Interesting Thoughts

I just got this comment at he end of my Guardian thread and I thought it was so startlingly good, I asked if I could post it here.

So thanks to "ephemerid" ......

" We have 2.5 million people out of work. 

Allegedly.

The way the figures are calculated means that : 

-People of working age who have no job and are claiming JSA are counted.

These people aren't - 

Those who have no job but don't claim including self-employed people without entitlement and people who have a working person in their household; 

Those who have run run out of the 6 months JSA entitlement; 

Those who are "hidden" on work programmes; 

Those who have been made redundant but aren't claiming yet due to severance packages, 

Those who have taken early retirement, or are economically inactive due to some other reason (parents, carers, students, interns);

Prisoners; 

and of course, those who are disabled, sick, or dying.

Some of those people claim benefits, many don't

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The vast majority of people who get benefits in the UK are, old age pensioners. There are more people in work claiming Working Tax Credits, Child Tax Credits, Disabled Tax Credits, Disability Living Allowance, Housing Benefit, and Council Tax Benefit, than there are people on ESA. 

People with incomes of more than £40k pa can claim some of those benefits. (You can look all this up at HMRC and other sites - it's all true)

Big corporations who pay minimum wage, offer zero-hours contracts, and employ people for less than 16 hours to avoid NIC, are effectively getting benefits in that their profits are made by using armies of people whose labour is subsidised by the state. 

They must be rubbing their hands with glee at the thought that people claiming JSA will now have to "earn" their £65 by working a full week for free. 

Those JSA claimants will include people who have been thrown off their ESA by a French IT company, which, with all the money its' got for doing this, has the brass neck to sponsor the Paralympics.

There are people who have cancer having these benefits stopped; if they have to claim JSA they get sanctioned if they don't turn up for an interview for a MacJob because they had to go for chemo.

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The Tories are engaging in classic divide and rule tactics - it started under Labour, to its' eternal shame - and the hype and hysteria regarding benefit cheats and scroungers is causing absolute misery.

I genuinely fear another cold winter; I know that I can't work, I know that I'm facing yet another battle to claim what I'm entitled to and have paid for; I know that I will never meet draconian jobsearch conditions; I know that if I didn't have the support of a loving friend I'd be homeless; and I know that this government is deliberately, callously, and coldly demonising people like me and it's disgusting.

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My heart goes out to the people on here who have described the appalling treatment they face every day.
Divide and rule, bread and circuses - no bread for us, we've become the bloody circus. It's reprehensible.

Hear! Hear! ephemerid. Hear! Hear!