wake_up_bomb wrote:
Merla wrote:
Expenses scandal came and went and it turns out certain people (Baroness Warsi but I bet there are others) are still being dishonest when it comes to money and what they claim because nothing very bad happened to anyone the first time it all came out. A4E and ATOS are supposed to be sorting out benefit 'cheats' (AKA the disabled and sick people on ESA), one is up to its neck in fraud and the other is paid millions to deliver an incompetent service that wastes more money in appeals than it saves in weeding out genuine cheats. And noone except those immediately affected by it bats an eyelash.
I agreed with all of your post, but it's particularly interesting to me how little people care about this. Most people would be in favour of the Work Programme, if you just asked them their opinion off-the-cuff. This affects everyone because it fundamentally changes the relationship between the individual and the State, and it is absolutely disastrous for the value of labour. But it's so true what you say that people don't care about things, until, or unless, it affects them. I really believe that this is the biggest achievement of the establishment; creating a culture and society where people don't care about each other, and even if they do, don't act in a way that is conducive to one another's well-being. I'm always hearing politicians say "communities", but this is just a politician's word now. There are no communities, or at best very few.
Apathy is the rule now. I think it's outrageous that there are huge swathes of people that care more about vacuous nonsense like the only way is essex or x-factor than real life things that genuinely matter and could affect them or someone they care about one day.
I would be angry about workfare and related benefit system things even if I wasn't on ESA myself, I think it's disgusting that people are being treated this way, I actually care about other people and how we treat our vunerable. But I know I'm in a minority. You're right about the lack of community, it's really sad how isolated and almost hostile people have become, it's exactly what the government needed to get away with all this.
