You are not going to believe this but it's true. The UN is telling the UK what to put in its Budget

Unelected Belgian EU/UN ‘expert’ lectures the UK on ‘povertyism’

Today I reveal the out-of-touch absurdity at the heart of organisations such as the EU and UN.

Last week a Belgian official, steeped in working for the EU and now for the UN, gave an interview to the Guardian and lectured the UK’s Sunak Government ahead of the Autumn Budget.

“This is the worst time to impose such cuts. You do not impose austerity measures when the whole population is facing a cost of living crisis.”

• UN ‘Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Belgian ex-EU technocrat Baron Olivier De Schutter, 26 Oct 2022

This is a man who now constantly lectures the world about making ‘povertyism’ illegal. I was unsure what ‘povertyism’ could be, so I investigated for readers.

The UN telling the UK what to put in its Budget

• ‘Povertyism’ — what is it, who invented it, and why is the UK guilty of it?
• What did this unelected official tell the UK Government to do?
• The United Nations has form when it comes to criticising Brexit Britain
• Who is this UN expert on extreme poverty

Let's take a look

1. Povertyism’ — what is it, who invented it, and why is the UK guilty of it?

Helpfully, ‘Povertyism’ does not appear to have an official UN definition. This allows it to be defined and redefined according to the whims of those at the United Nations who write lengthy reports about such things on a regular basis.

In general terms, it has been described as “negative attitudes and behaviours towards people living in poverty”. The UN’s ‘Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, the Belgian ex-EU technocrat Baron Olivier De Schutter, went on to say it “is as pervasive, toxic and harmful as racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination and should be treated as such.”

2. What did this unelected official tell the UK Government to do?

Speaking to the Guardian last week the senior UN official told Rishi Sunak.

“This is the worst time to impose such cuts. You do not impose austerity measures when the whole population is facing a cost of living crisis. What you do is you raise taxes on the rich, you raise taxes on corporations.”

“The immediate reaction of many households will be to reduce the quality of diets and ultimately the consumption of food. For children, learning is more difficult when you have an empty stomach and that is becoming a reality in the UK. That should not be allowed to happen.”

“We have many studies showing that the belief in meritocracy is highest in those more unequal societies and the UK is not faring very well in this regard for the moment… of course, that’s a way for them to confirm their sense of superiority…”

- UN ‘Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights’, the ex-EU’s Baron Olivier De Schutter

Photo above: Baron Olivier De Schutter. United Nations Extreme Poverty site

3. The United Nations has form when it comes to criticising Brexit Britain

In May 2019, Baron Olivier de Schutter’s immediate predecessor as the UN’s ‘Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights published a highly critical report on the UK.

Each year the Special Rapporteur selects two countries to visit, “where he reports on the situation of people living in extreme poverty and investigates their access to human rights.” Following each visit, he produces a report. Given the remit is “extreme poverty” there are a large number of countries to choose from — Africa, Asia, the Far East, and the Caribbean, in particular.

The UK is the fifth-richest country in the world and a member of the G7. Ahead of countries such as the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Nepal, and Kyrgyzstan, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty chose Brexit Britain, then led by Theresa

Photo above: Nepal. Credit: United Nations Extreme Poverty site

His report was highly critical, describing how successive governments had inflicted “great misery” and had imposed “punitive, mean-spirited and often callous” austerity policies. “There is a clear requirement in human rights law that you do not adopt retrogressive measures,” he told the UK Government.

“There are 14 million people living in poverty, record levels of hunger and homelessness, falling life expectancy for some groups, ever fewer community services… The imposition of austerity was an ideological project designed to radically reshape the relationship between the Government and the citizenry. UK standards of well-being have descended precipitately in a remarkably short period of time, as a result of deliberate policy choices made when many other options were available.

“It is hard to imagine a recipe better designed to exacerbate inequality and poverty and to undermine the life prospects of many millions. But in response to this social calamity, the Government has doubled down on its policies.”

- UN “extreme poverty” report on the United Kingdom, May 2019

Back to the UN’s latest attack

In last week’s attack on the UK Government of Rishi Sunak, Baron Olivier de Schutter opined on what the UK’s economic policies should be. He also threatened the possibility that the UK might break international law.

“Not aligning social benefits or minimum wages with increased costs of living is a retrogressive measure so the government would be violating its international human rights obligations if it were to cut down on social benefits [in real terms], and that is what we may see happening.”

4. Who is this UN expert on extreme poverty?

Baron De Schutter is a Professor of international human rights law and European Union law at the University of Louvain in Belgium, as well as at the College of Europe. He has extensively on economic globalization and human rights.

His bio states: “Since the mid-1990s, Olivier De Schutter has been involved in various capacities in the debates on improving governance in the EU, and on fundamental rights in the EU. In 1995–1997, he co-organized a seminar on reforming governance in the EU with the Forward Studies Unit of the European Commission, a seminar that later, following the fall of the Santer Commission, was influential in shaping the White Paper on Governance published in July 2001 by the European Commission. Between 2002 and 2007, he coordinated the EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights, a high-level group of experts established at the request of the European Parliament to provide recommendations to the EU institutions on the implementation of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and to report on the situation of fundamental rights in the EU. In 2013, he was appointed a member of the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency’s Scientific Committee.”

I fully understand if Baron De Schutter does not have the first clue why his ideas are so out-of-touch with those of the vast majority of the British people (or the people of any other western country), and this article is certainly not personal to him.

He is part of a globalist order and its adherents now think they are so important and so powerful they can tell the British Government what to do when it comes to its economic policies.

I would be happy to debate Mr de Schutter any time. He should be warned, however, that a key question will be: “On what planet can the UN’s priorities on “extreme poverty” place the United Kingdom so high up its list to attack?” We live in a world where large parts of the global population have no social security system to speak of, no unemployment or sickness benefits, and no effective state health provision. Surely those countries are the priorities?

Striking back

I decided to research and write this report because it is indicative of the mindset of an ‘elite’ who aims to change our country into part of an amorphous mass of global groupthink. This is not why we voted for Brexit.

We must strike back against those who seek to influence and control what is and is not acceptable, around their own warped, misguided, and utopian ideas. It is western capitalism that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty around the world and the UK has been instrumental in doing that with our AID BUDGET which is around 12 billion a year

Destroy that at your peril Baron Olivier De Schutter.

Sources: United Nations — various sites and reports | The Guardian