THE POTTER’S FIELD
By Ian Hamilton
For two thousand years there has been no one so disdained as the informer. Two thousand years ago Judas informed on his Teacher to the Pharisees: then he took his thirty pieces of silver: then he repented and gave the money back: then he hanged himself: then the Pharisees wouldn’t touch the money and the thirty pieces of silver went to buy The Potter’s Field. Now Jim Murphy MP, Secretary of State for Scotland, wants to make a Judas Iscariot of us all.
Do not think I imagine things. On 9th February of this year 2010 he is quoted in the Herald as saying that anyone knowing of benefit cheats should report them. In return the informer will get a share of the money saved by the Department of Social Security. He wants this proposal to be part of Labour’s election manifesto. He has put the idea up to Ed Milliband who is to run Labour’s election campaign. He would turn us into a nation of bounty hunters. There will be an informer among us all. Is this how we wish to live, rich and poor alike?
In a poor family where there is even a little carelessness the children go hungry. In a rich country where the greedy take too much the children go hungry. In this rich land of Scotland one quarter of our children live in poverty. Is it too much, Mr Murphy, to ask you to think of them? Can you not imagine what it is like when someone is tempted to get a little more? Can you imagine how your fellow MPs felt when they were led into temptation? Can you see no difference between them and the working man out of a job who cheats to get a little more? I reproach you. You never reported your fellow MPs although you should have known what they were at.
There are times when I can find something to laugh at in the antics of myself and others. Unlike so many I am not too offended by the greed of our bankers. If we are daft enough to offer them millions they would be daft if they didn’t take them. I would throw a stone through Sir Fred’s window if I happened to be passing that way but I would do so with a certain amount of good humour. ‘There you are,’ Sir Fred I would say. ‘From Paisley to Paisley,’ for I too was once a Paisley schoolboy.
But I am hit with a sort of horror by the cold cruelty of Jim Murphy. There is no laughter in what I write. The Labour Party once existed to look after the weakest in society. It set up the Welfare State, an example to the world. We of the left, whether of the Labour Party or in the SNP truly believe that it was a terrible heresy to say, ‘The poor ye shall always have with you.’ We hope to abolish poverty, at least in Scotland. Now we are invited to spy on the poor and told to keep an eye on what they get. Worse the poor are invited to spy on one another and are to be bribed with the pieces of silver that even the Pharisees wouldn’t touch and that went to buy the Potter’s Field.
Mr Murphy MP, Cabinet Minister, Secretary of State for Scotland, successful man,
I look on what you say and I despair.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:09 am
Perhaps a similarly funded campaign with TV ads encouraging people to claim what they are entitled to would balance this out? Nah…. I suspect the amount claim fraudulently is dwarfed by the amount unclaimed through ignorance or self-preservation of one’s sanity when faced with filling in a 50 page dossier and full DNA profile.
The TV campaign encouraging us to “grass-up” benefit frauds has always made me feel uncomfortable, it doesn’t shy from portraying the single mum with a wee cash in hand cleaning job, or the dad labouring for a bit of extra at Christmas as deviants, outcasts stealing from “you” the embodiment of government. Yet when it’s our representatives dabbling in fraud, we are the mere funders of government.
And you’re right, it won’t be the “haves” that inform, it will be the similarly desperate. I wonder if their bounty will be taxed? I wonder if this nice little earner on the side will affect their benefits?
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:42 am
You are on the money withy our comments, I didn’t see Jim (skull) Murphy jumping up and down shopping all his fellow Labours MP’s when they wree stealing public money.
The man is fast becoming the biggest laughing stock in Scotland.
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:28 am
And now, ironically, according to BBC News, Scotland, 23rd February, he wants to connect with religious voters.
Why? Because this could help Labour win the general election. And because he would wish to emulate the United States, “where faith has long played a central part in politics.” Should he not be mindful of the part it has played in Ireland?
Moreover, it seems he is due to emphasize that “FAMILIES are our firm foundations, our rock in times of trouble”. The only cliche left to spout is “There is no such thing as Society”.
Margaret Thatcher has found her true heir - in Jim Murphy.
And this creature is a shining light of the Labour Party? I am horror-stricken.
February 23rd, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Mrs W
I agree entirely with thrust of your comment but can we please drop the pejorative description “single mum ” or “single mother”. There are women who are mothers and there are women who are not. None of the mothers got into that condition themselves
What started off years ago as a perfectly acceptable description of a mother without a husband and therefore deserving of a little extra community support had become a term of sly judgemental abuse.
I lived for years in Africa in a society in which formalised marriage was only for the rich. The whole community looked after all the children.
That is our obligation as a community.
February 23rd, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Spot on Ian. Murphy must have known that there was cheating and stealing going on in London. With more than half of them at it, it must have been clear to even the most terminally stupid.
Can you imagine what would have happened if there had been such a programme of “informing for money” in the Commons?
Like you say of course, no one likes a sneak. The Tory public school boys would have no part of it. Eton deplores the teachers’ snout. Some of the spiv Labourites would have been on it like a vulture on a carcase though. A few shelves, a rewiring job and 10% of the duck house. Nice one!
Murphy would turn our Scotland into the East Germany of today. What a thought. Or what a lack of thought. But then, that’s New Labour. Lack of thought is part of the creed, just as it was in East Germany.
February 23rd, 2010 at 5:15 pm
As Paw Broon said,
” Look at New Labour very closely, then look at them again.”
I fail to understand why shelves in a pub cellar in West Lothian are considered to be less worthy of consideration for expenses than the decoration of a summer house in North Queensferry. It appears that around £12,000 was “claimed in error” and promptly repaid. I could get very angry if that happened to me!
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:18 pm
David McEwan Hill
I would hardly use the term pejoratively having been one myself for several years. It’s not a demeaning term - it’s a factual term. Whether you like it or not there’s a world of difference between being a single mum and a mum as part of a couple and believe me when I say they both have their good bits and bad bits.
February 24th, 2010 at 12:35 am
I am seriously concerned that we are seeing a ramping up of secularisation by Murphy and to what purpose? If we are putting these ideas to the test it’s not on and for votes - it’s too dangerous a tactic. The labour party need to get him in check pronto.
February 24th, 2010 at 5:58 am
The matter of benefit payments is made on our behalf as a society when someone falls on hard times, a safety net, and I have no problem paying my part in that, I can and would vote for a party that did this. If a party decided to drop it I would not vote for them.
Where do I get to have a say or vote on Bankers pay Ian ? I use Bankers in the loose term for the club in the city.
I did type a huge reply but I have just deleted it because everyone falls asleep or gets bored reading long replies.
February 25th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
“To them that have, more shall they have” - of whatever the ‘more’ is.
In the Murphy’s case he’s spoilt for choice, but we could begin with hypocrisy.
March 1st, 2010 at 1:12 pm
I find this desperately sad. A few weeks ago I commented on your lovely article when you noted that we must care more. The momentum for the kind of behaviour being promoted by the body politic in Scotland should be nipped quickly and criticised with vigour. I live in a country where 95% of the population live on less than US$2 per day. Scotland is rich when compared with this abject poverty, but with comments from Mr Murphy, Scottish politics is mired in its poverty of thought and in its creativity. I pray that this fellow listens to the criticism. I am returning to Scotland for a few days this week, so I shall listen with greater care to what is happening to understand more. Greetings from afar.
April 4th, 2012 at 3:56 pm
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