Sticking Cameron’s cabinet on £53 a week would in itself be a stunt. But in the age of rich public school boys being parachuted into safe seats without having any experience of life outside Westminster - the struggle for jobs and daily budgets far more demanding than anything Osborne has had to get his head around – it might just be a necessary wakeup call.
After Iain Duncan Smith claimed he could live on £53 a week in benefits instead of his £1,581 a week post-tax salary, he was challenged by an online petition to put his money where his mouth is.
Within a day the petition attracted more than 200,000 signatures. It has now secured over 300,000 signatures.
Petitions are hardly the strongest form of political protest, and this is something of a stunt, but my name is on that list because I think there is a worrying disconnect between rich politicians and the real world.
If Iain Duncan Smith were to take the £53 a week challenge, I wouldn’t expect to see a road to Damascus, or for this die hard dyed in the wool Tory to abandon his long-held ideological commitment to neo-liberalism. But at least it would show the man whose bedroom tax is to make 660,000 people living in social housing £728 per year worse off the everyday effect of his policies.
It is little surprise that a cabinet dominated by millionaires has consistently acted in the interests of its class with expensive tax giveaways to society’s richest individuals and the world’s biggest corporations, while clawing back money from Britain’s poorest. It’s basic self-interest, which displays a tragic lack of empathy for those less fortunate.
Sticking Cameron’s cabinet on £53 a week would in itself be a stunt. But in the age of rich public school boys being parachuted into safe seats without having any experience of life outside Westminster – the struggle for jobs and daily budgets far more demanding than anything Osborne has had to get his head around – it might just be a necessary wakeup call.
You can sign the petition calling for Iain Duncan Smith to live on £53 a week here.
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25 Responses to “How about we stick Cameron’s entire cabinet on £53 a week”
SadButMadLad
Well the first thing you can do is read into the real circumstance of Mr Bennett. It seems he has not been quite truthful about his situation. Not surprising with someone who calls himself a “ducker and diver”. It looks like he actually has £156/week left over after paying all his bills. A bit different from the £54/week. And Mr Bennett is not that badly off being able to pay the cost of a Sky subscription and broadband and run a van as well as gamble.
Careful about signing that petition, it’s likely that you might get egg on your face when it turns out that Mr Bennett is a scrounger rather than a striving market trader.
Emma Bain
Indeed i wish people would stop dreaming there will ever be a good government, they are all corrupted and always will be, i don’t vote because i know it’s a lie that we make that decision when we actually don’t, it helps to create the illusion of freedom when were not free we are just slaves to pay off their houses that allows them to live off us for free. Even the fact that having money means were not poor is a lie, when money is all we really have so we are still poor. They hold against the people that we cannot survive without them but we can and eventually will, i have never danced around the idea of being governed or which party to vote for because i just want to be free.
Sparkly
What a load of crap. Does the chairman of a supermarket have to have spent time stacking shelves in order to run the company? Does the CEO of a building company need to know how to operate a digger to make strategic business decisions. You think former Labour ministers weren’t wealthy? You think John Prescott wasn’t a wealthy man? Why weren’t you calling for them to live on income support for a week? Hypocrisy.
hardly likely but...
how about left food forward pays its interns?
2Legsbetter
I have experience of IDS, he was a non exec for a software company competing against my company. Although he had officially resigned the post he called the CEO of a major UK blue chip and demanded that the purchasing decision made in my companies favour was over turned. Unfortunately we live in a very corrupt country where people like IDS prosper!