A crude animation, splashed across the front of The Guardian website today, reveals how many of the latte slurping liberal elite really feel about those with least.
In the only nod to the aging and growing population, one of the key factors behind the rise in social security spending, the film makers do point out that much of the benefits bill is spent on pensions. The animation also rightly reveals that the UK spends less on benefits than other comparable European countries.
But then the animation takes a truly nasty turn by asking, “are the cuts really targeting the skivers?”
It appears film maker is only too happy to use the vile language of the Tory right and declare that all those unable to work due to unemployment, sickness, disability or family responsibilities are skivers.
This coming from someone who no doubt gets paid shedloads of cash to sit about making crap youtube videos all day.
But it is the decision of the paper to splash this across the front of their website which is truly revealing. Whilst pretending to be on the side of low paid workers, The Guardian seems to be only too happy to try and drive a wedge between the working and the out of work poor.
It’s hardly surprising that a Lib Dem loving newspaper should attempt to drag the argument over social security spending back towards the right. The Guardian had to be dragged kicking and screaming into supporting benefit claimants in the first place. And it appears that support is paper thin. Earlier in the month the paper printed a hilarious quiz, complete with crass stereotypes about people watching Jeremy Kyle all day, asking whether it’s readers are skivers or strivers How the chinless luvvies must have laughed in the Farringdon wine bars about that.
On a more serious note, only this week The Guardian’s Housing Editor declared that the bedroom tax is not unfair. This is the same newspaper where a writer recently complained that the changes to child benefit – the only cut likely to affect Guardian journalists – represent the death of the welfare state.
It is fair to say that some Guardian writers have worked hard towards exposing the truth about the vicious welfare reforms that are tearing so many people’s live apart. But all of that is undermined when the paper resorts to stigmatising those suffering under this Government in the name of cheap political point scoring. After watching this video many claimants will feel that with fake friends like The Guardian, who needs enemies?
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The Void
