Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/16/un-poverty-envoy-calls-uk-pove.html
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I honestly wonder who will be tagged for eternity as the next Nero, famous largely because he “fiddled” while Rome burned.
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And all this before the political choice of a hard Brexit that so many of the Tories who resigned seem hellbent on achieving.
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It’s soothing to read your Krugman on this stuff. It’s nice to retreat to graphs and stats about it, though Krugman always uses words like “misery” and “suffering” to remind his audience what we’re really talking about.
Reading them as “economics experiments” like “Trickle Down Definitely Doesn’t Work, Test #97” or “Austerity reduces consumption and is therefore the worst move in a consumption-bound economy, Test #36” at least gives you the feeling that EVENTUALLY, when people finally get mad enough to show up at polls in bigger numbers, we’ll have a pretty good set of economics theories to actually apply, having all this data from ruinously expensive and harmful experiments.
It’s like knowing all that stuff from Nazi experiments, how long it takes people to starve, or die of cold - experiments no moral individual would have a part in…but the data has inarguable value to do good, should some bastard provide it. Here we have data from immoral economics experiments that no decent person should have attempted. May they do some good - if only to prove they should never be used again.
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“If you disagree you misunderstand” is a bullshit rallying cry.
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I suppose it sounds better than their first effort: “It can’t be bad because I’m still rich”.
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…which of course, then comes along with “I’m prepared to take an economic hit from Brexit”. Sure you are, you self-centred git; it never occurs to you that you’re not the only one who will take that hit, and the hit you are going to take is probably a lot less than many other people who may already be on the edge.
The extraordinary part (to me) is that the Tories still have apparently got >40% support (and Leave still has >40% support too.) But then again, the Republicans just got >40% in your midterms, so I guess there are clearly still a lot of people who simply don’t care.
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I’m still waiting to be better off. So are my neighbours.
Maybe it’s because I live in a constituency that the Tories don’t have any hope of winning.
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a political choice” that inflicted “great misery”
Now tell us something we did not know.
But at least it may force the issue to a couple of front pages for a nanosecond, and make the govt defend the indefensible for another nanosecond, while giving assorted fuckwit Tories the chance to take their Brexit-like attitudes and transpose them to the UN.
/cynicism
At the same time I’ve been reading the several reports on his trip in The Guardian and the one thing that is clear is that people talking to him are so grateful for an outlet to tell their stories. Nobody in govt or the Tory party is even listening to them.
‘La la la la fingers in ears Esther McVey’ (thankfully resigned over Brexit yesterday) is held up as the Work and Pensions Secretary with a ‘working class / poor background who made it, so why can’t the rest of them’ all while trying to deny food banks are a problem (indeed, seeing them as a solution).
There is a pecking order of Tories I would gladly see removed from public life (yes, that is a euphemism for something rather more violent), and she is much nearer the top than the bottom.
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Some F’n Randians chanting “The Free Market Compels ths,” Does not mean that it isn’t a choice.
If only. Strangely I think they fuck over people who vote for them plenty, but they just keep getting the votes.
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I would say Cameron, although May is making an effort to be included. Cameron did bail out right away, so his is the greater crime in my opinion.
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And we have a new secretary of state for work and pensions.
This is almost identical to every other work and pensions minister since 2010, except for David Gauke voting against a welfare cut on one occasion.
I get the feeling if Jacob Rees-Mogg becomes PM he will be working on Aktion T4 part 2 before the end of hist first day.
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I suspect that many of those responsible would prefer to describe it as a political achievement; rather than a mere choice.
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