Sometimes I suspect that not a syllable escapes the lips of Rachel Reeves unless it somehow encapsulates the pitch for the latest Channel Four eat the poor documentary while simultaneously disgusting a sizeable chunk of Labour activists. Most recently, her declamation that Labour is not the party of the welfare state and doesn’t represent those out […]
Posts Tagged ‘Unemployment’
Does the party of the welfare state talk tough because it doesn’t know where the centre ground is?
Mar 29th, 2015 by David Osland.
Fast Facts: Gender social inequality and austerity in Europe
Mar 11th, 2014 by Tom Gill.Europe’s austerity fetish and longer term neo-liberal reforms promoted by Big Business, Governments and the EU Commission hurt women disproportionately. Here’s a few facts to illustrate the point. Europe wide The gender pay gap is around 16% It ranges from more than a quarter (27%) in Estonia to around a fiftieth (2%) in Slovenia. The latest figures […]
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Government fiddles unemployment figures by excluding everyone ‘sanctioned’
Mar 8th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.‘Sanctioning’ is a particularly harsh and brutal way of treating unemployed people. They have all their benefit removed even for the most trivial infringements, e.g. being 5 minutes late for a job interview or for a work programme session. Their benefit (£71 a week JSA) is removed for 4 weeks for the first infringement, for […]
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Everyone, including DWP staff, think universal credit is a disaster
Aug 5th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.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 […]
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Want people back in work? Then don’t cut benefits.
Jun 10th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.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 not […]
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For a Real Jobs Guarantee
May 21st, 2013 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Unemployment is caused by a lack of jobs. Obvious one would think, but yet this is a contested and controversial for many of our honourable members down in Westminsterland. Received mainstream political wisdom has it that if you’re unfortunate enough to be out of work, it’s down to some quirk of your character. You’re too […]
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Britain’s output per (available) worker is back to 2003 levels
Feb 23rd, 2013 by Jeremy Smith.This week, we have learnt from the Office for National Statistics that 2.5 million were still unemployed in the last quarter of 2012. The UK economy is failing to use the skills and resources of our people to best effect in the common interest. This is to a large extent because the government’s economic policies […]
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How is this avalanche of cuts really hitting the poor?
Jan 16th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.My own constituency, Oldham West, is one of the poorest in the country. How are they being affected by the cascade of cuts? Housing benefit cuts in April will particularly impact on pensioners, families on low incomes, disabled people (many already traumatised by Atos assessments of their alleged capability for work), the long-term sick , […]
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Are we in a household debt crisis?
Feb 16th, 2012 by Carl Packman.During the middle of last year, Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein noted that rather than beating around the bush, he would call “what we’re in [now, in the US] a “household-debt crisis,” or something more elegant that gets the same idea across”. The reason being that household debt to GDP ratio are dangerously high, banks aren’t […]
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The second global banking crash
Nov 7th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.The EU sovereign debt crisis is not primarily about the 17 countries that constitute the Eurozone, it’s about the intertwined European banks’ exposure to a mountain of speculative lending in high-risk countries that could never have survived German competitiveness within a single currency. The UK is equally at fault here even though not itself a […]
