Never Forget, It Is David Cameron Who Is Ultimately To Blame For Welfare Reform Deaths

Understandably much of the rage aginst the vicious welfare reforms –  which are costing an increasing number of lives – has been aimed at blundering fucking idiot Iain Duncan Smith.

But it is David Cameron who has cheered along whilst the DWP has spent billions driving the poorest people in the country into destitution.  It is David Cameron who has been in charge whilst hundreds of hungry families have queued at foodbanks, or disabled people have been driven from their homes due to the Bedoom Tax.  And it is David Cameron who is ultimately responsible for the deaths of David Clapson, Stephanie Bottrill, Victor Cuff, Jacqueling Harris and all of those driven to ill health and suicide by his Government’s callous devastation of the social security safety net.

David Cameron probably doesn’t even know that money runs out, and that when that happens, even in one of the richest countries in the world, the results can be fatal.  He is the living embodiment of the something for nothing culture, a man who has inherited a milion pound fortune, but never done a real day’s work in his pampered life.  It is unsuprising that someone so dripping in privilege has stayed in the background whilst Iain Duncan Smith has run rampant through the lives of the most marginalised in society.

David Clapson, who recently took his own life after his benefits were stopped, couldn’t be more different than the Prime Minister.  Whilst David Cameron spent his youth trashing restaurants and quaffing champagne with the elite Bullingdon Club, David Clapson was a serving soldier.  Whilst Cameron has spent much of his working life ‘chillaxing’ on holiday, David Clapson worked for sixteen years as a BT engineer, eight years for other companies, and cared for his sick mother.  If David Cameron were ever to have to stop work due to ill health he would still live a life of luxury that normal people could only dream of.  Yet when the same thing happened to David Clapson he was driven to despair, destitution and tragically his death because he missed a couple of meetings with the fucking Jobcentre.

Whilst Cameron has been enjoying yet another expensive holiday, over 180,000 people have signed a petition demanding an enquiry into the benefit sanctions which killed David Clapson.  The petition is rightly addressed to the Prime Minister – because the blood is on his hands.  It remains to be seen if he is brave enough to try and justify the death of a former serviceman in the name of trying to harass sick, disabled and unemployed people off benefits.  He will do everything he can to ignore it (don’t let him – @David_Cameron)

Iain Duncan Smith, Esther McVey, Lord Fraud and all the other murderous clowns at the DWP must also be held to account.  As should the craven Labour Party who began this attack on those with nothing and who have no plans to significantly change anything should they claw their way to back to power.  But it is David Cameron’s Government that killed David Clapson.  A man from the gilded toff elite where money rains from the sky is over-seeing a system that is demolishing the lives of the poor.  It is beyond sickening.  It must never be forgotten, or forgiven.

Please sign and share the petition calling for an enquiry into the benefit sanctions that killed David Clapson: http://www.change.org/p/david-cameron-hold-an-inquiry-into-benefit-sanctions-that-killed-my-brother

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Number of Sick And Disabled Claimants Facing Sanctions Triples In Just Six Months

The number of sick or disabled people who have had there benefit sanctioned for not taking part in ‘work related activity’ has almost tripled compared to just six months ago the latest figures show.

7.507 claimants on Employment Support Allowance (ESA), had their benefits sanctioned in March 2014, up from 4,698 the previous month and 2,369 In Sepetember 2013.  This has taken the total number of ESA claims sanctioned to over 100,000 since the regime was disgracefully introduced by Labour.

These clamaints are in the Work Related Acivity Group (WRAG) of ESA, meaning they have been judged unable to work at present but may possibly be well enough for employment in the future.  They include people with serious and life-threatening conditions including cancer.  Astonishingly this group are still sent on the Work Programme, where they may face compulsory ‘back to work’ training or even workfare.  Should they fail to attend any activity the private sector providers running the scheme dream up then they will have their benefits sanctioned.

These are not the only sick and disabled claimants who face sanctions.  Inhumane Atos assessments have led to many people with serious health conditions or disabilties being forced to claim Jobseeker’s Allowance.  According to the DWP, since the tougher new sanctions regime was introduced in December 2012, over 150,000 disabled people have had their benefits stopped.  Whilst people on sickness benefits only generally lose a portion of their benefits, those on JSA can lose every penny.  For people with special dietery needs or other conditions, this can prove fatal as the tragic death of David Clapson recently showed.

Appalling many of those sanctioned will have been driven into poverty due to failure to attend workfare with so-called charities and community organisations.  The first names of these organisations accepting workfare placements on the latest scheme, which involves 780 hours of unpaid work, are now starting to leak out.  Lanarkshire Association for Mental Health (@_LAMH_ also on facebook) have been reported to be accepting this form of workfare and have remained silent about their grotesque exploitation since being exposed.  @SumoWaste have protected their tweets on twitter and also have nothig to say about their grubby exploitation after they were named and shamed on the facebook page of Edinburgh Coaltion Against Poverty.  Also recently named as taking part are @DISC_Services, a so-called charity who will be receiving tax payer’s money to arrange workfare placements and who are also on facebook.

The DWP refuse to name the charities taking workfare placements, if you know of one contact Boycott Workfare to have them named and shamed.

Please sign, share and tweet the petition for an inquiry into the benefit sanctions that killed David Clapson: https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/david-cameron-hold-an-inquiry-into-benefit-sanctions-that-killed-my-brother

The latest benefit sanctions figures can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/jobseekers-allowance-and-employment-and-support-allowance-sanctions-decisions-made-to-march-2014

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One Last Push! Sign and Share The Petition Calling For An Inquiry Into The Sanctions That Killed David Clapson

This petition calling for an inquiry into the benefit sanctions which killed David Clapson has hit almost 75,000 signatures in just over a week.

Mr Clapson had his benefits stopped after missing a meeting with the Jobcentre.  This left him unable to chill the insulin he needed to manage his diabetes and without any money for food or electricity.  Shortly after his benefits were sanctioned he was found dead without any food in his stomach.

His sister launched the petition last week calling an inquiry into benefit  sanctions and the terrible damage they inflict.  Tens of thousands of people have signed already.  The Government will do everything they can to ignore it, but behinds the scenes this will not go unnoticed.

Benefit sanctions are the teeth of welfare reform, and are designed as a form of punishment for being on benefits.  If you don’t jump through every hoop set up by the deranged Iain Duncan Smith – in the exact way he has decided you should – then you will have all forms of meeting your basic needs stopped.  Depending on your circumstances you might become homeless, ill, or even die.  It doesn’t even have to be your fault.  The system is as haphazard as it is vicious, and thousands have been wrongly sanctioned for the most trivial and vindictive of reasons.

There are signs that, as the public discover what the DWP are doing to people, the mood is starting to change.  A recent poll  by Ipsos Mori found that more people are concerned about poverty and inequality in the UK since they began collecting figures in 1998 (h/t @patrickjbutler).  If this petition can hit 100,000 signatures then it will be further proof that people are finally saying enough is enough to the war on the poor that has been waged so brutally by both this, and the last government.

One last push can make that happen, so please share, tweet, blog and post the petition everywhere: https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/david-cameron-hold-an-inquiry-into-benefit-sanctions-that-killed-my-brother

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Sign The Petition For An Inquiry Into The Benefit Sanctions That Killed David Clapson

The family of David Clapson – the former soldier who recently died after his benefits were stopped as punishment for missing a meeting at the Jobcentre – have launched a petition calling for an inquiry into benefit sanctions.

In his sister’s own words:

“My brother, David Clapson, a diabetic ex-soldier, died starving and destitute because he was penalised by the Job Centre for missing a meeting.

“David had his £71.70 weekly allowance stopped meaning that he couldn’t afford food or electricity. He was penniless, starving and alone. His electricity card was out of credit meaning the fridge where he should have kept his diabetes insulin chilled was not working. Three weeks after his benefits were stopped he died from diabetic ­ketoacidosis – caused by not taking his insulin. 

“David wasn’t a “scrounger”. He had worked for 29 years; 5 years in the Army – including two years in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, during the height of the troubles – 16 years with British Telecom, eight years with various other companies, and in recent years was a carer for our sick mother. When mum went into a home, David turned to the state for help, receiving benefits while he looked for work and taking unpaid work placements.

“When he died he had just £3.44 to his name, six tea bags, a tin of soup and an out-of-date can of sardines. A coroner also found he had no food in his stomach.

“People turn to the state when they are in need – that is what the system is for – a safety net for hard working people like my brother when they need a bit of support. That £71.70 a week was his lifeline. To withhold it from him for missing one meeting is cruel. And the heartbreaking thing is that he was really trying. CVs for job applications were found near David’s body. He had been on work placements, passed his fork lift truck certificate and had been on a computer training course.”

To read more and sign visit: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/david-cameron-hold-an-inquiry-into-benefit-sanctions-that-killed-my-brother

Please sign, share, tweet and blog this. Let’s make sure this tragic story does not go away.

You can also sign the petition calling for benefits sanctions to be scrapped  without exceptions.

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RIP David Clapson, Another Man ‘Helped’ To Death By Iain Duncan Smith

RIP David Clapson, the latest tragic victim of callous welfare reforms.

When Funghi, the unemployed alcoholic  featured in the recent Benefits Street television series, disclosed that he had been abused as a child, most of those condemning him on twitter did not even blink.  Such is the state whipped up contempt amongst some towards people on benefits, that not even the revelation of a tragic childhood was enough to stop the bullying mob.

Yet one of the reasons child abuse is such an abhorrent crime is that the scars often last a lifetime.  Everybody knows this.  Addiction, depression, low self-esteem, isolation, these are just some of the ways that a life can be blighted by mistreatment as a child.  Often people like this find it hard to just get a job, and often not through want of trying.  The sad truth is that employers are not rushing out to hire people addicted to drink or drugs, or those with a serious mental health condition, or even people who might simply be judged to have a mild personality disorder.  In an economy based on high unemployment, and no real political will to change that, some people will always be left behind.  There are over two million people currently looking for a job.

Captitalism chews people up and spits them out.  Everybody knows this as well.  Whether the stress of a shit job or no job, poverty, lack of adequate housing and fractured communities, the pressures faced by those at the bottom are immense.  Yet the poor are now expected to be super-heroes.  Lone parents are not only expected to juggle looking after young children with endless work-related activity imposed by Jobcentres, but also to feed them healthy food, home-cooked on the fucking Aga using only natural ingredients.  It doesn’t matter that the pittance those parents have to survive on barely pays for value chicken nuggets and oven chips.  They should make do and mend, live on ten pounds a week, darn socks by the fire and be grateful that their children are just malnourished, not starving.

Disabled people and those with health conditions are now having those conditions and disabilities magically disappeared by endless health assessments which are designed to stop their benefits.  Such is the triumph of neo-liberalism, the rhetoric goes, that there is a job for anyone now if they just try hard enough.  If you can tweet you can work as one Tory MP claimed.  The stark fact that employers are guilty of grotesque discrimination towards disabled workers is swept under the carpet at best, or at worst disabled people themselves are blamed for this prejudice.

Many tyrants claim to be helping the people whose live are demolished by their acts of barbarism.  Whether European invaders ‘civilising’ Africa by forcing the people into chains, or Tony Blair carpet-bombing Baghdad to save it, death and destruction have often been inflicted by messianic monsters who believe they are killing people for their own good.

The latest government workfare scheme is called Help To Work.  It is nothing of the sort of course, when this type of workfare was tried in a pilot scheme it had no impact on whether people found a job.  But that hasn’t stopped gushing press releases from the DWP lying about all the wonderful new support the scheme offers.  In truth this so-called support is either forced labour or starvation and this Government couldn’t particularly give a fuck which.

Under the guise of this ‘help’, Iain Duncan Smith has re-designed the already scant support of the social security system to be a torture machine.  Slip up, just for a second, and you will be dragged down, to poverty, homelessness and destitution.  It doesn’t even matter if it’s not your fault.  People newly diagnosed with cancer now spend as much time fighting the DWP so they can have enough money to eat, as they do fighting their illness.  Victims of domestic abuse face being socially cleansed from the area they may have grown up in, instead of being provided safe, and secure housing.  Kids who’ve been in care are sanctioned, cut off benefits completely, and left to beg, rob, or sell their bodies to survive.

Today the Daily Mirror features the harrowing case of former soldier David Clapson on their front page.  This man, a 59 year old diabetic, was left penniless and without even electricity to keep his insulin chilled in the fridge.  A coroner found he had no food in his stomach.  His crime was to miss a meeting at the Jobcentre.  His punishment was death by benefit sanction.  Sanctions which ‘help’ people and according to one senior DWP official are even welcomed by those they are inflicted on.

David is not the first person to die as a direct result of Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms, and he will not be the last.  We will never hear of most of them.  As this Government knows only too well, the people they are waging war on are largely voiceless.  But there is an atrocity quietly taking place in the UK right now.

It is not worth one of these deaths to catch the tiny minority of benefit claimants who might be actively avoiding work.  In a country that spends millions on aircraft carriers, sports competitions, royal weddings and second homes for MPs, there is clearly enough money to carry a tiny handful of people on a subsistence income.  People who if the tabloids are to be believed do not live lives that many would envy anyway.  No-one who queues up outside the off-licence in the morning is usually very happy.  And daytime TV is shit, even on a flat-screen television set.

A society that drives some people to their deaths in the hope of catching a scrounger is no longer humane.  It is barely even a society.  Perhaps that is the point.  The rich would far rather have us fighting each other for the scraps they throw down than have a compassionate, strong and united working class.  We must change this, us from below.  If we do not, then the future is  not one you will want your children to grow up in.

UPDATE: David Clapson’s family have launched a petition calling for a public inquiry into the sanctions that killed him, please sign and share: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/david-cameron-hold-an-inquiry-into-benefit-sanctions-that-killed-my-brother

Sign the petition to scrap the benefit sanctions which killed David Clapson without exceptions.

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Shameless – Workfare Exploiting Charities Slam The Benefit Sanctions They Are Responsible For

In an act of breath-taking hypocrisy, the Salvation Army, along with the YMCA, have both signed a letter to The Times calling the current benefit sanctioning regime unfair and counter-productive.

This comes despite both organisations being involved in ‘Mandatory Work Activity’ and therefore responsible for reporting unemployed people to the Jobcentre to face sanctions if they don’t turn up for unpaid work placements.

The Salvation Army has even been praised by the DWP for ‘holding the line’ on workfare after scores of charities distanced themselves from the scheme. When peaceful anti-workfare campaigners visited the Salvation Army in protest at their use of workfare, the charity locked them inside and attempted to have them arrested with fabricated stories of staff being man-handled.

The Salvation Army have repeatedly defended their involvement in mandatory welfare-to-work provision and also their operation of a Work Programme sub-contract. Claimants on this scheme, including those on out of work sickness or disability benefits, can be ‘mandated’ to almost any job search related activity that the charity can dream up, including workfare. If their victims fail to do what they are told then it is the Salvation Army’s job to report them to the DWP to have their benefits sanctioned.

Not for the first time some charities are pretending to care about the poor in public whilst stopping their benefits behind the scenes.  If the Salvation Army and the YMCA think sanctions are unfair then perhaps they should stop sanctioning people.  Until then, these grubby attempts to white wash their own workfare crimes should be treated with the contempt they deserve.

To join the fight against workfare visit Boycott Workfare’s website.

Charities and voluntary organisations opposed to workfare can sign the Keep Volunteering Voluntary agreement.

The Salvation Army are on twitter @salvationarmyuk and facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/salvationarmyuk

YMCA are on twitter @YMCA_England and facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/YMCA.England

This blog has no sources of funding so here’s a quick reminder that you can help ensure it continues by making a donation.

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Number Of Employment Support Allowance Claims On The Rise – Is Iain Duncan Smith Making Us Sick?

The total number of claimants claiming out of work sickness or disability benefits rose by 15,000 between March and April provisional DWP statistics report.

2.485 million people were claiming Employment Support Allowance or Incapacity Benefit in April, representing a steady rise of 1.2% since November 2013. This comes despite the horrific Atos regime which has seen hundreds of thousands of claimants being stripped of benefits after being assessed as ‘fit for work’.  The number of people on out of work sickness benefits should be plummeting, and it was until just over a year ago.

It is hardly surprising that people are still becoming ill or disabled despite the magical Atos assessments. The UK did not have significantly more people on out of work sickness or disability benefits than other comparable countries even before the despised Work Capability Assessment began. It is unusual however that the number of people unable to work for health reasons should be rising at a time when unemployment is allegedly falling.

There is growing evidence that Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms are damaging people’s health. Some parts of the UK have reported soaring malnutrition linked to benefit cuts. A report produced by Citizen’s Advice last year told of people being unable to meet special dietary needs due to sanctions or having to beg or go through bins to find food. Homelessness charities have said that sanctions are causing people to lose their homes. And a damning report by the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland claimed that 35% of psychiatrists said at least one of their patients had been admitted to hospital as a consequence of the stress of Atos assessments.

Using hunger and homelessness as a weapon against benefit claimants will not incentivise people to find work, it will demolish lives.  Forcing people with mental health conditions into stressful and demeaning assessments under the threat of destitution will not magically cure them of their condition – in many cases it will make it worse.  Iain Duncan Smith really is making us sick, and with more workfare and sanctions on the way then things are only going to get worse.

The latest ESA figures can be downloaded from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dwp-statistical-summaries-2014

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Join the physical or online blockade of the Salvation Army!

From Boycott Workfare

Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty will be holding another of their regular and extremely successful blockades of the Salvation Army on Saturday morning from 11am onwards.

Join in with an online blockade of the Salvation Army’s social media and let them know what you think of their prolific and unashamed use of forced unpaid labour.

Make your feelings known and you may even get to join the prestigious ‘Banned by the Salvation Army over workfare related comments’ facebook group.

Although the Salvation Army are steering clear of the government’s latest workfare programme, the 6 month long Community Work Placements, they are still major users of workfare, taking part in Mandatory Work Activity and the Work Programme. The Salvation Army have expressed their support for workfare for sick and disabled people using the disturbing phrase “emancipation through employment”. Their enthusiastic support of workfare has won them praise from the government last year that they were ‘holding the line’ as other organisations were dropping out of the schemes due to public outrage.

We will keep the pressure on until they fully withdraw from all workfare schemes which threaten people with benefit sanctions of up to 3 years, causing hunger and homelessness.

Contact the Salvation Army UK on Facebook and on Twitter: @salvationarmyuk

They can be telephoned on (020) 7367 4500 or emailed at: info@salvationarmy.org.uk

Please spread the word!

The Salvation Army’s youth section are on facebook here.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Number Of Jobs Gained On Work Programme Plummets: Are Benefit Sanctions To Blame?

The latest Work Programme statistics (PDF) show a shocking fall in the number of people gaining work and suggest that being sent on the scheme is now actively harming people’s chance of getting a job.

The figures show that even after spending a year on the Work Programme, only 10.7% of people had gained a job which lasted at least six months.  This is a fall of almost a quarter since last year’s high in April when 14% of people on the programme for a year had found a long term job – figures which were regarded as a disaster at the time.  The Work Programme has been in steady decline ever since, with the percentage of people finding work overall – including those who have completed the full two years of the scheme – at a new low of just under 19%.  This is down from 22.5% just six months ago, and this figure was expected to rise as more people had been on the programme longer.

Astonishingly there is no mention of this dismal performance in the gushing DWP press release which accompanied this week’s statistics.  No longer are the DWP even reporting the job outcome rate, which is the only figure that matters when assessing whether the Work Programme is working.  Instead the Minister for Unemployment Esther McVey claims:

“Over a quarter of a million long-term unemployed people have been helped into a sustained job thanks to the Work Programme – that’s a quarter of a million people who previously might have been written off now with the security of regular wage.”

The DWP would like us to believe that no-one ever got a job without the help of welfare-to-work profiteers like G4S and A4e.  This is of course bollocks, and around 28% of people condemned to the Work Programme would have been expected to find a job under their own steam.  With unemployment allegedly falling, the companies running the Work Programme should be beating this figure by a long way.

Yet consistently the Work Programme has performed worse than doing nothing at all and these figures suggest that the scheme is now hampering  people’s ability to find work.

The secretive nature of the Work Programme means it is difficult to pin point exactly why it is failing so many people.  The so-called ‘black box’ approach means that the private sector providers are given free reign to mandate unemployed people to any activity they choose.  No-one really knows what’s going on except claimants themselves, some of who report endless harassment whilst others claim they barely hear from their Work Programme provider.

There is one feature however that is universal across the Work Programme and that is benefit sanctions.  These latest figures show five times more people had benefits stopped whilst on the scheme than those who found jobs.  Benefits can be sanctioned for missing or being late to a meeting with a Work Programme provider, failing to attend workfare, or not meeting the draconian, pointless and confusing conditions unemployed people now face to maintain a benefit claim.

Benefit sanctions demolish people, leaving many with nothing at all to live on.  A Citizens Advice report released last year warned that benefit sanctions were causing people to attempt suicide, making health conditions worse, or having to beg or go through bins to find food.  Unsurprisingly being driven to absolute destitution does not motivate people to find work. People who are hungry, desperate and can’t afford to wash their clothes do not generally impress employers at job interviews.

Of course no politician, from any major party, is aware of this because none of them has ever been poor.  To the likes of Cameron, Clegg and Miliband alike, money falls from the sky and the idea of not being able to run the washing machine, or even have a washing machine, is inconceivable.  Let them use the dry cleaners instead they would likely think, or just send out the au pair to do that kind of thing.  This is why almost the entire political class, along with many highly paid charity bosses, support the system of sanctioning benefits as punishment and honestly seem to believe they are doing people a favour.

Approaching a million benefit sanctions are now being inflicted on some of the poorest people every year.  Many of them will be on the Work Programme and this leaves one very big question for the DWP. How many of these claimants might have actually found a job if they hadn’t been forced to spend time queuing up in foodbanks just to get their next meal?

Join the week of action against workfare beginning on March 29th, full details at: http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=3353

Sign the petition to scrap all benefit sanctions without exceptions.

Above pic from a protest at Leith Jobcentre called by Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty.

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Policy Exchange Plot Smart Cards And Doubling The Length of Some Benefit Sanctions

Barely out of school, the Policy Exchange’s Guy Miscampbell has probably never done a real day’s work in his life.

In a humiliating blow to Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms, even the Policy Exchange have condemned the current mass use of benefit sanctions, whilst predictably calling for an even harsher regime.

A report published this week by the Tory think tank, and authored by Guy Miscampbell*, proposes that claimants should be given ‘yellow cards’ the first time they have benefits sanctioned for a lower level offence.  This would mean a smart-card with benefit preloaded onto it which could be used to monitor and control claimant’s spending.  The Policy Exchange admit the technology does not really exist to achieve this, however they think it’s a jolly good idea all the same.  As well as this claimants should be forced to attend the Jobcentre everyday, not to look for work as you might think,  but as a means of “punishing non-compliant behaviour” – the real reason for benefit sanctions.

This will only apply to lower level sanctions, the ones you get for being late for a  meeting or not turning up to a Work Programme appointment you were never told about.  The length of these new ‘non-financial’ sanctions should be doubled according to the bonkers think-tank.  The shame alone of being given a ‘Yellow Card’ by the Jobcentre will turn unemployed people into compliant little bunnies endlessly carrying out irksome and pointless ‘work related activity’ as a condition of receiving meagre benefits.

This will not be enough however to deter “undeserving claimants” say the Policy Exchange who want to double the length of the financial sanctions which will be used should someone slip up again after being given a Yellow Card.  It is often the most marginalised claimants who receive multiple sanctions – those battling addiction, homeless people, people with physical or mental health conditions or those with low levels of literacy or who speak English as a second language.  These are the undeserving claimants who will face even greater impoverishment and harassment if the Policy Exchange get their way.

This report suggests that panic is setting in amongst the swivel-eyed right that the public may not support their war on the poor forever and therefore the DWP’s vicious welfare reforms may have to be spun in a different direction.  Buried beneath their fake concern however is a sanctions regime precision targeted at those likely to find it hardest to find a job and least likely to have much public sympathy for their plight.  Even the unworkable, and frankly fucking laughable Yellow Card system seems to be a cheap attempt to use public concern over the poverty to introduce some form of food-stamp style smart-card scheme into the benefits system.

It is significant though that for the first time the Policy Exchange feel the need to not only insist ‘conditionality’ in the benefit’s system is necessary, but to argue concessions should be made to ensure this view prevails.  It comes at a time when an increasing number of people are calling for all benefit sanctions to be stopped without exceptions.  This is the only way to ensure a fair and humane welfare state, one which doesn’t grind people into the ground if they become unemployed, sick or disabled, but provides dignity and a genuine chance for people to get their lives back on track.

*If this the Policy Exchange report reads like it was written by some pampered little sixth former without a clue how people live in the real world then that’s because it more or less was.  22 year old Guy Miscampbell (pictured) left Durham University with a second class degree in 2012.  After four months as an intern he finally become an employee at the Policy Exchange just over a year ago.  According to his linkedin page this is the only job he has ever had.  And now this chinless little Tarquin thinks he has the knowledge or experience to propose changes to social security that could potentially affect millions of people.

He’s on twitter @guymiscampbell.

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