They seek him here, they seek him there. Those lobby hacks seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That damned elusive … Chancellor of the Exchequer. Okay, so my reworked rhyme lifted from the Scarlet Pimpernel doesn’t work. But neither do Osborne’s sums, so all is balanced in the world. Well, what a torrid few days for the Tories – and not in a good way. To be sure, when Nicky Morgan was wheeled out on Thursday to announce on Question Time that the planned cut to Personal Independence Payments wasn’t happening, it was obvious the government was in deep trouble. It’s not everyday a government rows back on a key budget pledge announced by the Chancellor in the House. But then the real damage was wrought after the odious IDS carpet bombed Downing Street before his deserved departure for the back benches. Continue reading
Tagged with IDS
Good riddance IDS: long may this internal warfare continue
When you’re the head of a department that has meted out cruel and inhumane treatment to disabled people, when you’ve sat in the Commons and nodded through cut after sanction regime after tightened eligibility criteria, at what point do you say enough and call time over your complicity in these proceedings? Does one draw a veil over the old ministerial career by claiming principle and love for the charges you’ve spent six years abusing, or stick the boot in to cause maximum political damage?
Iain Duncan Smith, the so-called quiet man who’s done catastrophic harm to the position of disabled people in this country, has elected to do both. Uncharacteristically, an attempt to fund tax cuts for the well off by taking monies from payments to disabled people has gone down like a cup of cold sick. Which is interesting, considering their previous attacks have gone by with nary a murmur from outside the ranks of disability campaigners, the left, and the labour movement. Continue reading
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Ian Duncan Smith’s policy: starve the poor into committing crime
The papers are full-on when members or ex-members of the government make a fool of themselves behaving badly when they can’t get their way – Andrew Mitchell foul-mouthing a policeman with the toxic ‘plebs’ allegedly added in because he couldn’t ride his bike through the No.10 gates, and David Mellor ranting at a black cab driver over the best route home to his £8m pad near Tower Bridge.
But what really matters about members of the government is not their silly misbehaviour, it’s they way they’re crucifying millions of people even to the point where they’re denying them food and shelter. On this, with a few honourable exceptions, the media are largely silent on the grounds presumably that they don’t matter because they’re not famous. A million people have been sanctioned by government ministers over this last year, which means that they are deprived of all their benefit for often petty infringements (e.g. being 5 minutes late for a job interview) and hence have no money for at least 4 weeks and sometimes 3 months, forcing them to steal to survive. Continue reading
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Iain Duncan Smith and the race to the bottom
Here we go again. In the topsy turvy Tory world of our beloved Department for Work and Pensions secretary, joblessness is not caused by a lack of jobs but instead “cultures of worklessness“. To his mind, there are millions living it up on the taxpayer dollar – skivers being kept in e-cigs, iPads and Jeremy Kyle appearances. They do not work because they have no incentive to take a job. It’s all bullshit and myth. When a million people queue up every week down the food bank, surely IBS and his chums at the Department would be more concerned about fixing that very real, very pressing, problem.
IBS is a stupid man. Fortunately for him these shortcomings failed to get showcased on Monday thanks to other, more pressing news items – not least a former Tory minister moaning about the lack of a spare room subsidy for MPs. Still, the speech was interesting for what it reveals about the Tories today, as well as the contradictions their inexorable decline are tying them up in. His claims the bedroom tax, tougher sanctions, work capability assessments and the like have responsibility for the “jobs miracle” Nothing to do with cutting up jobs and long-term self-employment depressing the jobless figures (and also wage packets), you understand. Continue reading
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Everyone, including DWP staff, think universal credit is a disaster
Universal credit was supposed to be introduced by Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) and the Department for Work & Pensions in September, but the roll-out date continually gets postponed. The aim is to replace several in- and out-of-work benefits – job seeker’s allowance, income support, employment and support allowance, tax credits, plus housing benefit and support for childcare costs – with one single payment. However there are snags, big ones: Continue reading
