Thoughts On Becoming A Folk Devil

A little background to the terminology to begin with Folk Devil (Apologies to those who have  reservations about the reliability of Wikipedia but their overview is as good as any and better than most in this instance)

I myself (and many, many others) have recently  acquired this hideous status courtesy of our rabidly Right Wing Government.
So what did I do to become an enemy of the state?

Did I get so overexcited at the prospect of becoming Deputy Prime Minister that I entered a coalition without acquiring power of veto over bad policy formulation by my coalition partners? No. That was somebody else.

Was I appointed as an advisor on public sector economic efficiency despite having evaded £1.2 Billion of taxes? Not me either.

Did I encourage journalists to illegally hack mobile phones whilst serving as a Newspaper editor? Don't be silly.

Did I fall in love with a disabled woman, marry her, give up my career to be her carer, live on a pittance for most of the Major years, get a significant increase to my still very low income under the last Labour government then see myself & my wife and people like us demonised by this government as part of its policy of slashing services at all costs whilst turning a blind eye to bloated salaries & blatant tax evasion amongst its cronies? Guilty as charged. I know, I'm evil. Aren't I?
Actually, I don't think I am. People like me save the country far more than we cost. We are told that people on disability benefits are shiftless scroungers, that disabled people get prostitutes at the taxpayers expense, that Disability Living Allowance is a form of unemployment benefit. (It's not, the clue's in the name)

So why we are being subjected to this abuse? Why has there been a four fold increase in hate crimes against disabled people since this government came to power? Two little completely harmless sounding words: "Small State". That the state should be made smaller, not for some practical function but as a point of principle.
Even when (as is the case here) the state is too small to meet its minimum obligations, you reduce it further on principle. A shopping list contains more thought than went into this idea .


Some would say that this is the logical entailment of a coalition of Tories (Who help the wealthy and no one else) and the LibDems (Who favour sloganeering over analysis in policy formulation & expediency over principle in the business of government) I would not dispute that but it doesn't make the consequences any easier to live with. We're not hypothetical abstracts we are real people living real lives in the real world. Please remember that. As for me, if we ever meet please forget what you have been encouraged to think. If you do, who knows, you might even like me.