Letters: ‘This is NOT the Labour Party I have voted for my entire life’

The Labour Party is no longer recognisable to a reader, who writes of her own experiences navigating the disability benefits system. Has the Labour government already lost its way? These Big Issue readers think so.

Labour Party is unrecognisable

I think the government’s claim of wanting disabled people to ‘live with dignity’ is a far-off dream when you are bladder and bowel incontinent, as I am, and have to rely on your family to help you with the smallest things that other people take for granted. I would be happy just to be allowed to live. I am medically retired and have two lifelong, incurable, degenerative diseases: multiple sclerosis and severe arthritis, as well as neutropenia. I have also had a stroke and cannot walk more than a few steps.

A friend of mine killed herself rather than go through another dehumanising assessment for PIP. Why do people with MS have to be ‘re-assessed’? At my last assessment, I was downgraded and had to appeal, after the assessor stated that she had seen me walking (I am confined to a wheelchair) and that she had examined me (she had not come near me). How can disabled people have any confidence in this brutal system? This is NOT the Labour Party that I have voted for my whole life.

Harriet Connides, London

Labour away

Reactions to Labour’s benefit cuts from Big Issue’s social media platforms.

And yet MPs have had a pay rise, their energy bills and council tax bills still paid for. This is disgraceful, they’re going after the most vulnerable instead of doing the logical thing which would be taxing the rich. 

@fitlilmonkey23 

Cuts are a choice by a cruel and out-of-touch government. A wealth tax is long overdue and the cuts must be reversed. 

@richardevans2522 

Sad that the most vulnerable people have to suffer at the government’s expense because they don’t have the backbone to tax the rich. Cowards If you ask me :/ 

@waffle2038 

If only they would announce a wealth tax and closing of tax loopholes. Go after offshore tax evaders instead. 

@bernd_rs 

Make an award-winning ITV drama about a photogenic hardworking normal family who are devastated when they find their grumpy neighbour died three months ago due to benefit cuts and it took them that long to notice?

@otakukeith 

• The hidden impact of Labour’s disability benefit cuts – from carer’s allowance to railcards
• Could Rachel Reeves have introduced a wealth tax instead of benefit cuts? Economists say yes
• Labour’s benefits cuts are short-sighted, whatever way you look at it

Fare enough

We loved your article about the Fare Dodgers Liberation Front – a reminder of the burden that high fares put on the shoulders of Londoners with low income. We started the Fare Free London campaign last year, calling on the mayor to embrace the principle of free public transport, and to commission research on how it could be implemented. Fares now are so much higher than in the 1990s. Many poorly paid workers travel to work by bus because the tube is so expensive. Social inequality, right there.

Free public transport is totally practical. They have it in Montpellier and Dunkerque in France, the whole of Luxembourg, Kansas City and Albuquerque in the US… and 110 cities in Brazil. Karnataka in India has free public transport for women. London is miles behind. Support our campaign here.

Tony Wood and Simon Pirani, London

Sheen and heard

Respect to Michael Sheen for using his profile to highlight the fact that debts are bought and sold behind closed doors, and for his generosity in putting his own money on the line to help people. The programme focused on the actor’s generosity and the delay and frustration with “getting into the system”, but it could have gone so much further, by digging into the scandalous, secretive trade in debts.

There was a film made a few years ago in Walthamstow that revealed so much more of the iniquitous hidden trade in misery, which uses a strict and elitist licensing system to keep it in the shadows of the wider financial system. The film’s called Bank Job (not the Jason Statham one). One of the shocking things it points out is that they bought £1.2m of debt for just £20,000 – apparently quite a normal discount within this closed shop of bankers and financiers, while the people who had to take out the original loans continue having to pay interest on the full amount. It’s a cash cow for the rich financiers, a ball and chain for the poor borrowers.   

David McDade

Credit note

I was sorry that the article about the Brian Haw statue didn’t give the name of the sculptor, Amanda Ward. I think your readers would also be interested to know more about her and her other work.

Maggie Organ

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.