Cameron has been making much of the dramatic fall in unemployment, bragging about it like he has brought it about.
But if one jobcentre can take 2,700 off its books in one month by sanctioning for minor misdemeanors, and get away with it, then surely we can wipe out unemployment, if not overnight, then at least within a couple of months.
Simply sanction everyone for some perceived fault. Then Iain Duncan Smith can add that to his list of lies.
Having worked at jobcentre, I know that sometimes sanctions have to be used, but, in the absence of enough suitable jobs, and with tight targets to meet, there are reports of people being sanctioned for being a few minutes late from an appointment, although they are clearly dependent on unreliable privately-owned public transport; people being sanctioned for not having enough money on their cell phones to phone for jobs; people losing money because they got two interviews on the same day, at the same time, and failed to turn up for one of them; people being sanctioned because they moved home and were transferred to another jobcentre, and their details got lost in the system.
Is it too much to ask that the DWP treat people like human beings?
But if one jobcentre can take 2,700 off its books in one month by sanctioning for minor misdemeanors, and get away with it, then surely we can wipe out unemployment, if not overnight, then at least within a couple of months.
Simply sanction everyone for some perceived fault. Then Iain Duncan Smith can add that to his list of lies.
Having worked at jobcentre, I know that sometimes sanctions have to be used, but, in the absence of enough suitable jobs, and with tight targets to meet, there are reports of people being sanctioned for being a few minutes late from an appointment, although they are clearly dependent on unreliable privately-owned public transport; people being sanctioned for not having enough money on their cell phones to phone for jobs; people losing money because they got two interviews on the same day, at the same time, and failed to turn up for one of them; people being sanctioned because they moved home and were transferred to another jobcentre, and their details got lost in the system.
Is it too much to ask that the DWP treat people like human beings?
According to the Tories, our wage packets are getting fatter, but for once I believe the Labour party, when they say the Tories figures are dodgy and made up. The wee man on the ground will feel no benefit, because when the Tories say things are on the up they mean, millionaires profits are on the up.
ReplyDeleteAs for IDS, the pond scum that he is, he seems to take great pleasure in his work, especially inflicting pain and suffering on the poor and infirm, and with up to £25 billion quid still to cut from the UK's spending budget, far more pain and suffering appears to be on the horizon, not only for the sick and the poor but for the working poor.
Independence is a must for Scots, the alternative doesn't bear thinking about. As for IDS,lets just say if ever anyone was due a bad turn its this lowlife.
Oh no. I don't believe a word of it.
DeleteInflation is 2%, but that doesn't include housing costs... so, what the hell use is it. I mean in a cold country most of us don;t line in burrows, or nests. WE LIVE IN HOUSES.
In any case for the poor the cost of food (estimated inflation rate 10%, heating (10%), rents, and transport makes up the bulk of the week's purchases. Tell me that that all averages out at 2%.
So, unemployment figure is invented and the fact that the economy is on course is a figment of Gideons imagination fuelled by whatever he's on.
I don't know anyone at all who isn't worse off than (s)he was a year ago.
tris
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2014/jan/23/iain-duncan-smith-gives-speech-on-welfare-politics-live-blog
Duncan Smith characterises the difference between left-wing and right-wing compassion as ‘How can we help you in your current state?’ versus ‘How can we change your situation so you don’t live like this?’ The difference was further spelt out by Michael Fallon, the business minister, who recently told me that the party should question whether young people ‘really need the full panoply of employment protection and all those kinds of rights when they’re just starting off’. Reduce the protection, he thinks, and young people will get what they need most — more jobs.
Fallon, along with many other colleagues who are not metropolitan modernisers but compassionate Conservatives nonetheless, would like to see further proposals in the next Tory manifesto on deregulating the labour market, so that employers might find it easier to take on young people.
As i told you once before were i work when they needed to lay people off they sacked all the long term sick and the disabled.
first due lack of capability they say and all legal......apparently??
one guy was left and we used to joke (gallows humour )
about him being the last one left...my turn next he would say
ha ha ha
and then one day they had him in the office and laid him off
after working there for 14 years. he has still not found a job.
and does not expect to either.
anyways the filth scum dirt Torys throw the sick and disabled
off social security into the world of work.meanwhile the world of
work even before having their limited rights taken away.
boots them out the door for not being as flexible as workers
without disabilities.
All in the wish to help them they say.
It's bloody funny help.
DeleteOf course I hear what he's saying. If you reduce the wage and take away the rights, maybe employers will create a few jobs... but most likely they will sack the people they have and take on unemployed, unprotected young people on the new lowest of low wages.
I see the logic., but the logic taken to its quintessence is that if everyone works for nothing then there will be loads of jobs for people.
I for example could afford to take on someone to wash and iron my clothes, clean the house, wash the car, drive me...
They want to reduce health and safety legislation and of course have been aided by the Daily Mail type "Elf and Safety Gorn Mad". Of course there are fewer costs if you don;t have to make sure there's a fire escape, or the electricity is safe, but, there's always a chance that everyone will; be killed. It does depend on your priorities.
The London government showed what it was worth on these patters when they told us that they were forcing sick people off benefits and into work because it was good for them, and not to save money; and within a few weeks have announced that they were closing Remploy factories that didn't make profits.
But the right wing press prints all the rubbish on the earth about scroungers and the feckless, and Channel Four wants shooting for this Benefits Street programme. This has played right into the Tories' hands.
I wouldn't mind but it wasn't the sick that got the UK in this mess. The sick contributed very little to the three trillion pounds worth of debt.
Mark my words, all Tories ever want to help is Tories!
DeleteAlthough I hate the Torys (as all decent right minded people should )
ReplyDeletefor what they do and the harm they intend to do.
They are only able to do so much abuse to the vulnerable because
Labour went down the path thatcher started they took the baton from her hand and it has now passed to Cameron and co. who have only took it bit further and a bit faster.
Labour made Cameron task easier by not taking a different more socialist path.
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind
unfortunately its the less able the most vulnerable in society who are reaping the whirlwind..
just a thought
why is it they say if you have a 50% tax the rich wont work
so to get the rich to work you must pay them more
and yet to get the poor to work you should pay them less
they say...
Niko, I disagree profoundly with your SNP bashing, but fully agree with your last comment.
DeleteThe Tories are evil. The LibDems are their willing assistants. Labour are very, very nearly as bad as the Tories. And as for UKIP....
Who is it who speak out against what the Tories are doing, and what Labour would do if they were in power? The SNP, the Scottish Greens, the SSP, and Labour for Independence - take your pick.
Scaraben
Well, that's true, Niko. Blair should have reversed a lot of what Thatcher did... not all of it of course, but some of it.
DeleteBut for all that he failed to do, and he failed the country, not Blair, not Major, and not ever Thatcher would have dared do what the bunch are doing.
An interesting question... what will Labour reverse if they get in in 2015?
Will unions get some powers back? Will they renationalise the PO, Railways, English health service and all these weird people they have running schools in England, selling off playing fields just when there was supposed to be a payback for all the money that was spent on the Olympics?
These people in government now have no idea what life is like. At least Thatcher had worked in a shop and Major's dad worked in a circus...
Blair and Cameron... no earthly idea what it's like for folk that didn't go to Fettes or the English equivalent.
That is why I want independence.
Whatever our leaders might be like, Salmond, Lamont and even Davidson and Harvie, went to ordinary schools and lived in ordinary houses, knew ordinary people adn have probably been hungry from time to time.
I can't think of one person in our parliament who isn't like that.
The figures like the polls are pretty much rubbish. Doesn't matter who is in power, I bet unemployment is millions if you count those old and fit enough to work and not the milked way they do its. IDS , sorry, is a tosser, toilet scum, the lowest form of human being ever and I would put him up there with some of the worst.
ReplyDeleteBruce
spot on
DeleteI take it you don't like him then Bruce :)
DeleteMore and more people are seeing how fascist the UK is becoming.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant news in a poll commissioned by the Scotsman, so likely if anything to be slightly biased in its questioning towards getting the answers THEY want.
DeleteAs Darling's lies about the pound and the EU and border posts are shown to be rubbish, and there is a smugness of the UK government about how things are getting better, at the same time as things are very obviously getting worse for you and me.. I reckon people have sussed the No campaign as a bunch of Spivvy chancers.
It won';t have done them any good that they keep on sending people we didn't vote for to Scotland to tell us we couldn't manage (even if they have to have a minder in the form of Danny Alexander.
It won;t help that Cameron refuses to debate (and it wouldn't help them if he did and got beaten.
The campaign in the Daily Mail against "cyber" Scot Nats, which admits that there is a similar campaign of hatred coming from "cyber" Brit Nats, but doesn't elaborate and doesn't give examples... must be sickening those those are undecided. I heard a No voting neighbour the other day point out how desperate they must be if their best argument was cybernats... and that he was beginning to wonder if there wasn't something in the Yes argument.
No started their campaign of hatred and inability far too early.
When you tell blatant lies you shouldn't leave the public 2 years to suss you out.
And they should try to present a united front. The Tories falling out with Alistair Darling. Gordon Brown starting a rival organisation to Darling's organisation. Jackie Baillie and Anans Sarwar saying one thing and London saying another...
It all dopes them no favours.
But one poll does not a victory make.
And we must keep on highlighting the faults in their arguments and explaining how we we could be more like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland... even if there is a rush from the newspapers and the BBC to tell tales of how terrible life is in Scandinavia.
Hence two years campaign.
DeleteBruce
Yes. I thought it was a mistake to begin with. I was wrong.
DeleteYou cant take money from the rich they say it will only lead
ReplyDeleteto tax avoidance ( a criminal offence ) and less tax and they
wont work either...and we are supposed to pay attention to this
shite.
Can we afford the rich any more ???
Meanwhile the Torys do the most appalling things to vulnerable
people, with big psychopathic grins fixed on their faces.
Being so kind and helpful to them.
back to Victorian Britain with a vengence....soon being poor
will once again be a criminal offence ......oh forgot it already is!!!!!
Absolutely. If we tax them highly, they will simply refuse to pay, which means that George will just have to stand there and wring his hands... because the alternative is to round them up and put them in prison. And that would nev do. prison doesn't work!
DeleteI don't know why people can't see that we are returning to a Dickensian attitude. And that might be ok while everything is going your way...
But even for the reasonably well off, a divorce, the loss of a job, an accident, a heart attack, cancer... all of them can completely change your life and you can suddenly find yourself in need of help.
Almost no one, except those at the very top, can feel safe.
tris
ReplyDeletewe are all just one months wage from benefit street.
Yes, Niko. Well, of course we can exclude Cameron Osbourne, or for that matter Clegg, Miliband Salmond, Lanot,e tc, from that situation, because even when they get sacked there is that pension... and for many the HoL.
ReplyDeleteBut for ordinary folk, you're bag on, which is why it's a bit silly for them to praise IDS's punishment of the unemployed or the sick... or indeed the low paid. You could loose your job and get another one at the minimum wage for 30 hours a week!