100 days of Red Ed

Of the 610,245 immigrants to the UK during the July to September 2009 period, 371,000 were students who can apply for a NI number and work part time legally, but cannot claim benefits.

That leaves 239,245 potential benefits claimants.

Of these 239,245, 112,000 were work permit holders and their dependents, all of who can work, apply for a NI No but who again cannot claim benefits.

That leaves 127,245. Of these 85,000 were UK residents, some of whom may or may not be perfectly entitled to claim benefits. Others due to the length of time spent outside the UK, will not be entitled to claim certain benefits. That leaves us with 42,245.

29,085 of these were from eastern European countries that require worker registration. As stated above, some of these are entitled under reciprocal EU arrangements to certain benefits.

Of the remaining 13,160, 5,055 were asylum seekers. The remainder would be Youth Mobility, Ancestry visa entrants and such, none of whom can claim benefits.

LBB, the Tory barrel has no bottom.

In most organisations the cream rises to the top, in the Tory party the scum sits on the surface.

During Osbournes parliamentary speech outlining his cuts the filth on his back benches were laughing and shouting "more more" did they give a flying fuck that lives would be blighted? not for one moment, did they worry that the cuts would lead to people dying due to lack of care, never entered their heads.

And LFN says to describe the Tories as uncaring is "stupid" what i would ask her whenever was the Tory party decent and caring. Never in my life time

No - IDS will align the financial incentives, in order that they find it makes more sense to get a job, and find it makes more sense to stay in a job.

How will he do this? by increasing the minimum wage above poverty levels or by cutting benifits to below starvation level?

"imported millions of foreign scroungers"

Oh dear LFN that really is scraping the bottom of the Tory barrel

Firstly, growth wasn't 'very high' in the lead up to November - it grew 0.7% for Q3 2010.

Are you saying that it is not true that many economists and others predict that pressing on with austerity measures will depress the economy and lead to real-term wage cuts?

Well, as someone has commented in the article I posted:

Are "November's borrowing figures" the reason why we need decisive action?

Or are "November's borrowing figures" the consequence of decisive action?

Or put another way (by another commenter):

Austerity driven cuts = low growth = high deficit = we need more austerity = lower growth = higher deficit = we need even more austerity = even lower growth = even higher deficit = ok now we really need austerity.

Surely the signs that they have made idiotic decisions are clear (house prices, borrowing, inflation, unemployment, available jobs) that it really is time for Plan B.

May I take you back to 2008?

LFN, really it is not true that Labour did not penalise people who didn't look for work, or claimed Incapacity Benefit when they didn't deserve it

Just a query - but for all this talk about cuts and deficit reduction, how come in November there was the largest government borrowing of any month ever recorded and the deficit went up way beyond analyst predictions?

poor george

As for the OP - as others have stated, Labour don't need to be offering alternative policies for now. They need to set the pathetic rhetoric you keep quoting about "the worst deficit in the Western world". Untrue. The coalition are doing a good enough job in self combusting and becoming parodies of themselves - if anyone can hear any single one of them talk without saying the soundbite "sorting out this almighty mess left by the last Labour government" bla bla bla, then I will eat my own head. Ed don't need to worry for now.....they are doing his work for him.

Here's my contribution to the thread Ed's Policies I'm in the know

Whilst important, those elections shouldn't be regarded as completely kosher barometers of public opinion though. They will largely just be about the usual anti-incumbency mood.

Less than 9 months in office, normally the honeymoon period lasts a bit longer.

Think about it, even with all the poor news for Labour the Tories failed to get a majority and after 9 months you think the "country" will vote against them, hardly a ringing endorsement is it.

In 4+ years of taking the axe to valued social services and increasing social division the Tories will be out of office for a long time.

And before you quote Hameron's BS figures.......

"In response to a question on the increase in unemployment by the Labour leader, Ed Mili­band, at Prime Minister's Questions on 15 December, David Cameron said: "While part of the figures are disappointing, they are mixed because we did see the claimant count has come down in the unemployment figures and also we are seeing an increase in the number of vacancies in our economy. Every day, there are another 10,000 vacancies. So, yes, we have got to get the private sector going, increase the number of jobs that are available." They sure do.
Pretty vacant

The claimant count, which excludes many of the unemployed, including all 16-to-17-year-olds, fell by a paltry 1,200. Cameron misspoke, as vacancies are not rising by 10,000 a day. Far from it. Over the quarter, they in fact grew by only 1,000. So, assuming there are about 91 days in every quarter, the number of vacancies grew by only 11 a day, not 10,000.

Anyway, this increase was driven primarily by a one-off increase in vacancies in the public sector. As is made clear in a note on page nine
of the data release, the estimate for the three months to November 2010 includes vacancies for temporary jobs in connection with the 2011 census, which have been advertised by the Office for National Statistics since October 2010.

Excluding these census vacancies, there were 455,000 vacancies in the three months to November 2010, down 12,000 from the three months to August 2010, or 132 a day. Private-sector vacancies fell at a rate of 55 a day.

"

Taken from here

LFN, what bloody jobs! your party will INCREASE unemployment not reduce it, I ask again what jobs.

Pie in the sky

LFN - the last government and all previous governments have introduced financial incentives to get people back into work. It is a myth that IDS is doing anything new in that respect.

It is new however to introduce the feckless, scrounging, "get the bus" rhetoric back into it, all the while slashing jobs.