For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath*

Rumour, and the Sunday Telegraph have it that one way that the Tories are going to save money, having ditched the Liberals idea of a Mansion Tax along with most other Liberal policies, is they will make the poor pay even more.

Yep, that's it. The bankers and the government drop the country into a stinking cesspit of debt and the government responds by cutting people's benefits to make up the deficit.

So the latest proposal is that the government will dock 10% of JSA after 6 months of unemployment and then a further 10% after a year.

Those under 25 currently receive £56.25 a week under Jobseeker’s Allowance. This rises to £71.00 a week for the over 25s and £111.45 for couples.

So, after 6 months the under 25 year old would lose £5.62, and after a year £11.24. That would mean that they would be down to £45.01 a week to live on. That doesn't go far when a loaf of ordinary white bread in Asda costs £1.20; the bus fare into the town around £2 and 6 apples £1.80.

If you add this reduction to the already proposed freeze for 2 years of all benefits, while inflation (officially at 2.5%), is in reality far far higher...gas and electricity are set to increase by around 10% for example, you are looking at complete misery at the very least and starvation, food banks and death at the worst.

You might think that people should be able to get a job within 6 months, but this depends hugely on a variety of factors like where you live, how old you are, what kind of skills or experience you have, how your health is, if you have any disability, if you are overweight or, sometimes, whether you are good looking or plain. Things are tough out there. The jobs pages in local paper which used to be worthy of a pull out supplement, now barely fill a column.

One comment on the Telegraph site impressed me. I think it is worth repeating here:

"I've got 30 years experience as a Board-level PA/Executive Assistant. Last year, I was made redundant and I have been out of work for almost exactly a year.  I have applied for literally hundreds of jobs. At the last interview I went to, I made some enquiries about the post: for a 20 hour a week job, they had over 800 applicants. 

"Then I was sent on the "Mandatory Work Placement Scheme", run by a company whose Chief Executive draws a salary of £3.5million, according to information in the public domain.   We were summoned by letter to the HQ of the company, and told that we would be starting "work" the next day - no notice, no time to organise childcare, no nothing.  In my batch of people there were 40 people; all of us were being sent to "work" in charity shops.  This is despite a) us being told in the letter that our skills and experience would be looked at and "a placement appropriate to your experience" found, b) there being white collar workers, single mums, scaffolders, IT professionals, a butcher and an ex-animator /film maker in the group.

"Three of us were sent to a small local charity shop - three of us!  to do 30 hours a week for a month.  We had been told that "since the A4E problems (a euphemism if ever I heard one), placements could not be made in commercial companies.  The shop already had its full complement of volunteer staff, so we were basically in the way.  The shop manager had to find 90 hours' worth of work for us three that month.  The existing volunteers hated us because we were taking over their roles - some of them were told not to come in for a month - so even though they were volunteers, we were putting them "out of work" for a while.

"I made some new friends, but I didn't pick up any transferrable skills to get me another job in my particular field.  And A4E made approx £350 out of the government for each of us - by phoning a charity shop and getting us a temporary "job" there.  And when things went wrong, A4E were nowhere to be found.

"And on top of working there 30 hours a week for a month, I was still expected to find the time and energy to continue looking for a proper job.  30 hours a week to receive standard JSA benefits works out at appreciably under the National Minimum Wage.

"An acquaintance of mine (retired) announced recently that she had been thinking of taking a part time volunteer post at her local charity shop to give her something to do a couple of mornings a week but was turned down because the charity shop had taken on Mandatory Work Placement people - of which there would be a constant, ever changing stream, so there were no voluntary jobs there for the foreseeable future. 

"People think that the unemployed should work for their benefits. I don't see Messrs Cameron and Osborne offering to do without their salary to help the economy." 

Basingstoke67

PS: I also enjoyed this comment from another contributor:

How about anyone found to have evaded tax for over a year gets to work in the community and get a 20% increase in their tax liability?

*Matthew 13:12