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badly-drawn bee 🐝

12 Jan, 11 tweets, 2 min read

Tories don't think they're behaving callously towards families in poverty. The genuinely believe, in the way believe things you've been explicitly and implicitly told throughout your life, that poverty is a *punishable moral failing*. 1/

Bad decisions by parents. Drink and drugs. Layabout attitude. Wanting something for nothing.

It's ideological moralising, pure and simple.
(Hypocrisy too, since the majority of these traits are in plain sight amongst the already wealthy.)

I grew up in a pretty Tory environment. I believed - again - through explicit and implicit messages - that there were 'common people' and there were 'nice people'. Nice people didn't have strong regional accents. Or get drunks. Or were poor.

Moving away - going to a diverse university, teaching, spending 20 years living in London with friends in social care, health care, education - all that has completely altered my world view.

You only have to scratch the surface to see the layer upon layer of hypocrisy within this 'us and 'them' / deserving / undeserving attitude which marginalises those in poverty.

I've never seen drinkers like some of the people my parents socialised with over the years. But they were nice, middle-class drunks.

Drug use is *everywhere* but so long as it's Oxbridge lads doing rails at Soho House it's OK. Want to give poorer families cash? We're clutching our pearls about 'booze and fags'.

If I hadn't moved away and widened my horizons/changed my perceptions, I might still feel that way. That 'common people' were poor because...they just were. It's what they were born to be. I wouldn't have crystallized that thought, but it would be what I'd believe.

That's the Tory mindset. "This is what these people deserve, so why should we help them? We can't trust them with cash, so let's destroy any dignity by giving them scraps."

It's repellent.

I didn't intend this to go on, but it's worth realising that this isn't (always) a case of Tories knowing it's morally wrong but doing it anyway. It's ideological - they *believe* this is what people in poverty deserve. It requires a wholesale mindset shift on their part.

How do we achieve that?

Fuck them; they've had their chance. I don't care to spend my time re-educating empathy voids.

Vote them all out the nanosecond we get the chance.

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