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.

[DanaC]

Britain's most senior Roman Catholic, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, has accused the prime minister of acting immorally by favouring the rich ahead of ordinary citizens affected by the recession.

The cardinal also denounced David Cameron's opposition to a "Robin Hood tax" on financial institutions.

And he urged Mr Cameron not just to help "your very rich colleagues".

But the man in the Top Hat understands, he really does.

The prime minister told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "I understand how tough it is for people in our country right now, if you're trying to make the household budget work out, if you've got petrol and diesel at the prices that they are now.

"I understand how difficult it is when you've got job losses in the public sector and you need the private sector to expand faster - we need more jobs.

"I understand those difficulties, that is what fires me up, that is what gets me out of bed to work hard to do the right thing for my country and it's got to be about the long term."

He understands, he says. But many of us would find his policies more palatable if they came from a place of ignorance. To understand and still act in this way is unforgivable.

In a BBC Scotland interview, [the Cardinal said]: "My message to David Cameron, as the head of our government, is to seriously think again about this Robin Hood tax, the tax to help the poor by taking a little bit from the rich.

"The poor have suffered tremendously from the financial disasters of recent years and nothing, really, has been done by the very rich people to help them.

"And I am saying to the prime minister, look, don't just protect your very rich colleagues in the financial industry, consider the moral obligation to help the poor of our country."

The UK government has opposed the unilateral introduction of the "Robin Hood" tax, which would impose a small tax levy on large transactions of currencies, bonds and shares. It argues jobs and investment would be lost overseas.

But the cardinal said he believes that position is immoral because, he maintains, it overlooks the needs of the poorest in society and those of the less well-off.

He said: "When I say poor, I don't mean (only) the abject poverty we see sometimes in our streets.

"I mean people who would have considered themselves reasonably well-off.

"People who have saved for their pensions and now realise their pension funds are no more.

"People who are considering giving up their retirement homes that they have been saving for, poverty affecting young couples and so on and so on.

"It is these people who have had to suffer because of the financial disasters of recent years and it is immoral.

"It is not moral, just to ignore them and to say 'struggle along', while the rich can go sailing along in their own sweet way."

So says the (small 'c') conservative Catholic cardinal.

The cardinal was speaking in support of a campaign by the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF) which says the billions of pounds raised by levying a financial transaction tax in the UK could be spent helping the poor and vulnerable at home and abroad.

The aid agency estimates a tax of 0.05% on major financial transactions, such as the trading of stocks, bonds and derivatives, would raise £20bn each year in the UK alone.

We're all in this together and the Prime Minister understands. But he won't put the cost of the nation's distress onto his friends, when the poor are able to shoulder so much.

[DanaC]

This, incidentally, is the man currently masterminding swingeing cuts to benefits and public services, whilst easing the tax burden for the highest earners:



George Gideon Oliver Osborne, heir to the baronetcy of Ballentaylor, member of the Bullingdon Club, friend to David Cameron and Nat Rothschild, Member of Parliament for Tatton, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, with an estimated personal fortune of £4 million (from a trust fund paid for by his father).

[DanaC]

So how about that Man of the People, Cameron? We're all in this together and he understands what it's like for the common folk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_C...litical_career

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, is the younger son of the stockbroker Ian Donald Cameron (12 October 1932 – 8 September 2010 and his wife Mary Fleur (née Mount, born 1934, a retired Justice of the peace, daughter of Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet).[

Cameron is a great-great-great-great-great grandson of King William IV and his mistress Dorothea Jordan. This illegitimate line consists of five generations of women on his father's maternal side starting with Elizabeth Hay, Countess of Erroll née FitzClarence, William and Jordan's sixth child, through to the fifth female generation Enid Agnes Maud Levita. His father's maternal grandmother, Stephanie Levita, daughter of Sir Alfred Cooper and Lady Agnes Duff (sister of Alexander Duff, 1st Duke of Fife) and was a sister of Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich, GCMG, DSO, PC,Liberal democrat statesman and author. His paternal grandmother, Enid Levita, who married secondly in 1961 a younger son of 1st Baron Manton was the niece of Sir Cecil Levita, KCVO CBE, Chairman of London County Council in 1928. Through the Mantons, Cameron also has kinship with Alexander Fermor-Hesketh, 3rd Baron Hesketh, KBE, PC, Conservative Chief Whip in the House of Lords 1991–93. Cameron's maternal grandfather was Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet, an army officer and the High Sheriff of Berkshire, and Cameron's maternal great-grandfather was Sir William Mount, 1st Baronet, CBE, Labour MP for Newbury 1918–1922. Lady Ida Matilde Alice Feilding, Cameron's great-great grandmother, was the daughter of William Feilding, 7th Earl of Denbigh, GCH, PC, a courtier and Gentleman of the Bedchamber. He is also a great × 4 great-nephew of Sir James Hanway Plumridge, KCB.

His father Ian was senior partner of the stockbrokers Panmure Gordon, in which firm partnerships had long been held by Cameron's ancestors, including David's grandfather and great-grandfather, and was a director of estate agent John D Wood. His great-great grandfather Emil Levita, a German-Jewish financier who obtained British citizenship in 1871, was the director of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China which became Standard Chartered Bank in 1969. His wife, Cameron's great-great grandmother, was a descendant of the wealthy Danish Jewish Rée family, whose ancestors originated from Altona, Hamburg, Germany and Głogów, Poland. One of Emile's sons, Arthur Francis Levita (d.1910) (brother of Sir Cecil Levita), of Panmure Gordon stockbrokers, together with great-great-grandfather Sir Ewen Cameron, London head of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, played key roles in arranging loans supplied by the Rothschilds to the Japanese central banker (later Prime Minister) Takahashi Korekiyo for the financing of the Japanese Government in the Russo-Japanese war. Another great-grandfather, Ewen Allan Cameron, was senior partner of Panmure Gordon stockbrokers and served on the Council for Foreign Bondholders, and the Committee for Chinese Bondholders (set up by the then-Governor of the Bank of England Montagu Norman in November 1935).

He's also the nephew of Sir William Dugdale, brother-in-law of Katherine, Lady Dugdale (died 2004) Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen from 1955.

But...that's all just birth. It doesn't necssarily disqualify him from having experienced the rigours of a life unprotected.

After leaving Eton in 1984, Cameron started a nine month gap year. He worked as a researcher for Tim Rathbone, Conservative MP for Lewes and his godfather. In his three months he attended debates in the House of Commons. Through his father, he was then employed for a further three months in Hong Kong by Jardine Matheson as a 'ship jumper', an administrative post.

So, after six months working for his Godfather and then his father, where did he go?

After graduation, Cameron worked for the Conservative Research Department between September 1988[42] and 1993.

In 1991, Cameron was seconded to Downing Street to work on briefing John Major for his then bi-weekly session of Prime Minister's Questions. One newspaper gave Cameron the credit for "sharper [...] despatch box performances" by Major,[44] which included highlighting for Major "a dreadful piece of doublespeak" by Tony Blair (then the Labour Employment spokesman) over the effect of a national minimum wage.[45] He became head of the political section of the Conservative Research Department, and in August 1991 was tipped to follow Judith Chaplin as Political Secretary to the Prime Minister.[

He didn't get that role. But got another. And stayed pretty much within the realm of politics until he eventually became a member of parliament.

So...his experience of anything which might be deemed 'the real world' in terms of economic survival seems limited to six months work experience between college and university.

He worked hard, very hard. Absolutely earned his place in his party. But he really doesn't understand. And we really aren't all in this together.

I just wish, that whilst they're doing what they're doing, what we all knew they'd do, that they'd just get on with it and stop trying to tell us that they feel the same pain, or face the same struggle.

[DanaC]

K. I'll stop now.

[infinite monkey]

What a great essay! You're so talented.

You guys were much better off when Hugh Grant was your PM.

(I watched that movie again Friday night and it made me think of you.)

[Ibby]

The only real difference is that our elite class gets a little more leeway to call themselves self-made, most of the time, and that power tends to hang around only two or three generations rather than for hundreds and hundreds of years. And that most of our elites can stay out of the limelight if they want to, more than those connected to british nobility at least, I think.

[richlevy]

Wow. It's a close tie between Dana and TW for 'The Cellar's shortest poster'.

Seriously, a great post. While it's no surprise how coddled politicians with no financial or health care worries can make such decisions, it is instructive as to how coddled some of them were before they got into office.

[Blueflare]

Private Eye: All in the same boat

[DanaC]

Ahaa! Love that, Blue.

[DanaC]

For clarity by the way, I am not suggesting that their lives have been without trouble or sorrows, or suffering, or fear. David Cameron and his wife suffered probably the harshest pain anybody ever could, when they buried their first child.

But even that becomes tainted when it enters the political arena. Their grief, and their experiences of emergency admissions and sleeping in hospital chairs, and the years of negotiating care for their son. It was offered to us as proof that he could be trusted with the NHS.

Safe in his hands he said. Of all things the NHS was close to his heart he said. Die hard leftie and general cynic that I am when it comes to politics, on that claim, and that alone, I believed him.

And now general practitioners, consultant specialists and hospital administrators, not best known for their collectivist attitudes, have joined with the nurses and other healthcare workers to condemn the scale of change this government is determined to usher through, and the remaining barriers to complete privatisation are being battered away.

Safe in his hands. I dont think so.

[Happy Monkey]

Listen, kid, we're all in it together.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Ibram

The only real difference is that our elite class gets a little more leeway to call themselves self-made, most of the time, and that power tends to hang around only two or three generations rather than for hundreds and hundreds of years. And that most of our elites can stay out of the limelight if they want to, more than those connected to british nobility at least, I think.

They might call themselves self-made, but few are. Money begets money. The ability to move upward in the US is diminishing.

From Wiki

Several studies have been made comparing social mobility between developed countries. One such study (“Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults?")[5][15][16] found that of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation. The four countries with the lowest "intergenerational income elasticity", i.e. the highest social mobility, were Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Canada with less than 20% of advantages of having a high income parent passed on to their children. (see graph)

[Stormieweather]

There comes a point, doesn't there, where a person has enough money to live more than comfortably, to invest and create and luxuriate in? And beyond that, making even MORE money is rather obscene and irrelevant, except to those without.

So excuse the fuck out of me if I don't sympathize with cutting tax rates on the wealthiest, while reducing benefits to the poor and sick. It's pure greed, plain and simple. The people in charge, elected and otherwise, need to realize that greed will do them (and everyone else) in, eventually.

[infinite monkey]

EVERYBODY SING! :snapfingerssmilie: