Stop the cuts, stop the attacks on the poor
Yesterday, the Government announced a further 12,000 job cuts in the DWP - on top of the 30,000 that have already happened in the past three years. These public sector jobs and funds will simply be diverted to the private sector who will take over the role of getting people back into work - and offered bonuses of up to £50,000 if they get people back into work - funded by job cuts and benefit sanctions.
The measures announced are more to do with the Government's neo-Thatcherite obsession with attacking the poor and privatising public services, than with a genuine attempt to tackle poverty.
Allowing private companies to profiteer at the expense of the benefits of the unemployed clearly demonstrates Gordon Brown is guided by a different moral compass than the rest of the labour movement.
Over the coming weeks and months I will standing in solidarity on picket lines with PCS members to resist these cuts
The measures announced are more to do with the Government's neo-Thatcherite obsession with attacking the poor and privatising public services, than with a genuine attempt to tackle poverty.
Allowing private companies to profiteer at the expense of the benefits of the unemployed clearly demonstrates Gordon Brown is guided by a different moral compass than the rest of the labour movement.
Over the coming weeks and months I will standing in solidarity on picket lines with PCS members to resist these cuts
posted by John at 9:39 AM
3 Comments:
I would like to congratulate John McDonnell for standing up for those whose voices are unheard of during the government's rush to hive off the Welfare State - the claimants, the sick, the disabled, the workless, the single parents.
The prospect of us being delivered into the hands of the Artful Dodger Plc, and Lady Bountiful Reg.Charity, is dire. The future can be seen in the failure of existing private and 'voluntary; sector run schemes on the New Deal and elsewhere: a system rife with bullying, waste and profiteering. It has proved incapable of providing lasting employment, except to the expanding industry of 'providers' or the needed cash for welfare, except for those running these schemes. Now employees of the DWI are to pay as well for those welfare-companies, feasting off the public purse.
The notion that hundreds of thousands of people are about to be found work is, in the light of these failures, ridiculous - it is more than probable that the result will be the growth of a large workfare sector, with claimants assigned to forced employment without proper rights or pay.
There is a need to create a campaign against the New Poor Laws. It is encouraging that in Parliament there is someone with John's ability who can stand against this Cabinet of Holy Willie Brown, Mr Gradgrind, Samuel Smiles, Mrs Jellybey, and Mr Bumble the Beadle.
Andrew Coates
Imo, this is New Labours 'Big Bang': the scope, speed and, yes, ferocity of welfare reform has been breath-taking. No hyperbole, but this is ultimately the end of a rights based welfare system in the UK, coupled with a move to a privatised and minimal U.S model.
With the reforms people are going to lose money,homes, forced into work and even medical treatment. Further, based on only thirteen weeks work by Freud, Purnell has effectively privatisated large part of the welfare state. The companies will also only be paid by results increasing pressure on advisers and ensuring even more pressure and an increasing level of invasiveness in claimant’s lives. Compulsion will also be a central element of all these changes, with benefit cuts making life for claimants even more difficult.
One more alarming reform is that a claimant can still be monitored, advised, etc by private companies, three years after they first get a job! Yet in Canada there is evidence welfare to work didn’t work and in Australia, the new PM is reigning in its excesses.
I think ultimately this will all affect the culture of the uk, more like the U.S again, with people increasingly blamed for their poverty with only the big private training companies benefiting, There will a new revolving door ‘workfare class’ which will be used to replace(now unwanted) non EU immigration and drive down wages.
Sadly, apart from JM, SP, AC, a few charities, etc, civil society, the left such as it, is has been largely silent.
That is a poor state of affairs.
More stuff here
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2008/02/391945.html
www.swansheffield.org.uk
01 March 2008 18:38
desparate
fear, terror, sucide attepts, hospitlation, sucide of 2 friends.
whats the cause of this touture
WELFARE REFORMS!!!
you talk it i live it.
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