Details of Claimant Commitments Emerge And Show the Biggest DWP Farce Yet

A recent response to a Freedom of Information request reveals the first clear details of what will be expected of claimants when Universal Credit is launched.

The new benefit, which will be rolled out nationally from October, will replace all unemployment and sickness/disability benefits along with housing benefits and working tax credits.  All claimants who are unemployed or working part time will be expected to sign a ‘Claimant Commitment’ detailing how they will try to find a job or ‘more or better paid work’ if already employed.

Those who do not have a significant health problems will be mandated – under threat of sanction – to take part in Work Related Activity (meaning work, workfare, jobsearch or training) for 35 hours a week.  Single parents with children between the ages of 5 and 13 will usually be required to spend 24 hours a week looking for work.  Even those with serious disabilities or health conditions, currently in the Work Related Activity Group and claiming ESA, will have some form of mandated jobsearch.

Much of this activity will be centered around Universal Jobmatch, the DWP run website which is littered with spam, scam and spoof vacancies and could even place vulnerable jobseeker’s at serious risk of harm.  At present there is still no requirement to tick the box giving the Jobcentre access to your Universal Jobmatch account.

The recently released documents (linked to below and uncovered by @refuted) should be shared and read by all claimants, along with everybody in work who is concerned about redundancy – because this is what you will face should you lose your job.

Jobcentre advisors will have unprecedented powers to compel claimants to carry out whatever old bollocks they can come up with to waste unemployed people’s time looking for jobs which aren’t there.  Those who do not meet their Claimant Commitment could face having benefits stopped for up to three years.  For those with children this could be devastating, for those severely unwell or disabled it could mean death.

As well as outlining the rules concerning Claimant Commitments the documents also give examples of how the new system might work in practice.  A fictional Claimant Commitment shows how a claimant could be mandated to visit her local town centre twice a week to use Universal Jobmatch on the library computers*.  She will also be expected to hand in CVs to local shops whilst she is there.

This ignores the fact that many libraries – if you can find one still open – charge for internet access and that she may have to take a bus into town.  Astonishingly claimants could find themselves sanctioned because they are too poor to meet their job-seeking requirements.

The other aspect of her claimant commitment shows just how far Universal Credit has descended into farce.  How many shops does the DWP think are in this town she lives in?  Is she really expected to visit them every week, or even twice a week, to hand in a CV?  If there’s one way guaranteed to make sure you don’t get a job somewhere it’s acting like a stalky weirdo who keeps turning up every other day waving a new CV even after being told there are no vacancies.

And this is the key point.  There are no vacancies.  Whilst those in big cities could just about get away with ‘cold calling’ and visiting employers for 35 hours a week, in small towns this will be ludicrous.  Some of them only have a handful of shops.  Some only one.  Will unemployed people in remote areas be expected to spend 35 hours a week arguing with their local shopkeeper about why they should give them a job?

Such is Iain Duncan Smith’s obsession with punishing the unemployed for the failure of government, he has devised a system that is verging on parody.  And a system that will soon fall over as millions of claimants swamp Jobcentres to use computers, telephones and printers.

Jobcentres are already creaking under the strain of high unemployment.  There is no requirement to tell the DWP you have online access at home even if you do.  A recent response to another FOI request also confirms that there is no requirement to give the Jobcentre your phone number or email address.  It therefore seems a sensible idea not to tell the Jobcentre you have a computer, or a phone.  Demand to use theirs instead and watch Claimant Commitments collapse.

The rules on Claimant Commitments, including information about a seven day ‘cooling off’ period, and how you can demand a review of your commitment, can be read at: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/163018/response/398294/attach/html/3/CC%20Narrative%20short.pdf.html

An example of a Claimant Commitment is available at: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/163018/response/398294/attach/html/4/2451.Annex%201.pdf.html

*as the law currently stands on cookies, you can not be mandated to use Universal Jobmatch anywhere but Jobcentres, so without a change in the law, this aspect of a Claimant Commitment could be challenged.

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The Miliband McCluskey Love In And Why It Matters

There has been some mild criticism of the piece posted earlier this week addressing Unite boss Len McCluskey’s recent support of Ed Miliband’s ‘worklessness’ diatribe.

It may be uncomfortable for those who are involved in Unite’s Community Union – the section of the union recently formed for claimants – to find their organisation on the wrong side of the sanctions and benefit reform debate.  But they are and there should be no squeamishness about pointing it out.

At the end of Len’s McCluskey’s recent statement endorsing Miliband’s benefit bashing speech he is quite clear in his support for Labour’s Jobs Guarantee workfare scheme calling it a ‘good start’.

In case there is any doubt about whether this means Unite support benefit sanctions then this is what McCluskey is praising: “a compulsory jobs guarantee, young people will have an obligation to take a job after a year or lose their benefits”.

Of course this won’t be a real job, but a temporary six month placement funded by the tax payer and pegged at the minimum wage – despite Miliband’s so called support for the living wage for everyone else.  It is unclear whether they will even be paid in full for their work, with Labour only offering 25 hours wages and insisting companies provide an additional ten hours ‘training’.  If young people refuse, or are unable to take these jobs, they will be sanctioned.  These jobs are workfare, backed with benefit sanctions and sadly this is what McCluskey has pledged Unite can ‘help bring to life’.

Miliband also voiced his support for the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) along with the upcoming Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessments.  The only purpose to these assessments is to slash benefits and Miliband calls them the ‘right thing to do’.  Just as importantly Miliband didn’t even mention the bedroom tax.  Over half a million of the UK’s poorest people are set to lose their homes or be plunged into debt and poverty, and this wasn’t even worthy of a mention in Miliband’s keynote speech on welfare reform.

And neither was it worth a mention in McCluskey’s gushing response and it is this that damns him.  What Miliband’s speech represents is an all too familiar strategy from the neo-liberal Labour Party.  It is an attempt to anchor the debate on welfare reform away from the demands of claimants and instead offer a pointless choice between Tory or Labour benefit cuts.

To Miliband, the debate on the bedroom tax, the WCA, PIP and other benefit changes is over.  There is to be no discussion about repealing these measures, merely a weak demand that they should be a bit nicer.  Perhaps there might even be a couple less suicides, or not quite so many people will be driven from their homes.  And with Labour’s track record on benefits, they shouldn’t even be trusted to achieve that.

McCluskey and Unite represent, in the popular debate at least. the left, or even far left, of Labour.  For Unite to back Miliband’s statement and ignore his shameful support for Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms means a a job well done for the Labour Party.  It drags the entire conversation away from the current demands of claimants and turns it into a petty neo-liberal squabble about how to fix unemployment by fixing unemployed people.  Whether knowingly or not, McCluskey is playing his part in an attempt to shut down the voices of those who want, and need, the bedroom tax, the WCA, PIP, the benefit cap and workfare scrapped, immediately.

Unite have talked a good game on social security up until this point, even setting up a branch of the union specifically for those on benefits.  This means it is McClusky’s job to represent the interests of benefit claimants.  If they are not prepared to do this then they shouldn’t have bothered wasting everyone’s time and money.  Miliband’s speech outraged most claimants and showed that if Labour are elected then we will need to fight them every bit as hard as we are fighting the current slime.

The head of a union which represents claimants should have been ferocious in condemning Miliband’s speech.  Instead they did quite the opposite, openly supporting workfare, and ignoring everything else. There was no ‘hope’ for claimants in this speech as McCluskey claimed.   If Unite Community Union’s only response to an open attack on claimants  is to call it a good start, then the question needs to be asked, what is the point of the Unite Community Union?

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Don’t Ask Me About Benefits I Don’t Understand Them Admits Benefits Minister

Skiving Employment Minister Mark Hoban has confirmed what many people suspected, which is that he isn’t clever enough to understand the benefits system.

Speaking at a recent anti-poverty conference organised by the Catholic Church Hoban admitted: “I can’t navigate my way round the benefits system.”

The Guardian Diary reports (spotted by Obi Wan Kenobi in the comments) that Hoban claims the system is ‘complex’ and that whenever a constituent has a problem concerning social security he sends them to Citizen’s Advice.  Hoban will do almost anything to get out of actually doing some work.

Unfortunately it’s not just his own constituents that Hoban is abandoning.  Over five million people are on some form of social security.  Many are facing unprecedented poverty and homelessness due to the brutal and bungled welfare reforms.

And Hoban’s comments are the clearest indication yet that DWP Ministers don’t even understand the very system they are reforming.

Claimants manage to understand the benefits system.  As do advice workers and (some) Jobcentre staff.  Yet the man in charge hasn’t a clue.  The skiving scrounging bastard is picking up a huge tax payer funded salary and even he admits he isn’t up to the job.

The scary thing is that compared to Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Fraud, Mark Hoban is the clever one.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Wetherspoons Are Out Of Workfare … Sort Of, Maybe

Wetherspoons have announced they “no longer support the Workfare programme” on facebook in a statement which leaves more questions than answers.

The statement goes on to say: “We continue to support entirely voluntary work experience programmes, in particular those for the young, the disabled and ex-military. We define ‘entirely voluntary’ as programmes where candidates will not lose any benefits where they do not participate in the programme, and normally candidates are paid to complete this experience.  We do not support programmes if attendance is mandatory for benefits to be retained, for example Workfare.”

It is unclear whether this means they are still involved in the Government’s Work Experience programme.   When the workfare row broke out at the beginning of last year the DWP was forced to make Work Experience officially ‘voluntary’.  Unfortunately due to the current regime at the DWP nothing can be said to be voluntary anymore as claimants live in permanent fear of losing benefits the moment they put a foot wrong.

Claimants who refuse voluntary workfare can simply be sent on Mandatory Work Activity somewhere else instead.  Whilst the DWP continues to use benefit sanctions to punish claimants – with 2.25 million benefit sanctions imposed since this Government weren’t elected – then no Jobcentre run scheme is voluntary.

And even if someone does ‘volunteer’ to work unpaid for a private company it should still be resisted.  Wetherspoons are not a charity and have no right to be exploiting young people’s fear of unemployment  to trick them ‘volunteering’ to increase the profit they make.  Every worker deserves a wage.

Clarification is needed from Wetherspoons on their true position on workfare.  And whilst they’re at it they can have a fucking word with themselves for allowing their pubs to be used as EDL social clubs.

Wetherspoons are on twitter @jdwtweet and on facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/wetherspoon/168018523150

To join the fight against unpaid work visit Boycott Workfare.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Unite For Workfare, Atos and the Bedroom Tax

The head of the UK’s largest union, Unite, has issued a gushing statement praising Ed Miliband’s recent ‘worklessness’ diatribe in which he announced mass workfare should the Labour Party ever claw their way back into power.

According to Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite: “Ed Miliband’s speech offers hope that there is an alternative to George Osborne’s punishing experiment with the national economy.”

During the speech Miliband announced the party will bring in a “a compulsory jobs guarantee, young people will have an obligation to take a job after a year or lose their benefits”.

Those over 25 who have been unemployed over one year will also be subject to the same rules.  These jobs will temporary and paid at the minimum wage, which will be funded by the tax payer.  Employers will be required to provide  an additional ten hours training – although whether those on the scheme will be paid for that training is unclear.

The scheme seems almost identical to the current Wage Incentive programme, the Tory scheme which is currently being rinsed by the private sector who are laughing all the way to the bank as the tax payer funds their wage bill.  Under this scheme companies are paid by the government to employ young people on shit wages for six months before sacking them in favour of another government subsidised employee.

It appears that Len McCluskey supports one million workfare-style jobs being created with little or no job security and which are pegged at the minimum wage.  This according to McCluskey is Milliband’s ‘alternative’ -  a near carbon copy of a Tory scheme already in existence which will drive down wages for everybody and remove the right of young or long term unemployed people to choose where they work.

It also seems that McCluskey supports single parents being hounded by DWP busy-bodies to prevent ‘worklessness being passed down from one generation to another’.  Miliband announced in his speech that even those with toddlers should be bullied by Jobcentres to carry out work related activity or training whilst their kids are at play school.

Presumably McCluskey is also in favour of the brutal Atos regime which has led to hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled people having benefits slashed.  Whilst Miliband claims the Work Capability Assessments that his government introduced needs some reform, he is adamant in his support for the tests and claims they are the ‘right thing to do’.

It is the right thing to do, according to Miliband, to find the people who ‘need help to get into work’ or ‘who can work without support’.  In other words Miliband and McCluskey share the rhetoric that significant numbers of people on Incapacity Benefit are faking their conditions – or need some kind of Work Programme – no doubt involving workfare – to bully them into work.

Miliband didn’t stop there.  He is also in favour of the introduction of the Personal Independence Payments – the replacement for Disability Living Allowance (DLA) which has been designed to slash benefits from 20% of disabled people.  All Miliband has to say about this Tory policy is that it is important to have the ‘right’ tests in this area, as if the Tory’s are proposing to have the ‘wrong’ kind of test.  There is barely a cigarette paper between Miliband’s attitude to sickness and disability benefits and Iain Duncan Smith’s current vile agenda.  And McCluskey is backing him all the way.

What Miliband didn’t say in last week’s speech is also significant.  Whilst 600,000 people currently face losing their homes due to the bedroom tax, and another 50,000 at least due to the benefit cap, Miliband chose not to even mention it.  And why would he, Labour support not just a cap on benefits for individuals but also a cap on social security spending overall.   And whilst some in the Labour Party have shamelessly exploited those facing poverty and homelessness by pretending to be opposed to the bedroom tax, behind the scenes Labour were plotting a near exact same move themselves – something else that McCluskey is happy to get behind.

Miliband’s proposals will be a disaster for claimants and low paid workers alike, yet the head of the UK’s largest trade union is singing his praises from the rooftops.  What is perhaps most contemptible of all is that Unite also run a Community Membership scheme for benefit claimants.

Unite have been only too happy to take money from claimants to subscribe to this branch of the union by pretending they are on the side of those on benefits.  Yet as soon as their pampered pet in the Labour Party launches an attack on claimants they are the loudest voices in support.  Unite Community members who choose to tear up their membership papers up after McCluskey’s shameful support of Miliband’s benefit bashing should also consider asking for their fucking money back.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

More Charities Abandon Work Programme As Long Term Unemployment Continues To Soar

Nothing demolishes the sham which is the welfare-to-work sector more than the soaring long term unemployment figures.

The number of people out of work for over two years has risen almost every month ever since Iain Duncan Smith’s bungled Work Programme, his magical cure for unemployment, began two years ago.  Today’s unemployment figures show this number has risen yet again, to 458,000 people whilst the number of those out of work over a year has jumped by 11,000 to just below 900,000.

This is despite the fact that the Work Programme, which has already cost hundreds of millions of pounds, was specifically designed to bring down long term unemployment.

It has been a dismal failure, with recent news of yet more charities abandoning the scheme.  Even Tomorrow’s People, the Tory dominated front organisation for brewing giant Diageo, announced they were leaving the Work Programme at the beginning of the month.

The Chief Executive of Tomorrow’s People is Baroness Debbie Scott, a Tory life peer who used to run Iain Duncan Smith’s think tank the Centre For Social Justice.  They are most famous as the organisation who forced young people to sleep under a bridge under threat of benefit sanctions during the Queen’s Jubilee.  The charity say they are leaving the Work Programme due to a lack of referrals.  Coming from his own side, this is a hugely embarrassing snub to  Iain Duncan Smith which shows that even if you’re a Tory you can’t trust a Tory.

They are to be joined by the Volunteer Centre Kensington & Chelsea who have also announced they are leaving the Work Programme.  The charity say they are withdrawing from the scheme due to restrictions placed on how they work with service users – meaning long term unemployed people, or those claiming sickness benefit ESA in the Work Related Activity Group.  According to Third Sector, the charity claim:  “We thought that the best way to influence the service was to be inside it, to speak with the voice of evidence back to the primary contractor and say ‘This works and this is great, but this doesn’t and this is our suggestion’,” 

“But our experience was that they simply didn’t want to listen.”

The primary contractors on the Work Programme are the welfare-to-work companies such as A4e, Ingeus, Working Links and G4S.  These companies have fleeced the tax payer for billions over the years by feeding off the orchestrated  attack on those claiming social security benefits.  This multi-billion pound benefit fraud has tricked both the current and the last government into believing that  unemployment can be fixed by harassing claimants with workfare and benefit sanctions.

None of the schemes these companies have leeched off have ever made the slightest difference to the unemployment figures, although the appalling performance of the Work Programme represents a new low.  This is hardly surprising as these companies have been given free reign to do whatever they choose under the payment-by-results model.  This has meant for those long term unemployed people who are hardest to help find work – and therefore unlikely to be profitable – they have chosen to do nothing at all.

Instead they have picked up lucrative job entry payments by claiming credit for the people who would have almost certainly got jobs under their own steam.  The scrounging welfare-to-work sector have fooled the DWP into thinking that no-one unemployed has ever managed to get a job before attending an A4e CV workshop, or being forced to work in a charity shop without pay.

The end result of this has been the tax payer handing over hundreds of millions to welfare to work sharks whilst long term unemployment – the very thing they are being paid to fix – has sky rocketed.

Every modern capitalist country in the world has high unemployment.  In times of economic growth unemployment comes down and when the economy stagnates unemployment rises.  This has nothing to do with people suddenly becoming lazy or workshy.  Unemployment is still so high because George Osborne fucked the economy.

All the Work Programme has achieved is yet more profits for the welfare-to-work sector.  Mass workfare has meant the number of real jobs has shrunk, whilst benefit sanctions lead to people queuing up outside foodbanks rather than trying to find work.

An individual less arrogant, or less stupid, than Iain Duncan Smith might at least acknowledge the evidence and stop spending millions of pounds  forcing people into destitution.  As well as being inhumane, it is gross incompetence.  But with such huge sums being trousered by the private sector it appears to be full steam ahead on the welfare reform gravy train.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Disagree With An Atos Decision? Then Starve Says DWP

The DWP have laid a vicious benefit trap which will mean severely sick and disabled people will have no legal entitlement to benefit at all if they choose to appeal an assessment by the notorious IT company Atos.

Atos carry out the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), the test for the sickness and disability benefit Employment Support Allowance.  This crude computer based test has been use to strip benefits from hundreds of thousands of people by declaring them ‘fit for work’.

From October this year claimants will not be able to appeal against a ‘fit for work’ decision until they have first requested a ‘mandatory reconsideration’ by a DWP decision maker.  Only if the claimant disagrees with this decision will they be able to take an appeal to a benefit tribunal.  This process is likely to take months.

A recent response to an FOI request (PDF) confirms that claimants will not be able to claim ESA whilst waiting for this process to be completed.  The DWP say that claimants will instead have the: “option of applying for alternative benefits, such as Jobseekers Allowance, however they must meet the conditions of entitlement”.

One of the key conditions of entitlement for Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) – the benefit for those unemployed not unwell – is that the claimants is able to work.

This will mean that those appealing an ESA decision and claiming Jobseekers Allowance will be placed in a potentially fraudulent position.  They will be appealing an ESA decision based on the fact they do not believe themselves able to work, and will be claiming JSA based on a claim that they are able to work.

Already many claimants have been left in a benefit limbo, after Atos have declare them ‘fit for work’ but Jobcentre staff do not believe this to be the case.  All those on JSA must be actively seeking work, ready to start work immediately and can be sent onto four weeks workfare at any point in their claim.  For many of those who have had ESA stopped, this is an impossibility.  JSA claimants can have benefits stopped completely, for up to three years in some cases, if they fail to complete jobseeking activity or workfare.

After these changes to appeals come into effect, any claimants who disagrees with a decision made by Atos is likely to be forced to go without any benefit at all whilst ‘reconsiderations’ of their benefits take place.  These people are not just already amongst the poorest in the country, but those with cancer, MS or other life threatening conditions.

This appears to be a vindictive attempt to bring down the number of successful appeals against sickness benefit decisions which have been a continual embarrassment to both the current and the previous Labour governments.

The new message from the DWP seems to be appeal if you want, but don’t expect to eat or heat your homes whilst you are waiting.  The end of result of these changes will no doubt be less appeals.  The price of that will be more people dying at the hands of this callous process, which increasingly seems precision-engineered to drive sick and disabled people into destitution.

UPDATE  13/6/13:  Clarification, the DWP say that claimants ‘may’ be paid at the assessment rate once the ‘mandatory reconsideration’ has taken place if they pursue an appeal.  There is no time limit on how long this process can take and this depends on whether they are able to provide medical evidence to the Department.

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We Are All Benefit Scroungers Daily Telegraph Figures Show

Figures published in today’s Daily Telegraph reveal that the vast majority of UK tax payers are likely to take far more out of the welfare budget than they ever pay in.

The Government are soon to send out statements showing how much tax people pay towards the social security budget, NHS and other government departments annually.  The Telegraph have used these figures to work out how much tax people are likely to pay over a lifetime in what appears to be a crude attempt to use big numbers to undermine support for publicly funded healthcare and the welfare state.

This had led the paper splashing a story across their front pages today  claiming: “A person who earns an average salary of £50,000 over a 43-year career will contribute £219,039 to state welfare and pension spending.”

The next sentence however reveals the truth of the situation: “They would have to receive the state pension for 38 years to become a net beneficiary.”

Now this may be optimistic, but it’s not impossible, meaning even some of the highest earners will get all the tax they spent on social security back in their pension.  The figures are also deliberately misleading.  Few people, even the highest paid, start their career on £50,000 a year, so these earners would have to be on significantly more than that by the time they retire for this to be a career average salary

Far more importantly the figures also show that someone on £25k a year,  just under the average wage of £26,500 (but still far more than many people earn), will pay a total of £80,854.19 towards the social security budget in their lifetime.

Pension Credit, the minimum income guaranteed for single pensioners is £145.40.  This means that an average earner who lives just ten years after retiring receives every penny they’ve paid into the social security system back in pension payments.

And this is assuming they didn’t have children.  A couple of kids means average earners will also receive around £30,000 in Child Benefit.

Whilst everybody’s circumstances are different, so precise calculations are impossible, it is likely that most of those on salaries of up to around £30/35k are a net drain on the social security budget.

And this is before what most people regard as benefits are even taken into account.  Any of these tax payers who have ever needed to claim in-work benefits such as tax or child credits, housing benefit or funding for child care will receive far more over their lifetimes.  On top of this, should they ever become unemployed, unwell or disabled, they will be be eligible for the increasingly scant support of the benefit system.

Whilst benefits are under attack like never before, the value of this level of social protection is still not insignificant.  Even the most basic private income protection insurance, which doesn’t include cover for disability and would only provide a tiny income for a year, is likely to cost around £20,000 over a 43 year career.  Job Seekers Allowance, the benefit for those unemployed, is just over 2% of total welfare sending, costing around £1,600 over the lifetime of the average tax payer.

But after they’ve received their pension and any child benefits, the vast majority of tax payers are actually getting this comprehensive social insurance for free!

The reason for this situation is the huge disparity in wealth in the UK.  Last year the Daily Telegraph ran a piece whinging that the top 1% of earners pay 30% of the tax.  But that’s because they’ve got so much of the money.  As recently pointed out by someone else (but I can’t remember who), if they had all the money, they’d pay all the tax and they’d no doubt still be fucking complaining.  This is despite the fact that almost all government spending is geared towards helping them become as rich as possible whilst remaining safe from the threat of crime or revolution.  The amount they pay in tax is nothing compared to the amount of profit they earn from our work.  That is why the rich keep getting richer and we keep getting poorer.

This chasm between the very rich, and the rest of us, means that most people, whatever they may think, are a drain on government spending.  So the next time you hear someone complaining about how their taxes pay for people on benefits perhaps you could gently remind them that the chances are they don’t pay a penny towards the benefit bill.  In fact it’s quite likely they are one of those benefit scroungers that everyone is always complaining about.

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Ed Miliband Fuck Off

So the chinless Adrian Mole clone in charge of the Labour Party has shown his true colours by launching a tirade against ‘worklessness’ and single parents whilst cheer-leading the murderous Work Capability Assessment.

Ed Miliband’s speech today reveals the modern Labour Party’s utter contempt for those who are poor in this country, as he tried to outdo Iain Duncan Smith with a string of vile slurs aimed at those with least.  Even his language is the same with his nasty insinuations that those out of work are idle and that idleness can be passed along through generations.  And anyone who uses the word worklessness, when they mean unemployment, is a cunt.

There was a time when the leader of the Labour Party might have been brave enough to challenge Daily Mail myths about welfare, but not Ed Miliband.  Today shows he’s just as happy to play the swivel-eyed fool as the worst of the Tory Party.

Some might have thought that a so called socialist (stop laughing) might have shown some anger at the tens of thousands of people about to be driven from their homes due to the bedroom tax, benefit cap and other changes to social security.

But not Ed Miliband, after all, he knows nothing of the lives of those he seeks to condemn.  Why would he with his Primrose Hill schooling, Oxbridge education and then a series of lucrative non-jobs before he stitched up his brother to take the Labour Party leadership.

Ed Miliband has never done a real day’s work in his pampered life.  You can hardly expect him to understand the suffering that has been brought to the lives of those with nothing, not even their health, due to the Work Capability Assessment.  An assessment process which has led to countless deaths and which the Labour Government introduced.  And an assessment process that Ed Miliband today praised to the high heavens.

Meanwhile his big idea on Tax Credits is to pay the money to businesses instead, whilst single parents with young children are to be hounded with pointless compulsory appointments at the Jobcentre – no doubt under the threat of having their benefits sanctioned if they refuse.  Hungry children mean nothing to Ed if he thinks there might be a vote in it.

And his other big idea, the Compulsory Jobs Guarantee – which he pretends will cure unemployment – is nothing more than a fraud. These so called jobs are not intended to be a job for life, but a six month period of enforced work on poverty wages before claimants are slung back on benefits.  No new jobs will be created by the scheme as employers lay off staff to replace them with tax payer funded workers.  In fact this Government is already handing a fortune to businesses in this way through the Wage Incentive programme.  This scheme has already been thoroughly rinsed by the private sector looking to hire temporary staff on the cheap before laying them off when they actually have to pay them proper wages.

Miliband’s speech today shows he is quite happy to further the myth that unemployment is caused by unemployed people, an idea which feeds off nasty, class-based bigotry and has no bearing in reality.  He even goes as far as telling the bare-faced lie that “among the biggest drivers of social security spending are the costs of unemployment”.

In fact spending on Jobseekers Allowance costs around 2% of the entire social security budget.  Even if you add Housing Benefit for those who are unemployed into the mix then spending reaches probably little more than 5% of the total cost of welfare.   The bulk of spending goes on Child Benefits, Child and Working Tax Credits and pensions.  But then these are benefits claimed by lots of people.  Far better in Miliband’s eyes to stigmatise the unemployed then stand up and admit the truth about the welfare budget.

Unemployment is a structural consequence of capitalism as Ed Miliband – with his Marxist Dad, who must be spinning in his grave – knows only too well.  To be more charitable than Iain Duncan Smith deserves, at least the Secretary of State is quite stupid and does seem to believe his own bullshit.

The treacherous piece of shit Miliband has no such excuse.  He knows he’s talking bollocks and that all his policies will do is further stigmatise and in many cases destroy the lives of sick, disabled or unemployed people.

But the squirming little scab doesn’t care as long as he gets a chance to be Prime Minister one day.  This is all we can expect from the new breed of Labour politicians.  No heart, no soul, no principles, just naked and ruthless ambition.  And if they leave a trail of bodies on the way then that is just collateral damage in their quest for power.

And Liam Byrne can fuck off as well.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

DWP Finally Own Up To Fake Online Campaign

The DWP have admitted their involvement in the Role Models: Inspire A Generation youtube channel after first attempting to mislead people that it was initiated ‘by young disabled people for young disabled people’.

The youtube channel hosts 50 videos of disabled people with successful careers and has been criticised as being soft propaganda for the vicious cuts to disability benefits.

The youtube page previously gave no indication that it was a government run campaign, however this has now been changed to admit that: “This account is a co-production between young disabled people and the Department for Work and Pensions.”

The facebook page for the campaign, which also gave no information that it was a government run page, is still missing after it disappeared shortly after it was launched.  Scores of people had visited the page to criticise DWP inspired policies which are forcing hundreds of thousands of disabled people into desperate poverty.

Luckily the youtube channel, which currently has a less than impressive 49 subscribers, is still accepting comments.  The DWP say they want to encourage open and lively debate – but no swearing.

You can join in the open and lively debate at: http://www.youtube.com/user/rolemodelsinspire/

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid