If there was one person in Tunisia more unpopular than deposed president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali it was his wife Leila Trabelsi. Her main job when not plundering the national treasury was to roll up and comfort the deserving poor for the benefit of the TV cameras. A regional Diana Spencer.
It’s always nauseating when the rich and powerful feign concern for the people they are crucifying. Which brings us on to David Cameron.
He is not planning to make a visit to one of his victims but he has promised to write a letter to Bristol mother Riven Vincent (no relation). The BBC reports that “her six-year-old daughter Celyn is blind, quadriplegic and has cerebral palsy and epilepsy.” Ms Vincent’s request for respite care from her local social services has been refused. In desperation she is asking for her child to be taken from her and put into care. She is in no doubt that it is Cameron’s cuts which are responsible for the local council’s decision.
His response is as vacuous as can be imagined. One of his press officers alleges “the prime minister is very concerned at what he’s heard.” Not just that “he’s writing to Riven Vincent” and even “he’s also asking the MP to speak to the local council to make sure that she’s receiving all that she’s entitled to.”
She probably is receiving all the help she’s entitled to. Every council department in the country with responsibility for supporting vulnerable people is raising the bar to deny access to support. Where they are not doing that they are increasing charges. That is another way of doing the same thing.
It may just be that the press attention the Vincent family has received may shame their local council into giving them a little extra help. That changes nothing any more than a gift from Leila Trabelsi had a real impact on the lives of people in Tunisia.
A little bit of feigned angst from Cameron makes even more insulting and offensive the class warfare he is conducting against people like Riven and Celyn Vincent. It’s people like them who have the potential to give him the same lesson that Leila Trabelsi has just learned.
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