How Michelle Dorrell was shafted by the Tories

Michelle Dorrell was in all the headlines last Friday, but the press is now trying desperately to forget about her as they run their latest Corbyn bad story. It's up to social media to keep the story alive and remind people of just how scummy the Tories are.

The point is that Michelle got a double shafting. Firstly she was promised by Cameron that he would not cut working tax credits. That was an election pledge that has just been unceremoniously dumped, leaving Michelle and thousands like her up shit creek. She voted for the Cameroonians on the basis of a pledge that has turned out to be a downright lie.

Secondly, and this may not apply directly to Michelle, but it applies to plenty of others who bought into the Tory shtick of demonising claimants as scroungers and exalting people in employment as hard working taxpayers. 

That line came with a particularly nasty sleight of hand trick whereby the unemployed were encouraged to set themselves up as self employed, even if the so-called businesses that they were running did not make any money. They were told by the joke shops that working tax credits would pay them a wage, in effect, and the beauty of this wheeze was that overnight they went from being benefit scrounging scum to hard working family taxpayers. As far as the Tory regime was concerned it was all about getting the official unemployment figures down, until this year when they decided to reverse the policy.

A couple of years ago I met  fellow who was supposedly a copywriter. Over a pint or three he told me that what he actually did was give Amazon book reviews for a couple of quid a throw to anyone who wanted them. He confessed that he only earned a few quid a month, but that his tax credits gave him something approaching an income.

What was true of that man is also true of the Big Issue sellers who are now being encouraged by at least one organisation to become self employed - especially if they are Central European gypsies.

Sorry, but you cannot blame the unemployed for doing as the Tories wanted by becoming self employed. It isn't their fault that in July this year those same Tories decided to include them in the category of scroungers rather than hard working taxpayers.