Iain Duncan Smith

Goodbye and fuck you, Iain Duncan Smith

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So, there were (more) serious, nasty cuts to disability benefits in the budget on Wednesday, which were hated and attacked by all sorts of people. Lots of Tory politicians, who had previously voted for spiteful cuts, are now running scared, and trying to distance themselves from Osborne’s latest stupid idea.

That they took their time coming out against measures they probably applauded on Wednesday shows up their hypocrisy. There is no reasonable way you can presume their opposition comes from any sort of morality. They’ve seen how unpopular the policy is, and they’re doing what they think will save their careers.

Iain Duncan-Smith has gone one better, and resigned his ministerial position, pretending he’s doing it because he can’t stomach ‘a compromise too far’. More likely, he imagines this stab at Osborne will put him in the good books of the other anti-Europe Tories.

Let’s hope this is the first part of the complete end of his political career, instead.

Work and pension secretary says too much emphasis has been placed on money saving exercises in letter to David Cameron

Source: ‘A compromise too far’: Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation letter in full

Do you really want to be trapped on an island with these people?

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So, we’re halfway into the second week of what’s going to be a tedious and depressing EU referendum campaign. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the country has already become bored and irritated by it all.

I’ll come straight out and say that I’ll be voting to stay in. There’s a lot wrong with the EU, and the only way to fix the problems is by staying in and arguing more effectively for reform*. Also, it’s naive to think we won’t be affected by EU policies if we leave. We’ll still have to meet the standards they set if we want to trade with them, and there’ll be a load of new restrictions on travelling, living and working on the continent.

My stance puts me in the unsavoury position of being on the same side as David Cameron, George Osborne and Tony Blair. I’ll live with that. Not least because of the incredibly low quality of so many of the Brexit supporters. A short list, off the top of my head-

Nigel Farage A caricature of the worst stereotypes of England made flesh. The only good thing I can say about Farage is that, whichever way the vote goes, he’s going to be even more irrelevant after June.

Boris Johnson A man who plays the buffoon in the hope that we’ll not notice all his cheap political game playing. And the fact that he is a bit of an incompetent. It’s hard to take seriously any claims that Boris’ stance is for anything other than the chance to be leader of the Tory party and possibly PM.

Michael Gove Gormless, useless little man, who has only got as far as he has by taking advantage of the friendship he has now betrayed with the Prime Minister.

Iain Duncan-Smith Let’s face it, Duncan-Smith wants out of Europe to save his own skin. He’s scared that a European court might one day hold him to account for introducing policies that have driven thousands of the most vulnerable to early deaths and pushed people to suicide.

Nigel Lawson Walnut faced former Chancellor who now makes millions of pounds conjuring up weak arguments for gullible climate change deniers to keep spouting, thus slowing down progress on fixing the greatest imminent threat to everyone’s way of life.

John Redwood Supposedly hyper-intelligent former minister, who was once known as the Vulcan, but now looks more like Dobby the house elf. Redwood’s highly intelligent and deeply considered opinion on matters of climate change and energy policy somehow always sounds like the sort of thing Nigel Lawson’s group has dreamt up for gullible climate change deniers to repeat endlessly.

David Icke Really. David Icke supporting something is the equivalent of having it stamped “100% guaranteed bullshit”.

These are the people who will be running this country if the referendum results in us leaving (well, apart from Icke, he’ll probably say something incoherent about lizards, then disappear back to wherever it is he hides). They are scum, and they’ll be even harder to escape from, because they’ll trash your chances of going to live and work in Europe.

A vote to stay could be the first part of a double whammy. First, do serious damage to the careers of the would-be leavers by rejecting their campaign. This will have a knock-on effect of destabilising, maybe even splitting, the Conservative party**, offering an opportunity for more sensible parties to sweep in and kick them out at the next election.

It might not happen, but I’m an optimist.

*And kicking out all the UKIP MEPs. Really, is there anything less useful than a UKIP MEP? They’ve been elected to something they want the country to leave, and their constant refrain is how terrible the EU is for Britain. They could use their positions to fix those problems, and make things better for thr UK. But then, that would show that the EU is capable of doing good things for Britain, making the case for staying in. So UKIP MEPs must just sit on their hands and make things worse, because it’s the only way they can achieve what they want. They’re actively making things worse for us, under the pretence that they’re working to make things, somehow, better.

**Actually, either result could have this effect. But In is the best for the majority of us.

We are governed by incompetent morons

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The deficit has risen. The temptation is to say ‘despite George Osborne’s austerity policies’, but the truth is more that the deficit refuses to go down because of them. George Osborne is an economically illiterate incompetent, but at least the damage he’s doing to the country won’t affect him. Even if austerity was working, it would still be the wrong policy, because its lasting effect will be to destroy everything useful and decent that the Government does.

Still, at least Osborne’s uselessness isn’t driving a drastic increase in suicides, like Iain Duncan-Smith’s is.

The UN is investigating UK’s ‘grave violations’ of disabled people’s rights

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The United Nations is carrying out an unprecedented inquiry into “systematic and grave violations” of disabled people’s human rights by the UK government, Disability News Service (DNS) can finally confirm.

DNS revealed last August that the UK appeared to have become the first country to face a high-level inquiry by the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD).

The committee said last summer, when approached by DNS, that it was not allowed to say whether the inquiry was underway.

But DNS is now in a position to state definitively that the inquiry is taking place, and has been underway since January 2014.

I wonder what happens when the UN CRPD comes back with a conclusion that the government is a human rights abuser. Does it open the possibility that Iain Duncan Smith, Cameron and others could be prosecuted?

Source: Confirmed! UN is investigating UK’s ‘grave violations’ of disabled people’s rights

Taxpayers’ Alliance: Burn the old

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Okay, this is from a fringe meeting, and not (yet) official Tory policy. Alex Wild, of the Taxpayer’s Alliance* thinks the Tories should slash old age payments as soon as possible.

Mr Wild, who is research director of the think tank which campaigns for lower taxes and highlights examples of Government waste, said the cuts should be made “as soon as possible after an election for two reasons”.

“The first of which will sound a little bit morbid – some of the people… won’t be around to vote against you in the next election. So that’s just a practical point, and the other point is they might have forgotten by then.

“He added: “If you did it now, chances are that in 2020 someone who has had their winter fuel cut might be thinking, ‘Oh I can’t remember, was it this government or was it the last one? I’m not quite sure.’

“So on a purely practical basis I would say do it immediately. That might be one of those things I regret saying in later life but that would be my practical advice to the government.”

Ian Duncan Smith would like that idea. He is running a department dedicated to making cuts and introducing policies that speed up the deaths of the people affected.

Source: Taxpayers’ Alliance: Cut pensioner benefits ‘immediately’ – BBC News

In the same way that the Countryside Alliance was only created to campaign to keep hunting with hounds, but pretended to care about more important countryside issues, I think the Tax Payer’s Alliance was created by people who go out of their way to pay the minimum possible tax.

Iain Duncan Smith’s latest foolishness: He no longer uses poverty to measure poverty | Vox Political

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The proposed new, and (deliberately?) vague, ways of defining child poverty look like yet another attempt to blame the poor for their own plight. There may have been faults in the previous definition- maybe it should have been based upon the Living Wage rather than the moving target of median income- but at least it gave something easily measurable to aim for.

I get the feeling the Tories know they’re failing- even deliberately hurting- the worst off, so they’ll just keep bringing in victim blaming targets and telling us it’s our own fault.

Source: Iain Duncan Smith’s latest foolishness: He no longer uses poverty to measure poverty | Vox Political

11 reasons the poor are worried that Iain Duncan Smith is back in charge of benefits cuts

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I reckon “Reasons this government are shit and dangerous” could become a daily feature. Some repeats in this article, but it also gives a bunch of pointers for bad decisions that are likely to come our way in the next few years.

Source: 11 reasons the poor are worried that Iain Duncan Smith is back in charge of benefits cuts – General Election 2015 – UK Politics – The Independent

Keep talking, Iain – your idiot ideas will run your party right out of office | Vox Political

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Iain Duncan Smith typifies the classical definition of an idiot – and his latest speech will prove it by ignoring Britain’s real problems in favour of self-centred, ideologically-motivated foolishness.

The Greeks used to believe idiots were ignorant people, incapable of ordinary reasoning, whose judgement in public and political matters was poor – but who refused to change their minds.

via Keep talking, Iain – your idiot ideas will run your party right out of office | Vox Political.