...because our politicians certainly can't be relied upon to do such a thing...
So the Govt. is going to 'reform' the welfare system (yet again). It effectively intends to punish the long term unemployed by making them do community service (much in the same way criminals are punished when they've done wrong) and intends to get a million or two off long term incapacity benefits and into work. (Like there aren't already more than enough socially dysfunctional mentally-ill, depressed people in all but name, already in work making life miserable for the rest of us. You know the sort I mean. Like Taxi-drivers, Traffic wardens...)
Except of course - no one is bothering to ask were these extra one or two million or even more jobs are going to magically appear from. For instance - local councils up and down the country are always pleading poverty (despite how they consistently raise council rate rates year in, year out) and when they're not currently laying off staff are suffering from strikes were many council workers are finding their wages just aren't enough for them to live on. So are they going to provide these extra jobs? Seems unlikely.
Not to mention we're at a point in time when the unemployment levels are already rising and look set to continue. There's a whole part of the equation being over looked - the bit where there is so much unemployment is because - there simply aren't enough jobs to go round. Duh.
As for the sorts of jobs available - that's changed so much over the past 30 or so years. There used to be mining - coal and steel - that's all but gone. Manufacturing - we used to make stuff and sell things to the world, but China and India does most of that now. For the past few years people have been selling each other their homes at ever increasing prices - but that's stalled now. I know many areas have been letting Land developers build more and more luxury houses and flats for millionaires to buy - but that's turned into a fiasco. I guess there's still a lot of people being on the phone selling 'consolidation loans', debt relief packages, insurance of one sort or another, to each other... but i don't know how long that can go on. I suppose there's always the NHS and care work looking after our increasingly elderly population... or even child care - that's looking after the children of the single mother who's been forced to get a job instead of staying home to look after the child herself she now has to go to work to earn the money she now needs to pay the child-minder... oh and working for the DSS, who'll soon be going mad trying to put these hare-brained reform schemes into operation.
(Job creation UK style.)
Of course another inconvenient, barely mentioned fact is that there are more people in working poverty than there are claiming benefits, and even this doesn't take in to account the millions of working families having to claim 'tax credits' to top up their meager wages - which effectively subsidizes employers and only encourages low pay. (I happen to believe if any company can't afford to pay it's employees a decent living wage then it simply has no business doing business and it deserves to close.) As for most casual 'benefit cheats' those who work and claim benefits - again this is more often due to dodgy businesses not paying their staff - for whatever reason a decent wage - so again the state ends up subsidizing poverty pay. However, when it's done legally - it's called 'tax credits' when illegally it's 'benefits cheating' - when it's a Department of Work and Pensions scheme - it's 'incentive payments' or something equally stupid sounding.
What's more no one is bothering to mention that maybe, just possibly maybe one of the reasons there are welfare cheats in the first place is that the benefits paid out are just way, way too low to actually live on. Gas and electricity prices have shot up the past couple of years - everyone knows food prices have gone up. Dole money hasn't though.
(There was a time when one working class man's wages could support a whole family - with the wife staying at home to do all the domestic stuff. A middle class man could do the same and keep servants. Nowadays it takes two people in full time employment to earn a living wage. Although a lot of domestic drudgery has been eased by things like washing machines, vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens etc.)
Whatever - it's become the dogma that having a job - any job, no matter how low-paid, miserable or totally useless seems to be the magic answer to all life's problems. Rather than it being the start of a lot of problems.
So I ask again where are these new jobs going to come from? - because no Government since the 1970s has had much luck with job creation schemes.
Maybe they have plans to split the unemployed into two groups have one where they employ them on short term contracts to oversee the other half doing these lame-ass community work schemes - and when their contracts run out - they'll employ the other half of the unemployed to oversee the newly-made unemployed when they end up having to do their work-for-dole jobs. That could work. It'd be the equivalent of hiring one person to dig a hole and then someone else to fill it in again... but that doesn't seem to matter. So long as the official figures look good and the next batch of politicians can stand up and read them out in Parliament - "double plus good - the chocolate ration is to be increased..."
(Come to think of it - being a Politician seems to be an enormously cushy job. It's all just wearing suits and talking utter rubbish. Couldn't there be a bit more room made for a few thousand more drawn from the long term jobless?)
...and this brings us to the real reason behind all this - it all boils down to trying to win votes. The same way through the late 70s and 80s the Conservatives managed to poach votes from the working class ('here, vote for us and we'll sell your the council home you're already renting - for cheap' etc.) - Labour is poaching the votes from the nasty, small minded, mean-spirited, cruel hearted, vicious, Daily Mail/Telegraph reading little Englander who usually votes Tory. Which is why our two main political parties are becoming indistinguishable from one another. There's no vision any more - just a pandering to the general public and cynical poll chasing.
Other people wot do write better about stuff than I do...
Polly Toynbee:
"Labour's sin-eater has now neutralised welfare reform"
Steve Richards:
A big step forward on the path to welfare reform, but there is difficult terrain ahead.
No comments:
Post a Comment