Matthew Norman: Cameron is the David Brent of welfare reform

 

The Prime Minister seems to be happy to pat the disabled on the head and then leave them behind

 

Matthew Norman
The Independent
Wednesday 18 January 2012
 
Those who know him only as the ribald host of the Golden Globes in Hollywood will be unaware that Ricky Gervais was once Britain’s most strikingly prescient socio-political satirist. Long before last year’s outbreak of “mong” warfare on Twitter, Gervais produced an uncannily accurate predictive metaphor for the Tory attitude towards the disabled, on view this week as the Welfare Reform Bill wended its contentious way through the Lords.

It came in an episode of an obscure, long forgotten show, The Office, involving a fire drill. While the able-bodied of Wernham Hogg amble down to the ground floor, David Brent and his assistant Gareth Keenan display their caringness by patronisingly fussing over the wheelchair-bound Brenda as they ostentatiously push her to safety. But time is short and the chair heavy, and, when they realise that they’ll have to carry it and its occupant down several flights, they leave her marooned on the stairwell with the imaginary flames licking around her wheels.

And so to David Brenteron, the Prime Minister who is first a friend, then a boss, next a chilled out entertainer, and finally a galaxy class hypocrite. The PM has often highlighted his special feeling for the disabled and their carers, and persuasively so for the saddest of personal reasons. He and Sam may have had the money to hire help for Ivan, and equip their home to make things easier on a purely practical level, in ways denied most parents of severely disabled children. But no one could question the passion of his love for his son or his hands-on commitment to caring for him. More to the point, this is not a man so emotionally dim that he lacks the power of empathy.

Or so you’d have thought until now, when, with the public finances aflame and even the agile struggling to find the exits, he is happy to pat the disabled on the head and leave them behind. This is a desperately crude précis of the relevant sections of the Welfare Reform Bill. But it’s no good going all on the one hand, on the other, when the other hand isn’t visible.

Read more: Matthew Norman: Cameron is the David Brent of welfare reform

 

David Cameron VS ANGRY SURGEON (David Nunn) **Full clip!!!**

 

 
The prime minister Nick Clegg get shouted at, at the NHS Guy’s hospital in London, England (U.K.) by a screaming doctor “get out of my ward” in a ward with patients and a news media crew on June 14th 2011.

 

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