Can we normalise normal please?
Alun Smith
It’s difficult to know where to start with the benefits announcements Reform UK have made over the last days. It’s tempting to put it down to their M.O and say “yes, standard fayre for them”.
But we mustn’t ignore it, because whilst it’s true that their latest hateful rhetoric is becoming normalised, that is, in fact, what makes it worse. It’s worse because it’s no longer shocking to any of us.
Their fanbase, (because that’s what they are, they’re not the ‘man on the Clapham omnibus’, they’re a cult), expect it from them, demand it, and lap it up when it happens, and the rest of us, brow-beaten and bereft of energy, are being led by the nose to offer up no more than a resigned shrug in response.
This can’t fly. We must call it out, and allow ourselves to engage with the anger we’re feeling about it. And believe me, many of us are feeling very, very angry about it, not least because their odious vitriol pervades MSM, who report on it as if it’s a completely normal part of our news diet. It isn’t, nor should it be. Reform have a handful of MP’s, they’re not a major political party.
Literally days after Farage threw every resource he had (including a gleeful Dan Thomas, elated to be attending Farage-Fest, rather than looking out for his own constituents in Wales), into beating a comedy candidate in Clacton, and then lying about the reasons why he didn’t turn up for the count (pun intended), his cultic minions Tice and Jenrick, announced that they would make sweeping benefits cuts were they ever to be in power.
Why don’t you trial this heinous non-policy in Clacton Nigel, where over 9000 of your constituents receive Personal Independence Payments? That’s without the thousands of people there who claim LCWRA (the health element of Universal Credit), which you’ve also said you’d cut.
Let’s see how that works out for you. We are talking about the lives of almost 3 million British people and Reform frame it as a cost-cutting exercise. It’s abhorrent and what it really is, is a life-cutting exercise. For the record:-
1) P.I.P is an IN-WORK benefit.
2) P.I.P and LCWRA are extraordinarily difficult benefits to get. You get awarded them, yes awarded, they’re not thrown around like sweets at a pantomime.
3)The majority of monies spent on the Welfare Bill go to pensioners. That shouldn’t even come under ‘benefits’. They earned that money.
No one has yet satisfactorily explained to me WHY the benefits bill has to be cut. We have advanced medical technology now and we have an ageing population, people are disabled, people get ill, people get old.
Leaving them to die because you want to save money to fuel your war-machine, so that you can make even more sick and disabled people in foreign climes, and kill even more innocent people in other countries cannot, must not, EVER be the answer.
And this speaks to a wider problem that I alluded to earlier. Wrong-speak is being normalised everywhere and not called out. The Independent used a headline recently that read ” Plaid Cymru and Reform led Wales”. What!? Plaid Cymru are in government in Wales, albeit with a minority, Reform are the opposition. How on earth did this pass unnoticed across the editors desk? Or was it, in fact, noticed and ignored? Another win for the insipid, anti-woke, drip-drip of the nastiness that sloshes around in our peripheral lives?
Division
There is altogether too much hate and division, and it’s absurdly easy to deflect and ignore the demonisation of the poor, the disabled, the infirm, the foreign, the other, and it’s all being normalised and it’s got to STOP!
The day cannot come soon enough when the architect of most of this monstrous malevolence flooding through our society, Farage, is found guilty by the standards committee he’s about to face, and dismissed from parliament and from all of our lives.
Once that happens, I’m hoping beyond hope that the whole septic tank that is Reform UK rusts and fades away.
Maybe then we can all get back to living our lives with some modicum of peace, where we look out for each other again, debate with reason and integrity and learn to embrace our differences.
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And perhaps Farage could also try out Tice’s “just enjoy the hotter weather with some English wine” line on firefighters, people whose houses have burned down, people who’ve been involved in train derailments, hospital patients, medical staff, bus drivers, anyone else working in intolerable conditions, anyone living in a 70’s high rise city flat and farmers. Just for starters.
And the twenty percent of the population who have breathing difficulties…
The leaders of this ‘firm’ should be taken off the streets, Broadmoor is where they should be…potential serial killers like Fat Shanks and his ex-pals…
The problem is their supporters can’t see anything past their hatred for people of colour and Muslims. Even their own personal demise. Ultimately, feels like self combustion.
Terrific stuff Alun! Gets the the heart of it. Exposing the blind stupidity of those who out of hate & bitterness vote for self harming policies. Farage is the ultimate political conman.
“Wrong-speak is being normalised everywhere and not called out.”
First time I’ve ever heard “wrong-speak” used unironically in the intended direction.
A milestone in the discourse. I wonder what Orwell would make of it.
He would call it the Fat Shanks Effect…
80 to 90 years ago, there was a massive target group called the Jews who were slaughtered on an industrial scale and thrown in alongside in a broader remit were others who were deemed ‘undesireable’ and those deemed to be of ‘no use’. It seems we waited for it all to finish before anyone was comfortable to call it Nazism. Now we have a massive target group called the Muslims and others being dragged in are all non whites, any other so deemed ‘undesireables’, disagreers and and those deemed to be of ‘no use’. I’m not waiting for history to… Read more »
Fact is though, the UK benefits bill is set to reach 400bn a year by 2030 so it’s not something we can hide from. Every government, political party etc has to tackle it somehow.
Why? If we have a lot of people who are disabled and a lot of people who are elderly, then that’s how it is. Why does it need “tackling”? How about we ‘tackle’ corporate fraud and privateering? How about we ‘tackle’ iniquity? How about we pay people pay a decent wage that they can live on, run a car, buy a house……
We tackle everything. Everything you have mentioned, plus the benefits Bill which is unsustainable.
No, sorry, the things I’ve mentioned aren’t being dealt with.
Do you honestly think that 1 in 4 working age people are genuinely disabled?
A 2% wealth tax would potentially bring in 10 billion pounds a year. By 2030, that would mean 40 billions pounds to the treasury.
A drop in the ocean compared to 400bn. Besides, wealth taxes never work as the wealth just leaves and you’re left without the tax receipts you had in the first place…
If Bezos and others want to leave, then good luck to them. Leave.
Not viable. Top 10% of UK earners pay 60% of all income tax. Tax the millionaires, but if you think they are a cash cow then the money will go elsewhere and you are left with zero. Then you don’t have money for free healthcare, education etc. In fact, there could be a case of cutting some capital gains taxes, even income tax etc to encourage high earners and entrepreneurs to move to Wales bringing their wealth into the economy, the jobs from their businesses etc.
You’re putting words in my mouth. I’m not talking about ‘earners’. I’m talking about billionaires. If Starbucks doesn’t want to pay tax then they can go. We can get coffee elsewhere, which will create more jobs btw. We’re getting way off track btw. None of this is what the article is about.
If people or companies are avoiding tax completely then that is a different story altogether.
And what do you think “billionaires” do? Where does their wealth come from? Its earned from business and is seldom sloshing about in a current account. This whole Wealth Tax idea sounds neat when you imagine something with a Billion pounds in the bank but wealth like that is in business value. How do you slice up a business to make it 2% smaller every year without causing huge harm? Jobs would be shed and investmenmt reduced if it happened. In reality, such firms would need to based offshore and take them out of UK Corporation Tax altogether costing HMRC… Read more »
Correct. The article is based on the assumption that unlimited tax increases can be implemented to sustain the unsustainable. It’s just plain wrong.
Hi. No, it doesn’t. The article is not about tax at all.
Of course it is. How do you think benefits are funded?!!
That’s the sort of maths which led Reeves to hike taxes massively on Non Doms which has actually led to less tax revenue than before she started!
More than half of that is pensions. That’s not something we can hide from.
Correct.
The truth is, all of those politicians, in all parties, know how to make cuts, but none of them know how to have good ideas to generate money for the state. Everyone knows how to make cuts and Reform leaders are no different, a five year old could do that. The opportunities are endless, but all of them are so busy fighting each other, either for control of the state, career advancement or the love of power, or in Reform’s case – their hard AI vested interests alongside crypto, that once in a blue moon they remember the people they… Read more »