"Divide and conquer, yes. Why does such an obvious and old trick like that always work?"
I suspect it is because of the following:
1. In a recession or depression, the majority will always be tempted to blame minorities for their own woes. In Hitler's Germany in the Thirties it was the Jews. In Cameron's Britain of today it is immigrants, the unemployed and the disabled.
2. Many people are not intelligent enough to question the crap they are fed on a daily basis by an overwhelmingly Tory media. They struggle to think in any kind of reasoned way. So their typical answer to any abstract argument based on statistics etc. etc. is usually on the level of "I know a fella down the pub", "My mate at work told me" etc etc.
3. People who have crap lives tend to look for excuses elsewhere irrespective of a recession.
A little graph.
Re: A little graph.
I turned 65 5 weeks ago: do I need my pension? Yes!
I retired to France in 1997 found out 2 years later that Equitable Life had been running some sort of Ponzi scheme paying enormous dividends to people by selling more and more irresistible pensions. My fund built up over 40 years should have paid me more than a living pension. If you want to find out what happened, you can check it all out online.
Suffice to say, had I declined my state pension back then, I was given the opportunity, I would today be completely and utterly shafted. Having to go back to work because corrupt bankers are just that, wrankles a lot, to have forfeit my state pension would make me "murderous".
As yet no one has served a day in jail and none has repaid the enormous bonuses they paid themselves.
I retired to France in 1997 found out 2 years later that Equitable Life had been running some sort of Ponzi scheme paying enormous dividends to people by selling more and more irresistible pensions. My fund built up over 40 years should have paid me more than a living pension. If you want to find out what happened, you can check it all out online.
Suffice to say, had I declined my state pension back then, I was given the opportunity, I would today be completely and utterly shafted. Having to go back to work because corrupt bankers are just that, wrankles a lot, to have forfeit my state pension would make me "murderous".
As yet no one has served a day in jail and none has repaid the enormous bonuses they paid themselves.