I am 60 years old. The older I get, the more disturbed I am at pictures of children in distress. Ipossible to see footage from war-torn Palestine and famine-blighted Ethiopia witbeing seeing my grandchildren.
And I am sure that the photograph of the sixPhilpott children has haunted many people this week. No child deserves to die. And certainly six children do not deserve to die at the hands of their own parents…in an arson attack.
The narrative of this week has been revealing. On Monday, Iain Duncan Smith was being attacked over Welfare “Reform”. The ongoing debate has been interesting. In times of Austeritthe society has become more fractured. Any consensus that Welfare is a right and that claimants should be treated humanely while accepting that on the fringes, the system is abused.
Rather like accepting that guilty people go free is the price we pay for a humane legal system….we accept that scroungers abusing the system is the price we pay for a humane welfare system. Austerity has opened up the notion of the DESERVING poor and the UNDESERVING poor..and the decision rests with Conservative Party and their friends in the Media and the City of London.
There IS an agenda here. If you are a Tory, you will err on the side of the “Taxpayer” . If you are a Socialist, you will err on the side of the “Claimant”.
Yet on Tuesday the narrative changed….with the conviction of Mick and Mairead Philpott. He was…lets be frank….a scumbag. On Tuesday night, it emerged that Philpott was a reality TV “star”. He had appeared with his wife and mistress on Jeremy Kyles Show For Scumbags. And he had hosted Saint Ann Widdicombe in his home.
Less well known was that he had served a prison sentence for stabbing his (then) girlfriend and her mother.
But unspoken on TV at least on Tuesday night was the connexion or coincidence that a war on “scroungers” is taking place…and Philpott is the very worst kind of scrounger.
Sadly on Wednesday the Daily Mail ran the headline “Product of Welfare Britain” and George Osborne…veteran of the Bullingdon Club….weighs in today.
Let me be frank here. My father had a chronic heart condition that meant he rarely worked after I was about ten years old. No doubt many looked own on him and us…but like most recipient of Welfare we were decent people.
Now of course I am familiar with Scumbags….and I could have spotted that Mick Philpott was a scumbag. It’s not rocket science. And I could have spotted that Mairead Philpotts extended family were a little inadequate but striving for a respectability that eluded them.
Now ANY authentic working class would have spotted that difference.
And the TV companies don’t get that. Jeremy Kyle doesn’t get it. Ann Widdicombe doesn’t get it. The Daily Mail doesn’t get it. George Osborne doesn’t get it.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
Very good blog. I agree fully. The crimes of an individual twisted person should not be exploited for the agenda of demonisation of the working class.
I will share one picture with you that, for me, sums it all up.
I heard they enjoyed setting fire to ten pound notes ..I front of the homeless.
It is a pity that the unionist proletariat haven’t woken up to that fact yet. The really sickening part is that they are still dancing to the flag waving tune. I know this sounds patronising, and it is, but I pity them. Genuinely
Hi Bangordub: we need a left that speaks for the working class regardless of religion.
The Tories endlessly refer back to the former government but the truth is that the problems are the fault of the party before that.The deindustrialisation of vast swathes of GB has resulted in three generations without a source of mass employment. A job must produce a decent wage, with expendable income, to keep an economy, on the local or national scale, afloat. And what we have is te validation of a wage of survival as a fair day’s pay. Why would anyone wish to freely work for such a wage. Oddly, at the other end of the scale, Dave and Gideon rant on about how we must throw money at the geniuses in the city because, well, no one expects them to work hard without good renumeration.
Hae to give it to the Tories, be its thatcher or Fitzgerald, man alive, they won the war. Simon Cowell, iPhones and Internet porn is the new opiate of the masses and a very well performing drug it seems to be, even much more potent than religion by a long, long way.
About an hour ago, I was talking to this kid who can’t get a job. He’s 17 and not getting the bru because he’s, frankly, too thick to successfully apply. He told me he’s thinking of joining the TA because his mates, from Rathcoole, are doing the same. I gave him a brief sketch of the issues of vets, criminal behaviour, health issues, social reintegration etc. Pretty sure the army will indeed take him because, like in swathes of America, it’s becoming the only choice.
David Cameron and George Osborne have a bigger sense of entitlement than Mick Philpott.
But Philpott clearly knows vastly more about managing money than Gideon
Leaving aside the National Question, the attempts at building any serious Labour Movement/Party in the North failed disastrously.
The NI Labour Party had more votes at times than say the modern middle class APNI but that then fails big time with the “padlock the swings on a Sunday” episode.
The NILP of the past always did have a Puritan streak.
Maybe that’s why they had such a large base in East Belfast.
Interestingly I wrote a longish piece on Labour in Non Iron in another bloggers site just a few hours ago. I am on an iPad right now and have not yet mastered copy and paste here. later today , I will copy and paste from PC after in day.