An Email To My MP
I have to say it CW: sweary in parts
This week, renowned rabid dog and general nincompoop Jeremy “Jazz Hands” Hunt stood on a speaker’s platform at the Conservative Party Conference and went all Dickensian in his speech, talking about increasing benefit sanctions on the hardest hit.
Organise, a site which brings together working people to pressure dickheads in power to change their minds about being pricks, has organised a petition and campaign to mass email MPs and press them into forcing “Hulture Secretary Jeremy Cunt” to step back from his Charles Pooter policies.
Below the fold is the email I sent to my MP.
I write to you, concerned over Jeremy Hunt's intentions over benefit sanctions, in the face of established fact that the government’s own research proves that sanctions actually impede people's efforts to get back into work.
Organise, a workers’ rights network, has set up a campaign to end unfair policies such as this.
I could bring up the usual issues people talk about when the topic of sanctions comes up - the financial hardship heaped upon people who are already finding it difficult to make ends meet; the barriers of poverty which make it all but impossible to access the resources needed to get back into work or to start work, starting with paying for transport to get into town - but people seem not to listen to those points.
So instead, I'd like to point out that speeches made at Conservative party conferences this year have been presented in less than glowing terms by a media which has been finding it almost impossible to speak on speakers' pledges without a strain of incredulity.
Jeremy Hunt's less than sterling record of competence in his past Ministerial positions has been brought up many times, despite efforts to keep them out of the limelight; and people in positions of influence within Parliament have been speaking out against these pledges as "without merit" and "pandering to the dwindling voter base of the strident."
Even the most supportive media have been less than sparkling in describing Jeremy Hunt's presentation. In the face of such a lukewarm response to his speech and, beyond that, the party conference as a whole, where even the most supportive media channels are finding it hard to go past his words to find a sense of enthusiasm for his plans, it might be tough to be where you are and still find a way of making his words make sense where they impact with the real world where you and other normal people have to live in.
As my MP, please can you raise this issue at the next PMQs and write to Ministers on the devastating consequences that benefits sanctions have on families.
Here’s why your constituents are supporting the campaign:
“My son lost his baby boy because he was born at 23 weeks and struggled to survive for 3 weeks 2 days. My son's next appointment was scheduled for the day of the funeral, he didn't go to the appointment because he was burying his son and he was sanctioned and received no money.”
You can see this petition on Organise here: https://the.organise.network/campaigns/network-tell-the-uk-government-benefit-sanctions-don-t-work-704199d922fab4be
I look forward to hearing your response soon.