Tweet In the last week Labour has tried valiantly to get across the message that it can be just as tough as the Tories in taking unpopular decisions, but with ingenuity it can be done without causing harm. It is a message that strains credulity, though it has delighted the Blairites. Contrary however to what [...]
Posts under ‘Benefits’
Labour and rebuilding social security
Jun 10th, 2013 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Tweet Look, I get it. No one needs to tell me that the antipathy towards the unemployed, the disabled, and anyone else forced to subsist on social security payments has been carefully but repeatedly orchestrated for over 30 years. Labour have historically not just gone along with the collective hounding of benefit recipients; during its [...]
Ed on social security: putting the cap into capitulation
Jun 10th, 2013 by John Percival.Tweet Despite attempts to spin it otherwise, Ed Miliband’s speech last week on social security represents a complete capitulation. Capitulation to the Tories, capitulation to the media and capitulation to the Blairites within the Labour Party who for months have been trying to push him into accepting many of the Government’s welfare cuts. Unfortunately despite [...]
Want people back in work? Then don’t cut benefits.
Jun 10th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Tweet The recent focus on capping benefits to satisfy the Tory tabloid blood lust against all social security recipients is not only unfair and unreasonable, but according to recent evidence bad for the economy. Job seeker’s allowance at £71 a week is already almost the lowest level in the EU, and reducing it further would [...]
Support George Rolph: on hunger strike having had his disability benefits denied
Jun 5th, 2013 by Jon Lansman.Tweet Today, George Rolph is in day 16 of his hunger strike, which he is doing for others going through what he has had to endure, whilst also trying to get the general public to wake up to what is happening to the most vulnerable people in the United Kingdom, a country which once cared [...]
Means-testing winter fuel payments is another Labour own goal
Jun 4th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Tweet Ed Balls didn’t have to say it. It will save a piffling amount of money relative to the size of the budget deficit which is still plateaued at £122bn. Inasmuch as it’s a Tory-style policy, it’s doing the Tories’ dirty work for them. And it’s another nail (admittedly not the first or the only [...]
Mothers facing brunt of Tory attacks
May 26th, 2013 by Marshajane Thompson.Tweet The economy may for now have escaped a ‘triple-dip’ but women, particularly those of us who are mothers, have experienced a triple- whammy from cuts which hit us as workers, as claimants and as carers. As the Fawcett Society recently identified: Women are being hit hardest by job cuts in the public sector; Women [...]
Judges overturn ATOS work capability assessment
May 26th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Tweet Three cheers for the courts and mental health activists, none for the politicians and the Department of Work & Pensions. This week three judges ruled – as we all knew, but it required the courts to make it the law of the land – that the Government’s prescriptors, regulations and guidelines used to assess [...]
Eight things IDS didn’t tell you about Universal Credit
May 19th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Tweet One: Universal Credit (UC) was officially launched, on a very small scale, at the end of last month in Ashton-under-Lyne. It merges several benefits and tax credits into 1 monthly pay-out, not let it be noted weekly. IDS is keen to tell the public that 3 million people will gain, though for some reason [...]
“Scroungers” and Class
May 15th, 2013 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Tweet I’m sure many readers were depressed to learn that Labour voters have swung to the right over their attitudes toward people who subsist on social security. According to Joseph Rowntree Foundation, who commissioned the research: Two-thirds (66%) of the public identify an explanation for child poverty that relates to the characteristics and behaviour of parents, [...]
