ITS WHAT TORIES DO

For those of you young enough not remember the late 80s, the savagery of Thatcher’s Government, mass unemployment and the birth of the yuppie generation, you are in for a shock as long as David Cameron and George Osborne hold onto the strings of power.

Tories are Tories, and Tories look after Tories. They like big business. They like the rich. They never deflect themselves from their aim of looking after their own, and if this means that those of us who need a helping hand, a few more pennies, a bit of security or generally find life tough at times go without then so be it.

The recent riots are an excellent example. In the immediate aftermath, Cameron was blathering on about fatherless children. The demonisation of single mothers has started once again. He failed completely to comprehend that many single parent families (be that one with a mother or a father) work much better than “traditional” families. He fails to recognise that many single parents work very hard to bring up their children. He fails to recognise that is just as likely that kid from a “traditional” family can fall into mischief as one from a single parent family. But that’s ok. Tories like traditional families, so they don’t care if the upset single parents.

Another example are the comments from Philip Davies, MP for Shipley. His comments really upset me because he was the MP who managed to obtain the costs of Compliance Officers in HMRC, something we used to great effect when campaigning to keep our jobs. But now he is in power, he shows his true colours. He basically said that employers should be allowed to employ people with disabilities at less than minimum wage. His logic went along the lines of giving disabled people a chance to prove themselves in society. He completely missed the point that people with a disability do not need patronising in that manner. Many who are able to work, do so. If they do work then they shouldn’t be regarded as slave labour by greedy employers.

And on the other hand Osborne talks about Welfare Reform, and that’s just a neat Tory phrase which translates as “paying less to fewer”.

And finally, we’ll again look at the post riot comments, specifically that rioters should lose their benefits and council houses. That is a massive (and incorrect) assumption that the people who rioted are unemployed and do not own or rent their own properties. From what I have seen, many of those responsible do (or did) have jobs. Essentially what Cameron is doing is trying to punish those without work twice – once in the courts and then again by denying them welfare. He doesn’t of course wonder why people were out on the streets in the first place. He doesn’t of course consider where families who are evicted are supposed to live or how they feed themselves. He doesn’t consider this because it is a safe assumption that none of them involved will vote Tory.

Very cleverly Tories try and build public opinion against certain sectors of society. It’s the Homer Simpson mentality of “identify the weakest kid in the playground and steal his lunch money because he can’t fight back”.

So, Tories do what Tories do. They are looking at relieving the tax burden on the rich by reducing the 50p tax rate. He makes glib promises about tax evasion, but its only words. He continues to fund the bombing of unfriendly oil rich states; yet ignores Zimbabwe and North Korea. His Chancellor makes announcements that will put a million people out of work and then they both scratch their heads at rising unemployment figures. They ignore the chronic youth unemployment rates. They steal public sector pensions to cover up the mess their mates in the banking industry made.

Don’t be surprised at any of this. It’s what Tories do!

That is why the Trade Union movement are fighting back. That is why we take to streets to protest against Tory austerity policies, that is why we take industrial action to protect our public services.