_angel_
.
What's it got to do with relation to this thread??
Purnell: more attacks on the unemployed, etc
- Thread starter treelover
- Start date
What's it got to do with relation to this thread??
_angel_
.
Far more women in the workforce than there was then, probably wives never were counted as unemployed then.
Apparently women's employment is one factor for the rise in IB claimants. You can't claim it if you haven't paid enough in.
Apparently there's also more people in employment in Britain than ever before...as a percentage. There are also more people than the sixties so if you're looking at simple numbers it is going to be skewed.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
I'm sure that there are many people in this government who think it's a scandal that there are so many people long-term unemployed. After all, there's no point having a pool of people for cheap labour if they aren't doing cheap labour! At least some of the time, you don't want them all employed because then you can't threaten your employees with being replaced by someone else, and you might have trouble if you sack them.
Perhaps, you know, if they want people to take jobs, jobs could be made more attractive by offering better pay and conditions and security? Rather than it being made even harder to get benefits.
I do......
I also say that the benefits system in this country is cruel,inconsistent and should be reformed.
Why should anybody accept that so many disabled people are not working?
Why should anybody accept that so many young people are not working?
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
_angel_
.
Apart from, like I said, employment levels being at a high... isn't the question "why aren't employers employing disabled people" rather than blaming them as if it was their own fault.
You saying there are too many people claiming IB isn't good enough unless you know the personal history of every single claimant. You can't set a target on wellness ffs.
The things is FM this govt has at least done some things in opposition to the CBI etc like bringing in a minimum wage,MIG,EMA etc etc that your rather one sided view looks a bit silly.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
The minute somebody argues for a set of benefit reforms that involves ensuring that everyone has an income they can live on and doesn't involve threatening to withdraw support as a means of coercion, then I'll support those reforms. I'd also support anyone who stated that the current system wastes vast amounts of resources spying on people and harassing them instead of making a genuine effort to help them, and who was willing to admit that unemployment is an inevitable consequence of a market-based economy and it is not the fault of those unable to find work that this is the case. Basically I'd support any reforms that were based on empathy and rational thought rather than rabid victimisation of the poor and the sick.
_angel_
.
A minimum wage so low they've had to create a load more benefits to top it up (ctc, wftc) that have been notoriously badly adminned.
Part of the question is about the willingness of employers to employ disabled people but its not the whole story.
Some people with disabilities are activelly discouraged by day centres and family members from seeking work.
Look at how IB numbers rocketed in the last 15 years. Do you think that there are now twice as many people unable to work?
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
Do we live in the same country? There are different factions in the government certainly and they have to placate various groups but I can't see a single way in which this green paper could actually be described as helping workers. It's absolutely perfect for "the business sector" - even down to them privatising a load of it.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
I think it is often confusing in these discussions because government money is not seen as your money. In fact taxpayers money is our money just as much as if we paid it directly out of our wallets.
Imagine that you were government yourself, you charged people taxes and that money became YOUR money, then you paid out benefits, also your money, who would you pay your money as benefits to, and why?
Imagine that you were government yourself, you charged people taxes and that money became YOUR money, then you paid out benefits, also your money, who would you pay your money as benefits to, and why?
I disagree. I think lone parents should get lots of encouragement to work once their kid is in full time school.
I think its much better for kids if there parents work.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Absolutely, children cannot be held responsible for the financial situation of their parents and as such should not be punished if they happen to have a single parent. No child should have to spend most of his or her waking life either in school or in childcare, the economy is not more important than people having the chance to raise their own children.
Same country different planet.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Depends on what happens to the kids whilst their parents are working surely? Not everyone can afford a private nanny you know.
_angel_
.
No it;s not. Even if they are better off financially working (which sometimes they aren't) there are lots and lots of reasons why parents want to stay at home.
My sons first year he spent about 1/3 of the time at home, because he'd been sick. No employer would put up with that. Nor would they put up with the schools being closed for a fortnight without warning, and no childcare in summer.
I got quizzed on not being able to work half terms at one university job. Employers don't want their employees taking anytime off whatsoever.
_angel_
.
Schools operate 9-3 for 39 weeks of the year. Not every school has an afterschool club and holiday playscheme places for all. In short, there is not a provision of childcare in this country for parents to access.
You can bet after school clubs don't open up in special schools, either.
_angel_
.
More people are in work, paying into a system that entitles them to IB than previously.
Does that mean they're getting sicker? Or that the sickness would not have troubled the 'system' because they wouldn't have worked to pay into the system in the first place so be unable to claim.
If people are getting sicker, we should ask why as a society that is happening, than simply declaring them 'spongers' or frauds.
And no, employers not wanting to employ anyone sick, disabled with a poor health record is a MASSIVE part of the problem.
I find it hard to believe that despite Angels strong arguments, Baldwin still can't get a grasp of reality and seems to thing everyone out of a job is some kind of fakey cake baker, a charver or whatever. In fact if we didn't know better he could be Purnell himself as he shows the same lack of foresight
As for minimum wage ha ha i would like to see HIM live on it.
As for minimum wage ha ha i would like to see HIM live on it.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
This thread is about welfare reforms in the UK, in case you hadn't noticed.
People aren't "paid not to work", they're paid a minimal allowance while they seek work, an allowance that can be taken away from them at a whim.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
A reply that tells people all they need to know about you.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
All that Thatcher's "interpretation" of von Hayek has ever "proved" is that in certain economic conditions (i.e. HIGH unemployment, HIGH inflation) a large pool of surplus labour may damage job security in some sectors of employment, whether a person working in that sector is decent or not.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Although, of course, this depends on your skill level. The lower down the skills ladder, the worse they can treat you and/or the harder it is to exercise your rights.
"Pre-programmed failure" is a hell of a good description for it. Any government that actually had a worthwhile (worthwhile for "the people", that is) programme in mind would be concentrating on long-term vocational training, helping to fill the "skills gap" that they and their friends in the CBI are constantly whining about. Still, that'd mean medium-term investment, and anything that doesn't produce short-term positive results, returns and headlines doesn't get considered.
The Black Hand
Unclean
They say they are. WHo are you to say all these people are wrong? I do think life has got very stressful, far more than it used to be, for the poor. 'It's the economy stupid', as Bill Clinton used to say.
The Black Hand
Unclean
Resist the Attack on Incapacity
New Labour’s attacks on working class people are getting worse. Not content with taking the elderly’s retirement away from them via Pension cuts, and taking others livelihoods away via Civil Service job cuts, the aim is to force ill people to work for their money, or to make ill people worse. This is yet more American policy, work for welfare benefits, otherwise known as Workfare, and the promised Incapacity benefit changes are really the compulsory extension of the New Deal to the disabled.
While it is true that the state is now acting solely in the interest of capital, this was not always the case. What we have here is remnants of the welfare state being attacked, again, and state form is being changed more in line with neo-Liberalism. They are encouraging casualisation by enlarging the labour market, and that is done by enlarging the absolute numbers of and different workforce sectors ’forced’ to take low paid and insecure work.
Therefore, it is the job of all to oppose these cuts as it may affect you too one day, but those directly concerned should play a part. However, you may know that these people differ widely and are not in organisations at present, so the groups that are doing stuff such as Sheffield Welfare Action Network http://www.swansheffield.org.uk/ need to network, coordinate actions, and quickly.
Also, a significant amount of people (inc. those who jumped from JSA to incapacity) are expressing their autonomy from capital, and as such it should be encouraged. Many in the informal economy are DIY types who do not rely on ’employers’ - official or not. Instead, they are freetraders.
The NE NUM has done loads of cases, helping to get those made redundant in Easington more money (the UK IB hotspot), thus the IB changes are continuing the attack on class consciousness and should be resisted.
Incapacity Benefit Changes
The current stated New Labour Government aim is to abolish Incapacity Benefit and ’help’ a million people back to work, but its’ wider aim is to enforce work discipline and enlarge the labour market. By forcing ever increasing numbers of people to take casual and low paid jobs, to nobodies benefit except the capitalists.
Of course, the ’radical’ soundbites used New Labour spin doctors have to do with ’modernisation’, which really is the never ending project of work for the bosses - till you drop beyond doubt! Abolition by them is merely called "reform" – and our class should force New Labour bosses to remember that reform actually means making something better for everybody, not worse for most except the bosses.
The reforms will scrap the present incapacity benefit (IB) system, currently received by 2.7 million claimants, and IB is fuck all anyway. The average amount paid is £85 per week, and as a fraction of average earnings, IB paid to a single person fell from 17.4% in April 1995 to 15.2% in April 2003, and this is due to fall ever more drastically, or even totally. At first claimants will be put on a ’holding benefit’ paid at the jobseekers’ allowance rate until they face a medical assessment, probably within 12 weeks.
The majority will receive a Rehabilitation Support Allowance set approximately at £75 per week. However, this allowance will be cut back to jobseeker levels, about £20 a week less, if they do not attempt, including regular work-focused interviews, to get themselves back to work The aim apparently is to help a million people back into work. How this will be achieved is hard to know, as there are still around a million people officially currently looking for work.
As the IB reforms will not begin to set in before 2008, there is plenty of time to fight them. It shows too the fundamental optimism and spin of New Labour’s plans, as the one million new jobs is premised on the government’s own desperately sunny forecasts for economic growth. Such dreamy thinking is not a firm basis to build structural change upon. IB has already been tinkered with via statutory instruments (civil service instructions that do not require legislation) and it is doubtful whether IB can be simply got rid of by a few cuts. The intended effect will be to force people into dire poverty as few jobs are available, the jobs they will be forced to take will be unsuitable and short term, especially in the former industrial areas with the highest IB numbers. Far from including people as they claim, this will increase misery for the worse off in our society, building on the social exclusion and ghettoisation of the former working classes. A report recently published by Sheffield Hallam University estimates that around 100,000 former miners are hidden from unemployed statistics by IB. As New Labour does not and will not tackle the structural causes of regional unemployment, those on IB will not be able to find long term work.
The Work and Pensions Minister, David Blunkett, said "something very strange has happened to our society" if 2.7m people are now claiming incapacity benefit, and Blunkett told claimants to "Turn off TV and work". This is New Labour being the bastard children of the Tory Party. Have they forgotten Thatchers’ malicious class attacks, on the class they claim to represent? Let’s be clear the overwhelming majority of the claimants are not working full time while claiming IB, a few maybe regularly doing work or money earning trading they are not telling the government about – and who could blame them, and you are allowed to earn £70 a week whilst claiming IB anyway. In reality they are blowing the few cases there are out of all proportion, and even on their own terms they are wrong. If people actually are working in the Informal economy, wouldn’t it simply be better to offer an amnesty and legalise formerly illegal working? But no, they have another agenda, and that is to increase ordinary people’s problems and make things harder for the poor – by enforcing work discipline officially. Claimants should tell Blunkett and other New Labour ’luvvies’ to go fuck themselves.
When the Tories demand to know why nearly three million are on IB they should remember their last term in government. It was when Michael Howard was Employment Secretary that managers of Job Centres in high unemployment areas were told to put as more people on to IB in order to reduce their unemployment figures. Those currently on IB are concentrated in areas of industrial decline such as Merseyside, the Northeast of England, and South Wales. In effect, the unemployed were simply re-categorised as "sick", and the NUM has helped gain ’extended redundancy packages’ via helping to sign men on the sick as jobs are impossible to find for their members. The Tories deliberately used IB to disguise unemployment during their period in office. They also did little more than combat the statistics by revising how unemployment was counted 19 times over their years in office 1979-1997. Each change revised the numbers down. Of course, Labour denounced this while in opposition and failed to change back to the old methods when elected, when they had the opportunity.
Despite this unemployment in 1997 was at historically high levels when compared to the 1950s up to the 1970s. This slightly changed when New Labour, well according to Gordon Brown anyway, noted that after inheriting close to 2 million unemployed New Labour reduced that number to "less than a million, the lowest for 29 years.’’ That the UK has low unemployment is a myth based on government and media lies and the manipulation of statistics. The high numbers of disabled people in Britain is clearly an indication that the economy is in dire straights.
It all depends upon how unemployment is measured. The UK government claimed that only 2.9% claimed jobless benefits, but the International Labour Organisation presented a more worrying figure of 4.7% based on their way of counting the unemployed. This simply means that unemployment has been redefined rather than reduced. To get a realistic figure both registered unemployed and those claiming invalidity should be counted together. While the unemployment rate has gone down, disability cases have risen, and this is not counting other ways of containing the working classes deemed surplus to requirements; e.g. through the rising numbers imprisoned.
This point’s to extensive hidden unemployment and if we note those who are claiming incapacity benefit for more than six months, this is 7% of the UK’s working age population and shows that the stated 2.9% unemployment rate is bullshit. These figures are far larger than equivalent ones from Europe; in Germany only 2.1% claim IB while it is 0.3% in France. If IB numbers are added to unemployment figures, the imagined superiority of the British economy to Germany and France totally disappears.
Unemployment in Neo-liberal Britain is approximately that of ’regulated’ Europe. While Thatcher’s labour market reforms weakened workers’ collective strength and increased job insecurity, by increasing profits and inequality, they did not reduce unemployment. This is the reality of free market capitalism, unemployment is needed to reduce workers strength and more unemployed are needed to fill the low paid and insecure jobs, especially in the Labour heartlands but also in the South of the UK, and Brown and Blair dare to tell the world of the ’British economic miracle’!!
New Labour’s attacks on working class people are getting worse. Not content with taking the elderly’s retirement away from them via Pension cuts, and taking others livelihoods away via Civil Service job cuts, the aim is to force ill people to work for their money, or to make ill people worse. This is yet more American policy, work for welfare benefits, otherwise known as Workfare, and the promised Incapacity benefit changes are really the compulsory extension of the New Deal to the disabled.
While it is true that the state is now acting solely in the interest of capital, this was not always the case. What we have here is remnants of the welfare state being attacked, again, and state form is being changed more in line with neo-Liberalism. They are encouraging casualisation by enlarging the labour market, and that is done by enlarging the absolute numbers of and different workforce sectors ’forced’ to take low paid and insecure work.
Therefore, it is the job of all to oppose these cuts as it may affect you too one day, but those directly concerned should play a part. However, you may know that these people differ widely and are not in organisations at present, so the groups that are doing stuff such as Sheffield Welfare Action Network http://www.swansheffield.org.uk/ need to network, coordinate actions, and quickly.
Also, a significant amount of people (inc. those who jumped from JSA to incapacity) are expressing their autonomy from capital, and as such it should be encouraged. Many in the informal economy are DIY types who do not rely on ’employers’ - official or not. Instead, they are freetraders.
The NE NUM has done loads of cases, helping to get those made redundant in Easington more money (the UK IB hotspot), thus the IB changes are continuing the attack on class consciousness and should be resisted.
Incapacity Benefit Changes
The current stated New Labour Government aim is to abolish Incapacity Benefit and ’help’ a million people back to work, but its’ wider aim is to enforce work discipline and enlarge the labour market. By forcing ever increasing numbers of people to take casual and low paid jobs, to nobodies benefit except the capitalists.
Of course, the ’radical’ soundbites used New Labour spin doctors have to do with ’modernisation’, which really is the never ending project of work for the bosses - till you drop beyond doubt! Abolition by them is merely called "reform" – and our class should force New Labour bosses to remember that reform actually means making something better for everybody, not worse for most except the bosses.
The reforms will scrap the present incapacity benefit (IB) system, currently received by 2.7 million claimants, and IB is fuck all anyway. The average amount paid is £85 per week, and as a fraction of average earnings, IB paid to a single person fell from 17.4% in April 1995 to 15.2% in April 2003, and this is due to fall ever more drastically, or even totally. At first claimants will be put on a ’holding benefit’ paid at the jobseekers’ allowance rate until they face a medical assessment, probably within 12 weeks.
The majority will receive a Rehabilitation Support Allowance set approximately at £75 per week. However, this allowance will be cut back to jobseeker levels, about £20 a week less, if they do not attempt, including regular work-focused interviews, to get themselves back to work The aim apparently is to help a million people back into work. How this will be achieved is hard to know, as there are still around a million people officially currently looking for work.
As the IB reforms will not begin to set in before 2008, there is plenty of time to fight them. It shows too the fundamental optimism and spin of New Labour’s plans, as the one million new jobs is premised on the government’s own desperately sunny forecasts for economic growth. Such dreamy thinking is not a firm basis to build structural change upon. IB has already been tinkered with via statutory instruments (civil service instructions that do not require legislation) and it is doubtful whether IB can be simply got rid of by a few cuts. The intended effect will be to force people into dire poverty as few jobs are available, the jobs they will be forced to take will be unsuitable and short term, especially in the former industrial areas with the highest IB numbers. Far from including people as they claim, this will increase misery for the worse off in our society, building on the social exclusion and ghettoisation of the former working classes. A report recently published by Sheffield Hallam University estimates that around 100,000 former miners are hidden from unemployed statistics by IB. As New Labour does not and will not tackle the structural causes of regional unemployment, those on IB will not be able to find long term work.
The Work and Pensions Minister, David Blunkett, said "something very strange has happened to our society" if 2.7m people are now claiming incapacity benefit, and Blunkett told claimants to "Turn off TV and work". This is New Labour being the bastard children of the Tory Party. Have they forgotten Thatchers’ malicious class attacks, on the class they claim to represent? Let’s be clear the overwhelming majority of the claimants are not working full time while claiming IB, a few maybe regularly doing work or money earning trading they are not telling the government about – and who could blame them, and you are allowed to earn £70 a week whilst claiming IB anyway. In reality they are blowing the few cases there are out of all proportion, and even on their own terms they are wrong. If people actually are working in the Informal economy, wouldn’t it simply be better to offer an amnesty and legalise formerly illegal working? But no, they have another agenda, and that is to increase ordinary people’s problems and make things harder for the poor – by enforcing work discipline officially. Claimants should tell Blunkett and other New Labour ’luvvies’ to go fuck themselves.
When the Tories demand to know why nearly three million are on IB they should remember their last term in government. It was when Michael Howard was Employment Secretary that managers of Job Centres in high unemployment areas were told to put as more people on to IB in order to reduce their unemployment figures. Those currently on IB are concentrated in areas of industrial decline such as Merseyside, the Northeast of England, and South Wales. In effect, the unemployed were simply re-categorised as "sick", and the NUM has helped gain ’extended redundancy packages’ via helping to sign men on the sick as jobs are impossible to find for their members. The Tories deliberately used IB to disguise unemployment during their period in office. They also did little more than combat the statistics by revising how unemployment was counted 19 times over their years in office 1979-1997. Each change revised the numbers down. Of course, Labour denounced this while in opposition and failed to change back to the old methods when elected, when they had the opportunity.
Despite this unemployment in 1997 was at historically high levels when compared to the 1950s up to the 1970s. This slightly changed when New Labour, well according to Gordon Brown anyway, noted that after inheriting close to 2 million unemployed New Labour reduced that number to "less than a million, the lowest for 29 years.’’ That the UK has low unemployment is a myth based on government and media lies and the manipulation of statistics. The high numbers of disabled people in Britain is clearly an indication that the economy is in dire straights.
It all depends upon how unemployment is measured. The UK government claimed that only 2.9% claimed jobless benefits, but the International Labour Organisation presented a more worrying figure of 4.7% based on their way of counting the unemployed. This simply means that unemployment has been redefined rather than reduced. To get a realistic figure both registered unemployed and those claiming invalidity should be counted together. While the unemployment rate has gone down, disability cases have risen, and this is not counting other ways of containing the working classes deemed surplus to requirements; e.g. through the rising numbers imprisoned.
This point’s to extensive hidden unemployment and if we note those who are claiming incapacity benefit for more than six months, this is 7% of the UK’s working age population and shows that the stated 2.9% unemployment rate is bullshit. These figures are far larger than equivalent ones from Europe; in Germany only 2.1% claim IB while it is 0.3% in France. If IB numbers are added to unemployment figures, the imagined superiority of the British economy to Germany and France totally disappears.
Unemployment in Neo-liberal Britain is approximately that of ’regulated’ Europe. While Thatcher’s labour market reforms weakened workers’ collective strength and increased job insecurity, by increasing profits and inequality, they did not reduce unemployment. This is the reality of free market capitalism, unemployment is needed to reduce workers strength and more unemployed are needed to fill the low paid and insecure jobs, especially in the Labour heartlands but also in the South of the UK, and Brown and Blair dare to tell the world of the ’British economic miracle’!!
denniseagle
ding dong the witch is dead
Why should I find YOU an employer???
Did YOU find ME one?
If you are only taking out what you have put in I assume that you must mean that those who haven't 'paid in' should get nothing?
What should happen once you have got back all you paid in?
The guy I work with was born without arms .
He drives a specially adapted vehicle provided by his employer and works full time having found the job by himself.
Too many bemoan their 'lot' and 'list' all the reasons why THEY should not work, however my original post was questioning why those on Jobseekers allowance wouldn't be the first ones targetted.
It seems to be assumed that those who are on IB would be dragged from their beds/wheelchairs/iron lungs etc and be forced into accepting any job whether it is suitable or not .
Is there actually any evidence of this???
Anyone have documented proof that those who are genuinely incapable of doing any work ,have been forced into jobs?
Just out of interest how many of you out there suspect that some who are claiming IB are not really deserving.
The Football linesman case is a prime example. None of his neighbours suspected anything?
Or how about the guy with the bad back who won weight lifting competitions.
They do exist, despite protestations to the contrary.
The Black Hand
Unclean
FFS - fucking Tory twat. Leads us to a new abbreviation 'FTT'....
Jobseekers already get way too much questioning and surveillance. When this sort of harrasment is targetted at the idle rich I might agree with you.
Any sort of harrasment of those with mental health issues is problematic and dangerous. Certainly job centre staff do not know when to let up. There are already cases of suicide cos of problems with the dole.
I see he has been reading the torygraph or dailyhatemail they love printing stories like that but hardly ever if at all print one about a tax evader.People who are unable will be forced to seek employment which could lead to them taking their lives out of desperation can he live with that
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