How clueless do you have to be to believe Iain Duncan Smith?
The Man With No Time for the Truth is back again with more of the same shenanigans.
Iain Duncan Smith reckons his huge and unnecessary benefit cuts are breaking up the culture of unemployment on the UK’s housing estates – a culture he likened to that shown in the TV drama Shameless.
There’s just one problem with what he’s saying: It’s rubbish.
“The Work and Pensions Secretary revealed that cuts to jobless hand-outs had reduced the number of workless households in council homes to the lowest level since records began,” shrilled the Express report on Friday.
Apparently nobody had pointed out to either RTU or the Express that removing people from the unemployment figures does not automatically mean they are in work. It is far more likely to mean that our heartless Tory-led government of selfishness has consigned these people to destitution.
That’s of no consequence to Iain I-Believe-I’m-Right. If they’re off his books, he doesn’t worry about them. What a fine Christian attitude from this upstanding and still un-excommunicated Catholic.
“We are beginning to change this dependency culture that Labour bred and are turning it into an independence culture where people see they can take control of their own lives,” he lied. Throwing them to the wolves is not making them independent.
He added that the proportion of people in social housing who do not work had fallen from just under 50 per cent in 2010 to 41 per cent – and that he believed it would fall below 40 per cent. Perhaps this is because he has engineered a situation in which increasing numbers of unemployed people, unable to pay his Satanic Bedroom Tax, are being thrown onto the streets?
“People are beginning to say – I ought to go to work, I have to go to work,” he gloated, knowing that his party had devised a poverty trap in which falling wages are ensuring that people going to work will be no better-off for it.
People are, in fact, telling themselves they have to get off benefits before Iain Duncan Smith kills them – just as his policies have killed tens of thousands of incapacity benefit claimants.
And now the Tories reckon the country should support their plan to cut the maximum amount a household should claim in benefits from an already too-low £26,000 a year to £23,000. The original figure was in line with a Tory lie about the average family income. Does this mean incomes have dropped by £3,000 a year since they imposed the cap?
It seems the money ‘saved’ by the increased cap would fund three million apprenticeships, as David Cameron says he wants to “abolish” youth unemployment.
As ever, the devil’s in the detail. The money would be used to give 18-21-year-olds a six-month window to “find” work or training – but would be withdrawn if they did not carry out “community projects” like cleaning local parks.
And will any long-term jobs result? Or will these youngsters be thrown back after the money runs out, to be branded SNLR (as Iain Duncan Smith was, back in his Army days) – Services No Longer Required?
This is work formerly carried out by convicted criminals, which tells you everything you need to know about the Conservative attitude to unemployed youth.
“And will any long-term jobs result? Or will these youngsters be thrown back after the money runs out,”
It is far more likely that some long-term, albeit low wage jobs, will be cut, and those formerly employed thrown on the dole. That was what happened in New York and everywhere else this silliness was initiated in the US.
And given what is happening across the UK and notably and recently in Newport, Wales- the cuts to transport to educational placements for anyone over 16- these placements will be forced upon anyone from a poor background as they will be unable to afford any other option, such as further education, a stupid move given we need skilled workers with qualifications, not untrained itinerant workers (except for the farmers of course who are calling out for an exemption to minimum wage at harvest time….. given how many Tory voters are farmers (as an ex Somerset resident I know this very well) I suspect I know what much of this low paid work will involve). Nobody has yet explained the other linked conundrum as well: transport is also being withdrawn to SN Students, whose college placements are usually centralised rather than in sixth form facilities. At the same age PIP kicks in and helps far fewer people than were helped by DLA, or who actually need it…. with no income, and no training…. oh well, Caerleon Campus is up for sale, that would make a fine looking workhouse!
The term ‘workfare’ has become so ubiquitous, It is sometimes worth a reminder of how it became so ingrained in some people’s minds
This 1997 ‘Science and Society’ piece is worth reading again
http://envplan.com/epd/fulltext/d16/d160133.pdf
Whilst these questions, asked in another early study, have never been satisfactorily answered;
“My study follows only one route to an answer, the paths between family and work life. Other glaringly unexplored routes include examining how the labor markets surrounding programs affect their outcomes (are accessible jobs available?) or how job displacement is linked with job placement (does workfare cause job loss among the working poor?)”.
Stacey J. Oliker; The Proximate Contexts of Workfare and Work; The Sociological Quarterly, Spring 1995, Vol 36
Not that rtu would be that bothered
“People are, in fact, telling themselves they have to get off benefits before Iain Duncan Smith kills them – just as his policies have killed tens of thousands of incapacity benefit claimants.”
The trouble is no matter how much we say we have to get a job before he kills us the fact remains that the jobs are not there to be had, or none that make surviving any easier. Certainly not much mention from RTU that work is no longer a way to avoid having to claim benefits. Any talk of job creation seems to be more just finding things to keep us occupied and less to do with genuine national productivity (and therefore recovery). Enemies of democracy have only to wait for our glorious leaders to do the work no terrorists could achieve – the defeat of the people of this country.
Do you think that’s it – keep us occupied? Because if we’re occupied trying to find work that pays enough, we’re distracted and can’t concentrated on actually forming any serious resistance to what they’re doing?
That’s a mistake!
Mike, I so hope you’re right about it being a mistake. Right now the occupation centres mainly on trying to avoid starving and/or losing our homes – even when we are are working. It’s a pretty full-time occupation even before we get shunted onto useless schemes (well, not useless for the companies running them). As a tactic (keeping us occupied by use of fear) it’s working out quite well for the government.
There is the slim but real hope that the Tories will over-reach themselves as far as their collective egos are concerned. It only takes one really stupid remark, deed or leak and the whole lot could be down round their ears. IDS/RTU announcing today that he’s all up for rolling out Universal Credit across the nation (accelerated apparently) could possibly be that over-reach. Thousands waiting for disability assessments/decisions now to be joined by thousands waiting UC transfers. What could possibly go wrong?
Definitely a mistake! It’s through unjust treatment at the hands of the DWP that fired up a search engine to arm myself with facts, to try to fight my corner. I wasn’t alone, it was that search engine that pointed me here, among other sites offering resistance. When I first followed Mike, Johnny Void, beastrabban, Tom at AAV, there were less than a handful of contributions to the blogs, there are new names cropping up every day… And they stay!
Man with brain damage and ‘uncontrolled’ epilepsy hanged himself when DWP threatened to cut benefits http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/man-brain-damage-uncontrolled-epilepsy-4305508
Worryingly he wants to prevent young people from leaving home by denying them housing benefits, what about those who are “in care”? they don’t have any choice! I nearly starved to death when thatcher removed housing benefit for under 18’s. I was “in care since I was 4yrs due to horrific abuse, including starvation! It is hopeless hoping people in power to grow a heart, just like life itself!!!
And still the sheeple slumber.
With all that is going on whatever happened to the British spirit?
We are rapidly becoming the most downtrodden nation in the world.
Multiculturalism, political correctness, and the media.
All conspiring to keep “us” on our place.
No amount of talk / debate will change these evil policies inflicted on the most deprived and vulnerable people. The toffs are creating a third world country, nothing short of a revolution will be the only thing left to bring change in this country. Evil and corrupt to the core and we are paying them to do it. Words fail me, another poor sod hung himself thanks to IDS, God help him what must he have gone through.