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)
Campaigning for Unemployed Rights.
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.
Iain Duncan Smith admits the Tories have not worked out where their £12bn welfare cuts will come from.
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.
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.
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.
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 @johnpringdns
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”.
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