By Dude Swheatie of Kwug
- High interest rates and inequality
In early 2005 pressure group Debt on Our Doorstep (DoOD) launched a campaign against the charging of wildly excessive interest rates to poor families who were declared 'high risk borrowers' by those banks who exploited their vulnerability with 50% interest rates for having defaulted in the past.(1) Since then we have had the bursting of a 'housing bubble' leading to general economic collapse and the rise of TV advertised loan shark interest rates alongside public spending cuts and punitive welfare reforms dictated by a millionaire political class who have been extremely stingy in the allocation of European Social Fund (ESF) assistance to poor people. Is this justifiable, and if not, what would you do about it? - Fiscal responsibility and equal rights
A Labour Government signed Britain up to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) in 2007 and yet the prospects of a vast majority of poor disabled people and their carers have arguably been made much worse since, as if we have received a cheque marked 'insufficient funds'.(2) (3) (4) Is such equalities legislation useless and expensive red tape or a pathway worthy of investing in for the greater good of society?
Notes
(1) http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2005/02/17/families-as-shark-bait/
(2) Re UNCRPD, see Disabled People Against Cuts Manifesto http://dpac.uk.net/2015/03/manifesto-asks/
(3) Re 'insufficient funds', see what Revd Dr Martin Luther King Jr said in his 'I Have a Dream' speech on the centenary of President Lincoln's 'Gettysburg Address': http://quotesnack.com/martin-luther-king/we-refuse-to-believe-that-there-are-insufficient-funds-in-the-great-vaults-of-opportunity-of-this-nation-martin-luther-king-jr/
(4) For an individual case study on the cumulative impact of public spending cuts on one Kilburn man with learning difficulties, see Kate Belgrave's blog piece: http://www.katebelgrave.com/2015/04/update-on-the-house-mould-pictures-and-people-who-are-excluded-from-political-representation/
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