The day after the Coalition’s formation in May 2010, I sent an email to some friends saying that the Coalition was going to adopt a biblical verse as their slogan. I said it was from the New Testament - Matthew 13:12.
When people
looked up the reference they found it read: -
“For whosoever hath, to him shall be
given, and he shall have more abundance:
but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath.”
but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath.”
It was, back then, meant as a joke.
Almost three
years on, the sentiments in the biblical verse are not a joke any more. In this
month alone, the Coalition has shown conspicuous generosity to those who are
already very rich. The richest 1% of taxpayers have had very substantial tax
cuts - 13,000 of them are to benefit by more than £100,000 annually. The Queen,
one of the richest people in the world, has had a £6 million annual pay rise
from the taxpayer. Millions of pounds of public money will be spent on the
funeral of Margaret Thatcher, without there even having been a parliamentary
vote.
When
challenged on the cost of the Thatcher funeral, William Hague said that the
country could “well afford it”. It
can also well afford to treat its poorest and most vulnerable with decency and
compassion.
The
depredations visited on the poor increase daily. The welfare bill is being cut
more drastically than at any time since the 1920s. The government justifies its
actions by a cynical mantra. They say that the way out of poverty is to get a
job but they ignore the facts that a)
most people in poverty are already in jobs on very low wages and b) many affected - such as all children and some
of the disabled - are not capable of work and c)
in many parts of the country there are no jobs available.
Meanwhile the
Coalition and its media allies suggest that the poor deserve their poverty and
the rich deserve their wealth. The most cursory examination into the causes of
poverty and wealth in the UK would reveal that this is a myth. For most people,
it is the luck of the circumstances of their birth which is by far the greatest
determinant of their likely future income – not their virtues or vices or how
hard they work. The hardest working group in any society is the working poor.
The bedroom
tax is one of the cruellest of all the Coalition’s reforms. The Department of
Work and Pensions’ own impact assessment shows that 63% of those affected are
disabled, out of which 17,000 are blind. Many will be forced to leave
properties which have had expensive adaptations made specifically to help them.
It is highly doubtful if this ill-thought out policy will even end up saving
any money.
Since 2010,
there have been dramatic rises in homelessness and in the
use of food banks, the 21st century’s soup kitchens. There has even
been a sharp rise in pauper’s funerals, leading an academic quoted in the Telegraph to say –“it is becoming too expensive for poor people to die.”
Margaret Thatcher’s
funeral will soon take place in St Paul’s. The symbolism is powerful. She is the political
godmother of the Coalition’s policies towards the rich and the poor. St Paul’s
was the site of the Occupy protest in 2011 and 2012. Occupy asked the Church
the pertinent question “what would Jesus
do” in the face of the greed of the rich and the suffering of the poor. In
the end, the Church sided with the rich and powerful.
Thatcher made
little pretence of caring for the poor. She attacked those who criticised her
record on welfare as “people who drool
and drivel”.
She even declared,
startlingly, that the moral of the story of the Good Samaritan was that it was
important to make money in the first place. For centuries, bible study teachers
have taught that the moral was that we all owe duties one to another. As,
indeed, we do if we are to consider ourselves a civilised and decent society.
Will someone
read from Matthew 7:12 at Thatcher’s funeral? “Do
unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Or would that be considered too controversial in the
circumstances?
No. 300
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