Kicking the Poor

Recent months have seen the repetition of spurious statistics about 120,000  problem families. Fullfact have published their analysis of the derivation of this “figure” (see http://fullfact.org/factchecks/problem_families_costs_eric_pickles-27396) and this piece in the Guardian by Zoe Williams explores these issues, with additional links to real research that does more than a flying visit to 16 families.

Financiers can lie and screw the economy, Newspapers can hack phones of murder victims, High level executives have memory recall problems, millionaires can be addicted to drugs, footballers can be racist and adulterous, and sexual abuse is not respecter of class, gender or colour.   But Eric Pickles and the rest of the Compassionate Coalition can scapegoat the poor as feckless and needing state based intervention, even though we are trying to privatise as much as the state as possible…