Dear Mr. Duncan Smith,

As a supposed recipient of DLA and IB, that's Disability Living Allowance and Incapacity Benefit in case you didn't know, I felt it my duty to highlight a few of the problems with your current changes.

Firstly, it has allowed DWP workers to lie, cheat, ignore and bully the very claimants that they are paid to serve. And lets be under no illusion here, these are Civil Servants. The role is implied by the name and they are shaming it to its very core. They neither show civility nor serve the public.

Sir Northcote would be spinning in his grave.

In 1869 the Civil Service had "...eliminated all dunces...., while an entirely new spirit of economy and industry had been introduced..."

In 2014 his work has been utterly and completely undone.

I've been without any money for 6 months, even though your department agree I'm entitled to it.

And secondly and far more importantly, you are turning our once "Great Britain" from a civilised nation to one filled with barbarians. It can be acceptable to no decent human being that your changes are now intentionally starving people to death, making people homeless, abusing the disabled, the vulnerable, the ill and in so doing in many cases depriving children of their parents.

In 1572 an Elizabethan Government introduced the Poor Laws in order to replace the charity given by monasteries that were dissolved by Henry the VIII. The government of the day, even then, realised that you must do something to protect the poor, the sick and the vulnerable.

How can your Government be reversing nearly 500 years of civilised development?

Finally, please don't think this is a political attack.

I grew up in a small Welsh mining town (with one of the last pits in Wales to close) and was, unthinkably for most, a huge fan of Margaret Thatcher. For me she represented a chance to take on responsibility, she gave me real choice and allowed me to challenge authority.

This is a perceived view from someone that used her Youth Training Scheme to challenge and get out of state care at 16 (Howell's of Cardiff, cited as the best in the UK) , was able to go to University as a Mature student (Cardiff Business School at 21) because of the introduction of her Access courses and set up my first business thanks to her Enterprise Allowance Scheme (which of course you have recently revived).

I worked for the DHSS as was, in Wales1986/7 and it was her policies that insisted we get rid of the bazooka proof glass and started treating claimants like customers and showing them respect.

The biggest irony of all, was when I was the press officer for the Young Conservatives in Cardiff (1987), I was promoting the idea of a single payment to go to all claimants (thus eradicating all the ludicrous duplication of forms and disposing of the stigma of benefits), a good 25 years before your (sadly failed) Universal Credit Scheme.

I mention this, solely for the fact that you are fully aware I have no political axe to wield. I'm just interested in human decency, something that should be at the core decisions of everyone's politics, right, left or in the middle.

So what's the solution, how can you save both your political career, the nation and possibly your soul?

Simple, introduce Universal Basic Income. Yes the welfare that is paid to absolutely everyone over the age of 18. A sum sufficient to live on (at a guess I would say around £18,000 per annum) that regardless of whether you work or not, you know you'll be able to live.

And those who do work, would keep the entire sum and add to it with their earned income. If you want an incentive to persuade people into work, then there it is.

This would also allow for a fixed rate of Income Tax on all money earned and dispose of the need for complicated Tax regimes and all the associated staff who manage them.

You would eradicate £10's if not 100's of billions of pounds in saved pensions, child benefit, ESA, JSA, Tax Credits, etc. etc. you know your own list. You would garner even more savings by getting rid of approximately 1/2 Million DWP staff who service all these payments. You'd then have the official properties that house them, available for sale and yet more money in your coffers.

You would stimulate the economy (with an influx of people knowing poverty would be eradicated) as everyone would be better off. No more worries of controlling zero hour contracts or minimum pay and the associated costs. Imagine, no more strikes. For example If the RMT members were concerned over safety and wished to keep ticket offices open in Tube Stations, they could choose to do so voluntarily without being out of pocket.

You'd eradicate the current divisions between those working on the breadline fuelling what some believe to be the "benefit scum" lazing around, with their taxes (a myth I know, but one that is widely peddled as a truth).

It wouldn't of course solve the social problems that impact us, as Thatcher said "When we have got all of those, when we have got reasonable housing..., when you have got a reasonable standard of living and you have got no-one who is hungry or need be hungry, when you have got an education system that teaches everyone... you are left with what? You are left with the problems of human nature."

But with all that altruism swilling around, we'd unite in communities, support one another and ironically create a vision of Thatchers oft misquoted "There is no such thing as society..." interview, what was it she said "There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate."

But that's been the biggest problem with your and the preceding Labour Government. I've had no responsibility. It's been taken away from me. If you pay me what is rightfully mine (at a rough guess I contributed around £80,000 into NI during my working life, including my voluntary contributions whilst running my businesses) I could contribute. As it is, as your DWP deny me what is rightfully mine, you've lost me as an economic contributor, a social contributor and as an engaged estranged father.

But in one fell swoop with Basic income you would solve all this.

And you wouldn't need a massive IT bill to deliver it. You just need to adapt the National Insurance system to create NI cards that would accept payments on them.

The only other control the Government would need to bring in, is a rent cap. Rents have no reflection on supply and demand and as such need to be controlled for the benefit of the economy and for social cohesion.

But that's it. The worst inflictions on today's society cured. Simple.

It's hardly a new idea (it's been going around since the 1700's), even Thatchers favourite economist Milton Friedman supported it, even the founder of modern economics Adam Smith, saw the import of wealth inequality.

The fear of people not working if they have enough to live on has been dispelled by nearly all studies on the subject (especially the Permanent Fund in Alaska which has been running since 1976) .

The cost, now that our money supply is no longer controlled by the bank of England (with only 3% of our spending being in cash) and can be simply created out of thin air, is no longer the same kind of issue (after all, Labour gave itself an extra £350Bn by just adding a nought to the spreadsheet). As I said it is a system that literally pays for itself.

You see I grew up in the Star Trek generation. A generation that was inspired by a future that was about betterment, self improvement and exploration of mind, body and soul. The 21st Century should be one of groundbreaking future thinking not one that is taking us back 500 years.

And do not forget the reason that we as a nation were so great, we were a nation of explorers (e.g. Francis Drake, Charles Darwin), scientists (e.g. Michael Faraday - Electricity, Stephen Hawkins - Physics), groundbreakers (e.g. John Logie Baird - Television, Charles Babbage - Computers, Sir Tim Berners Lee - Internet), thinkers (e.g. Jeremy Bentham, Christopher HItchens) and writers (e.g. Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare).

Imagine what fantastic people we could develop if they were free of monetary fears. The artists, the film-makers, the writers, the ideas people. The things we have built our economy on. The things that made us a global powerhouse.

We're on the verge of a Dark Age, one that would not only eradicate our history but Britain's greatness entirely.

For once the moniker of "Evil Tory" seems entirely apropos. Put right the mistakes of today, right now and then..

Be the light. Be the first to make this shift. The Swiss are waiting in the sidelines to vote on whether they will introduce a Universal Basic Income this year.

Wouldn't it be nice to be a Great Britain again and be leading, instead of playing catch up?

Be a human being, show compassion, be a hero.



Make the change.

Yours



Paul Atherton

@BenefitClaimant