To wonder if Nazi Germany felt like the UK does now, when they were creeping into power?

[oneggshellsforever]

Transformations in the justice system are happening, stacking the odds against disabled people having a fair hearing when they appeal sanctions or having disability benefits turned down.

They're getting rid of in person tribunals, and getting rid of expert panel members.

Disabled people are often successful when it goes to appeal, so the government seem to be systematically stripping the legal system of a fair trial?

Will start happening in October. What the government is doing to disabled people, and people with very little money in general, is chilling me to the bone. I honestly wonder if the feeling in the atmosphere was like this in 1930's Germany.

www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/12/online-benefits-appeals-tribunals-disabled

zzzz- yes and we died younger and far fewer people went to university. So if we go back to those days of 15% University attendance then we could still have free University, IMO this would be far more sensible. Equally we now live longer so there is far more pressure on NHS/Dental services hence we now have to pay for some services.

When did we have free dentists and universities etc

Agree about dentists, but if you want free universities then it will have to go back to the model of the 80's as well with only around 10% intake, that was Blairs everyone go to university coming back to bite everyone where now we have people complaining that they have a degree and cannot find a job.

What you forget when you quote the 10 -15% going to University, is that then a number of qualifications were not degree level, but still required 3 years of study - e.g. teaching, nursing, midwifery. Teaching pushed to become an all graduate profession sometime in the mid 70s - 1975, I think from memory. Needless to say, these professions were or are predominantly women. Add them in to the totals going into higher education and it will be significantly more than 10%.

Blairs everyone go to university

There was an aim during Thatcher/Major's gov to increase university attendance to over 50%.

Helps with unemployment figures and pesky student/ young protestors.

Overall participation in higher education increased from 3.4% in 1950, to 8.4% in 1970, 19.3% in 1990.

Pre Blair it was already a well established ruse, alongside tuition fees started with Dearing in 1996 with Major.

Employment figures massaging.

Without the inflated and extortionately indentured university population in this country 'real' unemployment rates will be round the 25%.

And if people are dropping dead within a week of being assessed as fit for work I think we can safely say that a few more weeks of benefits, wouldn't keep them alive.

A helluva lot of the cases are people committing suicide because they simply can't face the stress of having to jump through DWP hoops to seek work or go through the appeals process when severely unwell. There have been a few heart attacks too - stress again.

David Clapson might still be alive though if he'd had a few more weeks of benefits. TBF though, that was a JSA sanction so totally different, I'm sure.

To return to the OP's question, unless this thread is pure hyperbole, a genuine answer to how the people of Germany felt during the Nazi uprising can be found in the words of contemporary author Christopher Isherwood.

A Englishman in Berlin "for the boys" as male prostitution was widespread. Christopher taught English and his interactions ranged from elicit members of the Communist party, through to rich German and Jewish families (who he taught) through to the working class men he paid for sex (who lived in tenaments rather like the poor in Victorian times here, one or two families in one room).

If you are saying that the UK populus currently perceives that there is an unjust imbalance in wealth and believe that's because a group of immigrants hold all the money and power amongst themselves, then I strongly disagree.

It's an insult to all the innocent people murdered by the Nazis to use this comparison so flippantly.

YABVU

pencils - again an awful lot of supposition in your post. If people are so mentally unwell that they wish to complete suicide that is indeed a tragedy and I strongly believe that mental health services in this country are woefully underfunded and inadequate. However I don't think that the benefit cuts are killing people rhetoric is helpful. By all means campaign for increased and better resourced mental health and social care services and I will be right there with you. However shouting that benefit changes are literally killing people is in IMO disingenuous and misleading.

If you are saying that the UK populus currently perceives that there is an unjust imbalance in wealth and believe that's because a group of immigrants hold all the money and power amongst themselves, then I strongly disagree

Do you think that certain groups of society are being blamed for issues in the country? And that this blame manifests itself in media attitudes, political attitudes and in acts of violence towards them and towards people who stand up against this blame culture?

lemonsandlimes123

Iain dont you have better things to do? Or is that you Priti?

Dont know why just dont think Damien Green would be on here, he doesnt seem as 'evil' as the other 2 were

I remember the 80s very well. NHS glasses that stigmatised children. Playground banter routinely including disablist, racist and homophobic language. Punk. Alternative comedy. Spitting Image. The Zeebrugge disaster. Hillsborough. Parents smoking in the car. Asbestos.

I'm not remembering free stuff and inclusive culture, or everyone being protected by the government.

And if people are dropping dead within a week of being assessed as fit for work I think we can safely say that a few more weeks of benefits, wouldn't keep them alive

Do you not see that if you are at death's door, a simple note from a doctor/consultant/specialist should be enough to extend benefits to end of life? Why on earth should someone so ill be put through an assessment (frequently miles from home), the stress of travel, the stress it places on families etc when dealing with such serious illness? How is it even possible that such ill,people are deemed fit for work? How is it OK that people,and their families spend their last few weeks with this kind of shot hanging over them?

Sleep, we do see families now living in a single room as there is no social housing. It's becoming more and more common.

Of course benefits should extend to the end of a very ill person's life. It's a disgrace if they aren't. But the removal of benefits does not cause the death of someone very close to death.

As for women's refuges, they need vastly more funding and I didn't vote Tory. But my mum was instrumental in the early women's aid movement within my own lifetime. Back then, in the days of flares and pointy collars, domestic violence was barely considered to be a crime at all.

My mum had women come to our house to stay because refuges didn't exist and the police weren't interested.

Domestic violence absolutely is a crime now, taken very seriously by the law and by society in general.

Again, in what period of UK history were women safer, more respected and free to make their own choices than now?

The war isn't won. Sexism, racism, disablism and all sorts of other injustices are very much still with us. But they always have been, and the general trend is always progressive. Things are getting gradually better.

Let's not mythologise the past, that's what the other side do.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/12/nazi-white-nationalist-rallies-virginia-protests

Increasingly Nazified' white nationalist rally descends on Virginia amid expected protests

Far-right monitoring groups estimate between 500 and 1,000 people will head to Charlottesville to hear from ‘alt-right’ ideologues such as Richard Spencer

Charlottesville.

And here in britain:
UKIP/EDL:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40902796

Follow the money: Leave, Banks, Mercer etc

www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democrac

It's old news now, but US and we're living with what countries whose institutions have been so compromised feels like.

European press is completely au fait with the premise of this thread by the way, I think we are also compromised by cultural isolation of language and other intellectual barriers.

Countries who have experience totalitarianism within living memory are wiser to the warning signs or actualities than britain seems to be.

I think there's the continual undercurrent that 'it couldn't happen here'; a feeling associated with British exceptionalism that the British would never tolerate fascism, not like those excitable foreigners. It's a myth that we've created for ourselves.
You've only got to look at the history of the Channel Islands to see otherwise.

Domestic violence absolutely is a crime now, taken very seriously by the law and by society in general.

Unless you are foreign/ female.

Sex worker robbed at knifepoint faces deportation after contacting police

www.politics.co.uk/news/2017/08/11/sex-worker-robbed-at-knifepoint-faces-deportation-after-cont

Another thread had a social worker complaining about how she had to visit people who lived in utterly squalid conditions. So yes, those conditions must exist and I doubt whether May, Gove, Johnson, Cameron or Osborne have much acquaintance with them. May, after all, professes concern about the people who are 'Just about managing.' I can't recall her expressing concern for those who aren't managing.

As it happened, the social worker got pretty short shrift and was told she was in the wrong job.

Countries who have experience totalitarianism within living memory are wiser to the warning signs or actualities than britain seems to be.

If there's one country that's certainly appeared to have learned the lessons of its past, then it's Germany.

Peregrina

I think MN pullldd the thread about the SW because they decided it was bollocks.

Hmmm. It sometimes feels like some people would like to make it a bit like Stalin's Russia where anything that isn't extreme left is labelled fascism.

I think MN pullldd the thread about the SW because they decided it was bollocks.

Oh, OK, I didn't know that. But SW friends confirm that some people do live in appalling conditions. It often seems that there are mental health issues involved, exacerbated by poverty.

TBF, I only know because I commented on it, and therefore had the deleted message.

Hmmm. It sometimes feels like some people would like to make it a bit like Stalin's Russia where anything that isn't extreme left is labelled fascism.

It sometimes feels that if you dont go along with the neo-liberalist, capatalist, market forces type thinking that you are described as extreme left