Hidden in plain sight: How the needs of the poor are being ignored - UK Politics, UK - The Independent

Hidden in plain sight: How the needs of the poor are being ignored - UK Politics, UK - The Independent: "Britain has become a nation of ghettoes of the long-term unemployed – mocked and punished by three decades of incompetent and heartless government. Mrs Thatcher's blitz on the country's industrial heartlands; a strategy to wring the necks of noisy trade unions, created these barrios of suffering. Tony Blair's landslide victory in 1997 had the legions on the dole dancing in the streets, but their dreams were betrayed. Instead, New Labour institutionalised and buried the 'dustbin' people who had sent nearly half the cabinet to London to give their children a future. David Cameron identified and condemned the Broken Society and promised to fix it. 'Jam and Jerusalem on hallucinogens' was one description of his campaigning fever in the slums of Glasgow. But once Gordon Brown had sulked out of Downing Street nothing changed. Even now, as another polling day looms, the suits of Westminster have left whole communities of the damned to rot in the spring sunshine. Welcome to apartheid Britain and the death of pity in the Mother Hubbard of All Parliaments."