By Wee Hamish

What does it take to block a financial programme which is intended to harm the Disabled people in our community?

Is it electing 56 (now officially 54) SNP MPs to oppose the plans in the House of Commons?

Is it setting up online petitions to demand the UK Government does not implement the changes?

Is it scores of Disabled people dying as a direct result of earlier cuts to their Social Security payments?

Is it dozens of newspaper articles highlighting the damaging effects of earlier cuts?

Is it social media campaigns highlighting the names of rich Tory MPs who voted for the cuts while trousering hundreds of thousands of pounds in Expenses claims?

Is it protests outside the House of Commons by Disabled people? Protests which were, incidentally, not broadcast to the nation because of Government censorship rules.

No, it is none of the above because they all happened and George Osborne announced the further cuts in his Budget anyway.

What it took to reverse the decision was the resignation of a single Government Minister who had, until then, happily persecuted the Unemployed and Disabled and who almost certainly had an ulterior motive for his resignation and used the cuts as a handy excuse to break from the Cameron / Osborne camp so that he can side with Boris in the brexit campaign.

That’s all it took. One man resigning.

Don’t get me wrong – I am not complaining about the cuts being stopped, just about the way they were stopped. The Tories ignored every protest, every bit of proof that their cuts were killing people and causing misery for thousands until it actually affected their own factions. If that’s how British democracy works, I’d rather we lived under a different system or, preferably, a different country.