We're all in this together!

[DanaC]

So we're told, again and again by the small cohort of wealthy, high-born, privately educated men who run the country.

And before people jump on me for that: I don't know what it's like in the States, but we still have a ruling class. Born to it, across many generations. Educated together with princes and the sons of great industry in the classrooms of ancient schools.

The Old School Tie has currency here. Maybe that's why, in the face of the worst recession in living memory, our chancellor has cut the tax burden for the wealthy and reduced assistance for pensioners and the most vulnerable benefits claimants.

Time and again they have used that phrase: We're all in this together.

Except some of us cannot afford the 200k required to get a 'lunch' with the Prime Minister, to put our case across.

Favours to supporters, contracts to friends. Murdoch's bid was all set to be waved through before the phonehacking scandal exploded. All set to wave through a deal for their friends, whilst simultaneously attacking the BBC. When the cabinet member in chanrge of the decision let slip he was anti-Murdoch, he was removed and in his place a new man who owuld supposedly treat the issue with the dispassionate disinterest required for a quasi-judicial decision.

Except the person they put in was a staunch supporter of Murdoch. A 'cheerleader' is has bene said. And the meetings and the emails flowed. And now this dispassionate and disinterested party has been shown to be kneedeep in it. Fortunately for him, he had an aide he could throw the blame onto. For now. His position looks very shaky.

We're all in this together my Prime Minister told me, echoed by his Chancellor, as they stripped away the help and support needed by cancer patients. Sick for more than a year? Tough, you had your year of sympathy, no more sickness benefit for you. As they stripped away the protections for those in desperate need and farmed the assesment of their health away ftrom their doctor and onto a benefits advisor. As they sripped back the appeal process, because so many refusals were being overturned at appeal. As they stripped away some of the tax credits for pensioners and working parents, as they hyped up the fees for students and as they cut the top rate of income tax for the highest earners.

We're all in this together and yet...something isn't quite right.

He understands, says the Prime Minister, how people feel. How people are scared, and how people struggle. He understands the need to put food on thetable, to put petrol in the car, to put shoes on their children. He's a family man, after all.

We're all in this together, says the man in the Top Hat.

The UK's richest people have defied the double-dip recession to become even richer over the past year, according to the annual Sunday Times Rich List.

The newspaper's research found the combined worth of the country's 1,000 wealthiest people is £414bn, up 4.7%.

It means their joint wealth has passed the level last seen in 2008, before the financial crash, to set a new record.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17883101


Meanwhile the Chancellor's proposals for even greater cuts to the benefits system have gone so far they have even drawn criticism from their own Conservative minister for work and pensions:

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith says he would not accept a suggested extra £10bn of benefit cuts.

He told the Times that welfare should not be "an easy target" and the government had "a responsibility to support people in difficulty".

The government identified an £18bn reduction in welfare spending by 2014 in last month's Budget.

Chancellor George Osborne says an extra £10bn cut in welfare spending would avoid extra cuts for other departments.

The chancellor said in his Budget speech: "If nothing is done to curb welfare bills further, then the full weight of the spending restraint will fall on departmental budgets. The next spending review will have to confront this."

But when asked if he thought a further welfare cut of £10bn was acceptable, Mr Duncan Smith said: "My view is it's not."

In an interview with the Times, the former Tory leader suggested further savings could be made but stressed the need for a "balance of what we're trying to achieve".

"There is in my view no such thing as an easy target in welfare," he said. "Some people think there is: until I show them where we spend the money.

"My view is that you have a responsibility to support people in difficulty. It's a prime concern of ours - we can't run away from that."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17877732

I've seen the effects of the changes to the benefits system. I've had constituents come to me in desparate need. People who are sick and struggling, but whose claims have been rebuffed by an unqualified and unsympathetic assessor.

We're all in this together, but we aren't all below the water mark.