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Courtesy Guardian.....Poly Toynbee part artile..........
Why we all love Charlie Bucket (and despise the poor in real life)
We love the poor in fairytales, but survey after survey shows we are all too quick to blame real
people who fall on hard times.
The Citizens Advice Bureau reports a rise of 78% in the last six months in people needing food banks
to keep going. Many have jobs, but their pay doesn't see them to the end of the week. The CAB chief
executive says millions of families face a "perfect storm" with benefit cuts, low wages, short hours and
the high cost of living. Even in apparently well-to-do areas, community halls and churches are
opening food banks so all can see those queuing for tins of beans and packets of pasta: basic calories,
no treats and nothing fresh.
Yet polls show most people think the benefit bill is still too high, scroungers and frauds are rampant
and the screw needs to be tightened. A £21bn benefit cut is not enough, and there should be even
more stick and less (tinned) carrot.
YouGov polling finds overwhelming support for the benefit cap now rolling out. This week the cap
hits the Guardian's neighbouring Camden, where 606 households with high rents will have to move
on. Yet twice as many voters think "the government is not being tough enough" as think it's "too harsh".
YouGov's polling for the TUC found remarkable ignorance of the facts. People think 41% of the budget
goes on unemployment - the real figure is 3%. They think fraud accounts for 27%: even Iain Duncan
Smith's own figure is 0.7%. They think people have little incentive to work. In reality a parent
working 30 hours on minimum pay gets £138 more than on the dole. Polling for the Institute
for Public Policy Research similarly wildly mistakes who gets what. People think immigrants
account for the biggest slice when pensioners take half. They say pensioners and the disabled are
the most deserving, but if so, why is there no outcry about disability cuts and Atos tests where 1,300
people died last year after being found "fit for work"?