like a duck and quacks – it was probably a cybernat…”
I’ve only come onto this thread tonight and having followed the comments from start to finish I’ve come to the conclusion that this article really has brought so many of the wider issues together in one post.
If people didn’t believe in the Agenda For Truth, (Conspiracy Theories), before then this should provide enough indication. There is less difference between those among us who work in reasonably paid jobs and those relying on top up benefits or wholly on benefits and the division created by this stuff is exactly as those controlling the media would have it! Like me, I am sure many of you have seen information, provided through links on this very site, which highlights the real inequality of wealth in society. The very top 1% possesses astronomical wealth while the vast majority of us share comparatively nothing!
The financial system is controlled to keep us all enslaved and living in fear. The politicians and business owners, wealthy as many of them are are only the puppets that perpetuate the system for the elite few. The rewards for the puppets is sufficient to make them believe that their abhorrent policies like those now being visited on the enslaved classes are perfectly acceptable. That’s right they actually believe this stuff is for the greater good. Why? Because they don’t know different!
The masses have moved so far from living by any ethical code to believing all the personality based crap we are fed in the media day in day out that we now actually struggle to agree on the absolutely abhorrent policies being marketed as welfare restructuring. The only thing being restructured is society.
So a YES vote for Scotland is only the start, we need to come together after 2014 and make sure power does come back to the people so that we create more jobs with decent wages so that people can work hard, pay their way and create a thriving economy, it can be done!
Hermione
link to en.wikipedia.org
I assume that a centre right conservative backing newspaper is visited mostly by Tory voters. I also assume that as 96% of the newspaper in question’s sales take place outside Scotland a breakdown of nationality of those commenting on their website is similar in proportion.
Would you care to propose a counter theory that requires less assumptions?
I hate the left right, middle class working class attempt to categorise people, I have in the past voted conservative, never Labour but for the last 25 odd years SNP. We will win the referendum simply because party politics does not come into it, if I have to pay a bit more tax here in the more prosperous North East to help maybe those less fortunate then it is a price worth paying. Nobody wants to pay more in tax but a fair and equal Scotland is worth a few pence in the pound.
@the journeyman-
Hear hear.
Good you can sound a positive note when there’s so much depressing stuff.
The sheer viciousness of what these people are doing to us is hard to comprehend. I’ve long believed that ‘they’ view ordinary citizens as livestock, pure and simple, and give no more thought to disposing of us via wars, ‘austerity’ or other means as a farmer would give to the problem of what to do with a surfeit of diseased poultry.
Ever read The Iron Heel by Jack London? He seemed to anticipate much of what has happened, and is now accelerating. We can’t say we weren’t warned, but the MSM have hardly been at the forefront of sounding the alarm – yesterday, with the HBOS high-heid yins being castigated, the message right across MSM was that these were extraordinarily inept people who somehow got away with gross mismanagement i.e. the ‘bad apple’ narrative we heard in relation to Abu Ghraib, the BBC/Savile outrage etc etc.
A few patsies fall, but their demise causes nary a ripple – the great heist goes on…
@pmcrek
Despite the best efforts of Wikipedia, Occam’s Razor does not state that “among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected”. Wikipedia is simply perpetuating a widespread misapprehension. Occam’s Razor actually says nothing about competing hypotheses at all. It simply says that models (including hypothetical models) should be as simple as possible, only trading simplicity for explanatory ability. It doesn’t say that the simplest model is the correct model, or that the simplest explanation is correct, only that the simplest is the most easily used and that there is no point complicating something that works. When it comes to competing hypotheses, it is of no use in comparing the two, only in critically analysing each, separately. If both work – are logically consistent and explanatory – then the one with fewest assumptions does not ‘win’. Only the one with the fewest unnecessary additions (or assumptions) should be subject to the Razor, and even then the Razor is only used to cut out the unnecessary parts, not the entire hypothesis.
ianbrotherhood
Thanks for the reading suggestion, I haven’t read it but will do. In my search for workable alternatives to where we are today I have been surprised by the information available about monetary systems and more importantly for how long many much respected individuals have written about such things. More pertinent is more recent information highlighting the flaws in fractional reserve systems particularly where the ratios are deregulated in the ways they were. More important is who controls the money system and the recent catastrophe pretty much proves we can’t trust the Government and The Banks!
However, this information is not in the mainstream and you have to ask why wouldn’t our public service broadcaster the BBC produce a detailed documentary like this to inform us? That’s when you realise there is something bigger at work here.
these were extraordinarily inept people who somehow got away with gross mismanagement i.e. the ‘bad apple’ narrative we heard in relation to Abu Ghraib, the BBC/Savile outrage etc etc.
Odd, isn’t? Establishment types gets caught, they’re exceptional cases and they get a slap on the wrist. One pyscho benefit claimant gets caught, he – rightly – get’s life and he’s indicative of the millions on benefits.
“you have to ask why wouldn’t our public service broadcaster the BBC produce a detailed documentary like this to inform us? That’s when you realise there is something bigger at work here”
The same BBC that didn’t bother to inform anyone the NHS in England was being privatised? Certainly.
It struck me tonight though: beyond news, why are our drama series not showing reality anymore? OK, I never watch soaps, so maybe they do. But I’d be willing to bet no one in a soap is suffering from ATOS or welfare reforms – am I right? And there have been no gritty, realist dramas that I’m aware of. Why not? It’s good drama and good stories. And it’s that kind of empathy people get through fiction which gives us compassion for others.
So, if I wrote a gritty drama about ATOS and sent it to the BBC, would it get anywhere? As a writer, I’ve stopped bothering even trying as I assume it wouldn’t. So is that my fault or the BBCs? Should writers be out there writing gritty, realist drama and sending it to the BBC, even if it seems hopeless?
@cath-
You may find this of interest:
link to bilderberg.org
” One pyscho benefit claimant gets caught, he – rightly – get’s life and he’s indicative of the millions on benefits.”
Yes, odd also that someone like, for example, JK Rowling isn’t held up as “a product of the benefits system” especially given she wrote Harry Potter while an unemployed single mother on benefits. How much has that little investment brought in for Britain since? But no, lets forget that and make sure any future JK Rowlings are too busy stacking shelves for free in Poundland to do anything so useless.
Cheers Ian – that might answer all those questions then.
Reading this thread all too depressingly brought The Iron Heel to my mind too.
Essential reading, and for free at link to gutenberg.org or have it read to you by Librivox link to librivox.org
The point that no one seems to want to address here is that the UK parties have a good handle on how these policies will play out. The toryies and lib dems know that there will be no major objection and labour know that starting that they will reverse them would lose them their site in at the next GE. The SNP have a risky strategy that by being vocal in objection to these policies, they(and independance) will become too the silent majority that support, or at least understand the needed for change.
Jiggsbro
The principal states, plurality should not be posited without necessity, and I claim my 5 pounds.
After reading this article I wonder how the Rev will react when he sees the front page of this week’s Scotland on Sunday supplement… link to i.imgur.com
That other bastion of the present-UK’s MSM version of fairness, balance and impartiality, the (Scottish)! Daily Express has on its front page “New blitz on benefit cheats”. (Notice the word “blitz”) The article quotes Iain Duncan Smith at length and, of course demonises those on welfare as “benefit cheats”. I don’t know what the comments afterwards are like – I felt suitably enraged enough after skimming through the ‘article’ without dealing with any more hatred and fuckwittery.
Thank..everything..that Scotland has the chance to remove itself from the evil that men do at Westminster. I do wonder though, if those – less fortunate than us who do have the 2014 referendum – living in the present-UK and cannot escape will reach a breaking-point. I mean, surely a time will come, if the measures being implicated by Westminster continue unabated, when people will say, ‘Fuck this, we’ve had enough!’ and things will start to kick-off. It’s a tinderbox out there. It would only take one spark to set the whole thing off.
I think the British people have been too dumbed down and oppressed by scientifically managed FUD, to ever again make a violent stand against the state. Anyway, do you think the military bases are positioned by accident?
The only hope rUK has for a free and democratic future, is if Scotland votes Yes in 2014. Come on folks, lets do it for our cousins.
Vote Yes in 2014.
Since it’s the Telegraph, I bet a fair proportion of those commenters are currently in receipt of the state pension. Ironic, innit?
Very similar sentiments are now to be found in the Troll columns of that sad remnant of a newspaper, The Hootsmon.
Rev Stu, isn’t this the result of the constant conditioning in the media and from the polticians on the topic of “scroungers, fraudsters, etc.”? It happens pretty much on a daily basis – that the poorest are demonised in a way that reminds me of many a dictatorship-ridden hell-hole of the past.
It is only going to get worse and the poorest will be transformed into a true serf-like class with less than human rights and respect, if this path continues. Every problem will be the fault of them, every failed policy or shortage laid at their feet.
On another thread there was a link to the series of documentaries by Adam Curtis titled “the power of nightmares” in which he demonstrated the rise of a mythology of al-Qaeda to sustain the neo-conservatives in the USA.
It is clear that a similar strategy is in place in the UK with regards to those in the lower quartiles of the economy, and those on “benefits”. The collusion of the media to exaggerate the exceptional situation of a minority of claimants rather than expose the massive ‘fraud’ in the tax system mirrors the same collusion over the ‘war on terror’. We are seeing history repeat itself even as we speak, and NO ONE seems to have the wit or the desire to expose it for what it is.
As others have more eloquently posted here, I have to believe that Scottish voters are more thoughtful and will take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take us away from Westminster and the dysfunctional political union that blights so many lives in Scotland and the rest of the UK. I am in the pessimistic school that thinks that after a NO vote, Scottish political affairs will be returned to Westminster, and the devolution “experiment” dismantled. I see no real will among the new “Political elite” and their big-business pals to allow the discrepancy between what an Independent Scotland could become, and the criminal feudalism that they seem to want to impose across the UK.
There will never be another democratic solution to Scotland’s Independence if the Scots vote to remain dependent on the whim of a corrupt political system after 18 September 2014. How will eyes be opened? For those who didn’t catch it, listen to Saturday’s edition of Good Morning Scotland. There was an early discussion about the benefits changes, and the tone of the pro-change ‘guest’ was (to me at least) so far removed from basic humanity that I wanted to throw the computer out of the window (I was listening on-line).
But THIS is the voice of the current Labour/Conservative/LibDem politicians in Westminster. If we don’t see this and don’t take our chance, we will have no one else to blame.
Sorry, but today I feel quite depressed about what is happening in the UK, and especially Scotland. It didn’t help that the Scots curling team are out of the final 🙁
Jiggsbro said: “One pyscho benefit claimant gets caught…and he’s indicative of the millions on benefits.”
Why wasn’t Fred West considered an example of the working-class boy done good, a self-employed aspirational striver? He came up from nothing, worked hard all his days, and ended up owning his own house and everything!
And surely there can be no better example of a self-made man and entrepreneur than the late Sir Jimmy Savile, OBE?
The comments to this make me feel sick, truly disturbing. It has already been established that many people have no empathy or sympathy even with the unemployed, sick and disabled, they will always hate single parents, especially mothers.
Osborne, who has actually said today that the majority of people agree with his immoral stance on welfare, obviously reads this kind of dross on a daily basis, I wish we could say he is out of touch and not in tune, but, looking at these comments just now they are all singing from the same nasty hymn sheet. Dispicable.
Tories……….doubleplus ungood.