**Please substitute the word "sick" or "disabled" for the word poor throughout the 1930s quotes. Welcome to 2010 and the humiliating, degrading world of ATOS, ESA & Work Programmes. Do play the soundtrack above as you read :)
"Then in 1930 the Depression {2008 Credit crunch} threw government into a fiscal panic, and the poor {sick} got the sharp end with the {Work Capability Assessment} Family Means Test. You had to prove just how poor {sick} you were, in intimate domestic detail. It imposed form-filling, impertinent questions......"
"It broke families into homelessness : adult children lost all benefits if anybody in the house earned 31 shillings a week, so they had to move out....."{Anyone claiming ESA with a working partner who earns just over £5000 per year will lose all benefits}
"From 1934, 190,000 unemployed men were made to attend “training camps” simply because there were no Jobs." {New regulations for Mandatory Work Activity have been laid before parliament (March 14th). The government have announced new powers for Jobcentre Plus advisers, that will allow them in certain circumstances to refer Jobseeker claimants to mandatory work placements. The DWP said, “where advisers believe a jobseeker will benefit from experiencing the habits and routines of working life, they will have the power to refer them to a four week mandatory placement.}
"The depression {credit crunch} originated in the U.S., starting with the {sub-prime housing crisis} fall in stock prices that began around September 4, 1929 and became worldwide news with the {fall of Lehman's} stock market crash of October 29, 1929 (known as Black Tuesday). From there, it quickly spread to almost every country in the world."
"An even larger question is whether the {Credit Crunch} Great Depression was primarily a failure on the part of free markets or, alternately, a failure of government efforts to regulate interest rates, curtail widespread bank failures, and control the money supply. "
"In an effort to balance the budget and restore confidence in the pound, on the {22nd June 2010, George Osborne} 10 September 1931 with Phillip Snowden still as Chancellor, the new national government issued an emergency budget, which immediately instituted a round of draconian cuts in public spending and wages. Public sector wages and unemployment pay were cut by 10%, and income tax was raised from 4s 6d to 5s in the pound[6] (from 22.5% to 25%). The pay cuts did not go down well however and resulted in a Mutiny in the Royal Navy."
"Politically the decade {1930s} was dominated by a Conservative-led coalition while Labour tried but failed to be more than the party of the victims of the recession. The National Government blamed Labour for the mess in which the country had fallen - although the origins of the recession lay in Wall Street - while invoking a rhetoric which asked everybody to suffer some pain to see the country through."
Love the soundtrack. I'd like to see sources for your quotes, but otherwise very well done on getting the message across...
ReplyDeleteThe one advantage over the 1930s is that we have more ways to assault Zionists and capitalist wolves and their kind: more varieties of ways of groups and individuals, often with differing perspectives, to come together, disseminate ideas and take direct action where appropriate.
ReplyDeleteThroughout all of history in the UK their has been a housing shortage and that in turn has left many not only poor but homeless if this had been addressed in the past a lot of what has happened with family life and poverty would never have happened
ReplyDeleteThis country has let it's people down year after year and even today the housing list gets bigger and bigger
You would have thought and it's hard to believe that not one single mp or lord has come about and spoken up for the homeless or indeed the sick and disabled and put matters in order so that the wrongs that blights the UK are over
Despite all of the knowledge gained over many many years by lords and mp's in the best universities we are still in 2011 no further forward in housing and poverty for the vulnerable
This way of doing things by bad governments is endemic across the world and it's about time a new world order was established to put everything back in order so as to put the people first and everyone else in government second
Of course this will never happen i hear you say and your right but there will come a time where a showdown will take place in the world it may even be in the UK and when that day comes and wherever it takes place a new beginning will be formed and the ill's of today will be a thing of the past
I work in the business of getting people back to employment (not with JC+, thank god). My first job was in Project Work, the last Tory government’s last ditch attempt to fiddle the figures and give people work experience. (If you take Long Term Unemployed [LTU] off the register for 13 weeks, they reregister at the end as new claimants, thus reducing the LTU count.)
ReplyDeleteSo, first no employers were able to take part because the unions said that if a job was there, it should be filled by someone earning a wage, not getting dole money. They threatened strike action if firms or councils...or anyone gave what would ahe been a paying job to a work experience person.
So it was charities and churches that had to take the “trainees”. So, what did they do? The sexually harassed the people who were working wherever they went, the stole, they damaged (they were often doing decorating or gardening work, and it’s easy to sabotage that kind of thing... “ooooops, spilt the paint”; “oh dear, dug up that plant; thought it was a weed... what that you say, a rare plant worth £250, well I never....”
What could you do? Well not a lot. As long as it was un-provable there was nothing much you could do.
None of it will work. It’s another one of these things that they will end up having to U-turn on. And the first person who dies, as a result of being made to do something unsuitable (digging when you’ve not done it before and have high blood pressure and cholesterol) and the shit will really hit the fan.
I don’t know why Cameron doesn’t just pack in now. He’s a useless clod who got the job because he went to Eton and Oxford and knows people at the palace.
As someone from the right politically, I'm furious with the Tories for a completely different reason. They're supposed to be BETTER at economics than this!
ReplyDeleteDeusExMacintosh
ReplyDeleteI think you raise a good point. If you take a step back from the situation, it should be obvious that the pace of the cuts - and the blunderbuss approach they are taking - are not good economics. It doesn't matter how big you think the state should be, whether you are worried about debt or so forth. From where we are now, this is not the right path.
(I'm not sure if that was the point you were making)
I agree with them about needing to reduce the deficit towards a financially more sustainable system, but what they're proposing is likely to cost more than it will save and has missed a massive opportunity to genuinely call on a "big society" in Britain.
ReplyDeleteIt would have taken every single section of the country whether working or on welfare to take the remedial actions that would have countered our massive personal and public indebtedness, followed shortly thereafter by the massive demographic stresses the economy is about to face due to the babyboom with a nice toxic topping of peak oil to finish.
Instead the government has chosen to put wedge politics before wellbeing and dishonour the commitments made to its own citizens. We had a chance. The politicians blew it.