James Purnell: it’s all about getting tough…

So when the clock strikes half-past 12 today James Purnell will unleash his latest attacks on the unemployed.

Minister James Purnell said it would “transform lives” and said public money should not be wasted “on people who are playing the system”.

Yes indeed it will transform lives….but certainly not in a good way. Oh, and playing the system? What about tax avoidance and evasion which far outstrips so-called benefit fraud. But it is easier to attack the poor.

And the usual Orwelllian mantra being chanted, work is good. But it isn’t good when people are forced into predicaments by NL, forced to take jobs because they will face sanctions otherwise and this is not about choice, that’s an illusion. If it was about real choice then finding supportive work would be on the terms of the unemployed not on the terms of the powerful. It is about leaving the decisions to people and giving people real choices not restrictions and therefore forcing people between a rock and a hard place. It’s about bully boy tactics, undermining and putting people under immense pressure and stress. Mental distress is already on the increase and these attacks will increase distress further!

There’s nothing about improving workplace environments (actual that would benefit all workers), flexible hours, tightening up the Disability Discrimination Act, good quality free childcare, training, education, penalising employers who refuse to even contemplate taking someone on who is disabled…..the list is endless..

Nope, the onus is on the unemployed, the disabled and parents to….get on ya bike and find a job. And if you don’t….then sanctions beckon.

And precisely what is this, ‘something for nothing’ belief? You know, people have a right to welfare benefits and it’s part of the welfare state…. Why is that ‘something for nothing’ culture? So what’s tax evasion then? Tax avoidance? Tax havens? Bailing out the banks? Well, you definitely know NL’s class interests are elsewhere as now it is all about marketisation, privatisation and profit.

John McDonnell MP hits, as ever, the nail on the head when he rightly argues: It is lunacy to force people into jobs that are not there and to force lone parents to take up childcare which is either unaffordable or non-existent.