Yesterday, Ed Miliband disgraced himself and the office he holds. So, lets look at the detail. It didnt really start well with his tale of a disabled man who he thinks should be able to work. Sorry Ed but what precisely are your medical qualifications again? Why does your opinion of somebodies work capability count for, well anything?
People will say he balanced it out but he didn’t he went onto legitmately complain about the disgraceful plundering of Southern Cross but said the link between the two stories was this:
That these are people who are just not taking responsibility – and the rest of us are left picking up the pieces.
Hang-on Ed, didnt you just say:
While out campaigning during the local elections, not for the first time, I met someone who had been on incapacity benefit for a decade.
He hadn’t been able to work since he was injured doing his job.
It was a real injury, and he was obviously a good man who cared for his children.
So, this man had a genuine injury. You’re comparing somebody with a injury, by your admission, is genuine and no-fault of the man’s own with business people who consciously took the decision to mis-manage Southern Cross for their own gain? Chalk and cheese spring to mind. Once this problem is highlighted the speech is exposed as the intellectually incoherent drivel it is. Ed then goes onto say:
We were intensely relaxed about what happened at the top of society. I say – no more.
followed by:
I’m not just relaxed about you getting rich, I applaud you.
Can Ed complete two paragraphs without sliding into mind-bending inconsistency? Seems not. He seems basically ignorant of the fact that the process of wealth creation includes the process of wealth reduction in other areas. A successful entrepreneurial venture which creates jobs will destroy jobs in his ailing competitor and the unlucky will be cast adrift, on the scrap-heap. The whole point is that the vast majority of people who are at the bottom don’t want to be – they want to live happy fulfilling lives which cant be lived on the dregs that constitutes welfare handouts. Because he’s a politician who lives a coddled life where recklessness is rewarded in vast expenses payouts, he couldn’t hope to possibly comprehend this.
He then came out with this:
We should not demonise people anywhere in society.
I do not accept the Conservative characterisation of those on benefits as being feckless and worthless.
Ever heard the one about the pot and the kettle, Ed? He bottled out of actual government regulation of high-pay:
It isn’t for government to set maximum ratios but we do need change to encourage the responsibility we need.
I am sure Ed’s incessant finger-wagging, recital of drooling cant will really scare the boardrooms of Britain. So, you’re going to clamp down on the tiny (relatively) speaking, cost of benefit fraud but do nothing about a problem which in your own words brought Britain’s economy to its knees? How very noble and consistent. I will leave you with these thoughts. How can anybody claim today, after one of, if not the, most hard-right speech from a Labour leader on welfare that Ed Milibad is a man of the left?
Is it not about time that the left learnt from the Blairites that the way to win battles is not through being ‘nice and friendly’ but by fighting the hardest, being prepared to go all the way, and not being so self-deluded that it thinks it will get something gratis from its mine. In short, is it not time that the Labour left woke-up and smelt the coffee?
The real question is not Ed is an opportunist arshole who will ask how high whenever the MSM pose the question. But what are the LP left going to do, continue to drift helplessly in the wake of a party whose polices it despises, or grow some balls and lead the fight to build a new Left Party.
It is pretty obvious the far left are not up to this task, that leaves you lot. It is time you lot pissed or got off the pot.
Whilst I think your point of view deserves an airing, I don’t think your interpretation of what Ed said is fair. It is right to be cautious of Labour’s leaders scapegoating people on benefits because, in the New Labour years, that happened too often, and Liam Byrne’s latest exhortation to the jobless to “try harder” is more of the same.
However, Ed’s words were far more balanced and measured and his opening remarks about the person on incapacity benefit who had “a real injury, and … was obviously a good man who cared for his children” could and should be read as a criticism of that state rather than of him.
It is not unreasonable for socialists to expect people to be willing to work for a living in an appropriate job. What is unreasonable is to throw people who have difficulty finding such appropriate work to the mercy of the market or to attack them for short term political advantage.
@Mick,
Your right about the far left not being up to the job. But equally, what is the Labour left without Labour?
Jon,
Errrr no not really. He quite squarely attacked the man in question here:
That these are people who are just not taking responsibility – and the rest of us are left picking up the pieces.
He lays the blame quite squarely at his door and whatever he says elsewhere is just a platitude. Except there is no other proof of that in this instance other than Ed Miliband’s completely unprofessional opinion.