In Great Britain today we have a very large hidden work force that receives slave wages, no holidays, work seven days a week in most cases, and is on call twenty four hours a day, have you guessed what job this describes yet, no, well, the people who do this job, this very valuable job, are called carers, that's people who care for their relatives or loved ones instead of the state caring for them. The government thinks that is ok to give them an allowance of forty eight pounds per week to live on, they can claim income support if they are realy desperate, but lots of people who claim these extra benefits are penalised for doing so that's why most carers only claim the carers allowance, what the government gives in one hand they take away with the other. Most carers have given up careers and their chance of having families of their own and their personal lives suffer greatly for doing this thankless task, the government takes advantage of these groups of people numbering six million they save this country some sixty five billion pounds per year, yet the government treats them like peasants.

Carers live in a state of increasing poverty, they have to buy their clothes from poverty shops like oxfam, they go withut food to make sure they can pay their bills, even if they are lucky they might get up to three hundred and thirty pounds a month, could you live on that sum of money and still work seven days per week at up to eighteen hours a day, I think not, you would not be allowed to do that much work under those savage conditions under the human rights act, Europe would not allow it, carers deserve more recognition for the job that they do, and the government must stop treating them like modern day slaves, this year we are meant to celebrating the end of slavery, not the start of a new generation of slaves, this nation should be ashamed of itself and make reperations to the six million carers of this country.