We can eliminate #poverty: but we have decided not to
#Tory MP and our trade secretary Kemi Badenoch tweeted:
“We don’t have a cure for poverty. If we did, we would have done it already.”
Of course, we know how to tackle poverty. As a matter of fact, there is less poverty in the #UK than once there was. As a result, unless you are wilfully blind, it is apparent that we do know how to tackle this issue.
The answers are relatively straightforward. Apart from paying decent benefits and appropriate pensions (neither of which happens in the UK at present) we also need to:
- Build affordable social housing in sufficient quantity that everybody might enjoy it.
- Ensure that essential public services, such as water, gas, electricity, telecoms and transport are affordably accessible to everyone.
- Guarantee free healthcare and social care from cradle to grave.
- Deliver high-quality education so that people can, if they wish, change their situations and are encouraged to do so.
- Have a policy of full employment at a living wage.
... ...
The choice is simple. Do we run the #economy in the interests of those who are in need, or for the benefit of those who already have a great deal but want more? That is the political question that we need to answer now. To add piquancy, human life can only survive one of those choices. That should make deciding fairly easy.
