I no longer intend to do so.
The reason for this is Ed Miliband and Liam Byrne's foul attacks on people who claim Jobseekers Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance.
Instead of opposing the Tories' vile decision to cut off Employment and Support Allowance after one year for all but the very poorest, they administer their own kicking to people like me.
Liam Byrne's hypocrisy:
Liam Byrne, the shadow secretary for work and pensions and policy review chief, is determined to make being on benefits even more unpleasant than it is already.
He talks about making unemployed people should report to jobcentres weekly, rather than fortnightly.
This will cost a lot more public money and will take time away from job searching.
If people have to get the bus to the jobcentre, it'll cost them more money.
Transport fares are expensive outside London, thanks to Labour and Conservative governments having failed reverse the Transport Act 1985 and regulate the buses outside of Northern Ireland and Greater London.
A jobseeker going once a week to sign on at a jobcentre in Oxford, for example, will pay £3 return a week. When he gets £65 per week, for which he or she must buy food and clothing, that's a big hit.
The jobcentre staff try to help, but the best way unemployed people can find jobs is by searching themselves online and by going to CV and interview clinics.
Making people attend the jobcentre more often is simply punitive.
His other plan involves requiring long-term workless households with pre-school children to attend compulsory employment workshops.
This is a reasonable idea, but I'm confused why it has to involve "pre-school children". Why not require all people unemployed for more than a year to attend these workshops?
Also, it would be good to know the content of these workshops and how they will help people.
As he's so keen to push people back into work, you'd think Liam Byrne would be keen to save public money.
However, he doesn't seem to employ (pardon the pun) the same principles when claiming
expenses.
In 2009, the Daily Telegraph reported:
During 2004 and 2005, [Liam Byrne] rented an apartment in County Hall, overlooking the Thames, at a cost of nearly £2,400 a month.
After moving out, Mr Byrne spent thousands of pounds over 18 months staying in hotels while searching for a property to buy.
Despite regularly charging the maximum of £400 a month for food, Mr Byrne submitted hotel bills showing a fee for room service dinners, which was rejected by the fees office. He regularly claimed for food during the parliamentary summer recess, when most MPs are in their constituencies.
He is also a convicted criminal, unlike many people on benefits. On 2 November 2007 he was fined £100 and received three points on his driving licence for using his mobile telephone while driving.
This is extremly dangerous and something which really angers me. He could have killed someone.
In a just political system, this man would have had to stand down as an MP for such a dangerous act.
Still, one rule for money-grubbing criminal Liam Byrne, who earns far more than the majority of people he represents, and another for those on benefits.
Ed Miliband's foul speech:
There have been rumours that Ed Miliband will instruct Labour MP's to vote against the Welfare Bill in its third reading.
How likely these rumours are to be true, I am not sure.
For Edward Samuel Miliband seems to believe that he has some kind of mystic power where he can tell by looking at the how suitable people on incapacity benefit are for work.
What other powers does Ed Miliband believe he has?
Will he try to fly from the top of Big Ben and land in the Thames below?
In his speech, he says:
While out campaigning during the local elections, not for the first time, I met someone who had been on incapacity benefit for a decade.
He hadn’t been able to work since he was injured doing his job.
It was a real injury, and he was obviously a good man who cared for his children.
But I was convinced that there were other jobs he could do.
And that it’s just not right for the country to be supporting him not to work, when other families on his street are working all hours just to get by.
So this man hasn't been able to work since he was injured doing his job. It's a real injury, not one of those fake ones that apparently fool doctors and Department of Work and Pensions staff.
He didn't spray a bit of ketchup on his arm and say "Ow, ow ,ow."
It was a real injury, and he hasn't been able to work since he was injured doing his job, but Mystic Miliband was convinced that there were other jobs he could do, and that it's not right for the country to be supporting him not to work, although he hasn;t been able to work since he was injured doing his job.
Milband went on to say:
There is a link between the man on incapacity benefit and those executives at Southern Cross.
What is that link?
That these are people who are just not taking responsibility - and the rest of us are left picking up the pieces.
It’s not about responsibility to the state, or the government, but responsibility to your neighbours, your friends and many others who you may never meet but who are affected by your actions.
He then appears to blame those on benefits for anti-social behaviour:
And people feel the consequences of irresponsibility in different parts of their lives.
The rubbish fly-tipped by the roadside.
The throb of loud music, played by the neighbour in the small hours.
The overgrown and litter-strewn front garden.
If Labour and the Tories had done more to create a more effective police force, a harsher judical system and better rehabilitation of prisioners, we wouldn't have this mess. A better education system would help as well. It's got nothing to do with people on benefits.
Blue Labour? More like sick-coloured Labour:
Liam Byrne says: "There is one sentiment that really shines through.
People are angry about the state we face and they believe a new politics of responsibility is the answer.
There's a sense of too many great sins: wealth without work; commerce without morality; politics without principle."
I reckon two of those three sins apply to today's rancid Labour Party.
Sue Marsh on Ed Miliband's speech and the reality of life on sickness benefits.
No comments:
Post a Comment