Coping with a disability and busting the myths

As people may or may not know I am registered as disabled being registered as blind. I have less than 30% vision I lost my central vision due to a rare genetic disease back in 2004. Life isn’t easy for me I’ll admit that. I make the best of a situation and do as much as I possibly can. Hearing the constant news of benefit scroungers and benefit fraud it worries me deeply that I’ll be next to see my benefits cut or ended. Ok I do work part time as there isn’t any more work I could do where I am at I would love to work full time but there simply isn’t the work for me as yet.

I decided to join the socialist party as I firmly believe they have the best ideas and the best strategy to creating a better fairer society for tee many not just the few. Other political parties talk a good game but no one puts their words and theories into action quite like the socialist party they do as they say and I’m glad to be apart of them.

But this government wish to make us disabled people including myself who are blind to pay for a crisis caused by the rich reckless bankers who gambled huge amounts of money more than you or I could ever possibly imagine and lost. We as ordinary working class people and the middle class lets not forget have to pay for their mistakes in the way of austerity measures.

I get by on little money any money I do get be that in a wage from work or benefits from the government are mostly given to my mum who I still live with due to the fact there is little chance of me moving out anytime soon as the lack of affordable housing out there in my area. I do not live the high life and I certainly don’t have it easy. The Tories and new labour before them have constantly attacked disabled people using various different terms such as scroungers, festering, work shy, drain on society, cost we cannot afford and the media have brought into this echoing these attacks in the daily press. Many people who read these papers and subscribe to such media take this in as gospel but I would like to shatter these illusions if I can and tell it how it is for me being disabled and a benefit claimer.

Sheffield socialist party have produced this myth buster which I hope they don’t mind me sharing with you all its fantastic. If this piece made it into the mass media or a opposition used this to defeat the lies we could really get somewhere as it is Labour buy into the scroungers idea too unfortunately something we must fight against too as they are no better.

The welfare state has led to a 'something for nothing' culture? IT'S A LIE. There are over 8 million people receiving benefits in this country. There are more people IN WORK who get benefits than not working. 90% of all housing benefit claimants are IN WORK. The Welfare state is actually a massive state subsidy to business which enables it to pay poverty wages and charge exorbitant rents.

You're all sick of paying a huge swathe of chavs to lay about watching Jeremy Kyle all day?
IT'S A LIE. Less than 5,000 people, out of a population of 60 million, have been on Job Seekers Allowance for more than 5 years. Historically, whenever jobs get created, they always get filled. The idea that there is a vast horde of the work-shy is a myth.
Living on benefits is a lifestyle choice?
IT'S A LIE.
More than 80% of benefit claimants are aged over 35. The vast majority of unemployed claimants have worked, and paid taxes, for years and are now on benefits due to redundancy, sickness, disability or having to care for someone. Millions more are receiving benefits due to poverty wages.
People won't work because benefits are too high?
IT'S A LIE. Average benefits amount to £3,400 a year. These people are living in poverty. Since 1997, due to various Government actions, the value of benefits has fallen sharply year on year in real terms. People on benefits are far worse off now than in the last 30 years.

People should get off their arses and look for work?
IT'S A LIE. When Iain Duncan Smith suggested the jobless in Merthyr Tydfil should get on a bus to Cardiff to find work, Merthyr had 43 people for every job vacancy. Problem was, Cardiff already had nine unemployed people for every job vacancy. The jobs just don't exist. In 2010, there was 1 million more unemployed than there were job vacancies.

Benefit cheats are bankrupting the country?
IT'S A LIE. Benefit fraud does amount to about £1.5 billion a year. However, £16 billion goes UNCLAIMED every year. Meanwhile, the amount of tax lost through avoidance and evasion is a whopping £120 billion a year. ( And don't give me the crap about avoidance being legal, the truth is, it shouldn't be. Not one of the major parties will openly state the real truth. The biggest causes of poverty in this country are lack of jobs, poverty wages and part time work. All the parties have social policies that they KNOW are based upon outright lies, lies that are allowing a whole section of society to be vilified as heartless people cast around to find a victim upon which to blame all this countries woes


The money is out there for us all to live comfortably I say lets tax the rich and bring their wealth into public ownership to benefit the many not just the few.
With thanks to Sheffield socialist party for the exert on myth busting benefits.

BBC’s panorama exposes rife capitalist tax evasion

As socialists we have known for sometime the way capitalists evade tax and make billions a year but tonight BBC panorama exposed some of the shadiest of dealings that goes on with the likes of Vodafone and Glaxo Smith Klein.

A special nod has to go to the PCS union who have been tirelessly campaigning against tax evasion for years now. Only now is it becoming a big big issue that polititians can no longer pretend doesn’t exist if nothing else they are forced to pay lip service to trying to tackle tax evasion by rich corporations.

The Tory party and even new labour would never seriously go after rich tax evaders as their interests lie with them they are and have been governments for the 1% the very wealthiest in society.

The BBC panorama episode if you can catch it is fascinating and is a real eye opener to the way the super rich capitalists work and get around their own influenced laws. As we all know the law is not neutral it is heavily stacked against workers and ordinary people if you tried to evade a bit of tax the tax man will come down on you like a tonne of bricks but if your Vodafone or Glaxo’s or the like different story entirely …

This programme showed that if these tax loop holes were properly closed and all the evaded tax properly collected there would be no need for any cuts at all to public services. But as we know this wont happen and we will be instead made to pay for a crisis in capitalism that is not of our making as ordinary working people.

An estimated 120 billion goes evaded every year by big rich corporations that would more than cover the entire deficit for this year and a little bit more. But who is putting this case forward? Only left unions with fighting traditions like the PCS and the RMT for as far as I can tell. The labour party which has no leg to stand on on this allowed this to go on on its watch too so they cannot be trusted to put forward a programme of nationalisation to bring these big corporations into public democratic ownership to prevent them evading tax and stashing millions and billions in offshore tax havens such as Luxembourg which was shown on tonight’s episode.

A true workers government would be looking to nationalise the commanding heights of the economy and gradually look to plan the economy by using the profits from these big multi nationals which will mean other nations having to follow a similar idea to close of loop holes which means capital can be controlled going in and out of the country.

These sorts of measures which would be transitional measures in the transition to a socialist planned economy with a society based on everybody’s needs not just the needs of a few very very rich people who can employ the best accountants to get around any laws that may or may not stand in their way.

So next time you are told the cuts are nessesary just ask them to take a watch of tonights episode of panorama and tell them there is the money out there if it was taxed and collected properly.

Britain back in recession austerity not working fight back against capitalism needed

Today it has been confirmed that Britain in the last quarter contracted by 0.2 % GDP meaning that two back to back negative growth figures lands us back in recession. A light one at present but still a recession none the less. Too many this has been on the cards for sometime and to the poorest in society may argue it never felt like we left recession with the misery of cutbacks and tax hikes and inflation all mounting to mean a huge strain on people’s lives and living standards.

The Tories and lib dem government has been in power for two years now and their plan of the phoenix of the private sector rising from the ash’s has simply not happened. We were told we must cut the public sector spending to allow the private sector to grow this hasn’t happened either if anything the public sector borrowing has goes up not down and our deficit is increasing.
The old phrase of its hurting but its not working is very apt here.

Even reformist measures here of investing in jobs socially useful jobs and a mass house building programme would go someway to helping this. But the con-dem government look focused on reducing the deficit the most painful of ways and still may not actually work for them. If anything this is a cocktail of cuts tax’s and inflation which will send us spiralling into endless austerity.

It was always said the definition of insanity was continuing to do what has been proven not to work. So the Tories and labours idea that if cuts don’t work we’ll have some more cuts is just barmy.

A serious shift is needed a ramping up of the tax’s on the very richest in society is needed a wealth tax with other tax’s preventing the rich getting away with not paying for the mistakes of the bankers who were the ones who got us into the position.
What is also needed is a nationalisation programme bringing in the major 150 companies into public ownership properly run democratically by the workers with all of the profits made ploughed back into the public purse to invest in more jobs, services and the things that people need to live. Not just for the benefit of a rich minority.

Its time the argument on austerity is won once and for all and a major shift to change society for the benefit of the many is fought.