to think David Cameron has done a wonderful job?

[toweraboveyou]

Dave Cameron is on a crusade to get everybody off benefits and into work, even those he thinks are probably lying about their disabilities. Therefore, he has obviously created enough jobs for everybody. Otherwise, he'd just be a fuckwit, right?

phacelia i know what you mean about Thatcher, being born mid-eighties I always knew I was supposed to hate her, but didnt understand why. Seeing the comparisons made with Cameron now, I understand.

Channel 4 news have tweeted that they are interested to hear from people who have experienced the Work Programme.

They are especially interseted to hear from you if you are/were an A4e client.

he is a bum face..... bloody bum face

Why is that making me giggle?!

I know it's very childish of me to refer to him as Bumface (which I do all the time at home), but he is a Bumface and it makes me giggle too

I was nearly sent on a work programme with A4e as areas of the NW still use them. I had a lucky escape as I got a 15hrs a week post as a support worker. Did you see the former exec on Ch4 news? Awkward viewing.

londonone I want them to stop forcing the charitable sector to take over necessary services (contact centres, support for young people, disabled children etc) and at the same time cut their funding meaning they either close or rely on unpaid staff. I have been a "Professional Volunteer" since January working unpaid for many organisations as I have a social conscience and want to make a difference. I'm a graduate and desperate for a paid job that will give me a proper career in this sector. I don't think the government ought to give me a job but I do think they should stop making it so fucking hard. Clearly you would deal with this much better. Tell me what you would do?

He does look like an arse

Its really funny that Tory supporters have got their party in government, yet say they think the government is spending their taxes in an incompetent way.

Ha.

I agree by the way. The tories are marvellously incompetent. Beyond satire! They have excelled themselves in this respect.

Gas up - Water up - electric up - food up - BUT INFLATION DOWN - ??? Amazing!

PerfectStorm and Phacelia- fantastic posts.

Of course the Tories are never going to increase the taxes paid by the wealthy and the business leaders who donate to the Tory party and provide lucrative directorships. Of course they are not going to means test any benefits paid to independently-living pensioners, who are historically a largely Conservative-voting group (FWIW I think all pensioners should have access to these universal benefits- I just disagree with them being taken from everyone else).

The way to make it more financially sensible to work than to be on benefits is NOT to cut benefits to the point where they are so low that anyone surviving on them is plunged into poverty, or make them impossible to even obtain (as in Pumpkin's example above). The solution is to remove the obstacles that prevent people working- address the lack of jobs for a start; find childcare solutions which allow people with families to work; build some flexibility into the system which allows people with physical and mental disabilities to work as and when they are fit to do so, but does not penalise them when they are unable to work.

The government are deliberately setting the working poor against the non-working poor according to their own political agenda- this helpfully diverts attention away from the billions lost to tax avoidance schemes, and the MPs with millions in offshore trust funds. meanwhile the money they actually claim to be lost to benefit fraud is less than the government's own error margins in the benefit calculations.

I think the thing that sickens me the most is that Cameron used his own son's disability to curry favour with the electorate and lend credence to the idea that he was going to help the vulnerable and those with disabilities. Instead he has a system which has incorrectly assessed many people with disabilities as fit to work- including hundreds who died before they ever returned to work.

I thought Labour got a lot of things very, very wrong. But this lot are trying to send us back to Victorian times, where the poor deserve nothing more than the workhouse and we have the same employment rights as chimney sweeps.

Not sure whether Cameron is generating his own evil, or whether he's a puppet having his strings pulled. Osborne is just a fucking clueless idiot, and Gove is trying to run the entire education system like an especially didactic 1950s grammar school; for some reason , he believes that privatising all schools is the answer to raising standards. Cameron though- he scares me, because I don't know whether he genuinely believes that the only way to help the poor , the vulnerable, disabled people, and children living in poverty is to punish them, or whether it's purely motivated by political and financial gain.

He has done a fantastic job at making sure no one will vote tory again!

Don't mention the workhouse....Cuntservatives read MN. Don't give them ideas....

Inertia - I think your reference to DCs dead son is disgusting - I'm sure he'd give anything to have his son back, he would never have chosen to have his beloved child be ill and die to curry favour with voters.

Have some respect ffs, he is a parent and human being after all, you may not agree with his politics but he lost his child.

DAVE CAM A FUCKWIT never not in a million years I heard Transit is closing today so more feckless unemployed people for him to find jobs for,

Loopydoopy -of course I would never wish the death or suffering of a child on anyone; it is the most devastating thing that could happen. It's a tragedy that nobody should ever have to suffer- no child should have to go through that pain, no parent should ever have to go through that terrible loss. Perhaps my post was badly phrased.

However, it's an inescapable fact that the image portrayed to voters was one that suggested Cameron understood the difficulties of caring for people with disabilities, that he understood how hard it is to access the required treatment and care, and he made promises to improve the situation. He is the one person in the country with the power to make a positive difference to people with disabilities - however, his government is cutting services and allowances providing for the care of disabled people, and forcing disabled people off DLA and onto the mercy of the fragile jobs market.

I have every respect for anyone who has lost a child , or who cares for someone with a disability. That respect transcends politics. But the fact is, there are hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities, and their carers, who need help now . Cameron is cutting their help, he is cutting NHS budgets. Cameron lied when he promised to help these people.

Shameron, Scameron, HamFaced Cameron-

This is enough to give you nightmares (if he hasn't given you them already)-

www.awwwards.com/gallery/65734/7

And this makes me laugh........

todolist.org.uk/love-from-london-maiden/

1% growth!!!
All due to the Olympics apparently
sustainable?

Oooh 1 % growth means we might be able to get a triple dipper recession - like the biggest rollercoaster evarrrr

loopy doopy

32 people a week are dying after being found fit for work by Atos who have the contract to get people off disability benefits.
They are all someones child too!

The reality of workfare in the workplace.

www.theunluckydip.com/Blog/?p=1047

heres one for londonone

And when y'all have read my link, here is a quandry for those of you who think we are too dependent on the welfare state, and that benefits should be removed.

Supposing I am a single father. I work full time. I am a counter assistant in a pharmacy. I earn the minimum wage of £6.08 an hour.
Surprised? Many more people only earn minimum wage than you realise.

I work 37 hours a week, and after tax and NI earn approx £9.5 k a year.

Out of that, my small 2 bed flat is £6300 a year (£525 a month)

Leaving me with £3.2 K

My council tax is £960 a year

balance is now £2,240.

Travel to work and back is £60 a month. That's £720 a year.

My energy bills, even with turning the heat of after my child has gone to bed at 7, are £750 a year.

Water is £380 a year.

I now have £390 left. A year.

Oh hang on. Before and after school Childcare while I am at work.

£2925

I still don't even have access to the internet, let alone school clothes and shoes, let alone FOOD.

And I am in debt by £2,535

So here is my question.

Do you:

A) MASSIVELY increase the minimum wage so that people who work full time can afford food, heat, housing and warmth.

or

B) provide a top up benefits system, so they can have all of the above.

Because you have to have one. Or the other.

These things are not luxuries.
With no benefits, people on low incomes would simply be homeless. All of them.
Oh, and the figures for rent etc above are very conservative figures. In the South East they would be a LOT more.

X post Julia scurr!

Of course the government doesn't "provide" jobs, in terms of just handing them out to the needy.
But what they can do is provide the economic situation where small businesses are not being stifled before they have had a chance to grow and employ people, not allow workfare so that there are no paid jobs for supermarket workers, and young people who want education and training to be the employers of the future are not being priced out of said education and training.
In addition, public services do actually provide jobs, which in turn creates consumers of, well, everything else.
Even the Tories have admitted that investing in infastructure stimulates the economy.
And if huge billion pounds profit making companies were actually required to pay tax, perhaps some of that money could go towards our schools, hospitals and disability services.
Rather than strangling the economy further, which is what the current bunch of idiots are doing.