Tag Archives: Child Benefit

Why does the LABOUR Party want to put families – children – into poverty?

Child poverty: both the Tories and Labour want to put families with three or more children into poverty, so what could possibly make you think voting for them is a good idea?

It seems some of you are still clinging to the belief that the Labour Party is the answer to the Tory insanity that has been running the United Kingdom into the ground since 2010.

Let’s put everybody straight about that – starting with Labour’s clearly-expressed intention to put families with at least three children into poverty and keep them there.

Here’s the Resolution Foundation:

As Gavin Kelly posted on ‘X’: “A decade ago 1 in 3 children in large families (3+ children) were in poverty. Now it’s more than 4 in 10, heading to more than 1 in 2 (51%) by 2028-29.

“Completely policy-driven. Fixable.”

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Tom Pollard posted – also on ‘X’, “The two-child limit will condemn an increasing number of children to grow up in poverty – permanently scarring them, reducing their life chances & costing us all in the long term.”

Here’s Jonathan Bradshaw, Professor Emeritus of Social Policy at the University of York:

He’s saying that the economic benefits of lifting the two-child limit far outweigh the annual cost to the public purse – words echoed by Dr Katy Jones, Associate Professor in Employment at Manchester Metropolitan University:

The benefits of lifting children out of poverty would be huge, but obviously the Conservatives won’t do it because it’s their policy and they want to make you poor.

And Labour won’t do it either because Keir Starmer clearly wants you to be poor too.

He and his party would rather give huge bungs to fat bankers, as we can see from Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds’s squirming response when challenged on both subjects by Kay Burley on Sky News:

Labour is now the party of the bankers, not the workers. And if Starmer is happy to screw over families with more than two children, he’ll merrily do worse to you.

So you simply cannot vote tribally – for the party you think represents you (none of them do; they’re all about enriching their MPs and nothing else) – at the next general election.

Instead – and I cannot stress this strongly enough – if you want your vote to mean anything, you have to actually find out what the candidates in your constituency are planning to do, if they are lucky enough to be elected.

That is what party manifestos are for. Independent candidates also have policy documents and they will all be online for you to find and read.

You need to find and read these policy documents, and then you need to make a dispassionate choice, based on what you have read.

Which of the candidates offers the most policies that fit what you need? And, by that, I mean: who will improve your own life the most?

Do not consider how other people will vote, either in your constituency or the other 649 around the UK. That is not your concern.

It is not for you to worry about which party will get enough votes to actually enact its policies. This will lead you down the usual garden path to voting in a government that won’t do anything at all for the good of the country, like the one we’ve had since 2010.

BE SELFISH. Bizarrely, it might be the only way to get the kind of government that all of us need.


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Keir Starmer’s right-wing stance is not a smokescreen. Here’s how you can tell

Keir Starmer: he’s not left-wing but he’s definitely sinister.

Take a look at this prediction on the date and outcome of the next general election:

Personally, I think autumn might be leaving it late and we might get a spring GE, at the same time as the locals. This would save Rishi Sunak from a “lame duck” summer that could harm Tory chances at the Westminster elections even more than his premiership already has.

The prediction that Labour will go on to form a government, if accurate, heralds disaster for the UK and everyone in it, though. We would just be swapping one gang of hard-right headbangers, hell-bent on robbing the poor to fatten the rich, for another.

Voters who want to support Keir Starmer seem to be doing it on the basis of a daydream, as laid out by ‘Barney’, below:

John Holman’s response tells us exactly why any hope that Labour will move back to the left in government is forlorn: Starmer will simply say that he must honour his (right-wing) manifesto promises because that’s what voters have endorsed.

He won’t mention the fact that nobody in the Labour leadership will have given any of us, including rank-and-file part members, a chance to choose which policies should be in the manifesto in the first place.

Nor will he admit that all of Labour’s policies for the next government will have been chosen on the basis that they will win support – and donations – for Starmer and his cronies from the very rich and powerful elites of the UK, or will line their pockets in other ways. That would show that he has made his party just like the Tories.

He will keep quiet about those facts – which This Writer is sure will become self-evident to those of us with enquiring minds – because it suits him to permit the majority of voters to carry on as ‘BanAllHunting’, below, suggests:

That’s about the size of it. Without any evidence at all, people have persuaded themselves that, because he leads an organisation that still calls itself “Labour” and operates under a red banner, Starmer is their left-wing Messiah.

The actual evidence suggests otherwise. Look at the way he responds to Susanna Reid’s probing about the two-child benefit cap, here:

Confronted with what she describes as “a very unpleasant nickname” – Sir Kid Starver – he doesn’t acknowledge or respond to it – and certainly doesn’t deny it.

All he says is that his party will have an “anti-poverty strategy”, just like Tony Blair’s New Labour government did.

But it will be without any funding, apparently.

So you can see that, under even the slightest scrutiny, any claim that Starmer will create any real and lasting improvement simply falls apart.

The absolute tragedy of all this is that, deprived of this fantasy, Labour tribalists will fall back on the old falsehood that anybody who doesn’t support Labour is a “Tory enabler”. That might be effective if Starmer’s Labour had any policies to distinguish it from the Tories, but it doesn’t.

In real terms, you’re a Tory enabler if you vote either Labour or Conservative.

The only way to break this deadlock is to find someone else to support, and there is a really easy way to do this.

You simply look up the other political parties operating in your constituency, plus an independents who may be around, and find out what their policies are.

Then you choose a candidate or party to support. This will be whoever has the most policies that correspond with what you want.

And then you vote for them.

Unless you are a hard-right headbanger, hell-bent on robbing the poor to fatten the rich, that is the only sane course of action in the UK, at this time.

Why on Earth would you vote in a party with policies you don’t want, that will do things that won’t help? That’s self-harm. Anybody doing it would legitimately need treatment for mental illness.

The news in tweets: Thursday, July 20, 2023

The puppets: in fact, with today’s information, this image needs to be updated to show a Saudi politician or a private health boss with his hand up Blair.

Labour sinks its candidates’ chances in today’s three by-elections

The UK’s main parties seem to have given their candidates in the three by-elections taking place today (Thursday, July 20, 2023) a shot… in the foot. An entire volley, in the case of the STP (Substitute Tory Party – formerly Labour). In fact, metaphorically-speaking, it would probably be accurate to say that those candidates no longer have any legs to stand on.

Here’s former party leader candidate Liz Kendall showing why members made the right choice by avoiding her like a nasty disease. In defending her leader’s decision to condemn 55 per cent of families with three children and a massive 80 per cent of those with four to poverty, she resorted to the “fiscal responsibility” argument that simply doesn’t ring true:

The simple fact is that fiscal rules may sound good to the public but all they really do is straitjacket political parties into courses that can harm us all in the long term. There’s no need for them.

Nor is there any justification in saying that (Labour) can’t make promises about where the money for a change will be sourced. The simple fact is that the Conservatives have spent 13 years cutting taxes for the richest people in the UK. The opposition party should be looking at the amount of money these policies have denied to the treasury and making its plans accordingly. Instead, the plan is to leave these tax breaks in place – boosting the rich still further while punishing the poor yet again.

The claim that parents should get better jobs is risible. Even if such employment was available in an economy where pay has been pushed through the floor, how are parents supposed to take them when the massive cost of childcare ties them to their home, looking after their children?

(And please, let’s not engage in the tired old argument that people should not have had more than two children in the first place: you don’t know the circumstances behind those situations, and in any case the UK’s economy requires a larger indigenous population, now that so many workers from abroad have been scared away.)

Elsewhere, Tony Blair has demanded that a future ‘Labour’ government should inflict austerity on the UK:

We know from the nauseating spectacle of Blair discussing policy with Keir Stürmer in public that the opposition party leader is a Blairite and wants to follow the desires of his ideological leader as much as possible.

Blair is saying he wants austerity, and he wants increased privatisation in the NHS. Only “basic” healthcare should be free at the point of use, he said. Other services would cost money. These are not Labour Party policies, of course – and nobody claiming to represent Labour who supports them, and/or the leaders who spout them, should be allowed into Parliament.

What we’re looking at is “policy capture” – and the organisation behind Tony Blair should be avoided at all costs because it is owned by foreign governments, it seems:

So candidates in today’s by-elections – by the words of leading party members – are not going to help working and working-class people but may well be following the demands of foreign governments instead, with plans including making us pay for anything more than “basic” healthcare.

Would you vote for that?

Grant Shapps shows why Tories should not be allowed near power

While leading members of the STP (Substitute Tory Party – formerly Labour) have been hobbling their by-election candidates, Grant Shapps has been doing the same for the real Tory Party’s credibility.

He has written to Keir Stürmer, demanding that the STP pay for damage caused by Just Stop Oil protests, on the grounds that the STP is the political wing of Just Stop Oil:

This is boneheaded stupidity. In doing so, Shapps is publicly acknowledging that any politician or political organisation that takes money from a donor will do what that donor demands in the future.

If Stürmer’s STP had said that, we could point to the donations its members receive from Trevor Chinn and say this is an admission that that party is now a sockpuppet of the so-called Israel Lobby (amongst others).

But because a Conservative has said it, we can rifle through all the donations that party and its MPs receive instead. Obviously Shapps is admitting that the Tories are all in thrall to private health firms (for example), and that’s why the NHS is being increasingly privatised.

He has opened the door for us to tell the world that the Conservative Party – and more importantly the Conservative government – does not work for the people of the United Kingdom, despite taking huge amounts of our cash.

Instead, it works for those shadowy donors, despite all the claims over the years that it did not, which we are now free to conclude are lies.

And that means any Tories elected in today’s (Thursday, July 20, 2023) by-elections will do the same and should therefore be blocked from ever entering Parliament.

Nice one, Shapps!

Rishi Sunak blames striking junior doctors for his own government’s health service blunders

Here’s another Tory failure that should cut into that party’s vote in today’s by-elections: Rishi Sunak’s attempts to blame striking junior doctors for weaknesses in the National Health Service.

I’ll let Peter Stefanovic explain:

A couple of points that should be emphasised:

As a result of Tory pay cuts since 2010, you are £11,000 a year worse-off than you would otherwise have been, and Sunak wants you to take further pay cuts (not just just junior doctors). Meanwhile, average pay for MPs, once their multiple other jobs are taking into account, is more than £200 per hour.

The “Independent” Pay Review Body is nothing of the sort. Its members are all employed by the government and are told how much money the government is willing to pay public sector workers before making any decisions. Those decisions are then made to fit in with what the government tells them to do, rather than with what public sector employees need.

Daily Express fails at basic maths. Just because inflation has fallen, that doesn’t mean prices are dropping

Carol Vorderman explains basic mathematics to the writers of a national newspaper.

It seems the Daily Express and its employees don’t understand that a fall in the rate of inflation does not mean that prices have dropped – despite the fact that it has been drilled into all of us over many months that such a fall really means the rate at which prices increase is slowing down.

So the following headline betrays a lack of economic credibility:

Still… when the price cuts demanded by the paper don’t happen, perhaps we can all enjoy a public backlash against the Tories.

That’ll be fun to watch.

Tory government paid almost as much for each ‘migrant barge’ as it costs to hire the most luxurious cabin cruise ships

This is self-explanatory:

This Writer understands that we still don’t know who won the contract to provide these barges, that have been modified to accommodate 500 people rather than 240, meaning less space is available for each of them.

And we don’t know whether there was a proper tendering process, with multiple interested parties invited to bid for the contract, or if it was just handed over to a Tory crony via the illegal “VIP lane” or any successor route.

It’s another point for voters in today’s three by-elections to consider.


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The news in tweets: Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Is Jamie Driscoll’s crowdfund the dawn of a new model of politics?

Some seem to think so:

In fact it is more the continuation of a democratisation of politics that we’ve been seeing on the social media for several years.

Long-term followers of This Site will remember when I started the CrowdJustice fund to fight Rachel Riley’s lawsuit against me. I started by hoping for £5,000 by the end of the first month – and had it within a single day.

That was in 2019, and my public profile even then was much smaller than Jamie Driscoll’s is now.

The corporate bosses of the social media platforms have since tried to squash independent, left-wing news and politics sites out of public view but Mr Driscoll, being already highly-visible, has been able to avoid such censorship (so far).

It will be up to his supporters to keep it that way – and we can all expect a strong backlash from the Establishment that wants someone like Kim McGuinness (Labour’s just-announced candidate to be North East Mayor) to win:

Gosh. She loves the region and its people and wants to make the North East the home of real opportunity. For whom?

And hasn’t Mr Driscoll already done all of that? And isn’t he better-placed to continue all of that?

The only reason STP (Substitute Tory Party) leader Keir Starmer wanted to replace him is to change policies away from those that work for working-class people and towards something else.

In such circumstances, only a fool would support anyone but Jamie Driscoll.

Is Labour’s candidate selection process racist?

Read Mish Rahman’s statement and you will learn that, it seems, racism is alive and well in the STP (Keir Stürmer’s Substitute Tory Party), despite all the leader’s (false?) claims to have cleaned up the party’s act.

Mr Rahman says: “None of my fellow Bernie Grant Leadership Programme alumni have been selected. We were told the party would support us towards leadership positions as black and ethnic minority activists – yet after this longlisting process, nothing has changed.

“I was blocked for how I voted on the NEC in relation to the composition of party disciplinary structures, following the EHRC report… Being blocked for casting a vote in a democratic process should be a serious concern for all of us in the Labour Party.”

So: not only racism but also totalitarianism. Stürmer’s party hates democracy.

What else are we supposed to conclude from this?

Doubletalk and bafflegab over Labour’s child poverty betrayal

The pundits are out in force, trying to smooth over – or emphasise – the mistake Keir Stürmer’s STP (Substitute Tory Party) has made in refusing to promise to lift the two-child limit on Child Benefit claims.

Some (mostly representatives of the party leadership) are trying to support the decision on the grounds that changing the limit is unaffordable:

Others are attacking it – while still saying Stürmer’s party should get our vote in upcoming elections:

The debate reached ridiculous levels when STP right-winger John McTernan appeared on the BBC’s Newsnight to ask, if the two-child limit on Child Benefit is abolished, where will it end? Scrapping the punitive Benefit Cap? Abolishing Universal Credit and it’s five-week delay in paying claimants?

He said this as though those outcomes would be bad things; they’re not. Watch:

Oh, so the plan is to lift children out of poverty via an improved economy. But Stürmer has no economic policies that are intended to do that – or even like to achieve it by accident; no consequence of any mythical improved economic performance are set to be channelled into a better quality of life for working people under a Stürmer-run government.

In fact, we don’t know what such a government would do, because we are simply not being told.

We can only echo the words of former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn – a man who explained very well exactly what he would have done if elected to form a government:

The simple fact is that Stürmer could find more than enough cash to support the proposed Child Benefit change, by reversing Conservative tax system tinkerings. For example:

Nobody should vote for any candidate – on Thursday (July 20, 2023) or at any other time – just because they have a Labour Party logo next to their name. Without knowing what the organisation behind that banner now intends to do, it would be foolish in the extreme.

Instead – if you want to elect someone with policies equivalent to those for which the Labour Party was originally formed – standing up for the people who do the work – you need to support the Independents who used to be Labour members but have left because their politics and those of Keir Stürmer and his cronies have diverged.

We all know about Jamie Driscoll, whose election for North East Mayor isn’t until next year.

But there’s also Rosie Mitchell, standing as an Independent in Somerton and Frome on Thursday.

And there are two other by-elections on the same day. Who are the candidates there who stand for what you need?

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The news in tweets: Sunday, July 16, 2023

Clement Attlee innovated. Keir Starmer will privatise

That was one politician’s response to Keir Starmer’s interview in The Observer today (Sunday, July 16, 2023).

In it, Starmer contradicts himself by saying he won’t promise to spend any more money but will prioritise economic growth and wealth creation; these cannot be achieved without investment – and indeed, investment is mentioned later in the article.

He also says he intends to impose “radical reform of public services” – by which we may infer that he means more privatisation, despite the fact that the state of the privatised water and energy firms shows it is a disaster for service provision.

We can see evidence that he supports privatisation in an interview with Starmer’s political idol, Tony Blair, on Sophy Ridge’s Sky News show this morning:

The correct response to that is to point out that public sector innovation should come from the people in charge – who are politicians. Blair was in charge of the public sector between 1997 and 2007; if he didn’t bother to innovate, preferring instead to dick around with PFI and “Third Way” nonsense, that was his mistake.

And it will be what loses Starmer his election, if he follows the same road at a time when we can all understand perfectly well that we are being ripped off by the water and energy firms.

The social media responses have gone directly to the point:

Labour won’t lift the two-child limit on child benefit, says Starmer

After Independent candidate wins council by-election, call goes out to support Independents in this week’s Parliamentary polls

Expect to see more support for Independent candidates as the week progresses.

As the UK braces for more pollution-induced soaring temperatures, here comes a Bill to stop politicians benefiting from oil and gas profits

You can bet this won’t get anywhere, as the suits on both sides of the House of Commons link up and climb aboard the Gravy Train.

And finally: bathing water is pronounced ‘best quality ever’ – but is Therese Coffee lying to you (again)?

And that is why this happens:


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Yes, Nusrat Ghani, let’s have that debate about MPs abusing power – we can look at your fellow Tories [STRONG LANGUAGE]

How can Tories complain about anybody’s attitude to women or minorities when Boris Johnson is Foreign Secretary?

Tory MP Nusrat Ghani reckons she will demand an urgent debate in the House of Commons about the incident in which Clive Lewis used the word “bitch” during a social event connected to the Labour Party, a month ago.

Some of us may find it worth comment that she wants an “urgent” debate about an incident that is a month old and is only being discussed now in order to distract the public from the growing list of the minority Conservative government’s failures. Where’s her demand for an urgent debate on her own government’s failure to support the will of Parliament and suspend the Universal Credit rollout?

Here are her tweets:

Oh, right. Using the word “bitch” implies a lack of respect for women. This Writer can certainly get on board with that – but not with the hypocrisy of saying it after reading an article about Mr Lewis on the Guido Fawkes blog, which has a record of abusing that word:

And what about the misogynistic abuse Guido‘s followers heap on women after they’ve been targeted on that website? Here’s an example:

Here’s another:

And there’s this one as well:

The event at which Mr Lewis misspoke was run, presented and owned by women – and no objection was raised at the time. Some have tried to raise indignation because a female voice was heard saying, “This is supposed to be a safe space”. Here’s the owner of that voice:

On top of all the foregoing is the fact that Mr Lewis himself has apologised for his words, which he accepts were completely inappropriate (even though the way they were said ran counter to the misogynistic use that is correctly vilified).

So we’ve established that the fake outrage over Mr Lewis is a storm in a teacup. But a debate could still be useful – to point out the many similar outrages caused by Conservative MPs.

I mean, opponents of the government could raise the obvious policy points:

But let’s admit it – the time would be far better-used discussing the transgressions of individual Tories. Aaron Bastani, whose social media organisation Novara hosted the event at which Mr Lewis said his offending words, listed a few possibles – including, for the sake of fairness, one example concerning a Labour MP:

Boris Johnson is worth an article in his own right – and the Metro has obligingly provided one. In it, Yvette Caster comments on his claim that women go to university because “they’ve got to find men to marry”, that female graduates are responsible for rising house prices – and are making it difficult for other families to get housing, that working women should get back to the home because they are responsible for young people’s antisocial behaviour.

There’s this: “Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.”

I strongly recommend that you visit the article to experience the full horror.

But Mr Johnson isn’t the only Tory transgressor. What about James Heappey?

I wrote an article on Vox Political about this – ahem – “gentleman”, along with Tory Nick Harrington who said Ireland could “keep its f’king gypsies”. What charming men!

Moving back to the Cabinet, what about Michael Fallon, who called a journalist a “slut”, although it seems he would be more accurate if he applied the term to himself:

Fallon’s people have denied that he used the word but they would, wouldn’t they (to paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies’s words about another Tory defence minister, in another scandal)?

And then there’s the deputy chairman of Bermondsey and Southwark Conservative Association, Rupert Myers QC. Journalist Kate Leaver has alleged that he “forced himself” on her – and I hope everybody reading this knows what that means. If it is true, then not only should he be imprisoned but he should be stripped of his Tory membership and dismissed from the bar (of the court – although it seems he should also be banned from reputable drinking establishments):

Finally, let’s all remember that the inappropriate misuse of language is not restricted to men speaking about women. Let us consider Anna Soubry:

This incident happened in the House of Commons itself, during a Parliamentary debate. Ms Soubry’s words were not picked up by any of the many microphones in the chamber, but she certainly appears to be using those words.

These are just a few examples of incidents in which, mainly, Conservatives have used their “position of power and establishment” abominably and it could easily be argued that they have undermined Parliament by doing so.

So, yes, Nusrat Ghani – let’s have that debate – and let us use it to expose your Tory colleagues as sexist, misogynist, and criminal vermin.


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Royal couple expecting third child. What if they were treated the same as others who rely on state benefits?

More on the way: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with children George and Charlotte. Do they really need any more, considering WE are paying for them?

Nobody ever mentions it but the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, like the rest of the Royal Family, are effectively benefit claimants.

They live on money provided by taxpayers for their upkeep – just like, for example, people claiming Child Benefit.

I mention this because there is a two-child limit on Child Benefit. Nobody who has more than two children can claim any extra money for them – except under certain circumstances.

Bearing in mind what one of those circumstances is, can you imagine the scandal if any government employee asked the relevant question before handing over the Cambridges’ share of our money?

The only difference between these people and Child Benefit claimants is an accident of birth – the Duke of Cambridge was born into a family that, as Tony Benn once described it, stole lots of land, claimed fancy titles and surrounded themselves with weak-minded followers.

Yet because of that, his wife can hold her hand out for as much of (our) cash as she wants – while other young mums have to suffer the indignity of being asked to satisfy the demands of the rape clause.

It is as described in today’s Independent article:

“The contrast lays bare the fundamentals of reproductive injustice: the fact that class, wealth and race control which groups are considered worthy of the privilege of reproduction. Underpinning this is the lie that the wealthy are self-sufficient, whereas the poor upon whose work they depend are parasites. We know this is not true.”

Perhaps the parasites who were the centre of media attention today should think carefully about contraception in the future.

Oh. By the way, I’m not a republican. I simply think the Royal Family have a duty to understand the harsh conditions under which most of us are living and behave in a responsible way – rather than rubbing our noses in the difference between their style of benefit conditionality and ours.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting their third child, Kensington Palace has announced.

The Queen and both families are said to be “delighted with the news”.

Source: Royal baby: Duchess of Cambridge expecting third child


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Migrant in-work benefit ban is about cutting your money – didn’t you know?

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A would-be migrant waits in Calais for the opportunity to cross into the UK. Would that person really want to come here, in the knowledge that claims about the wealth of the UK economy, along with propaganda about the generosity of our benefit system, are nothing more than myths?

David Cameron has found another excuse to cut benefits for the poorest in the UK.

Apparently, a manifesto promise to reduce the number of immigrants coming to the UK by ensuring they could not claim tax credits or child benefit for four years is illegal under EU law – unless he inflicts the same cut on UK citizens aged 18-22.

Cameron and his ministers must have known about the EU restrictions before including the promise in the Conservative manifesto. The alternative is that he and his government are incompetent, and they’re not about to admit that, are they?

Instead of scrapping the plan, it seems he has instructed ministers to consider how to implement a cut that will force poverty on people who are just starting out in life and need as much help as they can.

The only conclusion is that this is what the Conservative Party wanted all along.

In a document leaked to the BBC, government lawyers have stated: “Imposing additional requirements on EU workers that do not apply to a member state’s own workers constitutes direct discrimination which is prohibited under current EU law.”

It seems that, rather than stop discrimination against one group, Cameron’s preference is to impose it on as many people as possible.

After all, they’re only poor people and he is only a bigot.

You have to laugh at the response of the government’s spokesperson, as quoted in The Guardian: “We’ve already taken action to protect the benefits system and ensure that EU migrants come to this country for the right reasons and to contribute to the economy.

“Now we’re focused on renegotiating our relationship with Europe and getting a better deal for Britons, and we won’t speculate on other options.”

So, what about all those migrants sitting in Calais while they await the chance to slip into the UK unnoticed? Are they coming for the right reasons?

Of course not.

They’re coming because they have believed Conservative rhetoric about the UK economy being the powerhouse of the West (even though it isn’t), along with all the Tory-sponsored media nonsense about the benefit system being over-generous (even though it isn’t).

The migrant situation is a crisis of the Tories’ own making and they are using it to hammer their own fellow citizens. What are you going to do about it?

Tories Consider Child Benefit Cuts – After Promising They Wouldn’t | Welfare Weekly

Here’s Conservative Party fair play in practice: In the name of “fairness”, the Tories are considering cutting child benefit by up to £2.5 billion a year, meaning parents will be worse-off by £360 annually.

Rich parents would hardly feel the difference but for the poor, it will be a bitter blow.

In the name of “fairness”, then, how will the Conservatives ensure the rich lose a similar proportion of their income?

The Sunday Times reports that Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, has ordered civil servants to draw up plans for further cuts to child benefit and housing benefit.

One of the options being considered is limiting child benefit to no more than two children, saving an estimated £1bn a year for the Treasury. The move would affect both working and non-working parents.

Treasury officials are said to prefer a mildly less arbitrary child benefit cap of three children.

Another option being considered is to reduce child benefit for the first child from £20.70 a week to £13.70, saving £2.5bn annually. Affected households would lose £360 a year, reports the Scotsman.

Source: Tories Consider Child Benefit Cuts – After Promising They Wouldn’t | Welfare Weekly

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Tories plan benefit system massacre

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The headline is no joke. Based on the plans revealed by the BBC, if the Conservative Party is re-elected in May, all but the richest of us can look forward to the death of a loved one – perhaps many loved ones.

They’ll have to hang signs over entry points into the UK: “Conservative Britain, 2015-2020: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here”. At least now we know why David Cameron was determined not to reveal any details of the proposals to cut £12 billion from the benefits budget.

Chequebook euthanasia play a prominent role, and it is clear that the plan is to push as many benefit claimants into destitution as possible while encouraging suicidal thoughts. It has already worked with many people on Employment and Support Allowance; they want to spread their version of Aktion T4 more widely.

Top of the proposals is the replacement of the Industrial Injuries Compensation Scheme with an insurance policy provided by companies. Any not doing so would become members of a default national industrial injuries scheme, similar to the programme for asbestos sufferers. This is the long-anticipated arrival of private health insurance in the British benefit system; we have been expected this ever since Peter Lilley invited the criminal American firm Unum into the then-Department of Social Security in the 1990s. Vox Political predicts that nobody taking out such insurance will ever receive a payout on it; it will be run by Unum.

The DWP predicts that £1 billion will be cut from the benefits budget. The human cost might be significantly higher, especially when you consider the following:

Carer’s Allowance may be restricted to those caring for somebody eligible for Universal Credit. We know already that Universal Credit has been designed to prevent genuinely sick and disabled people from receiving their benefit, and that Universal Credit doesn’t work; this attack on their carers will tip both deep into poverty. Leaked documents suggest about 40 per cent of carers would lose their payments, despite the fact that they genuinely need the money.

The DWP hopes to cut another £1 billion from its bills with this. As it ties in with current chequebook euthanasia programmes, expect many thousands of deaths.

Employment and Support Allowance and Job Seekers Allowance claimants may be denied the privileges that should be afforded to them by virtue of having paid enough National Insurance contributions; your record will not count if you claim these benefits. The plan here is to cut benefits for more than 300,000 families – by around £80 per week. Those on ESA may have carers who will also lose their benefit, therefore we can conclude that this is another planned area of chequebook euthanasia.

Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payments and Attendance Allowance (for over 65s who have personal care needs) would be taxed in order to cut payments by around £1.5 billion a year (based on IFS Green Budget calculation ). Many of those claiming these benefits will also be claiming ESA and will have carers as well, so chequebook euthanasia – again – applies. Who knows how many will live to see the 2020 general election if the Tories gain another term in May?

Council Tax Support may be incorporated into Universal Credit. This blog is prepared to be corrected on this, but wouldn’t that mean the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament (and the Northern Irish Assembly if it runs a relief scheme) would be unable to pay the council tax demanded under the Pickles Poll Tax that came in after Council Tax Benefit was scrapped? This would cut funds to claimants of ESA, JSA, DLA, PIP, AA, carers, and those claiming Housing Benefit and therefore – again – the government is opening itself to accusations of chequebook euthanasia.

Child Benefit may be limited to the first two children in any family. How nice that the Tories may be planning to spring this on families without enough prior warning. This writer would suggest that 18 years’ warning is necessary, to clear the books of people who could reasonably have expected child benefit to be paid as it always has. What about those having triplets? Apparently little would be trimmed from the benefit budget at first, but up to £1 billion might be kept, every year, in the long term.

Regional Benefit Caps – instead of £26,000, the Tories are planning to cut its already-too-low Benefit Cap to £23,000 – and then vary it still further in different parts of the UK. Londoners would receive the top amount due to the higher cost of living; people in rural areas could be forced out of their homes by this.

The leaked documents were prepared by civil servants and commissioned by Conservative Party officials.A spokeswoman for Iain Duncan Smith, the architect of previous state-sponsored pogroms against the poor, sick and disabled, told the BBC: “This is ill informed and inaccurate speculation… Officials spend a lot of time generating proposals – many not commissioned by politicians… It’s wrong and misleading to suggest that any of this is part of our plan.”

In other words, this will definitely happen if the Conservatives are elected in May.

This blog has made much of Labour’s own failure to plan the scrapping of the homicidal Work Capability Assessment if that party is elected into office in May (the other parties’ plans aren’t as important; they won’t be running a government for the next five years). Labour is still wrong to inflict it on people who have illnesses and disabilities through no fault of their own.

However, faced with a choice between the Tories’ certain death and Labour’s possible death, the decision should be obvious.

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