Ipswich Unemployed Action.

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Archive for the ‘Liberal Tory Coalition’ Category

Tories Cut Benefits to win Popularity.

Image result for osborne cuts benefits boost popularity

Clegg and Osborne Enjoy a Special Moment Together. 

This says it all .

Clegg: Osborne casually cut welfare for poorest to boost Tory popularity (Guardian today)

Exclusive: Former deputy PM says ‘cynical’ ex-chancellor was not bothered about human consequences.

Nick Clegg has accused the former chancellor George Osborne of casually cutting the benefits of the poorest people in society because he believed taking the austerity axe to welfare would boost Conservative popularity.

In a candid interview looking back on his five years as deputy prime minister in the Tory-Lib Dem coalition, Clegg said he found the behaviour of his senior Conservative partner “very unattractive, very cynical”.

“Welfare for Osborne was just a bottomless pit of savings, and it didn’t really matter what the human consequences were, because focus groups had shown that the voters they wanted to appeal to were very anti-welfare, and therefore there was almost no limit to those anti-welfare prejudices,” he told the Guardian.

Speaking before the publication of his anticipated political memoir, written after his party was reduced to eight seats in last year’s general election, Clegg hit out at David Cameron and his Conservative partners in government. He said the former Tory leader or the chancellor – “I honestly can’t remember whom – looked genuinely nonplussed and said: ‘I don’t understand why you keep going on about the need for more social housing – it just creates Labour voters.’ They genuinely saw housing as a Petri dish for voters. It was unbelievable.”

See the Comments. (4080 at the time of writing this post).

For example:

This doesn’t surprise me. The vermin’s support base practically put the bunting out whenever cuts are aimed at the unemployed, single mothers or working poor but cry like babies when the nice to have freebies are taken away for the affluent old.

The Tory support base are nasty pieces of work. There is a section of the electorate who’ll vote Tory not in spite of them being a hateful class war party with no compassion for the weakest but because they are a hateful classwar party with no compassion for the weakest.

These people complain when they are called out on their behaviour.

And,

 Its amazing what short memories some people have when it comes to state benefits.
He didn’t cuts the £85bn in corporate welfare handouts
But did cut to Personal Independence Payments to raise £4.4BILLION to fund tax cut for the rich
In fact he consistently helped the rich – and he did it by hurting disabled people.

Written by Andrew Coates

September 3, 2016 at 10:04 am

Posted in Cuts, DWP, Government, Liberal Tory Coalition, Welfare Reform

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Iain Duncan Smith “Does not Know Where Welfare Cuts will Come from”. Vote Him Out!

Iain Duncan Smith admits the Tories have not worked out where their £12bn welfare cuts will come from.

Independent.

The Conservatives have not worked out where their planned £12bn welfare cuts will come from, Iain Duncan Smith has admitted.

The Work and Pensions Secretary said the Tories had not “done the work” and were not in a position to say which benefits would be curtailed.

Asked why he could not disclose the cuts, he said: “We would have to have done the work on it. That’s why. We would have had to reach agreement as to exactly where those are… as soon as we’ve done the work and had it modelled we’ll let everybody know what that is.”

In March of this year the Institute for Fiscal Studies challenges the Conservatives over their planned cuts and said the Chancellor should spell out exactly which benefits would suffer.

“But it is now almost two years since he announced his intention of cutting welfare spending by £12bn. Since then the main announcement has been the plan not to cut anything from the main pensioner benefits,” Paul Johnson, the Institute’s Director, said.

“We have been told about no more than £2bn of the planned cuts to working-age benefits. And, remember, apparently the ‘plan’ is to have those £12bn of cuts in place by 2017-18. It is time we knew more about what they might actually involve.”

The New Statesman provides the detailed transcript of what he said,

N: Let me come – speaking of a benefits and welfare, let me come back to you  IDS. Now in March you said that you are – I quote you: ‘May or may not decide that it’s relevant to reveal to the British electorate where the £12bn of welfare cuts are going to come from in the next government’  if you win. Why don’t think it’s relevant that we should know?

IDS: Because we’d have to have done the work on it, that’s why and we’d have had to reached agreement as to exactly where those are. We’ve let know – the public know exactly one area which was that we’re going to freeze those benefits. That’s going to save between 2 and 3 three billion pounds and also –

AN: About £2bn now with low inflation.

IDS:  – and we’re going to lower the cap to £23,000 which is average earnings. But as I said on the Marr programme more recently I said, you know, as soon as we have done the work and had it properly modelled then we will let everybody know what that is.

AN: Shouldn’t you have done the work before you come to the British people to ask for re-election?

IDS: Yes, but the key area here of course –

RR: Yes.

IDS: no, well okay, but the key area here is that everyone is very clear that after the next election, if you get a Conservative government we have already said that we will save £12bn from essentially working age benefits and we’ve said that. That’s very clear. But I have locked out –

SW:  What I don’t understand is … what you won’t cut.  If you’re clear  you won’t cut pensions, child benefit, disablement benefit.

IDS: Yes.

RR: Well he hasn’t completely about child benefit.

SW: Then why can’t you be clear about what you will cut?

IDS: Well because, as I said, the work that we do on this will be done in the spending room, we will announce that out at the time.

Now we already have

  • The Benefit Cap.
  • The Bedroom Tax.
  • No rise in many benefits to meet growing cost of living.
  • Obligation to pay Council Tax percentage by all claimants.
  • Massive sanctions.

In the offing are (Guardian): “abolishing statutory maternity pay and barring under-25s from claiming incapacity benefit or housing benefit. ”

• Getting employers to contribute more to the cost of statutory maternity pay – or as an alternative abolishing it entirely.

• Freezing benefit payments at current levels across the board.

• Limiting welfare payments by family size.

• Forcing single parents on income support to seek work when their youngest child reaches the age of three (currently five).

• Making it harder for sick people to claim state aid when they are out of work by introducing “stricter” fit-for-work tests and/or tighter limits on eligibility.

• Increasing the bedroom tax on certain categories of renters.

• Barring under-25s from claiming incapacity benefit or housing benefit.

 

They could simply cut JSA…..

I bet they’d like to.

So we’d all be begging charity from Foodbanks and the ‘Big Society’.

Vote to get rid of this crew!

Written by Andrew Coates

May 6, 2015 at 11:03 am

Posted in Council Tax, Cuts, Food Banks, Iain Duncan Smith, Liberal Tory Coalition, Sanctions, Tories, Welfare Reform, Welfare State

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Two Million a Year to Have to Use Foodbanks if Tories Win.

The Tory Future: An Endless Queue for Charity Food Banks.

Planned £12bn Tory welfare cuts will lead to two million a year using food banks, says study.

The number of people using food banks will double to more than two million a year under the Conservatives’ plans for £12bn of welfare cuts, an academic study by Oxford University suggests.

The research was seized on by Labour as evidence that David Cameron’s welfare cuts will have far-reaching consequences for family budgets, including eating into in-work benefits, if the Conservatives get back into power next week. On the Question Time leaders’ debate on Thursday, Mr Cameron said he did not want or had no plans to cut child benefit further – but Labour claims this does not mean he has ruled it out. The Prime Minister, asked about child benefit cuts on BBC Breakfast yesterday, again refused to rule it out.

Labour’s spokesperson on work and pensions, Rachel Reeves, told The Independent on Sunday that the Oxford University study was extremely worrying for families on low incomes, and claimed that Mr Cameron’s failure to rule out child benefit cuts suggested that they were on the table.

Last month, the Trussell Trust, the charity that provides parcels to food banks, revealed that visits had risen to over one million a year for the first time.

This is the ‘Big Society’ Cameron Promises.

Oxford academic Dr Rachel Loopstra’s research paper, entitled Austerity, Sanctions and the Rise of Food Banks in the UK, examined the relationship between benefit cuts and food bank demand. The study shows that food parcel distribution per head of population will rise by 0.16 percentage points for every 1 per cent annual cut in benefit spending.

This is the future: living on charity handouts from the Lord and Lady Bountifuls of the land.

Even in school: Schools feeding and clothing pupils, say heads

Head teachers are warning that schools are having to act like “mini-welfare states” in having to provide food, spare uniform and even to wash clothes and provide showers for some pupils.

The National Association of Head Teachers says such welfare support is costing £43.5m from school budgets.

Heads’ leader Russell Hobby said it was a “hidden national scandal”.

A Conservative spokesman said “the number of children living in poverty has fallen by 300,000”.

The warning from members of the NAHT, as they gather for their annual conference in Liverpool, is that schools are having to step in with welfare support for pupils, either because of poverty or dysfunctional families.

The union’s report, based on responses from more than 2,000 head teachers in England, found examples of schools supplying food, clothes, PE kit, headlice treatment, transport costs and equipment for lessons.

There were schools which now had facilities for washing clothes and providing showers for pupils.

We want rights not charity!

Vote to the Tory and Liberal Rabble Out!

 

Written by Andrew Coates

May 4, 2015 at 11:02 am

Posted in Cuts, Food Banks, Government, Iain Duncan Smith, Liberal Tory Coalition, Sanctions, Tories, Uncategorized, Unemployment, Universal Jobmatch, Welfare Reform

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Welfare Reform: Iain Duncan Smith Trumpets Success.

Some of those ‘Benefiting’ from Iain Duncan Smith’s Reforms.

Welfare reform has improved lives claims Iain Duncan Smith

Saturday April 25th. Express and Star, Wolverhampton.

The architect of the controversial ‘bedroom tax’ has insisted low and middle earners have benefited from his welfare reforms.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith slashed millions from the welfare bill as the coalition government sought to balance the books.

But he claimed these savings, alongside the falling number of people claiming certain benefits, had allowed the coalition to introduce tax cuts for those on low pay.

From this month the tax-free personal allowance threshold on income tax increased to £10,600.

Speaking in Walsall, Mr Duncan Smith said: “What I have been doing now for a number of years is reforming welfare as a means to making more people better off.

“The reforms have not just saved tax payers money, including those on low and middle incomes, we have actually been able to give them tax cuts by raising the threshold on the personal allowance on income tax.

“We have been able to afford that because more people have got back into work as a result of our reforms.”

Mr Duncan Smith, who led the Conservatives for two years during Tony Blair’s New Labour government, was at Nova Training in Goscote where unemployed young people are taught skills to help them secure work.

Evidence of this success…

Fuel banks pilot scheme aims to address austerity-era dilemma of ‘heat or eat’.

Guardian. 24th April.

Fuel voucher for families who use prepayment meters will be available to those in crisis referred to food banks by welfare advice agencies, GPs and social workers.

Families in poverty who are forced to switch off their gas and electricity supply because they are unable afford spiralling energy bills will be offered free charity fuel vouchers under a pilot scheme. The so-called “fuel banks” initiative will provide a £49 credit for struggling families who use prepayment meters in a move designed to address the austerity-era dilemma of “heat or eat”. It is being run by energy firm nPower and poverty charities including the food bank network Trussell trust.

The vouchers, which will provide enough credit to restore power, and keep lights and heating on for up to two weeks, will be available to people in crisis referred to food banks by welfare advice agencies, GPs and social workers.

 

Written by Andrew Coates

April 25, 2015 at 10:54 am

Posted in Council Tax, Food Banks, Government, Iain Duncan Smith, Liberal Tory Coalition, Sanctions, Tories, Welfare Reform

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Benefit-Related Suicides: DWP Forced to Open up?

Not to Escape Responsibility for Deaths. 

A Few Days ago:

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is facing an investigation into its refusal to publish ‘secret’ reviews into 49 benefit-related deaths, it has been reported today.

Welfare News.

The investigation was launched by the Information Commissioners Office following a complaint from Disability News Service (DNS).

A number of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, including from DNS, demanding that the DWP publish its reviews into benefit-related deaths have been rebuffed by the department.

Officials have since admitted that of the 49 reviews the DWP has carried out so far, 33 included a recommendation to make improvements and 40 were made in response to an apparent suicide.

The DWP says publishing the reviews could represent a breach of section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act; which states that it would be an offence for a DWP employee to, “disclose without lawful authority any information which he acquired in the course of that employment and which relates to a particular person”.

A complaint from DNS has now sparked an investigation by the information watchdog.

Just now we learn: Information commissioner to force DWP to be transparent about investigation into benefit-related suicides. Third Force News.

England’s information commissioner is to launch an investigation into the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) “refusal” to reveal reviews into 49 benefit-related deaths.

It comes after the DWP refused several requests to publish the information saying publishing the reviews could represent a breach of section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act.

The act states it would be an offence for a DWP employee to “disclose without lawful authority any information which he acquired in the course of that employment and which relates to a particular person”.

However, a complaint by campaign group Disability News Service (DNS) has launched an investigation by the watchdog.

Campaigners believe sanctions and cuts to benefits have been so severe many claimants – especially those with mental health problems – have taken their own lives.

The investigation will take a number of months to conclude but in the event investigators rule against the DWP the decision can be appealed.

A spokesman for the information commissioner’s office said: “The focus of my investigation will be to determine whether the DWP is entitled to rely on section 44 as a basis for refusing to provide the information you requested.

“Should it not be a valid refusal of your request the commissioner will also determine what information can be provided within the appropriate cost limit.”

We should make it clear:  CO not ‘investigating’ DWP on suicide reports, is assessing if FOI Act refusal justified

Refuted added,

Still,

As the so-called opinion polls saying that 99.9% of people back sending unemployment out to clean the streets with their toothbrushes and beg for charity in Food Banks cover the pages of the Sun, the Mail and Express, spare a thought for the poor bastards who’d had enough of all that – and ended up in these “events”.

Written by Andrew Coates

April 21, 2015 at 3:18 pm

Posted in DWP, Food Banks, Iain Duncan Smith, Liberal Tory Coalition, Sanctions, Welfare Reform

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