The Rich Get Richer While Those At The Bottom Are Reduced To Even More Desperate Poverty

His Attack On The Sick And Disabled Is Just Part Of The Programme.

Iain Duncan Smith, as he was in the Scots Guards, is the kind of officer who kicks a man when he’s down.
He’s determined to force a million poorly people into employment because “work is a health treatment”.
So now he’s a doctor as well.

With the blithe ignorance of the truly stupid, he says “we know there remains a gap between the employment of disabled and non-disabled people”.
As a statement of the obvious, that takes some beating, Lieut Dingbat Smith.
One of the two groups is made up of sick or disabled people.
It’s harder for them to find work.

The Tories are angry because although 700,000 people have lost unemployment benefit since they came to power, “only” 88,000 have been deprived of what is now ESA – employment and support allowance, normally worth just over £100 a week.
So, Lieut Dingbat is pushing through a Welfare Reform Bill.
He will change the rules to focus on what claimants can do rather than they can’t do.

On the face of it, this looks like a sensible reform.
And it might be, if it wasn’t him driving it.
But his real motive, beneath the oh-so-caring, missionary zeal to help the jobless into work, is to cut his department’s budget.
Permanently, as part of the Tory dismantling of the welfare state.

IDS has pledged to slash another £20billion from his department’s budget by 2020, and his attack on the sick and disabled is just part of that programme.
If claimants fail to take any work offered to them after this change, benefits will be stopped.
Where these million “jobs” will come from is anybody’s guess.

The government plans to shed another 200,000 posts in public services, throwing the equivalent of the adult population of Bradford into the free-for-all it calls a labour market.
Many of those on ESA have mental health problems, and charities warn that forcing them into unsuitable part-time work just to get them off the register exacerbates their illness.
But why should Lieut Dingbat care about that?

After a hard day’s poor-bashing in Whitehall he can go home to a luxury pad in his ministerial limousine without a care in the world.
Church on Sunday, conscience salved.
Except he leaves behind a trail of human misery.
( Paul Routledge, 28.08.2015 )

This Disaster Will Continue.

Benefits for the poor, sick and disadvantaged are being dismantled.
Young people may never own homes.
An education system that boosted every child’s chances is undermined.
The world-admired BBC is being killed off.
A justice system that brought fairness to all is wrecked.

And, most shockingly, our treasured NHS is being destroyed.
The rich get richer while those at the bottom are reduced to even more desperate poverty.
This disaster will continue until Britain gets a different government.
And that means a Labour government, for no other party can win power.
( Sunday Mirror, 26.07.2015 )

A Multi-Millionaire Giving Low-Paid Staff A Hard Time.

I was disturbed to read about that passenger who was tasered after a luggage dispute with Easy Jet staff at Gatwick.
Mainly because, days earlier, Noel Gallagher had a 20-minute row at Heathrow after he was told to pay a £65 excess baggage charge on a flight to the South of France.
So why wasn’t he tasered?

If not for being a multi-millionaire giving low-paid staff a hard time over such a piddling sum, then for saying before the general election he couldn’t vote Labour because its leader was a communist, how he’s chuffed to be sending his kids to public school, and for jumping on to a yacht in St Tropez with Bono when he eventually unpacked his precious designer luggage.
( Brian Reade, 22.08.2015 )

The Tories Have Twisted The Truth.

How much of the welfare budget is spent on the unemployed?
On average people think it’s 41%.
It’s actually 3%.
Okay, so how much of the welfare budget is claimed fraudulently?
Most think it’s 27%.
It’s just 0.7%.
And the proportion of children now classified as poor who are from working families?
That’s 63%.
Nearly two thirds.
Like Labour being blamed for a global economic crash when it was actually down to greedy bankers, the Tories have twisted the truth to suit their agenda.
( John Prescott, 26.07.2015 )

Sexual Offences On Public Transport.

Sexual offences on public transport rocketed by 25% last year, so, no, we’re not tackling it and women remain sitting ducks for predatory men.
Look at the latest rape figures for women, 69,000 a year at the last count, with only 1,070 convictions.
Look at the report from YouGov and the Thomson Reuters Foundation which says that 32% of women have been verbally harassed on public transport (and that’s just the ones who reported it, most don’t).
And 19% had been physically abused.
In the global rankings of safety, London’s transport system trails behind New York, Beijing and Tokyo, which is appalling.
In this country we pretend to take violence against women seriously, but we don’t.
We TALK about tackling it but with rapes and sex attacks at a record high, we’re clearly failing.
( Carole Malone, 30.08.2015 )

Millionaire Ministers Never Need A Union To Stick Up For Them.

Tomorrow, Tolpuddle, for the annual commemoration of the 19th Century pioneers who paid with their liberty for their comradeship.
In 1834, six Dorset farm labourers were arrested, tried for administering a secret oath and sentenced to seven years’ transportation in the penal colony of Australia.
Their real crime was to form a trade union in protest at the landowners’ cruel cuts in wages.

They refused to work for less than 10 shillings (50p) a week.
That’s right, a week.
A national outcry greeted their punishment, and 800,000 people petitioned for a pardon for the “Tolpuddle Martyrs”.
The Government relented, and the men were released after a few years.
Their memory, and the vital role that trade unions still play for working people, are celebrated with a two-day festival.

Tory ministers choose this moment to unveil a Trade Union Bill robbing support for the Labour Party, legitimising the use of scabs and undermining the right to strike.
It should be called the Trade Union (Backdoor Abolition) Bill.
Millionaire ministers never need a union to stick up for them.
Only the voters can sack them, and we missed our chance.
( Paul Routledge, 17.07.2015 )

British Children Are Among The Most Depressed In The World.

Put your hands up if you were surprised to read that British children are among the most depressed in the world.
Thought not.
Look at the hand we deal them today.
We feed them so much food saturated in sugar that diabetes is a cert, warn them that every respected person their grandad’s age is probably a paedo and the only music they get to hear is the “ker-ching” symphony played on Simon Cowell’s till.

We give them expensive smartphones to shut them up, then scream at them for never getting off them.
We tell them their reward for studying hard is a lifetime of debt, with little chance of owning a house without rich parents, or getting a decent job without the right connections.
And if they didn’t do well at school the Tories now want to send them to Boot Camp to justify their meagre benefits.
( Brian Reade, 22.08.2015 )