Meet the horrible minority

The results of a recent YouGov poll reveal the disgusting attitudes of alarming numbers of Brits.

YouGov asked 15,000 people to decide what things the unemployed, the working poor, the average earner, and the very wealthy should and shouldn’t be able to afford, ranging from absolute necessities like utility bills, Internet access, and basic nutrition, to general stuff like haircuts, a social life, new clothes, a pet, or bi-annual trips to the theatre.

The results paint a disturbing picture of a country where huge numbers of people revel in the idea of inflicting deprivation not just on the jobless (unemployed people and those on disability benefits) but on low income workers too.

Here are a few of the lowlights from the poll:

• 26% of Brits believe that people without work should not be able to afford sufficient food for themselves and their children to eat a healthy balanced diet.

• 24% believe that unemployed people and people on disability benefits should not be able to afford to pay for basic utilities like gas, electric, and water.

• 31% believe that people without work should not be able to afford basic (non-designer) clothes.

• 37% believe that people without work should not be able to afford haircuts.

• 43% believe that the unemployed and other people without work should not be able to afford a home Internet connection (despite an Internet connection being a fundamental necessity for complying with job search requirements in the modern world).

• 23% believe that both the out of work and those on minimum wage should not be able to afford to have the basics of a social life (stuff like going out to a pub or restaurant to meet friends).

• 24% believe that neither the out of work nor those working minimum wage jobs should be able to afford active hobbies like a gym membership or playing for a local sports team.

• 14% even believe that just a basic smartphone is too much of a luxury for unemployed people and those who work minimum wage jobs.

• 22% believe that neither the workless nor the low-paid should be able to afford a simple holiday/vacation within the UK.

• 35% believe that neither the unemployed nor minimum wage earners should be able to afford a pet.

• And an inexplicable 50% believe that going to the theatre twice a year to see a show with professional actors is too much of a luxury for both the unemployed and minimum wage earners.

The results reveal that about a quarter of people actively despise the unemployed and people on disability benefits, to such an extent that they’d deny them even the absolute basics of survival.

There’s also a lot of hatred towards people in low-income jobs.

Imagine the absolute lack of decency it requires to think that people who work full-time jobs shouldn’t be able to afford stuff like gym memberships, pets, trips to the theatre, a social life, or a short holiday in the UK, just because their bosses pay them the lowest amount they can get away with under the law.

Then there’s the widespread delusion that things like basic smartphones and Internet connections are luxuries that the poor should learn to live without.

In this day and age it’s absurd to think that jobseekers should be denied basic telecommunications and Internet access. Benefits applications are made online. Jobcentre work listings are online. Job search websites are online. The job application forms are online. Recruitment companies are online. Interview dates and job offers are sent out by email. Everything is online these days.

It’s quite simply vindictive to want the unemployed to be cut off from the Internet, and reduced to such poverty that they can’t even afford a haircut, sufficient food, utilities, or basic non-designer clothes.

Wishing this kind of poverty onto unemployed people goes much further than wanting to incentivise them back into work by denying them the luxuries of life, it’s about wanting to trap them in perpetual poverty by denying them the means of even getting out of it.

Without the Internet they’re going to miss out on most of the job opportunities that ever come up, and if they turn up to interviews malnourished, with scruffy hair, and old unwashed clothes, they’re hardly going to create the best impression with prospective employers, are they?

These vindictive I’m alright Jack attitudes against the unemployed and the working poor are alarmingly widespread, but in reality they don’t represent the views of the majority. But you wouldn’t know that if you looked at Westminster establishment politics.

The Tories are fixated on pandering to this vicious, vindictive minority with poverty-spreading attacks on the unemployed, disabled people, low-income workers, and their children.

Policies like the eugenicist two-child policy, Bedroom Tax, “fit for work” abuse of the disabled, below-inflation wage settlements, and below-inflation social security increases are all aimed squarely at winning the approval of the kind of people who think that the unemployed, the disabled, low-income workers, and their children all need to be punished with even more poverty.

Labour’s dispiriting refusal to scrap the Tory two-child policy or stand up for the interests of low-income workers demonstrate that they’re also intent on pandering to this horrible minority too, rather than providing an alternate for the majority of decent people to vote for.

What is it that makes the political class so desperate to pander to this horrible minority, rather than representing the majority view that every family deserves the absolute basics of survival, whether the parents are unemployed, disabled, low-income workers, or economically comfortable?

Perhaps it’s that they share the view of the horrible minority that unemployed people, the disabled, and their kids are sub-human scum who need to be punished with even more poverty?

Or perhaps they’re working on the cynical assumption that the votes of this horrible minority are more important than the votes of the decent majority, because the hateful are more inclined to go out and vote for politicians who promise to make life worse for people they perceive as below them than the decent majority are inclined to actively vote for politicians who say there’s a basic standard of living that nobody should be allowed to fall below, no matter their circumstances?

Whatever the explanation it’s profoundly dispiriting that there’s such a sizeable minority of horrible vindictive bastards living among us, and it’s even more dispiriting that the Westminster establishment class insist on pandering to them, rather than representing the majority of us who still believe in a bit of basic human decency.