Loading... Please wait...

Delicious Delicious  Digg Digg  Reddit Reddit  Facebook Facebook  StumbleUpon StumbleUpon 

Shocking betrayal over benefits: 8 in the morning - August 19th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk * Labour figures have slammed the Tories over plans to review universal benefits. * Ed Miliband has ruled out a future coalition with Nick Clegg, should be become leader. * John Kampfner says Labour needs to "grow up". * Over 3,000 A level students with A grades will be turned away from their chosen universities. * The Attorney General looks set to re-open investigations into the death of David Kelly. * Writing for LabourList yesterday,...
View 'Shocking betrayal over benefits: 8 in the morning - August 19th' >

Quite simply, lies?

By Hopi Sen / @hopisen One of these things is not like the others. "We will protect key benefits for older people such as the winter fuel allowance, free TV licences, free bus travel, and free eye tests and prescriptions." Coalition Policy Programme, May 2010. "…spending Mr Duncan Smith wants to pare back includes £2.7bn of winter fuel payments, a universal benefit paid to the over-60s that Mr Cameron made a conspicuous pledge to keep in the election campaign and...
View 'Quite simply, lies?' >

Benefit scroungers and tax dodgers - why aren't the Tories looking at both ?

By Jamie Ellison David Cameron is in the news today talking of the need to curb benefit fraud in the UK: "We need to do more to stop fraud. £1.5bn of hard-earned taxpayers' money is being stolen from the taxpayer. This is simply not acceptable." "It's quite wrong that there are people in our society who will behave like this. But we will not shrug our shoulders and let them get away with it any longer." "We will take the...
View 'Benefit scroungers and tax dodgers - why aren't the Tories looking at both ?' >

Tory thinking: A nudge for the rich and a kick in the gut for the poor

By Josh Fenton-Glynn Another day and more punitive talk from Cameron, this time beating up on benefit recipients. This is coupled with last weeks announcement that council house leases will change to be more regularly renewed so that people will have to justify their receipt of a council tenancy. Reading about both of these I couldn’t help but notice that the Conservative’s have abandoned one of their big ideas that they used to make them seem friendly and electable. This...
View 'Tory thinking: A nudge for the rich and a kick in the gut for the poor' >

A call for a fairer cut

By Kathryn Rose The Conservative-Liberal coalition is planning to cut people’s housing benefit if people do not work – this is how part of the June 2010 budget is popularly being summarised and with some foundation. A more accurate report would state that the coalition government are not planning to instigate the 10% cuts to housing benefit for the unemployed immediately; they intend to wait until April 2013 when it is hoped that employment levels will be rising. This scheme...
View 'A call for a fairer cut' >

A ballooning welfare bill? It's not that simple

By Declan Gaffney The chancellor and the chief secretary to the treasury have both adopted a simplistic narrative of out of control welfare spending in framing the June budget decisions and the coming spending review. George Osborne said in his budget speech: "Total welfare spending has increased from £132 billion ten years ago to £192 billion today. That represents a real terms increase of a staggering 45 per cent. It’s one reason why there is no money left. It has...
View 'A ballooning welfare bill? It's not that simple' >

Food vouchers show the truth behind the rhetoric of the Big Society

By Josh Fenton-Glynn The response to the inadequate out of work benefits in this country should be to raise benefits not to, in effect, cut them – as the June budget will do. The idea that families on low incomes who happen to live in a few select areas should be forced to redeem food vouchers from charities is demeaning, offensive and worst of all utterly ineffective and exposes the paucity of thought in the Tories big idea of a...
View 'Food vouchers show the truth behind the rhetoric of the Big Society' >

Back to the 1950s - The "Fieldian" universe

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk Frank Field, who is (just barely) still able to call himself a Labour MP, has – for a change – talked a hateful load of old twaddle about welfare and benefits. As the Guardian reported this morning, Field said : "For a large section of what used to be the core of the Labour vote – working class women – what they say they most want is a husband or partner in work which allows...
View 'Back to the 1950s - The "Fieldian" universe' >

Cooper attacks benefit cuts

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk Speaking to the BBC this morning, Shadow Work and Pensions secretary Yvette Cooper attacked Tory plans as "simply benefit cuts". "What they're actually going is they're in fact, if you look at the other proposals in the budget, cutting support for those who are severely disabled and who are unable to work - they will lose around £500 a year over the next few years, and that's for people who really can't work, they're actually...
View 'Cooper attacks benefit cuts' >

“Into the purse not the wallet” - the absolute necessity of universal child benefits

By Ruth Bailey-Davison Family allowance days were treat days when I was child. Mum would pick us up from school for lunch and we’d have ‘half-lots’, a half-size portion of fish and chips at home before she’d walk us back to the school gates for afternoon lessons. Much has changed since the early 70s. There are few stay-at-home mums these days and still fewer children go home for lunch. But one thing remains the same: the absolute necessity for universal...
View '“Into the purse not the wallet” - the absolute necessity of universal child benefits' >

The accommodation availability gap

By Kathryn Rose During the four years I have been a student, it has been easy to find accommodation; in fact the choice has been impressively vast and there were frequently many bed spaces left over. However, without a job the vast array of flats on offer dwindles into a few that landlords say they might consider you for. Labour endeavored to increase the amount of homes available to people receiving DSS and tried to help young people find work...
View 'The accommodation availability gap' >

Cruddas: Labour has lost its optimism

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982 Speaking at the Hay festival today, Jon Cruddas said Labour has lost its optimism, and is no longer "the voice of the voiceless." Cruddas said: "There is a crisis of social democracy, across Europe. How my generation of Labour politicians articulate those tensions and vulnerabilities is the challenge of our time. Politics will have to be reforged in the public sphere, and it will have little or nothing to do with Westminster. So the Labour...
View 'Cruddas: Labour has lost its optimism' >

Older workers and electoral politics

By Chris Ball The older you get, the more likely you are to vote. Add this to the demographic changes in society and you get a new ‘grey factor’ in election calculations. Four out of ten of the 632 seats (319) are likely to have ‘grey’ majorities in this election, including 94 of the marginal constituencies which will determine the result. But the older worker factor is a closely related angle. The numbers of older people in work and seeking...
View 'Older workers and electoral politics' >

We're going to keep on fighting for people like Tess

...
View 'We're going to keep on fighting for people like Tess' >

We can all do our bit

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982 At the beginning of the year, Labour's PPC for Aldershot, Jonathan Slater, wrote on LabourList, urging all Labour MPs and parliamentary candidates to sign up to the British Legion's "It's time to do your bit" campaign". The campaign calls on all potential members of the next parliament to commit to supporting the healthcare, housing, educational and welfare needs of our armed forces personnel and their families through the Legion's manifesto. As an ad in the...
View 'We can all do our bit' >

A citizen’s pension is the best way to end pensioner poverty

By Alexandra Kemp It is time to start an important new debate around citizenship, age and income standards. Labour has taken one million pensioners out of poverty but two million pensioners are still in poverty. A Citizen’s Pension, paid universally to all, with a 15-year minimum residency qualification, could give certainty, a sense of dignity, material wellbeing and social inclusion to all pensioners. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation approves the level of the means tested Pension Credit Guarantee - currently £130 a week...
View 'A citizen’s pension is the best way to end pensioner poverty' >

"Social mobility for the majority" and universalism - but at what cost?

By Preth Rao Gordon Brown's opening keynote speech at the Fabian conference today was clearly an attempt to re-capture the centre ground, following weeks of "class war" political debates - also in a week in which John Denham, the Communities Secretary, emphasised the importance of class in talking about race equality. The Prime Minister coined what may become a flagship campaigning cry: "social mobility for the majority". However, the fact that many people do not truly understand what that term...
View '"Social mobility for the majority" and universalism - but at what cost?' >

As Labour MPs and PPCs, we can all do our bit

By Jonathan Slater As a Labour PPC standing in a constituency in which the British Army reside, I have become acutely aware of many of the concerns of our army personnel and their families. As such, I felt it important to address the current political debate over the Labour Government’s support for the British armed services personnel, particularly with many of them currently serving in Afghanistan. This is a timely matter. The Secretary of State for Defence, Bob Ainsworth, announced...
View ' As Labour MPs and PPCs, we can all do our bit' >

Teach a man to fish...

By Peter Barnard “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I came across this saying only recently; perhaps in a comment on LabourList. According to this website, it’s a Chinese proverb, but, what was true in China a few thousand years ago is still true today. The saying invites the immediate question: who does the teaching? It appears to me that there is...
View 'Teach a man to fish...' >

Did Labour really create welfare dependency?

By Peter Barnard It’s a common criticism from Conservatives that Labour has created its ‘client electorate’ in the form of people drawing state benefits, that is, people dependent on the state for their beer, baccy and bingo money. The reality is different. The Conservatives, between 1979 and 1997, created “welfare dependency” on a scale hitherto unseen. Take a look at the following table (numbers obtained from the Annual Abstract of Statistics for various years): * (i) SSB: total social security...
View 'Did Labour really create welfare dependency?' >