What they said....

189. In evidence, the Secretary of State said that the Department had no intention of moving existing claimants of incapacity benefits onto the ESA. He argued:

"I do not think you should set about these sorts of reforms, as it were, by tearing up people's entitlement to benefits. […] I do not think it should be part of our agenda to retrospectively change benefit entitlement, […] it is likely to be the case in two or three years' time that the claimants who will be the hardest to reach and to place in the labour market will be people on old incapacity benefits, not people coming into new Employment and Support Allowance. But, again, I cannot see any alternative way of managing this process of change other than the way we have set out in the Green Paper."[211]

This is as it should be and by going back on this principle they have shown themselves to be unprincipled people. Now they also plan to retrospectively tear up people's entitlement to DLA too.

Source.

Winter pics - test!

I'm lucky to live in a rural area. Here's a few pictures today. You'll have to forgive the dismal quality, I'm trying out my mobile while being yanked by a bad dog.

Coalition Government reintroduces Slavery.

Here are the facts. There are just under half a million job vacancies in this country at the moment. (Click 'vacancies and unemployment' for a pdf file.) According to the coalition government there are at least 5 million people who are ‘economically inactive’ – the euphemism for being out of work.

Let’s be generous and assume that the 5 million figure is correct and all these vacancies are in the right places and they are filled. That leaves 4 and a half million people with no job to go to. But like with the argument for the existence of God, some people will insist that a lot of vacancies are not advertised. I don’t know whether we are expected to have faith that they are out there, never mind how we are supposed to apply for them if we don’t know they exist. But again, let’s be generous and assume that there are a million unadvertised jobs out there (and they’re in the right places, etc, etc.) That’s still three and a half million people with no job to go to.

But hang on a moment, isn’t the coalition government slashing jobs? Half a million jobs, to be exact. And do they not expect another half a million private sector jobs to fall as a result? Oops! Looks like we’re back at 4 and a half million.

It’s no wonder that this government adores the game of ‘blame the victim’ and wants to reintroduce slavery, feebly relabelled as workfare. It’s so much easier for the party of blame, stick and judgement to attack the poor for being poor instead of acknowledging the failure of capitalism and putting right its many vulgar faults.

More:

Harpymarx

Edit: The bully of disabled people, Danny Alexander, has declared that these spiteful reforms are not to punish and humiliate people. Yes they are - that is precisely what they are for - to punish and humiliate people.