SNAPS ON ...ERM.... MONDAY!

I'm a day late...so shoot me... 

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SUNDAY SNAPS, FEATURING HIT THE WEAK WEEK AND McCAMERON THE FEART

The welfare changes started this week and, true to form, we were treated to Cameron and his ministers out in force making ridiculous statements about how much welfare costs. 

Ignoring reality, which is that the bulk of the welfare bill is spent either on the elderly (and everyone has known that that was coming for the last 60 years and more) or on people who are in work but paid far too little to cope with the outrageous (and wholly unnecessary) price of staples, like foods, electricity, gas and petrol , they and their friends in the press continued telling us that all the money was soaked up by undeserving lazy skivers, criminals and child murderers. 

The truth is shown by these (the most recent) breakdown of expenditure from the DWP (2011).

42.3% elderly,

20.8% low income,

18.4% families,

15.5% sick/disabled,

2.6% unemployed.

Source: DWP

Still there isn't much profit for the Tories in letting the truth get in the way of their vile propaganda machine. And vile it is: Comparing struggling OAPs, and people dying of cancer, to a man who murdered 6 of his own kids is low, even for the likes of Osborne ...and yes, I know he didn't actually say it, but he implied it, and allowed the Daily Mail readers to make of it what they would. And if he didn't know that that was what they would do, it is high time he was back on his ancestral estate counting the sheep instead of our money.

Then we had Cameron in Scotland, refusing to debate independence with Mr Salmond. He said because "it was for Scots to decide... not an Englishman like me". (He seemed momentarily to forget that while Mr Salmond is first minister of Scotland, he is (like it or not) prime minister of Scotland) Maybe we successfully managed to make him feel like the outsider he is in our country. I hope so, because he is, and a dangerous one. 

He kicked holes in his own argument, however, by lecturing us about how much better we have been, and would be, in the UK. He's a Tory so he retreated into the usual jingoistic talk...it's all they know about.  We beat fascism together, we had nuclear weapons together and, if we didn't then Kim Jong Un could blow us off the face of the earth, and probably would. 

Cleverer than IDS a week before, he was talking to an audience that was bound to show him respect, as the talk was hosted by their employers. So telling him to... erm...'go away', wasn't really a possibility. 

But he won't talk to Alex. Oh no, despite the majority of Scots wanting him to, he just won't. I wonder what the real reason is...

By the day, it seems more and more obvious that if we want to live a decent life in a decent country with decent laws, we have to do this on our own. The alternative is to remain part of an angry and deeply divided country where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; where we store, and help to pay for, dangerous and unnecessary weapons, capable of killing tens of thousands  of people, while our schools and hospitals are underfunded, and those down on their luck because of illness, old age or unemployment are left to feel like thieves and child murderers. 

This one takes the biscuit!!

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In under 24 hours check out the difference from the Scotsman.

Friday's story on Western Baths:

"One of Scotland's best-known artists, Alasdair Gray, has unveiled a major piece of his work in arguably the most unusual location yet - his local swimming baths."

Saturday's story on Independence:

"Controversial artist Alasdair Gray is to publish a major new book setting out his case for Scottish independence in the run-up to next year’s referendum, The Scotsman can reveal."

Hmmmm. Best known one day and controversial the next... What a fickle world the Johnson Pressers live in.

LABOUR'S SOCIAL SECURITY POLICY MYSTERY

Does anyone know what Labour's policy is on benefits?

I ask because last week they voted against the changes proposed by the Liberals and Tories in Westminster. But, when the government won the debate (on English votes), and they cuts were approved, I heard that Ed Balls said that they couldn't guarantee to overturn the changes.

Then in Scotland Mrs Lamont has been insisting that we can't expect to have 'something for nothing' and that universal benefits can no longer be afforded. She appears to believe that we will have to submit our poor to humiliating means testing from now on.

She has called for a debate on benefits, set up a commission to look into the affordability of our current social security (which will not report until after the referendum) and has accused the SNP government of stifling the debate for which she has called.

It was, therefore, a bit of a mystery to us all that Labour took the attitude it did to last Thursday's proposed Holyrood session on that very subject. Following a report from the left wing organisation the Jimmy Reid Foundation  entitled The Case for Universalism, Claire Adamson, for the SNP, had proposed a members' debate on benefits. This was backed by the independent members, but, to be accepted as a member's debate, it required a backer from one of the major opposition parties, or the Liberals. 

Needless to say the Tories and Liberals didn't relish any further publicity on how their English bosses were intending to starve the poor out of house and home. But, given Mrs Lamont's enthusiasm for the subject, you would have expected Labour to put forward not just one, but many backers, to ensure that the debate took place. However, oddly, backers from the Labour desks came there none!

Could it be that Mrs Lamont's party was stifling the debate that they had accused the SNP of...erm.... stifling?

Very odd.

But there's more!

On the Andrew Marr show today, Johann's boss, Ed Miliband, said that universal benefits were 'the bedrock of our society', driving a coach and horses through Mrs Lamont's policy in just a few words. He was so enthusiastic about the idea that he actually said:  "I think that universal benefits which go across the population are an important bedrock of our society."

Nicola Sturgeon said: “It is deeply revealing that Labour politicians are running scared on this issue to the extent that they are now trying to close down the open debate on universal services which they themselves called for.

“Perhaps they are afraid of what they might hear about their insulting claim that pensioners – who have paid taxes all of their lives – receiving free personal care, or the sick receiving free prescriptions, are getting ‘something for nothing’.”

So, I ask simply, anyone who knows...what is the policy? Do we have universalism, or means testing and will or will not Westminster roll back the changes that the Tories have made, but that they, together with the SNP voted against?

Answers on a post card... or a banana skin...

WE NEED TO MAKE SURE WE HAVE JOBS FOR PEOPLE FOR WHOM "BENEFITS ARE NO LONGER AN OPTION"

The government has dropped its plans to cut in housing benefit by 10% after 12 months of claims. The cut was proposed in George Osborne’s June budget last year, however, as realistically it would only have created homelessness, crime and misery, Boris Johnston and Nick Clegg are thought to have scuppered it.

The cut was supposed to be an incentive for the unemployed to find work, which is a very good idea, but there really have to BE jobs before you can put someone out of their home for not having one.

I have a professional interest in Welfare Bills, having worked for many years trying to get people off benefits and into work.

To be fair to IDS there are some good things in this bill. The benefits system is being streamlined and simplified. Currently there are far too many JC+ staff who know little of the complex rules, and millions of pounds is wasted and much misery suffered as people are over or underpaid, because staff are hardly trained, lowly paid, overworked and have very low morale. I must say that I have never hated a job as much as the 8 miserable months I spent there.

IDS tells us that there are 500,000 jobs in the jobcentres every week, but a recent report said that 90% of jobs available are part time, and my experience of JC+ is that many of them are not just part time, but very part time.

“Cleaner: 1 hour a day 7-8 am, (2 hours Fridays). Min Wage. Must be flexible and available for extra hours as required. Key holder. Experience required with buffing machinery. References requ’d!” What use is that to most people?

No one would argue that getting people back to work is important. We have nearly 1 million unemployed 16-25 year olds. That is a scandalous waste of lives, as unemployment not only means poverty now, it is also associated with ill health and premature death in the future.

The trouble is that except for the start of the New Deal programme in 1997/8 we never do it properly. We send people along to job search courses willy nilly. All the wrong people together in a room, all with different needs; all looking for different types of work.

We underpay the staff who work with them, in what can be a very challenging job, and frequently get staff who have little knowledge or interest in what they are doing.

But for all that there are successes.

And what the successes need are jobs. Not part time jobs with zero hour contracts; not jobs which are totally unsuited to their needs and talents. We need decent suitable jobs with fair pay.

"What will happen is British people will genuinely be able to get British jobs because they will be incentivised to take those jobs, we will expect them to take those jobs but work will pay better than benefits. A life on benefits will no longer be an option for somebody.” IDS told the BBC.

So quite apart from falling into the trap that Brown fell into with his Britishness, I look forward to him finding the estimated 6 million jobs which will be needed to ensure that ”a life on benefits will no longer be an option”.

Incidentally, he talks too about sorting the sick note culture. He might want to start with JC+, which when I was there, was so badly managed that around 10% of the staff were off sick long term!!

Pics: (1) Boris, sporting his Mrs Thatcher bouffant, was the first to see the folly on housing benefit cuts. (2) People under 35, however, will be forced out of their homes and into shared accommodation to get housing benefit. (I don’t think the authors have been outside London.) (3) IDS was hoping to grab 10% of the housing benefit after 1 year’s claim, but Nick and Boris spiked his guns.