The Conservative government has created a climate of arrogance and contempt towards people on welfare benefits in order to discredit claimants who are being subject to frozen benefits, unfair cuts and sanctions.
It is no surprise at all that the Grenfell Action Group gained little traction for their complaints and concerns about safety from their landlords – the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation.
The opinions of the poor count for little when you have a government involved in social cleansing, driving the poor out of London, where many members of the government have vested property interests.
The attitudes whipped up by the government, the Department for Work and Pensions and the right-wing media against the disabled and those on out-of-work benefits, have created a climate where the concerns of those on low incomes count for little.
Would complaints by rich tenants in Knightsbridge have been ignored by the management group in the same way? Wealthy tenants have access to lawyers – unlike the poor, who have had legal aid taken away.
The government is complicit in this disaster in the way that it has engineered public opinion against the poor, the disabled and the wage-less. Had ordinary people been listened to, this disaster may have been averted.
Simon Collyer, Founder and CEO, the Association of Pensions & Benefits Claimants CIC
