I've written before about the Orwellian Tory assertions that Iain Duncan Smith's ideological attacks on the social security system represent some kind of "moral mission" (here). However I'm going to address the subject again, but this time I'm going to examine the thoughts of people that are delusional enough to believe this ludicrously Orwellian distortion.
The primary piece of evidence I'm going to refer to in this piece is an utterly ludicrous piece in the Daily Telegraph by Peter Oborne, which was published in the first week of April 2013, which was the most symbolic week of Tory malice. That was the week in which they introduced "Bedroom Tax" designed to further impoverish hundreds of thousands of the poorest people in society, whilst simultaneously handing a £100,000 per year tax cut to the 13,000 income millionaires in the UK.
The mind-boggling title of Oborne's article is "George Osborne can’t claim credit for Iain Duncan Smith’s virtuous reforms" so lets have a quick look at some of these supposedly "virtuous reforms".
Bedroom Tax: This malicious policy was introduced in the very week that Oborne penned his article. I've written about "Bedroom Tax" several times (here, here, here and here) but perhaps the most damning evidence is the death of Stephanie Bottrill, who committed suicide after being driven into debt by "Bedroom Tax". It was only discovered months after her death that "Bedroom Tax" had been implemented in such a cack-handed way that, like some 40,000 other victims, Stephanie Bottrill should have been exempt all along.
What kind of Orwellian definition of "virtuous" would you have to be using to apply it to a "Bedroom Tax" regime that was implemented so incompetently that it drove someone to suicide, even though they should never have been made to pay it?
Forced Labour: Another one of Iain Duncan Smith's favoured "welfare reforms" is the economically illiterate policy of using the unemployed as a source of free labour, often for highly profitable foreign corporations. The hundreds of thousands of people that are herded onto these schemes under threat of absolute destitution, are removed from the official unemployment numbers, despite the fact that they have no paid work and are they still in receipt of unemployment benefits. After Iain Duncan Smith's workfare schemes were declared unlawful by the courts, he had the law retroactively rewritten, so that his schemes would have been lawful had the law been written that way at the time. This grotesque abuse of parliamentary process was carried out in order to stick two fingers up at the courts and keep the estimated £130 million he stole from his victims.
What kind of Orwellian definition of "virtuous" would you have to be using to apply it to Iain Duncan Smith's Stalinist Workfare schemes, and his "I'm Above The Law" retroactive legislation?
The Atos WCA regime: Iain Duncan Smith's forced labour schemes are not the only parts of his supposedly "virtuous reforms" that have been condemned on multiple occasions by the courts. The Atos administered Work Capacity Assessment regime has been condemned by the courts as discriminatory on two occasions, yet Iain Duncan Smith, the DWP and Atos have carried on with their discriminatory regime regardless. The WCA regime is notoriously inaccurate, the constant flood of bad decisions made by Atos have resulted in a cost of £50 million per year in appeals, which is borne by the taxpayer (rather than the company that made all of those inaccurate assessments in the first place). Yet another consideration must be the 10,600 people that died between January and November 2011 within six weeks of being declared "fit for work"by Atos. Unfortunately it is not possible to provide more up-to-date death statistics since the Iain Duncan Smith and the DWP are stonewalling numerous Freedom of Information requests to release the data for 2012 and 2013.
What kind of Orwellian definition of "virtuous" would you have to be using to apply it to the discriminatory WCA regime, that results in countless thousands of people being told they are fit-for-work within weeks of their death and costs the taxpayer £50 million per year to deal with all of the appeals against these disgustingly inaccurate "fit for work" judgements?
Sanctions: The number of people being stripped of all all of their social security payments (often for absolutely ludicrous reasons) has risen to an all time high of 874,850. Between 2010 and 2013 Iain Duncan Smith and the DWP repeatedly lied to parliament and the public that there was no such thing as Sanctions League Tables. In March 2013 (a month before Oborne declared IDS's reforms "virtuous") the supposedly non-existent Sanctions League Tables were leaked to the press. DWP whistleblowers have explained that the sanctions regime resulted in the unintelligent and mentally ill being tricked into committing sanctionable offences, whilst the small minority of hardcore benefits cheats were left well alone (because more often than not they know the rules better than most of the DWP staff). One of the most shocking cases is that of Mark Wood, who starved to death four months after being declared fit-for-work by Atos and being stripped of his benefits.
What kind of Orwellian definition of "virtuous" would you have to be using to apply it to a sanctions regime with targets to drive vulnerable people off benefits, resulting in people actually starving to death?
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