From Welfare to Deathfare.

The 3 contenders for Chancellor of the Exchequer all agree on one thing – the budget deficit must be cut. This will require a variety of “brutal”, “savage” and “deep” cuts – but none of course, will affect you or your frontline services. It’s a bit like serial killer say he’s going to stab you repeatedly but you will still be able to go for a pint and a game of football afterwards. Most people don’t like seeing their school, hospital or for that matter job cut. But all 3 parties say they can make these brutal cuts without it really affecting the living standards of the population – how?

Well the Tories in league wi the tabloid press have said they” cut “non jobs” that are allegedly rampant in the public sector; gypsy co-ordinators, totem pole dramatists, carbon officers, etc. A lot of these jobs are basic admin stuff which have been made to sound fancy to stop the people working in them from forgetting that we are all middle class now. But a lot of them are tokenistic, designed to make it look like the Government are doing something about climate change, racism and discrimination in the workplace.

Ultimately though the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates 14 – 24% cuts in non-protected departments are necessary to deal with the budget deficit. We gave £500 billion in a bail out to the banks – sorry folks, there aren’t enough walking coordinators and health and safety outreach guardian jobs to cut to save that kind of money.

One thing that can be cut, and doesn’t directly affect the mass of the population though is benefits. There’s already demands from the tabloid press to drastically cut “spongers” on benefits. There are parts of Glasgow, London, Manchester etc with large minorities of adults who are living on benefits – a lot of whom are also on disability benefit.

Disability benefit ranges from £47 – £70 a week, an increase from what you get on the dole, which is around £50 a week depending on your age. The Government can’t cut people’s dole easily, but it can force people who are on disability allowance on to the basic unemployment allowance.

New Government tests have been designed, with 70% of the applicants failing to qualify for disability allowance, and deemed fit to work. These tests have been condemned by charities like Macmillan, and the Citizens Advice Bureau for deeming those with terminal illnesses as being fit to work.

Here’s a few examples below,

A CAB in London saw a former engineer in his 50’s who was working as a driver. After feeling ill for a number of months he visited his G.P and was immediately referred to hospital where he was admitted with heart disease and required a triple bypass. About three weeks after he’d been discharged he started to feel extremely ill again. He went back to hospital and after a series of new tests was diagnosed with inoperable and incurable stomach and liver cancer. Although he was advised to continue taking regular exercise, he found walking and breathing difficult, was in constant pain and suffered a number of uncomfortable side effects from both his cancer and heart medication. At his WCA he was found fit for work on the basis that he remarked how he walked daily (although not far and not without discomfort) and could raise his hands above his head (once). None of his medical consultants could believe the decision. He recently appealed the original decision and was successful in being put into the support group for people not required to look for work.

Other examples are given, of one client with Parkinson’s disease who was barely able to stand, and whose speech was slurred but still cleared as fit to work. Another man who was shot at by a violent gang, and diagnosed with PTSD was declared fit for work. His test did not take account of any of his personal circumstances, but just asked him a series of yes and no questions. It’s not dissimilar from what was featured in the documentary The Trap, where people were diagnosed or cleared of complex psychological disorders on the basis of a questionnaire and nothing else. New Labour are quite literally working people to death to save money.

The welfare bill for the budget is massive, with £190 billion spent on social protection – the largest single cost – and a further £29 billion spent on personal social services. Since coming into power in 1997 New Labour have been attacked for this massive proportion of spending on the welfare state. But the reality is the benefits you receive today for being unemployed are lower in relation to average income than ever before. Benefits are now 10% of average wages, down from almost 20% in 1970.

New Labour’s massive welfare bill exists due to long term unemployment in urban areas all over the UK – who previously had no lack of people working, but were plunged into massive unemployment, poverty, ill health and crime as part of the transformation of Britain from a manufacturing country (with the union power that entails) to one based on finance services.

This transformation meant that the economic boom has passed over areas in Scotland with massive unemployment, and without any Government investment or control of the economy to make jobs there are thousands claiming benefits because the talents they had are now irrelevant to the modern economy.

Another part of the welfare bill is in tax credits. Tax credits act as benefits for those who work, but are paid very poorly. Contrary to the tabloids many civil servants who administer this service are themselves paid so low that they also claim them. Tax credits effectively act as a Government subsidy to employers who pay their workers such a low wage, the state has to step in to provide them with enough money to earn a decent wage.

You can expect the unemployed to face a sustained attack from whichever party wins the next election; cutting benefits, forcing the ill to work, making people work for the dole (and not a decent wage). Remember that the biggest welfare state claimant in the UK’s history is not single parents, immigrants, the unemployed or the disabled – it’s the banking system who took £500 billion. They’re the real spongers.