It’s a strange thing, isn’t it, when politicians of all stripes aided and abetted by the right-wing populist press attack welfare benefits with the usual flair of the language of blame, vilification, stigmatisation and scapegoating. But what is so noticeable is how little they know about the benefits system, but hey who needs facts and evidence when you blame the “benefits scroungers” for sapping the welfare state.
Andrew Marr, while interviewing Mister Ed, showed just how dense and unintelligent the bourgeois commentator is… Question to Mister Ed about the numbers of people on “Invalidity Benefit…or whatever it’s called now”… Mister Ed nodded sagely and came back with, “Incapacity Benefit”…. No, No, No.. and NO… It’s called Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). Then Mister Ed commented about the great thing James Purnell did with the benefits system (Note to Mister Ed: it was Purnell who brought in ESA) along with describing some people who supposedly milk the system as “malingerers”…
I also today read Yvette Cooper’s speech at Labour Party conference. She followed in the path of James Purnell her predecessor. Cooper followed the ideology of neoliberalism, her voting record never ever deviated from the NL line. Today in her speech she said this, Conference this is the Britain David Cameron and Nick Clegg want to build. Hopes betrayed. Ambitions abandoned. Young people left to sink or swim. Unless you can afford to pay yourself. This is what the Big Society really means.
It kinda leaves in tear in your eye, doesn’t it.. Hopes and dreams dashed and destroyed by the ConDems. It’s obvious reality with what will happen to people’s lives wreck by this government. But the reason I get facetious and narked by Yvette Cooper because she was part of the problem when it comes to destroying dreams.
Consider this said by Cooper on ‘extra help to mums who lose their jobs in the recession’ as part of its efforts to end child poverty (summer 2009):
Every child should get a fair start in life, every child should have the chance to get on, to develop their potential, to chase their dreams. We believe in equality of opportunity for children as they grow. Children get left behind for years to come if their family gets left behind today.
Over a hundred thousand children could be lifted out of poverty if more second parents were able to work as their children get older. That is why it is so important to provide the help and support for parents who lose their jobs too.
Millions of working class people face being forced to work part-time on minimum wage due to processes started under NL. “Flexible New Deal’” enforcers have their own cushy number arm twisting people into jointing an army of working poor. 16 or 20 hours each week on £5.80 will not lift you out of poverty even with tax credits.
With the cuts to Housing Benefit for private tenants and for people on JSA for any length of time the working poor will be forced out of their homes. Working class people will no longer be able to look to having their own secure home as a reward for working hard. Back to two or more families crammed into one home. The boomerang generation will grow old in their parents homes.
This as well from Cooper towards the end of her speech: And throughout our history – from the Jarrow marches to the New Deal – we have fought for jobs.
How dare she include the Jarrow marchers in the same sentence as the New Deal. The New Deal was an attack on the working class through coercion and sanctions. Jarrow marchers wanted proper jobs with dignity.
Remember, it was James Purnell and Yvette Cooper who started these hideous attacks on welfare, the ConDems are continuing at a turbocharged rate.
It was truly horrible watching and listening to the smug Cooper earlier. How she has the bare faced gall to criticise the tories for doing what she did is beyond me. Hyprocisy at it’s hightest.
Thankfully I didn’t see it just read the transcript, NL started these welfare attacks, Cooper was part of that problem along with Purnell. All of the former ministers were part of the NL agenda and that includes Balls, Miliband junior and senior, Balls, Burnham…… ad nauseam.
New Labour still is part of the problem. I see Milliband Snr talking about moving on and there not being cliques and all that. He would say that. The LP should deal with the clique that is New Labour and its adherents. Then the party should move on.
Ah but Chris, NL is dead and buried… according to Mister Ed. I will see it to believe it! NL is still there.
A bloody good post, Harpy. Here’s some of the crap started by New Labour:
http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/press_20100323
Purnell doesn’t deserve the praise that he gets from his little army of sycophants.
Cheers Tim, I definitely agree with you regarding Purnell. Cooper just carried on the NL agenda.
You only get tax credits if you work 30 hours or more a week unless you fall into “special” groups, e.g., someone over 50 returning to work after being unemployed for six months or you have children etc. I know this because while on stage 4 of the Flexible New Deal my “Personal Advisor” told me, while forcing me to accept a 16 hours a week part-time minimum-wage job packing crockery in a factory or get sanctioned into absolute destitution for having the temerity to say no. (Before being made redundant last year I was a skilled precision engineering machinist programming and operating CNC machine tools.) “You’ll be better of than you would be on the dole” she said. And I am… a fulsome £0.97 better off each week when my transport costs, low as they are, are factored into the equation. So although I’m no longer receiving Jobseeker’s Allowance and the people I was assigned to on stage 4 of the Purnell/Cooper abortion called the Flexible New Deal have been paid a handsome fee for compelling me into unsuitable work that hasn’t lifted me even one millimetre out of grinding almost unendurable poverty, the scheme statistically appears to have chalked up another success because I have been removed from the head count of the unemployed and am now numbered among those that the scheme has place in gainful employment.
Still, at least I’ve got that extra £0.97 a week in my pocket!
Things could even be worse than that since the last idea I heard mooted by Yvette Cooper was the euphemistically entitled “Job Guarantee” which for me, as someone over twenty five years of age, would have meant twenty or thirty hours of unpaid chain-gang workfare every week for six months.
In 1997 when New Labour came into office they claimed that under their enlightened rule and age of social justice would dawn and that for everybody, especially for the poor and the suffering, “Things can only get better”.
Not for me and for countless millions like me they didn’t.
I don’t expect I will vote for any party in any election again while still alive.
Jim’s experience is depressing – I remember being similarly horrified when I started work under the Tories only to discover I was worse off than I’d been on the dole (mainly because of transport costs).
But on Cooper’s specific point about lifting families out of poverty by getting the second parent working… sorry, but I just don’t see how it can be true that “16 or 20 hours each week on £5.80 will not lift you out of poverty even with tax credits.”
That sort of money could very easily make the difference between living above or below the poverty line. I remember when tax credits came in and our net income jumped from around £900 to around £1250 a month. £350 a month clearly sounds like small change to you, but I can assure you that for us as a low income family it made a huge difference.
But, according to Jim, you don’t get tax credits unless you work 30 or more hours a week, so most people working part-time, especially single people, wouldn’t get any extra help and would probably be less than £25.00 per week better off in part-time work than unemployed. Factor in travelling costs to and from work plus sundry expenses and you could actually be worse off, which can’t possibly be right in a modern European country in the 21st century. Completely unskilled modern apprentices on government sponsored training schemes receive introductory wages comparable to that. God only knows what it must feel like to be a middle aged skilled or professional man or woman with a lifetime of solid work behind them, used to receiving a very good salary or wage, who, through no fault of their own, ends up dragooned onto a £90.00 per week job because that’s all the economy, country and the government has to offer them. Or perpetual workfare. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to have been reduced to that and I mean no offence to the doubtless guiltless Jim, a real person who has obviously been put through the wringer. I mean my hourly rate, charge by my employer to customers, is £80.00 AN HOUR! How can anyone get by with any dignity on half the minimum wage or less per week?
It will be interesting to see what the Coalition announces in respect to tax credits and in-work benefits at the end of the month. Something tells me they’re not likely to be as extensive or generous as they have been.
The future looks like millions suffering the torments of the damned as grinding, part-time, low-paid, in-work poverty replaces grinding, no-time, no-paid, out-of-work poverty. Unemployment will appears to fall while the sufferings and indignities of the poor will increase exponentially. And Yvette Cooper is as much to blame for this tragedy as anyone.
Jim – sure; childless people did worse than families under Labour & I’m not disputing the points you make here. It’s just that Harpy was disputing a specific claim of Cooper’s that for a poor family with one parent already in work, getting the *second* parent in work could be enough to lift them out of poverty. I was simply pointing out that Cooper was probably right on this one – even a few hundred pounds a month from low-paid, part-time work could very easily lift such a family out of poverty.
[...] Examples of total ignorance, Ed Miliband thinks Incapacity Benefit still exists while Andrew Marr (ignoramus of the blog world as well!) thinks people still receive Invalidity Benefit! If you want to attack people at least get the facts correct!! [...]