Britain’s conservative government is proudly dismantling many established social services. Austerity on crack.
The Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown tackles this in her weekly column and references my new book, Disaster Capitalism:
While we are on asylum-seekers and refugees, let’s look into the places these people are incarcerated. Antony Loewenstein’s Disaster Capitalism exposes the way profits are extracted from desperation. Since 2012, Serco and G4S have become custodians of vulnerable men, women and children. Here is what the author witnessed at a centre in Wakefield: “The rooms were home to rats and cockroaches. Pregnant women were placed in poor housing with steep stairs. Food poisoning was common. Some private contractors did not pay council fees, and tenants’ heating and electricity had been disconnected.” The hellish place is called Angel Lodge. But there are good returns in this developing market. And for “the ordinary people” among us, the living wage promise by the PM is as credible as his commitment to help refugees. He doesn’t mean it, and is only placating current public sentiments. The dispossessed and low paid have no place in Toryland. Poverty is fecklessness. Those who commit suicide after losing benefits are worthless. Free lunches for schoolchildren were Clegg’s soppy idea which must be taken off the table.