“…families and disabled people made destitute by their Dickensian austerity measures”
Give me strength !!!
Have a little dig into history, kvalidir, before you make such fatuous, ridiculous remarks. Nobody in the UK is destitute as a result of policies of this government (for which, incidentally, I have no time whatsoever). All this government is trying to do (and not really succeeding) is to reduce the enormous burden placed on the taxpayer by an over generous benefits system, examples of which are to be seen all around every day. To describe these measure as "Dickensian" is beyond parody.
Just have a think for a few moments to understand why I make that claim. In the mid 19th Century:
There was no NHS for the government to interfere with
There were no benefits of any description to be trimmed
There was no minimum wage(in fact, many people had no wage whatsoever)
There was no "social" housing on which to have the under occupancy charge levied.
There was considerable use of child labour
Serious diseases (which became epidemics) were rife.
Living conditions - particularly in cities - were appalling
Read this where Dickens describes a visit he made to London's Canning Town:
http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/ConNarrative.78/chapterId/1874/Social-conditions-in-the-19thcentury-port.html
In case you cannot be bothered, among his observations:
"Rows of small houses...are built designedly and systematically with their backs to the marsh ditches which...are all stopped up at their outlet. Two or three yards of clay pipe "drain" each house into the open cesspool under its back windows."
"Ague [a form of malaria] is one of the most prevalent diseases of the district: fever abounds. When an epidemic comes into the place, it becomes serious in its form, and stays for months."
"Many select such a dwelling-place because they are already debased below the point of enmity to filth; poorer labourers live there, because they cannot afford to go further,"
Andrew Mearns, a social commentator of the time wrote:
"...tens of thousands are crowded together amidst horrors which call to mind what we have heard of the middle passage of the slave ship. To get into them you have to penetrate courts reeking with poisonous and malodorous gases arising from accumulations of sewage and refuse scattered in all directions"
Do you really expect us to believe that the minor adjustments to some benefits is reducing people to these levels of poverty, squalor and degradation?
If so, you must be having a laugh.