If we just look after ourselves, who looks after us?

Once upon a time in the 80s, a woman set her sights on the working classes and effectively set about destroying them. She and her bandit of merry men targeted everything that the common man held dear to them: family (including starting poll tax, ruthlessly charging per person per household resulting in some families booting out their dependents unable to afford to keep them), protection of working rights (with the piecemeal destruction of the unions), their houses (why don't we buy all the houses privately, and if you can't afford it, try the streets) even children (who really needs a glass of milk?) and on it went. Until she got so unpopular and was removed.

Later in the story, the son of this woman reigns as controller of the purse strings and, like the bloody spade that tries to finally remove the creature which is caught in his headlights of the 4 x 4, is attempting to finish the job. He too is looking at the common man and he is tightening the noose around them. Taxes have been reintroduced, the millionaires get off lightly again and slowly an elitist education system swings back into view. The NHS is firmly in sights with hidden charges and costs becoming evermore voluminousness in number. The cuts to social services have been devastating and the whole thing is slowly creaking under the pressure of the spotlight.

And so there is a shift in culture and the general mood of the nation, as some newspapers would have you believe, seems to be 'if you can't pay for it' then you should  jog on,. Or 'I'm too busy looking after me and my own to give a damn about the rest of society'.  I hope this isn't the case, and that t I hope there will be an awakening of decency. Not every man and woman in this country can pay for food, warmth, shelter, private healthcare, a university education, their children. If you are incapacitated and cannot work, do you deserve to be told you have been reclassified and you can now work, just to reduce the numbers on a book somewhere? Yes it's not ideal for endless support, but life is not ideal. You can be winning one minute and then find yourself at the bottom of the shitheap the next. Does everyone on benefits start of life thinking they'll be on there? Certainly not. 

I appreciate there are some of you out there that think this is another namby pamby article, written by a privileged leftie who knows nothing of which she rights. Well you'd be wrong. I realise that somewhere along in the path of life, I got lucky - I got a job, I can keep a roof over my head and on a reduced budget I can just about make ends meet. That's today. Next year I might not be so lucky, and I might just need your help. Not because I want to, not because I'd be too proud to ask, but because that's what we do as people.

You look after your own, you take care of people at the beginning of their lives and in their end days. You don't see your fellow man and let it evoke bitterness. You shouldn't place hope in an end to free services in the expectation of a £200 tax rebate at the end of the month. Sure it'd be more in the pocket for you but across all of us, all of those who are unable to survive without other people stepping up, what would be the point? The cost to society would far outweigh the benefit to the individual. Because you might be OK today, and next year, and even the year after. But one day, you won't be or your dad might not be or your nan, your son. But nobody will care because we'll just be trying to get by and make sure we have enough money to pay the man.

If we just look after ourselves, who looks after us?