Search proceeds for new excuses

Was it liberal to prompt a storm of hostility and denigration towards benefit recipients, disabled people and the poor?

‘Truth and Lies about Poverty’, a joint Churches’ response, effectively nails some of the ignorance and prejudice that has been aired.

Was it liberal to introduce the ‘bedroom tax’, a blunt instrument in a bully’s toolbox rather than the claimed equalising factor? Bolstering the construction industry would be a more positive approach.

Was it liberal to exchange public sector employment with unemployment or insecure, low paid underemployment? Is it liberal for the Education Secretary to force academy status on schools through bullying and bribery and against the wishes of parents and governors? Where is the so called Localism in that?

Was it liberal to claim the sanctity of the NHS whilst busily working to make it fertile for private profit opportunities?

Is it liberal for the Home Secretary to tilt for a withdrawal from the European human rights convention, when the President of the Supreme Court warns that such action could mean the UK becoming a pariah state outside the United Nations?

The cracked record ‘It is all Labour’s fault’ sounds no better the more it is played. ‘George Osborne is an economic illiterate’, the words of a foremost commentator, may not be too well received either but they summarise the intense feeling that the Government’s economic strategy is hideously deficient, offering us little hope for improvement any time soon.

Meanwhile, the search proceeds for new alibis, new excuses, and new scapegoats.

ERIK SHOPLAND

Denne Road, Horsham