Sometimes you get overwhelmed with the hypocrisy of Labour supporters . One of the latest comes from that Blog with the misnomer Left Foot Forward . Where someone called Peter Russel writes with righteous indignation over a poster from the Scotland Yes campaign which shows
“a waist-down image of a little girl in scuffed and battered footwear, dirty ankle socks and a ragged skirt.”Russel writes
"So what is the problem, why is a middle-aged middle class Labour voter so livid about it? Here’s why.
First, it is an outright and foul insult to every low income parent and child in Scotland and the UK, through its depiction of them as dirty, scruffy and negligent.
I took up the issue with CPAG Scotland whose director, John Dickie, confirmed:
“As you will see from our own written and visual material we are always very careful to reflect the reality that parents go to extraordinary lengths to protect their children from the poverty they face, very often going without basics themselves in order to ensure their children don’t have to go without.”
I am still at a loss to understand why CPAG Scotland did not also take me up on the challenge that they should condemn this denigration of low income families (but that is on their conscience.)
But here is a second reason to be furious about the poster: the figure of 100,000 extra children in poverty by 2020. This is in direct contradiction to the Scottish government’s own White Paper which tells us that by the same date the increase will be by 50,000.
Any single child being forced into poverty is of course an outrage, and certainly 50,000 is too high, but the point here is that there is a discrepancy of 100 per cent between the Scottish government and Yes Scotland".
There can be no greater contrast than with the UK Labour governments 1997-2010, which introduced the Minimum Wage and Working Families Tax credits as well as many other measures which reduced child poverty by nearly 1,000,000 across the UK including 100,000 in Scotland (these were described as “heroic” by the UK CPAG, and were surely just well appreciated by its Scottish arm.)
An incoming Labour government could do the same again, across the UK. What is needed is not a change of nationality for Scots, but a change of government and a change of policies.
The difference is clear: it is between those who see child poverty and will act to fight it, and those in Yes Scotland and the SNP who are concerned only as far as it suits their narrow partisan agenda.
The public should now know:
They will use disgraceful images of people in poverty which suggest that low income families neglect their children, and allow them to go dirty and a scruffy, if they think it will win votes.
If there is any doubt, Nationalists and their misguided supporters will choose the highest available figure to inflate their claims.
They will make claims which are unsupported and they know they cannot support, and when asked to do so, they will claim it is not in the public’s interest to know about such things.
There are three conclusions which we can draw from this disgraceful episode.
Maybe its just me or doe Russel's objection reflect the fact that Labour have have abandoned the poor and dispossessed in their relentless pursuit of Middle England
For those suffering under the Con/LibDem coalition who are living in poverty and have very little hope a change of government to Ed Milliband Labour will make no difference .
They too will attack those on Welfare blaming them for their predicament just as Blair's government did even before the financial crisis and the need for scapegoats.
Labour have long simply regarded the poor as voter fodder but as many now don't even vote they can now ignore them entirely .
Russels huffing and puffing says more about the attitude of the Middle Class Labour who have more in common with Tory public schoolboys than the people who have given them their support for nearly a century despite the constant betrayal of that part in government
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