Left Leaning Blog excited to be a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn's brand of politics and cutting through the lies of the right-wing Tory press!
(This blog is being updated)
It's now patently obvious to all (except George Osborne) that his plan A has failed, and we are all staring down the barrel of a gun and unless Osborne changes tack and fast, we are all going to hell in a hand cart!
George Osborne's Christmas gift to the unemployed is rumoured to be a freeze or cut their Job Seekers Allowance (JSA). Apparently the chancellor is going to treat the unemployed like "cattle" and give them the "prod" they need to get them into work.
It may have escaped Osborne's notice that thanks to his insane austerity measures there is precious little work around for the unemployed to be "prodded" into! Ever since he set himself on course to destroy over a million public sector workers jobs and the temporary work created by the Olympics is fading fast, the only jobs that seem to be made in the private sector are part-time jobs. We know that George Osborne is a part-time chancellor himself (and an exceptionally well paid one), so this may come as a shock to him, but most people want to work full-time and do not require his condescending "prodding" to try and find work. The unemployed, are actually people, they are not animals to be prodded about about an over privileged, over bearing, out of touch millionaire Tory chancellor, who wouldn't know what it is like to subsist on state benefits, the total amount of benefit paid wouldn't keep Osborne in wine and champagne for a week!
Thanks to Osborne's anomaly making it cheaper for Tory doning company bosses to hire two part-time workers instead of one full-time, and also thanks to the Tories trashing workers rights in the work place, there is mainly only part-time work available as greedy company bosses slurp up and exploit the situation and exploit the position part-time employees find themselves in. No doubt the Treasury takes the view half a job is better than none, but it really isn't, not if you have a family to feed and support. Thanks to the Tory controlled coalition government and Osborne's total denial of the dire situation this government have actually caused. Falling living standards and the cost of living soaring, how are people supposed to manage on part-time pay? To add to the misery, Osborne's mate at the DWP, Iain Duncan Smith is going to cut even more money from people on working tax credits, if they do not increase their hours, never mind if they can increase their hours or no/, their money will be docked and this is due to commence in April 2013 and a whole load of people do not realise what is about to hit them.
Never mind constantly attacking those on low wages or seeking employment and trying to drive a wedge between people, the government should turn their attention to profitable companies who are guilty of exploiting their workforce and the taxpayers of this country, and they should be named and shamed and mentioned on every single news bullet-in until they stop it and pay their workers a decent living wage. Strange how the Mail, the Sun etc are so quick to bash the jobless and label them as "feckless scroungers, living it up off the state", or attack disabled people and infer they are all "malingering frauds", but never mention how Tory supporting, Tory doning firms are exploiting the system and forcing the taxpayer to pay a large part of their payrolls - not a dick bird!
When next some are about to fall into the Tory trap of attacking the "feckless" low paid and jobless and blaming them for all the ills in society and the world, perhaps they should save their criticisms for the Tory doning company bosses who are being given free full-time labour from the jobless queue and carte blanche to pay low wages and encouraged to hire part-time staff and all at the taxpayers expense.
This country faces serious financial hardship and many people are going to go under, the Bank of England has already predicted that the economy could shrink for the third time forcing the country into a triple dip recession. Osborne claims it would be a disaster if we about turned on his austerity measures, but if we don't it will be a catastrophe for this country. Many people are already hanging on by a thread, any further hardships announced by the chancellor tomorrow will see them lose their grip, it will be a financial Armageddon. All this is not to get us out of debt, we are not broke, this country is rich, all this suffering is purely for Tory ideological reasons and is finishing what Margaret Thatcher started. Only Thatcher was wrong back then, which is why the Tories jettisoned her and her policies are wrong now, they are bringing the country to its knees.
If the chancellor will not listen, if this totally incompetent reckless government refuse to stop this and insist on going still further, then it really is time for the British people to stop them. The time has come to "rise-up" and say: NO enough is enough and no more" and force a general election. There is precious little confidence in this government, only by a few die hard Tories and Liberal Democrat nincompoops.
Do we really want to wait before we act to see thousands of people living rough on our streets? Wait until we witness the harrowing scenes of children being ripped from their parents sides and arms because their parents have lost their home through the government insane rent cap, forcing people to pay for the greed of landlords? Repossessions are starting to rise, more families are losing everything, they are in the pits of despair, they are not idle feckless, they are people struggling to exist after losing their jobs, or struggling on low pay. Bankruptcies rising, redundancies rising, look at the state of the High Street next time you are there.
The damage that Osborne has already caused the economy is frightening and in his autumn statement tomorrow it is already clear he is about to cause more, the trouble is, how much more damage can the economy sustain before it actually implodes?
Below is the results of the Liberal Democrats recent showing in 6 by-elections. If they are not worried then they do not yet still fully understand the situation they are in, or the degree of hostility that actually exists towards them amongst the electorate in general, but especially the people who once supported them.
Rotherham - By election - November 29th 2012 Despite the best efforts of the right wing press to try and conjure up a win for UKIP in Rotherham, Labour held it comfortably and their share of share of the vote marginally increased from 44% to 46.3% after defending against a politically motivated attack from UKIP who used three innocent children as political footballs. A small swing to Labour of 1.7%
The Liberal Democrats came in 8th behind UKIP; BNP; Respect; Conservatives, EDL and an Independent with a 2.1% share of the vote and lost their deposit.
The Tories came in 5th behind UKIP and the BNP!
In the 2010 general election the Conservatives were 2nd and Liberal Democrats were 3rd, this 2012 by-election they were 5th and 8th respectively.
The Liberal Democrats lost 5 places and 13.3% of their vote.
Liberal democrats lost their deposit.
Swing 1.7% to Labour
Middlesborough - By election - November 29th 2012 Labour won comfortably and increased its share of the vote to 60.5%. The Liberal Democrats came in third with a 9.9% share of the vote.
In the 2010 general election the Lib Dems were second with a 19.9% share of the vote and a swing of 6.4% to the Lib Dems from Labour.
This by-election saw that swing reversed from LD to Labour of around 14.1%.
The Tories slipped to 4th from 3rd and lost around 12.7% of their votes.
Between the 2010 general election and this 2012 November by-election the Liberal Democrats have lost 10% of their vote and slipped to 3rd place.
Swing of 14.1% from Lib Dems to Labour
Croydon North - By election - November 29th 2012Labour won comfortably and again increased its share of the vote to 64.7%. The Liberal Democrats came in 4th behind the Tories UKIP 2nd and BNP 3rd with a 3.5% share of the vote.
In the 2010 general election the Liberal Democrats were 3rd with a 14% share of the vote and have lost 11.5% of their vote since the general election.
Liberal Democrats Lost their deposit.
Swing 11.1% from Conservative to Labour.
Corby - By-election -November 15th 2012 Labour gained this seat from the Tories overturning a Tory majority of 1,951 into a Labour majority of 7,991.
Liberal Democrats came 4th
In the 2010 general election the Liberal Democrats were 3rd with 14.3% of the vote.
Lib Dems have lost a place are now 4th behind UKIP and lost 9.48% of the vote, their share of the vote is now just 4.96%. Liberal Democrats lost their deposit.
Swing from Conservatives to Labour of 10%
Manchester Central - By-election -November 15th 2012 Labour comfortably held this seat and increased their share of the vote from 52.7% in the 2010 general election to 69.1% in this 2012 by-election.
The Liberal Democrats were 2nd with just 9.4% of the vote.
The Conservatives came 3rd
UKIP came 4th The Conservatives lost their deposit.
Lib Dems lost 17.2% of their vote.
Swing from Lib Dems to Labour of approx 17%
Cardiff South & Penarth- By-election -November 15th 2012 Labour comfortably held this seat and increased their share of the vote from 38% to 47.3%
The Liberal Democrats were 3rd in the 2010 general election with 22.3% of the vote
In the 2012 by-election Lib Dems were 3rd and had 10.82% share of the vote.
2012 - Lib Dems lost 11.44% of their vote
Swing from Conservatives to Labour of approx 8.39%
The results above are taken from the 6 most recent by-elections and the Liberal Democrats have lost 4 out of 6 deposits. Which ever way the Liberal Democrats want to view these results they are pointing to huge losses at the general election. Liberal Democrat supporters and MPs are saying well these are mid term elections and people vote differently in general elections etc.
I do not remember Lib Dems putting up the same arguments when they were pulling off stunning by-election victories from both Labour and the Tories.
I also don't remember those seats returning to Labour or the Tories in a general election either.
The Liberal Democrats put up exactly the same argument when they were almost annihilated in last May's elections and said their defeat would not translate to parliamentary seats - and yet, quite plainly, they have!
Some voters may not vote the same way come a general election, however, to overturn these seats it will take a huge swing away from Labour and that doesn't look like it will happen any time soon. Just look at the swings to labor that will have to be overcome for that to even be a possibility.
Without doubt these results are a bitter blow to the Liberal Democrats and they are also showing that the Tories are not in a too healthy position too.
As all the parties must now be surely turning their sights towards the next general election in 2015 (if this government last that long). The Tories have hired Boris Johnson's right wing election adviser, Lynton Crosby, thus revealing that the Tories look to be once again lurching to the right, probably because they are scared witless by UKIPs climb in popularity and the opinion polls. Crosby is know for his attacks against immigrants and is also reported to have told Johnson to concentrate on traditional Tory voters instead of "fucking Muslims". This may have worked once with Johnson in the Mayoral campaign in London, but I doubt it would go down with the rest of the country that well.
What the Liberal democrats fail to grasp is that they are being punished for supporting the most radical right wing government in the history of this country and keeping them in power. People will not forget the Lib Dems voting with the government to destroy and privatise our NHS and state education system. They will not forget their broken promises over tuition fees and Educational Maintenance Allowance. The electorate and Liberal Democrat supporters feel utterly betrayed by Nick Clegg and this will never allow this to be forgotten.
Post 2010 election when talks were going on between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats I couldn't see that there could ever be a deal between the two parties, "diametrically opposed", I thought. I can't see it happening, it would be hugely damaging to the Liberal Democrats, but to my utter amazement Clegg, Cable, Alexander, Hughes etc took the party into coalition with the Tories, I knew it would all end in tears, but the Lib Dems didn't, they were bedazzled with the promise of power and being in government and in doing so starting writing the end for the Lib Dems then. What I didn't know then, was that Clegg and other leading Liberal Democrats had already held talks with the Tories about forming a coalition government in the event of a hung parliament, so their minds were already made up, it was just dotting the i's and crossing the t's! The Lib Dems had actually gone into the 2010 general election under a false premise and they had deliberately misled their supporters. Which makes Clegg an even bigger liar when he said that he was also in talks with Gordon Brown in that interim period after the general election.Clegg was never serious he was using Brown and Labour as political leverage! That was the very first sign that Clegg was a liar and that his show on the leadership debates was just that - show, not real, all talk and no substance and a load of utter lies.
Before the 2010 general election Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, Vince Cable agreed with Labour that Cameron and Osborne's plans risked making things worse, he did a 180 degree about turn and suddenly agreed with the Tories when he went into government with them, instead of admitting he and Labour were right the first time, he still keeps backing the same old failing policies. It is this kind of attitude that is losing the Lib Dems support and voters are turning away from them in droves. The Liberal Democrats have done nothing for anyone, least of all their loyal supporters.
Clegg himself seems to be in cloud cuckoo land most days and denial the rest of the time. At their autumn conference Clegg announced with a fanfare that he had persuaded former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown to come out of retirement to head their election campaigns, if this is his work I think they had better put him back - quick!
I've warned repeatedly that the Liberal Democrats were painting themselves into a corner and I gave reasons why I thought that walking away from this coalition is the only answer. If they had done so a year ago, by now they would probably be regaining some of their lost support, however, idiots like Clegg insisted they were staying for the "good of the country" - baloney, for the good of Nick Clegg! Clegg and the Liberal Democrat MPs other excuse was that the country voted for a coalition so they had to stay. Baloney! Nowhere, not on one single ballot paper in this country was there a box to mark which offered a coalition candidate and a coalition government as a choice.
Now there really is only one choice on the table, if the Liberal Democrats do not walk away from this government now, then their vote will implode at the next general election, not only are all the warning signs there, but they have been joined by flashing warning lights and sirens. If they walked away now at least the Lib Dems would probably retain some semblance of a party, if they wait any longer, they will not have enough MPs to even call themselves a party.
The electorate feel thoroughly betrayed by the Liberal Democrats over so many issues, not least university fees, the NHS, education, welfare etc, if they carry on ignoring what the electorate are now telling them loud and clear, then yes the Liberal Democrats really are "dead in the water"!
In the run-up to the general election of 2010, right wing papers like the Daily Mail and the Sun echoed the Conservative party line and tried to scare people into voting Conservative. Scaremongering endlessly about the "plummeting stock market" which apparently entered "free fall" at the mere mention of a hung parliament, or another Labour government.
Perhaps the Daily Mail, and Mail on Sunday, the Sun and the Conservative party, may like to explain why, when we had a hung parliament we didn't we have the "run on the pound" they repeatedly warned about?
They and Osborne may also like to explain why on the 14th November 2008, Osborne warned that the more government borrows the less attractive sterling becomes. He said: "We are in danger, if the government in not careful, of having a proper sterling collapse, a run on the pound".
It is now widely accepted that Labour would have borrowed less than the Conservatives and that the Tories in just 5 years have added over £470 billion more in debt than Labour managed to do in 13 years!
Far from reducing borrowing, chancellor George Osborne has increased it! The Office National Statistics (ONS) shows that borrowing in the first seven months of the 2012-13 financial year was £73.3bn, that's £5 billion higher than in the same period of 2011-12, which is illustrating the failure of the government's economic strategy.
Who's fault is it and who does Osborne blame this time? The royal wedding? Too many bank holidays? The Jubilee? The weather? Too hot-cold-wet or dry and perhaps took the Treasury by surprise when is snows in winter?
No according to George Osborne, it's not *his* fault at all, this time the fault for *his* increased borrowing and the decline in *his* tax receipts is the fault of a cutback in the production of North Sea gas and Oil.
But wait a minute, isn't this cutback in production in the North Sea a direct result of George Osborne's policy? Didn't he try to make the North Sea oil and gas producers pay a rise in supplementary charge in order to pay for his reduction in fuel tax in his 2011 budget? Wasn't Osborne warned that his £2bn tax raid would result in the industry coming up short by around £50 billion?
And wasn't the North Sea Oil and gas industry going from strength to strength in 2011 before Osborne interfered with it?
According to the sector's annual business survey published in February 2011 it was; UK Oil and gas said: "capital investment in exploration and production has increased by 60% over the past two years, significantly slowing the rate of production decline from the UK continental shelf."
In 2010, the UK produced 850 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. So that's OK then? Yes George?
But wait I'm confused!
In the 2012 budget of total and utter confusion, didn't then the chancellor announce a £160 million brown field allowance for those operators promising further development of mature fields? Wasn't the concession one of several measures trailed in the 2012 budget aimed at tackling fears of a collapse in further investment in North Sea oil and gas fields following the £2bn tax raid by Osborne in his previous 2011 Budget, raising the the marginal tax rate for operators to between 62 and 81 per cent?
So first of all North sea production was doing well until Osborne hit it with a £2bn tax hike to pay for trying to make himself popular with motorists? (And Rupert Murdoch and the Sun newspaper editor).
Then it wasn't doing well so Osborne had to step in and ease back on his tax take?
So as a direct result of his interference, he has all but buggered North sea production for the whole of 2011 - 2012 as well as buggered up the tax receipt in the Treasury and this is somehow the fault of North Sea oil and gas?
Meanwhile tax receipts continue to decline, production in the North sea has slowed, Osborne is borrowing £158 billion more than the previous Labour government would have done and this is the fault of North Sea oil and gas?
It's rumoured that Osborne is going to halt the rise on fuel at the petrol pumps again in his Autumn statement next week, so North Sea oil and gas better beware, as the chancellor may replace the the tax he placed on you in his 2011 Budget and then lifted in 2012, it is now in danger of being implemented again.
I bet poor Chloe Smith who Osborne threw to the lions den of Newsnight with Paxman, instead of appearing person (coward) over his omnishambles Budget on - off, on - off, on fuel price rise back in the summer of 2012 is quaking in her shoes, in case there is another almighty cock-up, which she'll end up being totally humiliated over.
One minute last summer's fuel rise was essential and the next minute it was unnecessary. One minute a Treasury minister said it would cost £1.5 billion to scrap the rise and then later said it would cost £0.5billion, and it was all Labour's fault anyway and Osborne announced that fuel was then 10p a litre cheaper than it would have been under Labour. (At this point the Tories had been in power for 2 years 3 months, and yet apparently this is Labour's fault?!)
What George Osborne the most incompetent fiscally illiterate chancellor in the history of this country doesn't want you to know, is that as well as North Sea cut in production, there is also a cut in production in the construction industry by a huge 10.8%. There is a cut in manufacturing as it tries in vain to absorb the cost of the chancellors massive 2.5% VAT hike and a total fall off in demand for goods as more and more people see their quality of life rapidly diminish under austerity cuts and the public sector in the middle of losing over one million of its workers and the sudden loss of their purchasing power in the market has led to a tanking of consumer confidence, where no one is buying anything, or having anything built. Osborne has forgotten that a thriving public sector feeds the private sector, it feeds the service industry and it also accounts for healthy tax receipts into the Treasury.
Another anomaly is this supposed "fall" in unemployment. If unemployment is falling by the rate in which the Government claim, then why is the benefits bill rising and why isn't there a rise in tax receipts into the Treasury as more people work and pay tax and national insurance? And why is government borrowing rising not falling?
Could it be because the government are pushing more and more people into low paid jobs and the benefit bill is rising because more people are having to come to claim working tax credits in order to manage? So in effect the taxpayer is subsidising the Tory supporting corporations to pay less than a living wage?
There has been an over 50% increase in the number of part-time jobs, this is because it is cheaper for employers to hire two part-time workers instead of one full-time worker and the employer is then able to keep wages down to a bare minimum, pay less national insurance and no holiday or sick pay. meanwhile the government are forcing people to work two or more part-time jobs.
Also part of the reason for falling tax receipts into the Treasury is because the government are forcing people on the government work fare programmes to work full-time for nothing in big companies like Tesco, Poundland, Argos etc. Although they are classed as technically employed and taken off of the unemployment register, they are not really employed and the state, (us taxpayers), still have to keep them and pay them benefits to live on, despite the fact these people are actually working full-time? The taxpayer is once again subsidising the Tory supporting, Tory doning corporations and giving them free labour. So unemployment is not falling at all, in fact it is probably rising.
I have warned repeatedly on this blog that in the end the chancellor's hens will come home to roost and unemployment would cause a huge problem in this country and it is now starting to happen.
So as Osborne is actually increasing borrowing, can he tell us when we should expect the run on the pound he once warned about if borrowing was not not brought under control and we had a hung parliament or kept a Labour government?
Could the chancellor also explain the anomaly of why, when he is borrowing far more than Labour, has more unemployed than Labour, and is paying out far more in benefits than the Labour government did and is taking in less in tax receipts than under Labour (even under the dire circumstances of the worse global recession for 100 years and the global banking collapse), how come the deficit is going down and not up? Could it have something to do with George Osborne borrowing QE money from the Bank of England and paying the deficit down with that? So we are now in the crazy situation of the Conservative government borrowing money from itself in order to pay for borrowing more money to cover its excess spending on benefit bills which were incurred by its own draconian cuts, austerity measures and a massive hike in VAT. The whole idea of QE is to stimulate the banks lending and get the economy moving, but there is no evidence of this happening. The wealth gap between rich and poor in this country is widening and the way this Tory chancellor as managed QE has probably done more to widen it! Mervyn King at the Bank of England estimated that printing all this "funny money" has inflated everyone's assets, which is brilliant for those who actually have assets, but it isn't so good for those who do not! QE figures imply that the richest tenth are better off to the tune of £126,000, while the poorest tenth are almost £300 *worse* off. Once again we are seeing Osborne and the Tories pandering to the rich while kicking the poor while they are down and starving!
Either the Tory controlled government is playing politics with the British economy, or they have maneuvered the economy into such an appalling position that they are panicking and haven't got a clue what they are doing, or the first idea to get it back out again. We are stuck in a fiscal dead end with a sheer drop on each side and just a tattered and frayed rope bridge to return by. What is clear, is that this Tory controlled government are in no way competent for the return journey and before long, they will drive us off the edge of a financial cliff.
It's worth remembering that when Labour left office they handed the Tories an economy in recovery and growth, which Cameron and Osborne turned into a "double dip recession made in Downing Street" we have one small reprieve in Q3 a tiny 1% growth, which was mainly due to the Olympics and personal debt soaring as Osborne tries to force householders to pay their bills through their credit cards and payday loan companies. Now we are enduring the weakest recovery from recession in living memory and we have been left behind by our rivals, even in crisis hit Europe, and the US economy which is still taking the same path out of recession that the UK was on under the previous government their recovery continues to strengthen and slowly improve. As I have explained above about artificially reducing unemployment, which I believe is drastically affecting our living standards as they plummet and wages are being forced down as people struggle to get by on low paid part-time jobs, which in turn is having a catastrophic effect on growth.
Next week we have the chancellor's Autumn statement and it is already rumoured that the chancellor is going to once again attack welfare benefits, forcing the poor to pay for the richest tax cuts, and forcing the poor to pay for free labour for big corporations that can easily afford to pay their staff a proper decent living wage. And to pay for the greed of the Tory supporting bankers that caused the problems in this country and helped to cause the world's economic problems. It's now reached the stage where Osborne's insane measures are not only hurting the poorest, the disabled, the most vulnerable in our society, but it has reached the point where it is going to start affecting so called "middle England".This will have a devastating effect on Osborne's plans for the foreseeable future.
There is absolutely no way out of this because Osborne refuses to acknowledge he is totally wrong and has made the wrong choices and taken the wrong decisions, while he does this, this country will continue to flounder. Osborne and Cameron believe they are iron men, they are not, they are tin men and neither have a heart (or a brain), they are obstinate and totally ridiculous. We need a complete change of government and we need it soon, unfortunately, the only realistic prospect of this would be for the Liberal Democrats to grow a spine and walk away from this coalition and I honestly do not see this happening, they too, cannot admit they called it wrong, blithering idiots! Because of the Liberal Democrats we are losing our NHS to privatisation and losing our state education too. Nothing is being done about the cost of utilities and the poor and elderly are having to choose between eating something or heating their homes. The Tories are returning this country to the dark Victorian days, next we will have work houses and debtors prisons, probably called something new, but this is what they'll be!
One more sobering thought is that Osborne has put much in store of the cheap borrowing rates the UK supposedly enjoys because (he says) of his austerity measures etc (even though Labour managed to keep our AAA credit rating through the worse global recession for 100 years and a banking collapse and returned the economy to growth and recovery without these insane measures of Osborne's). Well apparently the UK's AAA credit rating depends upon Osborne reducing the debt, and if this isn't happening then we are likely to see our AAA Credit rating reduced by all the major credit rating agencies in the New Year.
No doubt right wing papers like Murdoch's Sun will go easy on the chancellor after his statement as some kind of pay off for Cameron being a coward and not implementing Justice Leveson's proposals for the press but if the total confusion of the Budget in 2011, and then the omnishambles of the pasty tax, the granny tax, the caravan tax and the charity tax,, the skip tax and the longest u-turn Budget in 2012 is anything to go by, then we should prepare ourselves for a very bumpy ride as Osborne's fiscally illiterate Budget unfolds on daily basis and more u-turns come along. We have an economically illiterate chancellor and those around him are not much better, time for the rats to leave a "Drowning Street"!
Even Murdoch will not be able to save this tawdry incompetent omnishambolic Tory controlled government of over privileged, out of touch total economic illiterates.!
The recent fuss about the Rotherham foster parents who allegedly had their foster children taken away because of the foster parents support for UKIP, really reached hysterical levels.
I wasn't sure what I thought about this, my first reaction was "how stupid", but then I wondered what had led up to this situation. Clearly there is an issue here, it is not just "political correctness", this couple were fostering three children from Eastern Europe and the foster parents were by their association with UKIP, opposed to immigration from Eastern Europe.
Based on what I know (or what I think I know) I do believe that Rotherham social workers acted stupidly, they could have handled this situation a lot better than they did. However, this still doesn't negate the fact that there was clearly an issue that needed sorting out, but to tip up and remove the children at 20 minutes notice, was unfair on the foster parents, but most of all unfair it was on the children. It's the children that must be thought of before anyone, or anything else, especially a political party!
From what I have read, social services received a phone call from a member of the public who were concerned about the children's welfare, if social workers receive such a tip off then they must act, they have no choice. I don't know what the tip-off was about, or what was said, but it must have been something serious enough to make social services act, they don't do things like this for nothing!
Children, even babies are very susceptible to tensions and older children are extremely sensitive to things that are said to them or that they overhear. None of us know this couple and they may have been exemplary foster parents up until the children were taken away, but I know they way they have behaved since is appalling. They as well as Nigel Farage and UKIP candidate Jane Collins have made this all about themselves and UKIP and it isn't, it is about those children¬
Why did they contact UKIP who in turn brought in the rabid Nigel Farage who immediately turned this into a huge political fest contacting all his contacts in the national press and TV and used the children's situation and the children concerned as political footballs? If I had a problem like this I would be more likely to go straight to the top of social services and the local authority and if I had no joy there I would contact a solicitor to get some professional advice, I wouldn't phone the Labour party, totally ridiculous.
All the while this hoo hah was going on and even though the children have not been identified, some must know who they are, teachers, neighbours, friends,etc. Isn't it bad enough they find themselves in a strange country and suffered God alone knows what, taken away from their parents and everything they know, placed in one place after another and then when they have finally settled, suddenly they are taken away so suddenly? Whatever social services should not have done that, they should have allowed more time, obviously there is a reason why they were removed, but not like that, it was unnecessary.
I'm not over enamoured with the foster parents behaviour either! Why did the foster parents seek to make a really bad situation worse by making such a big deal out of things with UKIP and made sure they got their story in all the nationals and TV and then if that is not bad enough sell their story to the Sun newspaper? They say they a want the children back, but this was hardly the kind of behaviour that was going to see social services returning the children to their care was it? Let's be honest the foster parents got paid serious money for emergency fostering the children and the children were never theirs and they knew it and they also knew the children could be removed with short notice and they were placed with them on a short term foster arrangement, they knew this, so why are they using emotive terms which hey know are wholly inappropriate in this case?
The leader of Rotherham Council, Roger Stone has said this is a complex case and from what I can gather it was a complex case before the children were placed with these parents. Joyce Thacker who is the council's strategic director of children and young people's services said the three ethnic minority children had been placed with the couple as an emergency and it was never going to be a long term arrangement and that social services were acting under legal advice. Having found out about the foster parents connections with UKIP from an anonymous tip off and already been chastised by a judge for not placing the children appropriately they had no choice but to act, however, they should have done it differently, they handled it incorrectly.
Joyce Thacker said: "The fact of the matter is I have to look at the children's cultural and ethnic needs. "The children have been in care proceedings before and the judge had previously criticised us for not looking after the children's cultural and ethnic needs, and we have had to really take that into consideration with the placement that they were in".
OK I understand that, but perhaps a better idea would have been to have found this out before Rotherham social services placed the children and certainly not just turn up and take them away with 20 minutes notice.
As for Nigel Farage and UKIP candidate in the Rotherham by-election, well it's they who should hang their heads in shame for politicising this sad business, they haven't helped, they have made things a thousand time worse, but I suspect their intention was never to help this couple, or the children, but to use them all for political purposes during their by-election campaign.
As for the foster parents, well sorry if this sounds harsh, but they joined Ukip and the truth is that they are against immigration and their leader is a bit of loose cannon given to ranting and raving about immigration and the UKIP candidate in Rotherham, has been overheard in a racist rant against immigrants herself in Barnsley. If this couple had actually read the Ukip mission statement before becoming members they may not have joined, however, it is a bit too late to read it now as UKIP have taken it down from their website - wonder why?
Anyone who doesn't think that Ukip are not using this sad story for their own political advantage only need look at Ukip website and their campaigning. Gone is any talk of their distasteful anti immigrant policies, gone are their more strident views on racism and in their place is everything to do with this story about these poor little children and it is disgusting. Even Andrew Gilligan of the Telegraph is joining in and trying to turn this into a party political issue when it is clearly not. The council happens to be a Labour run council, but social services are not affiliated to any party and it is social services that made the decision NOT the Labour party. The mere fact that Farage is using this, tells you that he couldn't give a monkeys about these children or their foster parents, all he cares about is getting a few cheap and nasty votes by stirring up trouble.
Time Farage and the UKIP by election candidate, Jane Collins, stopped stoking this fire and thought about the children. Do they even REMEMBER THEM?
Official figures show that the Tory controlled government's flagship welfare-to-work programme has failed to hit its own target.
Under the scheme companies and charities are paid around £14,000 for every person it finds work for.
If the government had done absolutely nothing at all, the same number of people would have found themselves jobs.
Under the previous Labour government's successful jobs for the future work programme more people were found proper jobs. Prime Minister, David Cameron's reply to this was that Labour's programme was too expensive! I know he doesn't do detail and figures very well, but even by David Cameron's not very exacting standards, that was a pretty silly comment. It cost far less in terms of getting people back to work and having them contribute tax and national issuance etc, than it does for the £14,000 per person that the Tories are paying scandal hit back to work companies like A4e!
The government says the scheme needs more time, but back in June 2012, companies like A4e had still only managed to get 3.5% long term unemployed back to work, if anything the situation at A4e has got worse since the summer and not better.
The government set a very low target of 5.5%, this was set to give providers leeway but only managed 3.53%. That means between 1st June 2011 and end of July 2012 around 878,000 people were referred to the government's work programme and only around 31,000 got jobs.
The taxpayers are paying companies like the scandal hit A4e to produce results and so far they have totally failed. I would also like to know how many people A4e have actually put into work in jobs that exist and how many are made up! Previously auditors found A4e management instructing staff to claim for putting people into jobs which did not exist and into jobs which did not qualify for payment and fabricating paperwork. This is yet another way the unemployment figures can be manipulated, no wonder the government is loath to do anything about A4e!
Another bare faced lie David Cameron told today in Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) was that the number of those claiming job seeker related benefits had fallen, this was a bare faced lie! The number of long term unemployed and claiming unemployment related benefits has reached an all time high and to ad to that we have another startling fact, there are now more people in work claiming Housing Benefit and tax Credits than there are people claiming out of work benefits. The whole system is in total chaos and this is *before* the massive unprecedented reform of Universal Credit kicks in next year!
With the implementation of Universal Credit, and a much tougher sanctions policy for those people unfit for work on Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), things are getting very tough and very frightening. Only 1.5% of people from this group were found work. Referrals to the new ESA claimant group are very low and successful outcomes in the hundreds rather than the thousands the government expected. This means that some disabled people are failing to get the tailored help they require and were promised and how can you make people that are too sick to work, suddenly pick up their beds and work? Why is the government "scratching its collective head" over this fact? They have been repeatedly told by various disabled groups that people are too sick, or too disabled to work and even if they were able to work the employers offering jobs for them are just not there.
For those on Job seekers Allowance (JSA) as well as those on ESA, it will be providers such as scandal hit A4e who police claimants' job-searches and refer them for sanctions. These companies do this already, however, with Universal Jobmatch they will have even more influence than they currently have.
As the government keep banging on about "something for nothing" and are using the taxpayers money to fund their failing back to work scheme. Also why is the public and journalists being denied information on government contracts with A4e and why information on Freedom of Information requests been heavily redacted on the pathetic excuse of commercial confidentiality? It's taxpayers money, we have a right to know!
It cost approximately £5bn per year to pay out JSA claims and the government frequently infer that people are just "lazy feckless scroungers" whose "blinds are still down" when others are going to work and if they do not meet a whole raft of insults and conditions then sanctions will be applied that may last up to three years, yet Work Programme providers are being paid over £5bn a year and we all now see they have spectacularly failed. Yet far from the government applying sanctions to these companies, they are actually defending their appalling record. Former boss of A4e, and friend of David Cameron's, Emma Harrison has personally been paid £8.6 million in one year alone. According to DWP figures 510,000 people have had their benefits sanctioned, while Emma Harrison gets off Scott free.
This back to work scheme isn't working because it cannot work, it is in chaos just like everything else this government touches or interferes with. Blaming the victims for this government's mismanagement and barking mad austerity and ideological driven measures is totally ridiculous. Out of work benefits represents approximately 15% of the entire benefit bill. it's a sledgehammer to crack a nut and it is failing - big time!
Virtually every Tory and Lib Dem MP has given a different figure and a different set of statistics. Matthew Hancock on BBC Daily Politics show today was gabbling on about a figure of 200,000 that had been helped back into work, where did he get that from, think of a number double it and a few naughts? If Tory MPs and government ministers are incapable of getting their facts and figures right, how is the rest of us supposed to know what is going on? Or have the Tories decided to come out and intentionally baffle and confuse in order to confound the public to try and limit the damage of bad publicity?
Also if the government doesn't understand why it is having difficulty getting sick and disabled people from the ESA group back to work successfully, then it will not understand other less complex issues and the whole policy will fail - badly.
Well, well, well Malcolm Lowe-Lauri former CEO of the Leicester Hospital Trust, looks like you jumped to join KPMG just at the right time! (Just as predicted) Mr Lowe-Lauri's departure from the Trust was exposed on this blog last June see HERE. Seems that Mr Lowe-Lauri has a lot in common with a former NHS adviser to the Prime Minister, David Cameron who recently jumped ship to join a lobbying company! See: HEREhow many people who previously worked for Government and had dealings with Lansley's Health & Social care [Bill] Act are now leaving Government and NHS trusts, in order to join the private sector and lobbying companies in order to make themselves rich? Companies like KPMG, IBM and lobbying firms like MHP Communications etc it seems are the beneficiaries of people that would have a lot of inside information. Of course they all state they are under post contract obligations not to work in certain areas and I expect they will "officially" fulfill those obligations! Recently it has come to my attention that IBM, who are the world's largest IT and consulting services company have put in a bid to run IT services and supply software to Leicester Hospital Trust. The idea was originally suggested by a non executive director (NED) of the Board, but now apparently negotiations are in full swing and due to be signed off before the New Year, strangely, before a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Leicester Hospital Trust has been appointed! Jim Birrell, who last summer was named as the fifth most expensive interim chief executive in the health service, was appointed Interim Chief Executive at Leicester trust. I've no idea what Mr Birrell gets paid by the Leicester Trust, however, as he commanded a salary of around £1,250 a day while in his previous role as Director of Delivery at the Birmingham and Solihull primary care trusts, one hopes that the Leicester Trust is paying their staff properly, and on time, after hiring such an expensive acting CEO?
Who was the NED that originally suggested the IBM deal and does he/she have any connections with IBM?
Has the Trust ever put this contract out to tender? If not why not?
As there appears to be a relatively short time to wait before the new permanent CEO is appointed in the New Year, it does seem a bit odd that the Trust is rushing in to sign off a deal between the Trust and IBM before the new CEO takes up position. As the new CEO, who will be the highest ranking officer in the Trust, surely he/she will want to have input into such an important and costly deal? Especially as IBM appears to have run into difficulties in delivering one of their contracts at South West One (SW1).
IBM has bailed out troubled Somerset shared services firm South West One with a £10m loan as the local authority venture starts bidding for work as an IT services company.
The supplier extended a mortgage to cover its 75% interest in South West One (SW1) after managers tore up the troubled public-private partnership's original business plan to avert its collapse. Computer Weekly
If the Leicester Trust was so cash strapped that at one point their then CEO, Malcolm Lowe-Lauri, sent out an email to staff warning that their salaries may not be paid, then how can they afford the services of a giant IT specialist like IBM as well as hiring the fifth most expensive interim CEO in the health service? If the Trust is struggling to provide its own IT services how will they manage taking a loan to cover it? Could it possibly be because IT suppliers like IBM can win big government contracts by cutting prices to suicidal-levels, and then make up the difference by brutally cutting costs and avoiding disaster in the interim by claiming tax rebates? The losses are built into the outsource model, say accountancy experts. Non-payment of tax is built in too - since companies only pay tax on their profits. But a loss-making outsource will still generate income for its parent - in the form of inter-group payments that go unrecorded under UK accounting rules. If this is the case then the loser is going to be the public who will suffer reduced and poor quality services, and the staff, who may begin to lose their jobs.
If Leicester hospital has financial problems why are they even thinking of a deal with IBM? Could it be a deal deliberately set up to fail? I've heard that the Head of the IM&T Department told the Leicester & Mercury that "nothing was going to be done" and that he knew nothing, however, it now looks like the deal will be signed off before the start of the New Year. If the head of IM&T is telling the truth and actually "knows nothing" then it looks like they too have been kept in the dark about this possible deal with IBM - why? Why is Leicester Hospital trust being so secretive about this deal with IBM? What will be the full effect of this deal with IBM on the existing IM&T department at the Trust? Will this inevitably lead to reduced services as IBM seek to make profits for shareholders? Will this deal inevitably mean the closure of the Trust's IM&T department and the loss of jobs?
I am told if the IM&T had a thorough reconfiguration in the department then it could be run a lot more efficiently. Following an external review of Management for Change conducted for the IM&T department, it was found that more Engineers were needed to cope with the call demand, and less managers. But since then, no additional Engineers have been appointed, but in fact one Engineer was made a Team Leader pulling him off the call work. Who made this poor decision which is opposite to that of what the review suggested and why? From where I'm standing it looks like the Trust is deliberately running the Information & Technology department down in order to bring in IBM.m If this is the case, who is leading this?
I'm told there are 4 team leaders for 9 permanent IM&T engineers. The engineers are struggling to cope and they have a backlog of calls, why don’t the ‘team leaders’ help them? This would never happen in a private company so why is it allowed to happen in the NHS? Why isn't Jim Birrell stepping in to help sort this problem out?
The radiology department has their own budget and 6 IT staff, but has been so poorly managed that there are now 550 calls for IT service and no one to do it (surly they need to look into where their staff are working?) The Trusts main IM&T engineers are being pulled of their already overloaded workload to help them – why? Poor management, or is it to make the IM&T service appear poor, so the staff will want IBM to run it?
The so called relocation of IT services out of the hospital to the county council offices. This was done at a huge expense; only to discover when they got there that staff couldn’t work or connect to the hospital systems due to a formality not being signed off. Staff couldn’t work, and in the end they had no option but to pack up their computers in their cars after days of just sitting at their desks and moved themselves back to the hospital.
If Leicester Trust outsources its IT department they may then be charged for any additional services, such as installing new software which could take many days and cost around £20,000 to £30,000 labour which is as much as the software.
Once the Board sign off the proposal to IBM, the main services will be relocated to India, leaving a lot of people out of work in Leicester. The IBM proposal exposes a story that is actually taking place across the country, where hospital trusts are being deliberately run down, so when the private sector is brought in to run them, people think they are saving them and this could not be further from the truth. What will happen is services to patients will be seriously reduced the quantity and quality of care will be badly affected. The number of different surgical procedures will be cut and many procedures will become only available if you pay for them. It's happening already in Trusts and in GP surgeries. Recently there was a huge drop in the number of people waiting for treatment, this was primarily because people on waiting lists for surgery were actually reassessed and taken off the list, then they were informed they no longer needed their operation, this was done without further consultation between doctor and patient. Nurses are losing their jobs every single day, operations are being cancelled, procedures limited, our hospitals are being deliberately run down so the Tory controlled government can flog them all off to the private sector, who are circling the NHS like a flock of vulchers waiting for the rich pickings. The number of cabinet and Government ministers who stand to gain from the privatisation of the NHS is alarming, they have interests in virtually every department. If people do not wake up and realise this soon, then it is when we lose our NHS and not if. It's happening now at great pace. Anyone who seriously doubts what I am saying need only to read this piece in the Telegraph by two doctors Dr Clive Peedell and Dr Richard Taylor who are forming the new National Health Action party and intend to put up candidates in Coalition seats in order to try and save our NHS. See HERE
People are struggling with their bills and the recent hike in gas and electricity are really frightening people and the government's answer to this is to raise the utility bills even more under the guise of Renewable Green Energy Investment? An investment with a cost not being met by the government or the Thatcher *privatised* utility companies but by the majority being forced to be met by the people of this country. These measures will fuel on average a rise of around £150 average per year!
"Earth to planet Davey" people do not have the money for this huge increase. Can he and this Tory controlled government advise struggling families, who are barely getting by now, how on Ed Davey's "green earth" they are going to find this extra money?
Liberal Democrat New Age Tory, Ed Davey, Energy Secretary, is a buffoon, he lurches from being "green" to "scorched" in half a sentence! Thanks to the Tory government's scorched earth policies, which Ed Davey not only personally supports, but has wholeheartedly endorsed with his voting power in parliament, people living on low incomes are already living in fuel poverty, while people just above them on the income scale are beginning to slip through the net in droves, and the way things are going, pretty soon, many thousands of "middle income Britain" will joining them!
Not only does Ed Davey appear to be flippantly batting away the enormous strain his policy will place on people already almost losing the fight to manage their household expenses, he also ignores the consequences his proposals will have on small businesses, who are already struggling to pay the soaring cost of utilities! The rising cost of utilities are the main cause of rising costs for 45% of small companies. If these businesses want to remain in business then many have no other alternative but to pass their price hikes onto the consumer. It's a vicious circle. When this happens the consumer is left with even less to spend, and consumer confidence is hit still further, local economies take a pounding and this in turn feeds into the general economy, which then adversely affects supply and demand. No demand, equals no growth, and no growth, equals recession and already economics experts are predicting we will enter a triple dip recession in the New Year! You do not have to be economics professors Joseph Stieglitz or David Blanchflower etc to understand this, and What sparked this downward spiral into the abyss in consumer spending (or lack of) off? Answer: The fiscally illiterate Conservative Chancellor, George Osborne and his massive hike in VAT, from 17.5% to a huge 20%. Couple this with what will be the sacking of around a million public sector workers and the omission of their spending power in the economy, it's not hard to see why we are in this spiral of despair now.
The public are in a lose - lose situation.
Public services are being cut and are descending into fear, chaos and confusion and with no expert public sector staff to run them proficiently they are starting to disintegrate so the public lose out in terms of excellent public services in the NHS, education and local authorities. The economy is also being driven into a black hole and we are being driven back towards Victorian times. We miss not only the excellence of the public sector w employee but we also miss the public sector's spending power in the economy, and their tax and national insurance receipts into the Treasury,and now have a rise in benefit payments to people that would have otherwise stayed productive earning and spending in the economy and paying tax and national insurance into the Treasury. And all of this because the eejit incompetent Osborne cannot see the fiscal woods for the monetary trees who has deployed a scorched earth policy towards benefits and public spending which is doing untold damage to the British economy. If monetary policy is supposed to provide the blunt instrument with which to "bash the economy into line", via interest rates and controlled inflation, then Osborne has by-passed the Bank of England's influence and gone out and purchased, not just a cosh with which to bludgeon the economy half to death, but a pile driver with which to bury the British economy deep into the Tory scorched earth's crust, and Liberal Democrat, New Age Tory Ed Davey, has supported these measures at every opportunity he possibly could by voting with the fiscally illiterate Tory government. Davey is currently aiding the Tory government in their production of scorched earth economic "suicide pills", which we will all need if this incompetent government is allowed to keep blundering through the echelons of the British economy, if they are not stopped - and soon - then there will be precious little to save and it will not be MPs, banksters and corporate friends of the Tory party and New Age Tory party (Liberal Democrats) that will be made to pay for it all - it will be us!
It's pretty hard to accept when today we learn that the Tory government have wasted £5billion on a back to work scheme that has totally failed to get people back to work! The only people this scheme has helped is the Tory doning, Tory supporting back to work companies this ridiculously incompetent Tory government have hired in place of the successful RDAs! Once again we see taxpayers money hemorrhaging out of the Treasury and into the bank accounts of the private sector companies like A4e. Of course the stupid government could have left the previous Labour government's Regional Development Agencies in place who were actually helping to get 100's of thousands of people back to work, but no this incompetent government knew best - only obviously they did not!
Ed Davey voted to increase the rate of VAT and voted to raise undergraduate's tuition cap to £9000 per year. He has voted with the Tories on EMA which is penalising poorer sixth form students in their studies. He has supported the government in their attempts to privatise education and has also supported the Tory government on the their controversial Health & Social care bill (now an Act of Parliament) which is currently destroying and privatising the NHS and he has also voted for regional NHS pay. (Delicious irony fact - how about we vote for regional MPs pay?)
Now the New Age Tory (Liberal Democrat) party with their multi coloured political swap shop pullovers and rosettes, are not only are helping the Conservatives batter those on benefits and low incomes into submission with the threat of fear destitution via sanctions to benefits etc, but they seem to think these "scum benefit scroungers" people fall into two categories "undeserving poor" and "deserving poor", the former being oversubscribed, and the latter barely in operation! Astonishingly the multi faceted political chameleons now want to put an even bigger strain on the "scum scrounger benefit cheats" *people* (who they have forgotten are actual human beings) via their utility bills and they are supporting the Conservatives who were the political party under former prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who sold off this country's utilities, to France, Germany and tried to privatise anything that wasn't nailed down.
If only "Sid" could see what his backing of the Tory government's privatisation and sell off of shares in British Gas in 1986, would do to the ordinary "working man" in 2012, under the guise of a coalition government which would have been more at home in Hitler's Germany. No doubt his "hiss" would have rapidly been reduced to a pfft!
As usual back then, just as it is undoubtedly is now the shareholders who benefit out of our public companies and our public services. During and after the battering of Thatcher, you were probably a Tory if you had at least a spare £1,350 for a 100 shares in British gas and in 1986 £1,350 was a huge amount for ordinary families to find and was completely out of most people's reach! Of course some ordinary people bought into the scheme, but it was foreign investors who purchased the biggest number of shares giving them control of our gas (and electricity) companies, which is underpinning the problems we are all experiencing with escalating utility costs today. The same happened with British Rail and exactly the same is happening right at this very moment with the NHS, education and welfare! Are people going to really have to wait another 26 years before they realise how big a mistake this is, or will they learn the lessons of Gas, electric, water and British rail etc?
When people had finally had enough and felt pushed to the extreme, Thatcher's measures led to the poll tax riots in 1990, what will The Tories and their "New Age Tory" counterparts measures lead to in the not too distant future? The mood on the streets is turning uglier with each passing day, couple this with people's genuine feelings of resentment against being demonised by the British government, who seem hell bent on turning factions of society against each other, able bodied against disabled, employed against unemployed, young against old, private sector workers against public sector workers, neighbour against neighbour, healthy people against sick people, indigenous population against immigrants etc in order to get their draconian austerity measures through, it is not hard to see that the whole thing has become a tinderbox just waiting for some "bright spark" not dissimilar to Ed Davey to set it all off. An extra average of £4.50 per week on fuel bills may not seem a lot to the likes of Ed Davey and Conservative spokesman millionaire Tim Yeo, but it may just prove to be the straw that finally broke the back of the camel of not only the poor on benefits and the low waged, but on middle income earners too and thousands of small businesses up and down the length and breadth of this country!
George Osborne, the chancellor, settled for a cap of £7.6bn in today’s prices on the framework by 2020 – a leap from the subsidy cap of £2.6bn for the 2012-13 financial year, rising to £3.9bn in 2015.This extra cost will be passed on to households and companies through higher energy bills - Finacial Times
It's all very well for the likes of politicians like Ed Davey to have principles etc and one may just be able to understand the merit of why this needs to be done, but it should not fall to the poor, unwaged and low waged of this country to pay for the benefits, that the rich will once again make a killing out of. We saw this with the sell off and privatisation of our utilities and railways and can all now plainly see the catastrophe that these measures proved to be for ordinary people and will be exactly so again with the Renewable Sources bill and is it is already proving to be with the privatisation of the NHS and state school education. Why should the ordinary people who never gained out of the Conservative government's various privatisation of our services, be forced to pay for them though the nose, just like they are being forced to pay now for the banks and financial sector's collapse?
Why should ordinary people who have next to nothing be forced to line the shareholders pockets and bank accounts of Tory doning health companies, utility companies and banks? Especially while this dreadful government seek to lay the blame for all this country's ills firmly at their door, while allowing bankers to go unchallenged and uncharged and get away with their crimes against the people of this country's standard of living, jobs, savings and businesses?
The government's austerity measures are not designed to pay down the debt and improve the deficit (because both are increasing), but they are s designed to privatise everything in the country, soon we will have absolutely nothing left, it will all be in the hands of Tory doning private sector who operate for profit, not for the benefit of our people. It's true, it's happening and it is happening right now.
Mark my words, people are extremely frightened, they cannot physically bear or accept another attack on their finances or their standard of living and will not accept another huge hike in utility bills and this Tory government and their New Age Tory Liberal Democrat mates will corner scared frightened people at their peril!
If ever Dodgy Dave Cameron and his mates get fed up with screwing everything up in government, they could always turn to publishing books, I have just the titles for them:
How to Fiddle the Unemployment Figures - By David Cameron
How To Rent your House and Make Thousands out of the Taxpayer - By David Cameron
How To Procure Millions of Pounds for Your Political Party From Shadow Banks - By David Cameron
How To get Your Treasurer To Sell Dinner With the PM For £250,000 - By David Cameron
How to Obscure the Tanking British Economy - By George Osborne
How To Make £450,000 Out of Taxpayers - By George Osborne
How to Avoid Paying Inheritance tax - By George Osborne
How To make £70,000 out Of Taxpayers - By Stephen Dorrell
How To procure Thousands of Pounds From Health companies - By Andrew Lansley
How To Help Virgin Care Buy Up the NHS - By Jeremy Hunt
How To Nick £60,000 From The TaxPayer and Get away With It - By David Laws
How to Pretend That You care About Child Poverty - Iain Duncan-Smith
The latest from the Work and pensions Secretary, Ian Duncan-Smith is that he cares about poverty (if you believe that you'll believe anything). Actually, what he cares about is bringing out a whole raft of measures that are literally going to mean that some people are forced to choose between heating their homes, or eating, while others will be in very real danger of losing their homes under Smith's cap on housing benefit. Then try and conceal it by pretending you care and order a study into child poverty that we do not need. And who has Iain Duncan-Smith roped in to help him deceive the public over poverty? No other than Liberal Democrat David Laws, the new minister for schools, the man who Cameron fired Sarah Teather for. Laws is the man who is an ex banker multi-millionaire who fiddled the tax payer out of over £60,000 to pay rent to his lover on the pretext he didn't want his family to discover he is gay. He was rewarded for his deceit by being promoted back into the Cameron government and allowed to sit in on cabinet meetings and now he is helping IDS pull the wool over people's eyes about child poverty, it's a disgrace. Children will soon be living in poverty, in freezing cold damp poorly lit homes with little or no food for long periods, this is what IDS and Laws and this hideous Tory controlled government are concealing!
The true reason why Smith is trying to obscure poverty and how it's measured is because he knows perfectly well that his new policies are going to cause a massive increase, not only in child poverty, but in poverty generally and he is going to mask the effects. The man is not only a nasty bullying hypocrite, he is also a deceitful bare faced liar.
We already have the Child Poverty Act 2010 to measure poverty effectively, we do not need anymore layers of bureaucratic clap trap to try and purposefully confuse the issue.
Smith says: "we must learn the lessons of a decade" he is shameless, he hides behind his cloak of religion and lies through his back teeth. He said that "despite best intentions and an unprecedented level of spending" Labour failed to cut child poverty by a half and not enough was done to break the cycle of disadvantage.
This is just so disingenuous, yet where is Labour's response? Why didn't they immediately point out that-true Labour miss *its own target* to cut child poverty by a half, but they did succeed in cutting it by a quarter down from the excruciating high levels it was left at by previous 18 years of successive Tory governments? To reduce poverty by that amount was an astonishing achievement. IDS knows very well that during boom years the poverty measure changes and it is harder to get people out of poverty and when we have a fall in the standard of living it gives a false picture that more are being lifted from poverty.Which makes Labour's achievements even more successful. That's why there are four measures as checks. But 60% is the international benchmark by which we will be measured byEurostat,Unicef, theOECDand everyone else. As the IFS says, whatever the short term blips, over any longer stretch this measure fairly reflects a nation's poverty level.
David Cameron, in his now notorious Hugo Young lecture, accepted the measure and claimed inequality mattered. "More unequal countries do worse according to every social indicator" he said – though he has now reneged from that. He also claimed: "As the state expanded under Labour, our society became more not less unfair." Not true, saysProfessor John Hills, the LSE's great expert on inequality. He says the poor caught up significantly with the middle, and all those below the line did better by exactly the same amount, not just those who inched over it. The great distortion was the soaraway top 0.5%, the mega-rich Labour dared not touch. Leave them out, and the rest of the country became more equal.
The other untruth is that Labour did nothing but splurge on benefits. This government erases the past, as if 2010 was year zero in tackling the causes of poverty. Labour used the nuanced phrase "social exclusion" to capture the many reasons why people get left behind. A social exclusion unit supervised 18 taskforces exploring every cause and effect, from worklessness to debt, low skills, poor neighbourhoods, bad housing, educational failure, mental health, single parenthood and more. Every year a fat document, Opportunity For All, benchmarked progress on removing causes of disadvantage, including breastfeeding and smoking: why has that been abandoned?
Consider what else they did. Catching family problems early was at the heart of Labour policy, with Sure Start children's centres and free nursery education. The decent homes plan brought millions of dilapidated social homes up to standard after years of neglect. The claim that Labour ignored work is shameless: "Work is the best welfare" and "A hand up, not a hand out" were Labour mantras from the start. The programme to get single parents into work was an unprecedented success, now dismantled, like the successful scheme that cut teen pregnancies. The Guardian
I really get sick of the way this government of corrupt millionaires lie and cheat and sit pretty while they dish out severe austerity measures on the poor, low waged, disabled, unemployed. I bet none of these people's children will go without this Christmas. This government are doing more to impoverish a whole generation than any other government in this country.
Under Labour, they reduced child poverty by 300,000, it has taken this God forsaken government just 2.5 years to reverse that entirely and place an almost identical number 300,000 back into poverty. All some people have got to look forward to in the new year and spring is poverty and for thousands, they now have the very real fear that they will be losing their homes under IDS benefit cap and Housing benefit cap.
No wonder that the evil bastard Anasazi that is IDS wants to now fiddle the poverty statistics, he wants to conceal the million children he is going to be responsible for placing in poverty. He doesn't want you to think that not having money to heat your home, or feed and clothe your children or put a roof over their head is living in poverty, than man should be locked up for what he is trying to do to people.
This is the 21st century and IDS and this dreadful, hideous government are taking us back to Victorian times. What next? Work houses? Orphanages? People will be evicted from their homes, they'll be unable to rent any other, local authorities outside London will not be able to cope with the extra burden and in the end children are going to be torn screaming and crying from their parents and placed in care, where God alone knows what may happen to them.
It will all end in tears, but I doubt that Iain Duncan-Smith will be shedding any as he spends Christmas with his large family in their rent free mansion complete with tennis courts and swimming pool and extensive grounds. He also recently said poor people should be discouraged from having children by stopping their benefits. Don't forget that IDS is also the man that paid his wife thousands of pounds from the public purse saying she worked for him when she did no such thing, that makes him a cheat and a liar as well as a hypocrite.
Anyone who has a modicum of compassion could not vote for this shower of incompetent, arrogant, heartless fools. Soon there will be no one left willing to admit they voted for the Conservatives, they would be too ashamed to.
David Cameron and George Osborne Asleep While Britain Goes Down the Pan!
Has someone been able to come up with a reasonable explanation why it is that Liberal Democrat MP and former Chief secretary to the Treasury escaped criminal proceedings for knowingly falsely claiming over £60,000 in his parliamentary expenses and was then rewarded for his crime with a promotion from the prime minister?
Other MPs and peers from Conservative and Labour have paid the price of their expenses folly however, the weight of the law does appear to have come down much harder on Labour MPs than it has Tory and Lib Dem MP's and I am wondering why this is?
David Laws principle excuse for falsely claiming what amounts to be a kind of "housing benefit" was, he said, because "he is gay and did not want his family to discover the truth" about his sexuality.
Laws was found guilty of serious breaches of no less than six parliamentary regulations, yet was allowed to pay the money back and apologise given a 7 day suspension from parliament, and that was the princely sum of his punishment! (Other MPs have falsely claimed much less and they got a year's suspension and in fact resigned their seat). Laws didn't even have the decency to do what he knows he should have done and resign his seat as the MP for Yeovil, and Cameron and Clegg, far from sacking him (like Cameron promised he would with errant ministers and MPs) encouraged him to stay on, and later when he thought it was safe, rewarding his criminal behaviour with a promotion. So much for David Cameron's promising the electorate recall of their MP if they did not perform properly - yet another lie! It beggars belief and Cameron etal have the temerity to infer that other people on low incomes are "scroungers"!
David Laws
Laws is a multi-millionaire ex banker, he did not need to steal £60,000 from the taxpayer. If he did not want his family to discover he was living with his partner, then why didn't he just not claim housing costs? being a multi-millionaire it wasn't as if he didn't have the money! Why with all of his money did he claim and pass it to his lover to pay his mortgage? It wasn't just rent he claimed either, it was maintenance etc to his partner's house. It has always puzzled me how his family would have known what he was and wasn't claiming on his parliamentary expenses, why would they know, does he show them his expense claims? However, giving him the benefit of the doubt, if his family did see his expenses didn't they think it was a bit odd that laws was paying for all these other things in his "landlord's" house? Wouldn't they thought it odd that a lodger would pay towards the upkeep of the house he merely rented a room in? At the end of the day, his lover was having his mortgage subsidised by the taxpayer and if he wasn't caught, Laws would have gone on claiming and the taxpayer would have part paid Law's partner's mortgage and it would have still been happening today!
If you or I falsely claimed that were renting a room in a house when if fact we were cohabiting (which is in effect what David Laws did) in order to receive housing benefit, do you think the local authority would not prosecute? If it got to court would the judge accept as mitigating circumstances you did it because you are gay?
No of course not, so why has David Laws got away with this and why at the earliest opportunity has David Cameron and Nick Clegg sacked Sarah Teather from the Government and promoted David Laws bringing him back into Government? And why is David Laws allowed to sit in on cabinet meetings?
I believe the only possible explanation for Laws being permitted to attend cabinet meetings is because Cameron and Clegg are going to give him a ministerial role in the not too distant future, and the position Laws currently holds in Government is just a stepping stone back to the cabinet and just a way of getting the public acclimatised to the fact that Laws is back on scene, despite the fact that he stole over £60,000 from the taxpayer and the public remain largely hostile to him!
What really infuriates, is that the prime minister, the deputy PM and the entire cabinet, the Tory party and the Liberal Democrat party, believe that David Laws is somehow worthy of special treatment, that he is a special case simply because he is gay? That because he is gay and chose to deceive his family, friends work colleagues as well as the public is somehow acceptable as an excuse for his dishonest illegal behaviour? If it is illegal to discriminate against someone on the grounds of their sexuality, how can it be justified to plead homosexuality in mitigation of an offence?
If Laws was allowed mitigating circumstances on the grounds he did not want to "come out" as a homosexual, then why wasn't Denis MacShane allowed to mitigate on the grounds that his young daughter was horrifically killed in an accident, his mother in law died and his marriage broke up? Or should MacShane merely have said that he was "gay" and used that as mitigation? The difference between Laws and MacShane is laws stole £60,000 that's approximately £48,000 more than MacShane and MacShane did not profit personally, he even gave his interns the laptops, which probably went on to help them get further employment and the rest of the money he spent in connection with his government work in Europe. Laws simply paid off his lover's mortgage and paid for the maintenance of his central heating system etc. I've asked it before, so I'll ask it again and no doubt I'll keep asking it until this hideously hypocritical government answers: "Where is the parity in these two cases"?
The entire government is just so hypocritical. Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan-Smith is about to make thousands of families homeless in April 2013 by punishing them for something that is completely beyond their control. IDS is going to place a cap on their benefits which will make it impossible for a great many families to stay in their present accommodation as they will be unable to pay the Tory landlords rent. He says he wants to make work pay, however, the vast majority of people who are claiming housing benefit are actually in work, but they do not earn enough, they are in part-time or low paid work. So how is docking their money making them feel that work pays? Many may just take the view that they may as well just give up the struggle of getting to work with the high cost of fairs and fuel and other expenses, give up the effort and worry of paying their gas, electricity and water bills and rent and rates and claim it all off of the state! IDS and Cameron have a pretty stupid idea of how to "make work pay"! If Tory doning corporations refuse to pay their workers a decent living wage and continue in hiring more part-time workers instead of full-time workers because it is cheaper to hire part-timers as the employer does not have to pay out so much in national Insurance contributions (NICs), then people will be forced to leave as they will simply be unable to afford to go to work and how will this be their fault? The majority of these companies with such bad practices who treat their workers so badly, do not even pay proper corporation tax, so the taxpayer loses out in several different ways:
Very little in corporation tax being paid by these companies so Treasury tax revenues are down
Low waged employees pay little or no income tax, so Treasury brings in less tax revenues
The state is forced to subsidise companies to pay low wages by topping up employees pay, pushing the benefits bill up
These big companies also benefit from the Tory/LibDem government providing them with FREE full-time workers on work government workfare schemes.
Free workers means less paid jobs so Treasury once again is not bringing in income tax revenue
Hiring two part-time workers means employees pay less in NICs, again affecting the Treasury coffers.
Then low waged people will spend less in the economy, which in turn affects us all, if Government dock their working family tax credits and housing benefits, there will be even less spent in the economy!
And this Tory controlled government has the cheek to accuse people of "scrounging"? I know who it really is who is scrounging and cheating the benefits system in this country and it is *not* the public, it is all these mega multi billion corporations, many of whom actually donate millions to the Tory party who are bleeding this country dry and any threat to make them pay their way properly in a civilised society that they benefit greatly from, has them threatening to leave the country and set up sweat shops in India etc. For what they cost this country, personally, I would show them where the door is, but warn them, that once they vacate the UK, they will be *prevented* from trading here in future. If this government wants to get tough, and act tough, then it should get tough with the correct people and stop pickling on soft vulnerable targets!
Meanwhile every single day this Tory controlled government does nothing about these corporations and banks etc is a raid on the wallet of the ordinary person and it is being condoned by the Tories, who are seeking to make ordinary people the scapegoats. These Tory supporting/funding corporations are making themselves and their shareholders mega rich at our cost, it's time people woke up and realised who the real scrounging crooks are!
Greed is running rife and is completely out of control right through this Tory government and Tory supporting corporations, the bubble is inflating daily and just like the credit bubble, it will soon burst. What then?
Tonight it will be revealed that the Tory cabinet Secretary, Francis [Jerry can] Maude will be exposed on Ch4 Dispatches programme as claiming for council tax; gas and electricity charges; ground rent; buildings insurance; internet connection; a TV licence; renting a TV set as well as claiming service charges. Maude's service charges alone are said to be around £5000 per year.
Tory rising star, Helen Grant is claiming £20,000 for a London flat but living in a £1.8m mansion in Surrey.
Does Mark Hoban Minister for Employment. think it is morally acceptable to harass and insult people and treat them like children, ordering them to do things he would not do himself? Does he think it is morally acceptable to call people "scroungers" while he himself claimed thousands of pounds in expenses for items such as wide screen TVs and red silk cushions and a lavatory brush which cost £18?
Does IDS think it is morally acceptable to claim for expenses for his wife, even though she never did the work? Does he think it acceptable to cap peoples benefits and make them homeless while claiming thousands in expenses himself and living rent free in a Buckinghamshire mansion complete with tennis courts and swimming pool and extensive grounds?
Treasury minister David Gauke will be named as pocketing £27,000, made from the sale of his second home which was funded partly by taxpayers.
David Gauke is the minister who believes it is morally wrong for cleaners etc to be paid in cash!Does he also think it is morally wrong to trouser £27,000 of taxpayers money while criticising those unfortunate enough to be in low paid work and supporting his government who are going to take away their housing benefit and make them homeless?
What about David Laws, doe she think this is morally wrong too?
Is it morally acceptable for the Conservative Chancellor, George Osborne to force people to increase their personal debt on credit cards to pay their mortgages, their energy bills, to fill up the car of pay the kids school dinner money, in order that he can say the country has come out of the double dip recession he and his "mate" Dave caused?
Is it morally acceptable for this government to force people with little or nothing to take out these legal loan shark payday loans, like Wonga who has connections to the Conservative party?
Is it morally acceptable to force people to sell their gold and other possessions in order to buy food for their families because they can no longer manage, because this government are driving down workers pay and conditions in the work place?
Is it morally acceptable that ordinary people who did not cause the problems in this country's economy or the global economy should be forced to pay for those who did? Tory bankers like David Laws, Michael Fallon, Francis Maude etc etc?
"We're All In It Together"?
If you say so Dave!
Do you see David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg, David Laws, Iain Duncan-Smith, Chris Grayling, Mark Hoban, Helen Grant, Francis Maude, David Gauke, Or any of the Tory Tyranny in this picture? No - Thought Not!
