When words like "Incentivising" are "Scarifying."

Our neighbour has a severely disabled son who suffers from a chronic degenerative condition and lives alone some distance away. She spends 10 hours 6 or 7 days a week caring for and being with her son, the kind of commitment that leaves little time in life for much else.  She doesn't complain, she does get very tired, but she is unremitting in her efforts to make sure her son's life is as comfortable and supported as possible, as humanly possible. And that of course is the only limit - what is humanly possible for one carer looking after someone who needs long term care for long periods of each day.

I mention this because cuts to welfare benefits for disabled people, in the name of austerity, remains a first line policy of the Conservative Governement. The latest cut is to the Employment and Support Allowance reducing by £30 the amount payable to support disabled people. The ESA was designed for two good reasons; to support disabled people who are unable to work, and to pay for personalised support so that those who can work are helped to do so. The reasons for the cuts are quite straightforward, and lack the imagination, compassion and social responsibility which ought to be evident in good government. In laying out the arguments for these cuts ESA is defined as a "passive" benefit which does not "incentivise" those who are unable to work to find work.

So the frontline argument is not reducing the deficit; the reason is not that austerity is an unfortunate but unavoidable necessity. No, the intention is to incentivise disabled people to work. One of the lasting legacies of this Government may be the invention of ugly words to screen out the moral dubiousness of its proposals and policies. "Incentivise" - how does that differ from compel, force, manipulate, bully, all of which are ways of incentivising people to do what the person who holds the power wants them to do? 

All of this was going through my mind as I was doing my neighbour's garden yesterday; well actually doing our gardens (plural) since I am now honorary looker after of her garden so that's one thing less she needs to bother about. I want to incentivise her to look after her son without feeling bad about the state of her garden. I want to incentivise her to go on doing what she does with a selflessness and determination this Government does nothing to recognise, reward or support. I am incentivised to prune apple trees, dig over the front garden and plant bedding plants and shrubs and apply mulch. I am incentivised to paint her fence. I am incentivised to scarify her lawn.

Now there's a word replete with ambiguity, "scarify". This Government is incentivised to scarify the vulnerable and to compel the disabled to find work by reducing their financial support. Or to use the word another way, there is a scarifying lack of moral imagination, human empathy and personal integrity in politicians who even tolerate such a proposal let alone dress it up in the rhetoric of board rooms where everyone is rich, powerful and blind to the ethical vacuity of their own euphemisms.

Incentivise indeed! Many, many disabled people could teach those same politicians, civil servants and accountants of the nations resources a thing or two about incentives, life achievements, overcoming obstacles, and living as independently as circumstances allow. Such remarkable people do not need incentivising, they simply need to be valued, encouraged and treated as full members of our society whose contribution to our community is not sommensurate with whatever money it takes for their support and care.

Comments

[Dave Summers]

I remember what seemed to me to be a defining statement of Thatcherism, and possibly of conservatism more generally. It's not one of Mrs T's better known sayings, but I heard her give this answer in a broadcast of Prime Minister's Questions: "The disabled must learn to stand on their own two feet."