Cameron: "Cuts will change our way of life"

[Skidfingers McGonical]

So wait, let me get this straight. You want something in return for the money we pay into government? If you pay tens of thousands of pounds into a system over a number of years then, when the economy goes tits up, you expect a fraction of that back as support so you don't starve? If you break you leg and want healthcare you expect not to be left in agony?

 

You sick, sick bastard. It's lazy bastards like you... etc, etc, so on and so forth.

 

That's not a very liberal way of looking at it is it.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

That's not a very liberal way of looking at it is it.

 

Well, calling people 'lazy cunts' and saying that you hope the cuts change their way of life dailymailesque and smells of rightwingery. Telling people to stop expecting the government to 'do everything' for them is typical conservative territory. That part, at least, sounds like it came from a Republican governor.

[Lee909]

Striking workers' benefits axed

 

Striking workers will not have their wages topped up from next year

Low-paid workers who take strike action will no longer have their wages topped up by the state, ministers say.

 

Workers on up to £13,000 a year can currently claim working tax credits to top up their income even when they take part in industrial action.

 

But from next year there will be no increase in benefits if a worker's income drops due to strike action.

 

Labour accused Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith of "starving people back to work".

 

The change is part of the new Universal Credit, which is replacing the benefit system with a single payment.

 

Mr Duncan Smith says the fact that the current benefit system compensates workers and tops up their income when they go on strike is "unfair and creates perverse incentives".

 

"Striking is a choice, and in future benefit claimants will have to pay the price for that choice, as under Universal Credit, we no longer will," said Mr Duncan Smith.

 

'Out-of-touch'

 

Under the new rules, benefit claimants will be identified as being involved in a trade dispute using information provided by HM Revenue and Customs, the government said.

 

The amount a household receives in benefits will then be assessed using "pre-strike" level of earnings.

 

For new claims, any entitlement will be based on usual "non-strike" earnings, said the DWP.

 

Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne, for Labour, said every week the government found "someone else to blame" for the recession.

 

"Britain needs a plan for jobs and growth and a government which will take a sensible approach to industrial relations.

 

"Instead David Cameron's out-of-touch government, not content with creating panic at the pumps after mishandling the fuel dispute, are talking about starving people back to work.

 

"It seems that Iain Duncan Smith has put the idea that 'we are all in this together' well and truly in the bin."

 

Labour MP Anne Begg, chair of the work and pensions select committee, said questions remained on the Universal Credit.

 

"This is another example of it not being as generous as the government first made out that it was.

 

"The gains may actually be less than the gains that previously existed under the tax credit system. "

[lifetime fan]

I'm surprised it took them this long to put it through.

[Section_31]

Can't even be arsed posting on this thread any more. There's nothing else you can say about the situation.

[lifetime fan]

Can't even be arsed posting on this thread any more. There's nothing else you can say about the situation.

 

Cunt and/or Cunts is always a welcome addition.

[Ian Sea]

Not quite sure where to post this, or even if it's already been posted, but there's an interesting interview with Jon Cruddas in the Guardian today;

 

Jon Cruddas – the maverick MP trying to lead Labour out of the wilderness | Politics | The Observer

 

"Is here OK?" asks Jon Cruddas as he sits down in an armchair next to a bag of golf clubs. Just above his head is a noticeboard on which is pinned a photograph of him with a big grin holding a giant fish in his hands.

 

Before we start, he draws our attention to pictures of the house he is building on the wild west coast of County Mayo in Ireland. "Look at this," he says. "Just the mountains, and the Atlantic. Next stop New York. Fantastic!"

 

His office is a good guide to the man. It is piled high with letters, papers from thinktanks, invitations to speak at universities and learned books about political philosophy. One is a work called Reclaiming Patriotism – Nation-building for Australian Progressives by Tim Soutphommasane, who Cruddas wants to invite to this country "as soon as we can" for Labour brainstorming sessions.

 

A few weeks ago this delicate balance that Cruddas has struck between real life, politics and academia was rudely interrupted by a phone call from Ed Miliband. "He invited me in and asked me to join his shadow cabinet," Cruddas recalls. The thought alarmed him. "I said to him, 'woah ... look, let's stop there. I am not really into the day-to-day stuff. So I am not interested.' "

 

The 50-year-old MP for Dagenham and Rainham, who worked for Tony Blair in Downing Street before becoming an MP in 2001, became disillusioned with New Labour in its later years. He thought it lost touch with its ethical roots and the party's founding purpose. He turned down offers to join Gordon Brown's government more than once. When Miliband made his initial offer, his reaction was the same.

 

But the Labour leader saw the refusal coming. "I thought you would say that," he said to Cruddas. "What about heading the policy review which we need to take to the next stage?"

 

Cruddas recalls his mind racing. "I was surprised. Blind-sided would be the best description. I thought, 'Why?' Then I thought, 'Why not?' This was the one that interested me."

 

The country is at a crossroads, Cruddas believes, economically and socially. On issues such as housing, social care and the wider role that the state should play in promoting secure and flourishing lives for all, he fears it is on the edge of a crisis. Given all that, it dawned on him that, if Miliband really would give him freedom in the job to be radical, he had to do it.

 

In his first interview since accepting the post as head of Labour's policy review, Cruddas is extraordinarily candid. He is clear that the appointment is "a gamble" and suggests that he will quit unless Miliband is "bold". If the party reverts to anything like late New Labour, he will be off. "I refused to join the Labour government because I was unhappy with the shape of it, and the trajectory of it," he says. "It was becoming mechanistic and bureaucratic. It lacked an identity.

 

"In fact, I stood for the deputy leadership in 2007 to try to change the direction of it. I am the worst person to be a defender of what the Labour government became. That is why it is a bold invitation by Ed, because I am not here just to dust down the record. If it is on those terms, I am not interested."

 

It was also bold because Cruddas did not vote for Ed Miliband in the 2010 leadership contest but chose his brother David. "I think I made a mistake," he says. "I just thought they were all about the same – but that David Miliband would play better at the box office."

 

Ed quickly impressed him. "I didn't go to the Labour party conference last year. I heard Ed Miliband's speech on reforming capitalism when I was driving. I stopped my car and started listening. I thought it was the most interesting speech I had heard for some time. He has caught my attention. Some of the stuff he has staked out does touch on the idea of the world changing and politicians being prepared to break out from old orthodoxies and challenge some of their own assumptions. It seems to me that this guy has got a game."

 

After just a month in his new post Cruddas has already "changed gear". He has torn up Labour's previous policy-making machinery of the past two years, replacing 29 separate policy groups with just three – on the economy, society and politics. He says what the Labour party has lacked since the last election is an "over-arching story".

 

That story should now, he says, be about "rebuilding Britain" both in terms of bricks and mortar (more housing and infrastructure to create jobs) and creating a sense among its citizens of joint involvement in "national renewal". This, he argues, will involve the unashamed championing of the role of collective action in people's lives – as distinct from the Tory-Lib Dem coalition, which he says wants to "hack back" the public sector and the state.

 

At the same time it will mean talking up the contribution of those who work in Britain's hospitals, schools and other public institutions. Cruddas wants to claim David Cameron's "big society" idea as the natural project of "true Labour" and make it work by inspiring a sense of national duty which includes and celebrates public service.

 

"Three of my brothers and sisters are public servants," he says. "The way that the notion of public service is being debased by the coalition in terms of the role of the state is a contest we have got to have. My family joined to make a contribution and I think we have to reclaim that notion of service. All of these ideas have to be framed about a contest on what we want this country to be."

 

He compares Labour's challenge now – as recession and austerity bite at home and the eurozone crisis deepens across the Channel – with the one it faced in 1945. "The way I look at it would be that in 1945 Labour locked in the organised working classes into an overarching story of national renewal, and that is the equivalent task at hand today."

 

He cannot give away details of policy, but his broad thinking is radical. He wants to look at the idea of appointing union officials to company boards. He wants to plug the public into the debate on Europe by offering an "in/out" referendum once the shape of the new European Union is known. He wants to reform public services where necessary, but only where that will enhance their role, not as a means of shrinking them and hiving them off in parts to the private sector.

 

Labour, he argues, cannot afford the luxury of time, because so much damage is being done. "When we lost in 1931 and 1979, it took us 14 and 18 years respectively to get back in the game. Now we are going to try to do that after an even bigger defeat – arguably our greatest defeat ever, in one term. We are obliged to do it because of the scale of the rupture that is occurring in real time around us in every element of the economic and social sphere."

 

He will not even contemplate "gang wars" between Blairites and other factions getting in the way because, he says, the task is too urgent. "We are beyond that. We have to be," he says. Neither is he bothered about the flak that papers such as the Daily Mail may well throw at him. "I couldn't give a toss," he says.

 

Some will see Cruddas's agenda as too abstract, too romantic. Others will say that the party's real task – before such grand theorising – is to rebuild economic credibility. This, he says, is already being done by Ed Balls. "If you look at the three crunch calls that Balls has made, he has got them all right," he says. "First, keeping Britain out of the euro; second, recapitalising the banks in 2008; and third, criticising the implications of fiscal constraint. Bang on, on every one. And brave, too."

 

Cruddas says he will be knocking on the doors of David Miliband and James Purnell in coming weeks to ask them to play their part. He talks confidently of "reforming the band", by which he means enrolling the biggest New Labour beasts, including Tony Blair, behind project Ed.

 

There may be a little less time for fishing and golf, but he promises an exciting ride. "Things could move quite dramatically if we get it right. But it is incumbent on all of us to step up, roll up our sleeves and get stuck in."

[VladimirIlyich]

Good luck with making changes,I'm not convinced it will work but I hope it does.

[Section_31]

Good move that, I like Cruddas. Could I have been wrong about Ed? I hope so.

[VladimirIlyich]

Good move that, I like Cruddas. Could I have been wrong about Ed? I hope so.

 

Me too.

[BatChainPuller]

It worked for FDR and Attlee, maybe it'll work for Ed.

 

[VladimirIlyich]

Dennis Skinner: 'I was formed in the pits and the war' | Politics | The Guardian

[lifetime fan]

Surely the libs won't vote to reduce the protection of whistleblowers in the NHS, will they?

 

Especially if patient safety and welfare is being put at risk by cuts to the NHS.

[Champ]

Surely the libs won't vote to reduce the protection of whistleblowers in the NHS, will they?

 

Especially if patient safety and welfare is being put at risk by cuts to the NHS.

Have I missed something? What are you referring to there?

[lifetime fan]

Have I missed something? What are you referring to there?

 

 

Proposed tory reforms to the protection offered to whistleblowers, as you can imagine this is a subject I'm keenly interested in.

[Champ]

Proposed tory reforms to the protection offered to whistleblowers, as you can imagine this is a subject I'm keenly interested in.

Have you seen the proposals?

[lifetime fan]

Have you seen the proposals?

 

Yeah, I'll try and get the article on here. May take a bit of time as it's behind the HSJ paywall.

[Champ]

Not giving anything away? Would be interested to see that.

[Section_31]

It's what the Tories do, they prepare for the shitstorm before they unleash it. Before Thatcher moved against the miners she gave the plod a payrise and stockpiled coal. It's telling that among the first things the Tories did when they came in was change the definition of child poverty. Cracking down on strike pay and NHS whistleblowing shows they're just circling the wagons for what is to come. If they put as much effort into running a country as they did trying to fuck it over, we might not actually be in recession.

[lifetime fan]

So the head of NHS mnagers has said that cuts are affecting front line services and has compared the NHS as heading for an iceberg.

 

Not that we didn't know the coalition were lying through their fucking teeth.

[RedRazor]

So the head of NHS mnagers has said that cuts are affecting front line services and has compared the NHS as heading for an iceberg.

 

Not that we didn't know the coalition were lying through their fucking teeth.

 

I really don't understand this - people are talking about cuts but funding has increased. What is really happening?

[Einch]

I really don't understand this - people are talking about cuts but funding has increased. What is really happening?

 

Fucking over the public costs money. The headline figure looks good an' all but the amoutn reaching the people who need it is going down.

[JER]

I see Dave has described Jimmy Carr's tax arrangements as morally wrong.

 

Mmmm

 

 

Cameron's father 'used tax havens to build family fortune'

 

David Cameron's late father ran a network of offshore investment funds to help build up the family's fortune, it was claimed last night. Ian Cameron, a stockbroker, set up funds in tax havens such as Panama City and Geneva, and boasted of their ability to remain outside UK tax jurisdiction. There is no suggestion he acted illegally.

 

When he died in 2010 aged 77, Ian Cameron left £2.74m in his will; the Prime Minister received £300,000. The methods used by Ian Cameron from 1979, when controls on taking capital out of Britain were scrapped, are now common among hedge funds. UK residents have to pay tax on profits they repatriate, and there is nothing to suggest the Cameron family did not. But the timing of the revelation by The Guardian newspaper may embarrass the Prime Minister. Labour claims that last month's Budget, which cut the top rate of tax from 50 to 45 per cent, showed the Tories are the "party of the rich" whose leaders are "out of touch".

 

Downing Street said it did not want to comment a private family matter. A spokesman added: "The Government's tax reforms are about making sure that some of the richest people in the country pay a decent share of income tax.

[Guest davelfc]

Latest tory plans are to cut housing benefit to the under 25s. That won't go down well with all the tory landlords. I mean who do you think mopped up all of those houses that people found they couldn't afford? Who mopped up the council houses that were sold off.

 

Who did away with the fair rents? I wonder why.

 

Surely if multi millionaire david shiny face fucktard cameron is going to come up with these schemes, he has to have made sure that there are places for these people to go, that there are jobs for people to do. I'm all for anyone tacking the welfare system but telling someone to get a job while there not being any jobs (and actively cutting jobs) isn't really tackling anything.

 

No wonder police forces are buying riot vehicles and having extra training, they know what's coming.

 

I hate politicians, all of them but tories, well they're the lowest form of scum on the planet.

[Ginny]

Thatcher is a slag