The despicable demonising of the poor

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/06/despicable-demonising-of-the-poor

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And so the vicious attack on the poorest continues (Tories pledge crackdown on benefit rises, 2 January). All the coalition arguments for limiting benefit increases to 1% are devious and dishonest. A primary school pupil would be able to point out that a 1% increase of a very small income is derisory when the costs of basics (such as food and heating) needed to survive poverty are rising at far more than the rate of inflation. Then there are the other hidden attacks on benefits enforced by the government.

A relative in her 90s recently showed me a letter from her local council. It said that because of government cuts it was increasing the prices of meals on wheels from £2.40 per meal to £3.80. Therefore, an elderly housebound couple who rely on such a service five days a week will face a monthly increase of £56. By my calculation that is an increase of 56%, slightly more than Iain Duncan Smith's beloved 1%. For those living in poverty there will be many more such unpublicised increases.

I had assumed the impact of limiting benefits would have been obvious to everyone. I had naively forgotten that the coalition cabinet is stuffed full of multimillionaires who have no idea what it is like to eke out a life where every penny counts. Chris Morris Kidderminster, Worcestershire

• Those politicians who selectively twist or distort the truth to mislead the public are beneath contempt. It is well known that wages tend to outstrip benefits in the long term, which is why benefit and pension levels in the UK have steadily fallen as a proportion of average wages and are now among the lowest in Europe. So choosing the last five years' changes in order to demonise the already poor is despicable. Rises below the inflation rate are in actuality reductions. To then claim that benefit increases that simply keep in line with prices is unfair is infantile – how about mentioning the way that top executive remuneration has consistently increased at well above inflation levels? Is that fair? Rich people depicting the impoverished as unfairly rewarded is insulting and simply shows up the nasty, tawdry ethics of those who have never known want. Michael Miller Sheffield

• As a jobseeker's allowance recipient, would you permit me to add a few comments to Zoe Williams's excellent article (Duncan Smith's polemic is politics at its most cynical, 3 January)? JSA costs £4.9bn a year, in a budget of £700bn; a fraction of 1% of total state expenditure. It therefore follows that any polemics concerning a very low degree of fraud by our feckless lumpenproletariat are about a fraction of a fraction of 1% of national spending, all of which is in any case spent in the economy – even if the expenditure is on booze and cigarettes!

Likewise, debates about small percentage increases in the JSA would be clarified if people understood that a 1% increase would yield me 70p, a small bottle of milk, a 3% increase £2.10, enough also for a large loaf! One per cent of £4.9bn is £49m. How are savings of this magnitude going to save the NHS or education? Alan Sharples Liverpool

• Even accepting government claims about the comparative rates of increase of benefits and earnings, the unfairness claim is mendacious. For a single jobseeker, the weekly rise has been about £14; for the average wage-earner, £71. It would have taken a 100% rise in the benefit to match the earnings rise. People spend money, not percentages. Eric D Farlie Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire

• For someone who once ran a centre for social justice, Iain Duncan Smith has a strange idea of what constitutes fairness in the benefit system. Basic unemployment pay is £71 a week. Average weekly earnings are just under £500. Yet he thinks it is wrong to increase the former at a greater rate than the latter. Raising rather than lowering the miserable level of unemployment pay relative to average earnings so as to improve the living standards of the poorest would be an elemental act of social justice. Robin Wendt Chester

• Your headline about Ed Balls (Take six months of work or lose dole, says Balls, 4 January) perfectly underlines the point made in the same issue by Diane Abbott (Left must find voice in society warped by fast food, booze and net porn, says Abbott) that the debate "must not be surrendered to the right". Labour urgently needs to be voicing an alternative narrative, intelligently articulated, which can form the basis for a rational and humane set of policies. Chasing the Tory agenda with "me too" headlines such as Balls's is no way to rebuild trust with the electorate. Only when that alternative narrative is punched home, daily, by major figures in the party, will Labour regain the initiative. Listen to Diane – she's showing us the way forward. Michael Quigley Cambridge

• There is not much reason for progressive optimism when the Labour party follows the Tory agenda (The logic of Cameron's cry for optimism is: vote Labour, 4 January). The Tories attack "skivers" for living off benefits. Labour defends the "strivers" – hard-working people who depend on benefits because their pay is so low. Skivers are strivers who have lost their jobs. What about defending the unemployed because they are the victims of a recession? They are not on benefits because benefits are generous – their value has been eroded over the last three decades. They are dependent upon benefits because there are no jobs.

The long-term unemployed are long-term unemployed because as soon as there is a job vacancy, someone who has been thrown on the scrapheap more recently gets it. I will be optimistic when the two Eds defend the unemployed and attack those who call them curtain-twitchers. Arthur Gould Loughborough, Leicestershire