Friends with benefits.

Here in the UK, over the last four and a half years, the coalition government has, under the guise of austerity, consistently and relentlessly, cut or curbed the benefits of those least able to defend themselves, whilst also removing, or making more difficult, the ability for claimants to appeal against the decision. 

The introduction of a number of heinous laws - such as bedroom tax, benefits cap and changes to the way benefits are calculated and awarded - has had a direct impact on the disabled. Propaganda against benefit claimants has never been so 'popular' - with mainstream TV shows depicting those on benefits as 'scroungers' and 'layabouts'. And, whilst it is fair to say that the last Labour government created a benefits culture, it is also fair to say that this coalition has created and nurtured a big-business and banking culture which rewards those at the top (and whose actions caused the banking collapse in 2008) who do their best to avoid taxes and reward themselves with massive bonuses without risk of any financial penalty. Their feeble protestations that "We're all in this together." no longer ring true, when you showcase their actions against those on benefits compared with their actions against their party paymasters.

And there seems to be no opposition to this, with both the Tories and Labour promising even further restrictions on benefits if they win the upcoming general election on May 7th. They're not promising to cap bankers' bonuses, they're not promising to invest in jobs and education, they're not promising to curb the movement of big business' profits to offshore accounts in order to avoid paying UK corporation tax - they're promising to continue the austerity path and attack benefits - because, as we all now know, people on benefits are scum, lazy and work-shy scroungers who live the high life at the taxpayer's expense.

The reality couldn't be further from the truth for the vast majority of benefits claimants - but they're all 'tarred with the same brush' these days. ATOS (who I've cynically renamed with the prefix "Couldn't Give") - one of the private companies tasked with assessing disability benefit claimants, and on whose board of directors probably sit a number of Tory ministers, has been known to assess as "fit for work" those close to death. The stories of their failings are widespread folklore across the internet - though, oddly, not in the mainstream press. Here's one REPORT from a few years ago.

I agree that the benefits system in Britain needed fixing, but fixing - not decimating!  There needed to be better policing of the system to weed out the minority of claimants who abuse it, rather than the 'one-size-fits-all' or 'all-claimants-are-scroungers' approach that the coalition adopted. And the fact that no mainstream political party seems to want to remedy this situation leaves me floundering when it comes to casting my vote in May.