Iain Duncan Smith, what kind of man is he?

I’ve been shocked but not surprised by the BBC’s latest show of “we pay your benefits” carefully depicting benefit claimants and trying to push the government’s propaganda and ideology and it seems to be working as far as I can tell. Even in today’s Guardian IDS as some people have called him is claiming he is very pleased with his work on welfare and says we must do more though. “This government has embarked on one of the most aggressive programmes of welfare reform Britain has ever seen, and we already have a proud record of achievement. There is no doubt that changes to the welfare state are desperately needed. Our reforms will put an end to people being left on sickness benefits year after year; they will eradicate the trap that has left so many better off on benefits than in work; and they will ensure the benefits bill is sustainable over the longer term. Questions have been raised about whether the dramatic pace of our reforms is too difficult to implement. But these doubts ignore my department's proven track record of delivering change and show a lack of ambition from the people raising them. Look at what has already been achieved.” He may see it as a achivement in hammering the poor but I do not see it this way at this most brutal attack on the poorest in society in a generation. As Laurie Penny who I’m not always a fan of in her piece in the New Statesman today wrote “The camera may not lie but sometimes it tells truths you weren’t expecting. As the government’s flagship benefits cap is rolled out across the nation, amid protests from homelessness charities, women’s rights groups and food banks already overwhelmed by demand, the BBC is devoting hours of its prime-time schedule to pitting the underpaid against the unemployed. The spectacle of one single mother telling another in the tin-can aisle at the supermarket that she’s greedy because she wants her kids to have a hot meal says a great deal about modern Britain. It tells us whose suffering matters and whose children will never have their dinner dissected for our scorn on national television. The BBC1 programme Nick and Margaret: We All Pay Your Benefits (11 and 18 July, 9pm), echoing the rhetoric of the Department for Work and Pensions, pits “taxpayers” against “shirkers” and asks how we can “make work pay”. Of these gristly little semantic nuggets of state propaganda, “making work pay” is the most noxious – a mantra that’s incanted by every jobsworth Tory in every debate, in line with the logic that if one repeats a lie for long enough it will function as truth. Taking away benefits will not “make work pay”. The reason why work doesn’t pay is not that benefits are too high. It is that wages are too low. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, with the rising cost of living, there have been 40 consecutive months of contraction in real wages in the UK. In many occupations, the basic pay is too low to cover rent, food and bills, especially in London and the south-east, where housing costs are out of control. This is why a large proportion of housing benefit is paid on behalf of those who are in work, straight into the pockets of private landlords. Then there’s “the taxpayer”, a phrase that is deliberately misused to imply that only those in waged work pay taxes. Everybody who buys a warm Cornish pasty puts pennies into the Treasury. Drawing an arbitrary distinction between “taxpayers” and “people on benefits” implies that those who rely on state support are taking money directly out of the pockets of workers, when they are being supported by a system to which we all contribute, which is there to help all of us should we find ourselves ill or unemployed. The anxiety to separate the interests of “taxpayers” from those of the unemployed falsely suggests that unemployment benefits are now the main drain on the state. Despite savage welfare cuts, state spending on unemployment remains high because unemployment remains high, for the simple reason that one cannot “incentivise” people into jobs that aren’t there. A far higher proportion of state spending goes on subsidising tax cuts for multinational corporations and arms dealers, maintaining our nuclear weapons programme and having a military presence abroad. “Taxpayers”, though, are not being invited into the homes of devastated Afghan families, taken on tours of the Trident base or shown around the mansions of offshore millionaires and asked to make judgements about how their taxes are being spent. The idea is preposterous. Poor people are supposed to make moral judgements about other poor people only. We can afford to offer Vodafone billions in tax breaks but God forbid some kids in Ipswich get a second-hand PlayStation. “

East Herts see claims for help with rents shoot up

In a fairly decent area of the country where poverty and crime is low relatively compared to other regions east Hertfordshire has seen claims for people struggling to pay rent increase. This is no doubt due to the governments vicious benefit cuts and our local councils unwillingness to fight the cuts. We have a Tory council around here so I wouldn’t expect them to be on the side of the poor but this article below quotes a local Tory councillor who clearly has no idea of the scale of the hardness on ordinary people out there struggling already. SWINGEING benefit cuts have seen almost six times the amount of people asking for help paying their rent than a year ago. Across the board, East Herts Council are being bombarded with calls and enquires from “confused and frustrated” people struggling to make ends meet as Government welfare changes come into force. In April and May this year 146 people in East Herts made requests for discretionary housing payments, up from 25 in the same period last year. A section of the report for the East Herts and Stevenage Council’s joint revenue and benefits committee, which meets tonight (July 1), said: “Customers have been generally confused and frustrated by the welfare reforms and are keen to express this dissatisfaction to officers. “The volume of contacts with customers is very high and often repeated.” The sweeping changes have lead to an increase of 15 per cent in the level of work done by East Herts Council and Stevenage Borough Council’s joint benefits service compared to last year. There has also been 503 more council tax payment reminders sent from May 2012 compared to May 2013, up 17.4 per cent to 3,388 from 2,885. The average value of the reminder is £87.55. Since April, 2,569 people in East Herts who used to get a 100 per cent discount in their council tax are now paying 8.5 per cent. This is after Government reduced spending on council tax support by 10 per cent. East Herts council passed this reduction on; something executive member for finance Cllr Mike Tindale (Con, Little Hadham) called “one of the council’s most difficult decisions” back in February when the budget was set. Speaking on Monday before the meeting (July 1), he said: “It was a very difficult decision about people who were already feeling the squeeze and were asked to pay more. “We were mindful of that and we wanted to spread the burden as wide as possible. “In retrospect, we feel what we did was right but there’s no easy way of making cuts.” Some of these people, which mainly consist of disabled people, the unemployed and those on low income, are paying council tax for the first time. “These customers are resource intensive and are demonstrating patterns of repeat callers,” the report continued. “There appears little understanding of council tax liability and payment requirements.” The report also mentions the benefits cap will hit 42 families in East Herts when it is rolled at intervals nationwide from Monday July 15. With article sourced from http://www.hertfordshiremercury.co.uk/Hertfordshire/Welfare-cuts-see-rent-help-requests-to-East-Herts-Council-up-584-per-cent-20130701131937.htm So more crocodile tears “difficult decisions” etc etc how about these Tory councillors find out what it is like to live on a limited income always worrying how they will next pay the bills and feed themselves. These Tory councillors don’t know poverty and will never know it from their ivy towers. Whilst East herts on the whole is not fairing too bad from the cuts there are still pockets of poverty hidden away from public more often than not but it is still there. It’s those people who are struggling by I stood for when I stood for TUSC this year in the county council elections. Gaining 59 votes in a hugely true blue Tory area with no previous experience of standing was a decent effort. Shows even in leafy East herts three are people looking for an alternative to cuts and misery even if just a few at this stage. We all know cuts will carry on and we must hold firm our time will come as socialists even in areas we’ve never seen much action in in the past. We live in unprecedented times where anything is possible it would seem.

Labours hypocrisy on benefits

Labour today intend to vote against the benefit cap of RPI + 1% which in effect is a real terms cut. This on the face of it sounds great go on Labour the labour left cheer we have our party back, labour stands up for the poor. Slow down there this is nothing of the sort. Labour still support a benefit cap just disagrees on the way it fits that’s all. Do you really think if they were in gov they’d be acting any differently? Take these quotes from Ed Ball’s article in the Guardian this morning and you can hear their similarities with the Tories ideas. Labour has fallen or rather backed up the Tories in the scrounger vs. strivers rhetoric so common among capitalist politicians nowadays. Take some of these quotes I found in this Guardian article by Ed Balls. “Of course we need spending cuts and tax rise’s to get the deficit down” He goes on.... We also need a welfare system that works. And for Labour, that means any reform of the system must pass three tests. First, it must pay more to be in work than live on benefits, both for the individual and the Exchequer. Labour introduced a minimum wage alongside tax credits to help ensure work pays. But this government's deep cuts to tax credits already mean that thousands of working parents are now better off if they quit their jobs, while cuts to childcare support mean thousands of mums and dads are struggling to afford to take up full-time work. The implementation of the government’s flagship universal credit is already proving to be a shambles with Iain Duncan Smith’s own Cabinet colleagues warning this week that it is a “disaster waiting to happen”. Meanwhile the government's benefits cap could also end up costing more than it saves. Labour supports the principle of a benefits cap but this government's crude 'one size fits all' cap - with the same level in London as the rest of the country - will simply lead to taxpayers funding the cost of rising homelessness as families living in high cost areas are turfed out of their homes. Second we must get tough on the scourge of long-term unemployment by matching rights with responsibilities. A One Nation approach to welfare reform means government has a responsibility to help people into work and support those who cannot, but those who can work must be required to take up jobs or lose benefits as a result – no ifs or buts. Tackling long-term unemployment will be a top priority for the next Labour government because we know from the 1980s that it has a scarring effect on individuals and communities, damages our economy and society, and builds up long-term costs for the taxpayer. All this could have come straight out of IDS’s mouth but a labour front bench politician I just think it says it all. Forcing you into an unpaid position or you will lose your benefits is slave labour there is no two ways about it. You have no choice in the matter. So whether you are labour or Tory workfare or workfare plus the results will be the same. Labour does not recognise that low pay is at issue here a huge issue that most people receiving benefits are actually in work. They talk of long term unemployment but have no answer to those themselves only more workfare and Tory light ideas. How anyone can support labour still I do not know. Their policies are bankrupt and their ideas are straight from the Tories. We as socialists cannot give any support to labour and must build TUSC as an alternative. Those who say only Labour can beat the Tories is wrong I’m sure the liberals were telling the newly formed Labour party in the 20th century only we can beat the Tories yet look what happened. We must be brave must be bold and confident let’s not settle for lesser evilism or labour are not as cruel line. Let’s kick the cuts coalition out and build a working class, socialist alternative with TUSC. With quotes from this Guardian Piece http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/69052/ed_balls_britain_needs_real_welfare_reform_that_is_tough_fair_and_that_works.html For more information on TUSC and how you can get involved check out www.tusc.org.uk