CPC13 my statement to the @Conservatives at conference by, Jack - TopicsExpress



          

CPC13 my statement to the @Conservatives at conference by, Jack Monroe @MsJackMonroe - A Girl Called Jack The question we were asked to answer today, was “are food banks a sign of hope or failure?” I think we all know the answer to that – or at least we think we do. Here’s my story. I’m a girl called Jack. I’m 25 years old, and I was unemployed for 18 months and claiming benefits. George Osborne spoke on BBC Radio Five Live this week about “drawing the battle lines”. We are all familiar with the phrase “war on welfare”. My father is a #Falklands veteran. My brother has just returned from yet another tour in #Afghanistan. It is frankly an insult to their service to this country to describe the savaging and damaging cuts to the support structures of this great nation, to compare the two. This is not a #war. It is an #assault against the unarmed, a #massacre of hope and dignity. This “war”, like every other, waged mainly by middle class men in suits, disproportionately claims the livelihoods of women and children. The single mothers did not cause the #BankingCrisis. The elderly the disabled and the unemployed are not to blame for tax avoidance by big companies. My son did not sell off the social housing and refuse to build any more. But the real casualties are hidden from headlines and public view as we are told that the economy is recovering. For who? At what cost? Wars are the result of decisions made at desks, in offices, people shuffling statistics and ideas around with scarcely a thought for the implications on the battle ground, only the outcomes that they desire. Casualties are reduced to numbers, as ink is far easier to live with than bloodied hands. But what use – and we heard from our friend at the end of the table earlier that there were ‘only 565 #FoodBank users in Cambridge’ justified as he mentioned the population of 82,000 people in his constituency – what use are numbers? There’s ‘only’ half a million food bank users in the UK. Less than one per cent. What use are numbers, when you are one of the 565, not the other 81,000 or so? What use is a one per cent chance, when that one per cent is you? What sort of a society do we live in where people who go out to work every day to provide for themselves and their families cannot afford to do so, but their situation is justified in a statistic? Why are you not ashamed, Sir, that there are FIVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE people in your constituency who desperately cannot afford to feed themselves and their families?
Posted on: Sat, 05 Oct 2013 17:39:10 +0000

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