{once we were young and we were crass enough to care}

[kaberett]

We have a majority government where official party policy is that they don't care, even a little bit, if I die.

I don't understand how anyone who voted for these people can consider it an ethical or moral choice, never mind a rational one. I don't understand how anyone who voted for them can want to associate with me in any way that isn't fundamentally horrifying.

Comments

[kaberett]

1. Party policy is to remove benefits including Housing Benefit from under-25s. I have been reliant on Housing Benefit at several points in my life; I'm about to become reliant on it again, and I don't turn 25 for another eight days. It is very likely that I would be dead without HB.

2. Party policy is a referendum on EU membership. EU membership enables me to work but, more importantly, it makes it easier for people like me to seek refuge here. Not that this is looking like a particularly good place to look for it.

3. Without the NHS I'd be dead several times over. There are currently no dedicated mental health beds in Cambridgeshire, and haven't been for several years.

4. I'm dependent on DLA. It was already the case that, near as I can tell, everyone who applied for DLA or PIP was initially rejected in the interests of having us give up and go away, with indifference to whether we die. Tories do not protect the most vulnerable.

5. How many more fucking studies do we need showing that austerity simply does not work before people will believe that they are, in fact, condemning people to die by voting for it?

6. You don't want me. If you are a Conservative voter, you are no friend to me.

[jelazakazone]

This is how I've felt about politics in the US for a long time. I am so so so so so sorry.

Also, I am just feeling like we are so fucked. :(

[cosmolinguist]

Yes.

[milkymoon]

We've all been reading about this and have been worrying rather a lot about everyone we know who will be affected by the Tories' nasty programme. :( The way they've treated disabled people and handled things like youth unemployment is horrific.

[raze]

Fuck :( Saddened and scared for you.

[batrachian]

sonofacrap.

[syntaxofthings]

Also, I am just feeling like we are so fucked. :(

This. It's so frustrating.

[rydra_wong]

Yes. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

[jelazakazone]

<3 Ugh, it really is. I always felt like if things got terribly wrong here in the States, at least I could run away to somewhere more rational. Maybe that's Canada.

[syntaxofthings]

I at least found out that the Democrats will never let my beautiful state-assisted health care lose funding, but. I don't think there is a place to run away. Everything is really scary right now.

[jelazakazone]

Thank god for something then. Because that's something.

[syntaxofthings]

Amen.

[alexseanchai]

:(((((((((((((

[ursamajor]

Augh. This is horrifying and ridiculous and just downright *mean*. How can people.

[frith_in_thorns]

I am so afraid. And, oh god, I'm about to become a primary school teacher. I'm supposed to give my kids the best possible start in life. Everything's so fucking stacked against us all.

[vass]

I'm so sorry. And scared for you and all the others.

I don't understand it either. It doesn't make sense.

[onyxlynx]

1. I am forced to conclude that UK voters really don't remember Maggie Thatcher.
2. Your #5. People spent years and political capital erecting various safeguards and programs because the late 19th/early 20th century did not work well for the majority of the populace, and the not-working is well-documented in the fiction and non-fiction of the period.
3. Yes, there is a cycle of rising "enlightenment," followed by a clawing back by "stupidity," but why (this is probably not an answerable question at the moment) have so many voters chosen to stab thenselves (and everyone else) in the back?

You have my sympathy, and my hope that the Tories are thwarted at every turn.

[worlds_of_smoke]

I will never, ever understand why people vote for right wing politicians and policies. It's often completely against their interests or the interests of their loved ones. It just isn't logical.

I'm terrified that our right wingers will win the 2016 elections. I don't know what it will take for people to wake the fuck up. And I don't know what it will take for the people who are awake to realize they can't change the system if they don't participate in it.

[davidgillon]

We have a majority government where official party policy is that they don't care, even a little bit, if I die

If anyone thinks this is exaggeration, the Department of Work and Pensions fought tooth and nail not to admit they've carried out at least 40 reviews (some figures suggested nearer 70, and DWP have a history of hiding stats they don't like, so it may be higher still) into people who have died as a result of benefit changes and in almost every one recommendations have had to be made for changes in DWP procedures to stop it happening again. Yet DWP refuse to release any details of the recommendations, or their failures, on the grounds of 'privacy'. One notorious case that made it into the press was an ex-soldier who died having been sanctioned - had his benefits stopped for some minor transgression like being late for an appointment - and was found dead, having not had the money to keep his insulin refrigerated. When challenged by his family, DWP minister Esther McVey (thankfully unseated yesterday) said 'it's complicated'. A disability rights activist has just won a freedom of information appeal forcing DWP to reveal the numbers of people who have died after losing benefits, which they've been refusing to release for several years, whether they do remains to be seen.

[jesse_the_k]

Bastards.

Note icon was born in UK, first 35 yrs in Canada, now U.S. Citizen.

And we are all three of us fucked fucked fucked. (Excepting maybe Alberta.)

[silveradept]

The word "fuck", said 9000 times. Repeatedly. What is it with people voting in parties that explicitly day how much they're going to make everyone miserable?

[catyak]

That depends on whether you prefer being told in advance how you're going to get screwed over or whether you want it to come as a surprise. Some of the basic ideas are OK, but the implementation is dire. For those who remember the Poll Tax, I never thought it unreasonable that all adults should be expected to contribute to local services, but whoever wrote up the implementation stopped listening too soon and missed the bit on the end that said "according to their means". They've clearly got the same guy in charge, or he was allowed to train a successor.

[shewhostaples]

I wonder whether part of it is the fact that the majority of the populace was born under the welfare state and can't remember or imagine what it was like without it. People don't seem to realise that it could all just disappear.

[onyxlynx]

Somebody somewhere (I think in Harper's, in around 2000 referring to the Gore campaign, but I was unable to find it) made a similar point: That people who had been helped by Depression-era programs seemed to be opposed to the next generation benefitting from the same programs, with a dose of "I made it OnMyOwn, they should too," or what I term Selective Amnesia.

Sometimes it seems that we humans do not learn from the past. I consider this a design flaw and suspect it was deliberately engineered.

PS I'm finally getting around to subscribing to you.

[onyxlynx]

Oh, some of us are awake and participating, but my participation is metaphorically a soapbox on a street corner, and the wingers have billions and television.

[worlds_of_smoke]

Yeah. :/ The right wingers definitely have us beat on that. If people would actually care enough to check out some of their claims, there would be a revolution, I think.

[onyxlynx]

If people would actually care enough to check out some of their claims, there would be a revolution, I think.

Well, that is the rub, isn't it?

[damerell]

On the plus side, on Friday morning, for the first time in 18 months, I knew _why_ I felt depressed.

[worlds_of_smoke]

I read this article a few months ago and I think that's a lot of the problem. :/ Learning to accept people even if they're different, to share your resources, and to challenge your -isms and everything else that goes with being liberal/progressive is hard work. It's easy to be conservative.