Letter: Dreams trashed by heartless machine

DOES it surprise anyone that, only a few months after the Tories were thwarted in their attempt to penalise the working poor  they went for another easy target — people with disabilities? Astonishingly the money that they hoped to save by introducing these cuts was to be passed on as tax breaks to the better off.

Year on year, the gap between those on lower incomes and those on higher incomes is getting wider. No one would say that we do not need a strong economy, but we might need to ask ourselves why we need a strong economy. Is it so that the treasury can sit on a pile of money or is it so that we can then fund the kind of society that we want? For a few brief years after the Second World War we were moving in that direction — a society which aims to provide a good infrastructure of health, education, housing and transport and one which offers a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, and supports those people who are vulnerable. It was not one which says “let’s make money for the sake of it.”

The Tories handling of the economy, (we are now eight years on from the financial crash of 2008) must be seriously questioned. Poverty is increasing and the numbers of people going to food banks continues to grow. Only the cynical use of' zero hours’ contracts and widespread low pay has kept unemployment statistics from being at an all-time high. The housing shortage is reaching critical proportions and to cap it all, another financial crash is now being forecast. Austerity has achieved nothing at all except to make some people very rich. How much more do we need to regress before we can all see this government for what it is? A heartless machine which has consistently robbed the poor to support the rich and continues to trash the dreams of a decent, civilised society which our parents and grandparents fought so hard to begin to establish.  

Jo Burton, Labour councillor, South Anston