Helping where we can

So politics is purely theatre and the winners are Thespians who put on a good show.
What a sad commentary on the current state of our nation.
In my youth and particularly in my Fathers youth, the rank and file voter, specifically what we used to call the "working class", that mass of people who have little to protect in terms of personal wealth and are fragile in their reliance on the State, on the whole have had firm and informed views on their political allegiance. 

Today politics is not, in most homes, on the breakfast agenda. Instead there is something of a revulsion towards politicians and politics and, because it is not part of everyday (any day) attention, the people are easily convinced by a newspaper headline or a sound bite on the television. 
The substance of modern 'belief'  is paper thin and an understanding of the larger issues or their future impact is lost in an ongoing creative marketing effort to obscure the facts. 
Of course that term, 'the facts' in politics has a quantitative/qualitative ring to it and given the subject matter "the human condition", it opens a Pandora's Box on how you judge the facts.
Take Ian Duncan Smiths 'bedroom tax' where people living in a council house, with an extra bedroom, must downsize or pay a penalty. In terms of freeing up the Councils stock of housing for larger families, when the incumbent, their own family having move away don't need such a large house. The difficulty is that there aren't smaller properties to move into and so the person is stuck but has to pay the penalty which given they are barely making ends meet is very hard.
A shocking case unfolded recently when a women committed suicide after struggling to pay her way for a year. The real tragedy was that she killed herself on the day and on the spot where her son had killed himself a year previously, it was his death which had triggered the bureaucrats to say that now she had to vacate the house !
The issue of leaving the vicissitudes of life to chance and being optimistic about the future is ok but for many, unrealistic and here, the weight of a government department to even-out the disparities in society is no bad thing.
If you believe this then there is no Thatcherite double speak that can dissuade you in the value you place in the strength of the "collective" be it government or workers representation. 
Many individuals within the society at large are too fragile, misinformed or under-educated and whilst we may claim they are no responsibility of ours, a wider humanistic view (never mind the religious connotation) would say that is just what we are here for, to understand and lay claim to helping where we can.