Political Edge
I don’t like the Conservative party. I think that the benefit system should be the pillar of a civilised society. Redistribution of wealth is something I believe in and my teachers at school were basically full-on Communists. By all rights, I should hate the party. Despite this, I’ve found myself wondering lately – do they have a point? The latest Tory controversy has hit the media in the form of plans to cut incapacity benefit for half a million Britons. Critics have claimed that this, along with other, ‘typically Tory’ policies such as raising the retirement age to 66, show that the party is back to it’s old tricks. I can’t help wondering though if actually these measures could be good news? Currently, 2.67 million UK citizens claim incapacity benefit. Sure, it sounds a bit harsh to ask half a million of these to just man up, but considering you can qualify for incapacity benefit with ‘dizziness’, perhaps it’s time we tightened our belts and asked those who need it least to face the outside world and have a go at working. Even if it’s only part time. Don’t get me wrong- I really do support the benefit for those who really need it, but I think it’s fair to say that many people on it could handle small amounts of part time work.
Besides, the cuts proposed aren’t as bad as the media have led us to believe. All Cameron has promised to do is reduce the payments, not to cut these people off altogether. Another idea that the Tories have been banding around is to cut off those claiming jobseeker’s allowance after a year. Again, it’s very unpopular, but again, is it so bad? A year is a really, really long time. Definitely long enough to find a job, at least doing something quite boring, which pays the bills and contributes to society (if you aren’t capable of finding any work for more than a year, then maybe you should get on that incapacity benefit…)
Now, retirement. An extra year at work is as unappealing to me as the next man, but raising retirement age to 66 generates an extra £13bn in tax revenue per year. With a £170bn+ national debt, maybe DC’s right – it’s going to be a bad few years, but we’re going to have to get on with it. We’ll already have done 65 – what’s an extra year between friends? We might even have time to pay off that student debt. Maybe.
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Cutting back in the economy in a recession? I think not. The Tories have yet again shown that they are about benefiting those with wealth and not giving a damn about the majority middle. It is simple economics that we need to spend more so people have more money in their pockets, so in turn they spend more creating more jobs.
Spend now, worry later may seem like a risky strategy however in my opinion, and in the evidence of history this seems like the only policy. Even the Nazi Party were forced to go against their upper middle class electorate and spend vast amounts of money in autobahns and public work schemes.
Then the magic idea of “freezing wages of the public sector.” It was the private NOT the public sector that caused this mess. Nurses, Teachers, Assistants, Managers, Doctors, Firemen, Policemen will all struggle to pay their way under Tory rule.
Time for change, or a change of time? Dickensian social injustice doesn’t seem a far cry from the “Modern Conservative Party.”
“I don’t like the Conservative party.”
Is that why you joined the Freedom Society?
“the party is back to it’s old tricks”
once again, it’s = it is.
“Currently, 2.67 million UK citizens claim incapacity benefit. Sure, it sounds a bit harsh to ask half a million of these to just man up, but considering you can qualify for incapacity benefit with ‘dizziness’, perhaps it’s time we tightened our belts and asked those who need it least to face the outside world and have a go at working.” Britain actually employs some of the toughest testing in the world when assessing incapacity – even before these latest proposals.
“All Cameron has promised to do is reduce the payments, not to cut these people off altogether.” People unable to work due to disabilities are some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable in our society, and incapacity benefit is already very low. When Cameron is exploiting such people by demanding they subsist on less still, your defence is hair-splitting.
“Another idea that the Tories have been banding around is to cut off those claiming jobseeker’s allowance after a year. Again, it’s very unpopular, but again, is it so bad? A year is a really, really long time. Definitely long enough to find a job, at least doing something quite boring, which pays the bills and contributes to society” – I doubt you’ll be saying the same if/when you find yourself a graduate looking for a job. To claim that, in the midst of a recession, anyone can find a job within a year, smacks of painful naivety and optimism in the face of grim reality.
“Now, retirement. An extra year at work is as unappealing to me as the next man, but raising retirement age to 66 generates an extra £13bn in tax revenue per year.” – revenue which is then funnelled off into jobseeker’s allowance, job-creation, etc. Regular job turnover depends on retirement; if fewer older people are leaving to retire, fewer jobs will be available to those young people entering the job market. Result is higher unemployment. Not to mention other problems related to the proposition to increase age.
Poorly written and massively biased rubbish. Tolerable in a comment section (and then only barely) but if you want to pretend to be a proper politics editor then you should try to be less biased than by pretending you hate the Tories when you’re supporting all of their pro-upper-class policies.
The policies listed are ones that specifically remove funds from those at the very bottom of society. The majority of Britain is middle-class now and so frown on people who aren’t working or who are incapacitated. But these people aren’t just going to invent a job because they’re getting poorer – they’ll just struggle, fall into greater poverty, move down the property ladder and end up increasing crime levels significantly.
Removing the bottom level support is like taking the bottom out of a pile of sand. Millions of people will move down and get sucked into the poverty level and the select few at the top will be barely affected either way. It’s support for the wealthy at the cost of those who need our help the most. The government isn’t there to help the rich but to help the needy – those who are ill, who need education etc. Write something more neutral and I’ll start to remotely respect you. Also; use grammar properly.
It’s about time we got these lazy group of underclass individuals off their handouts. It’s the true working-class that find these people despicable for their sheer lazyness and culture of evasion.
On the issue of later retirement, anyone that disagrees with this is utterly bonkers. The current pension system is a product of the 1920′s when the average age was about 65. People working to 65, collecting a pension to the age of 82+ (or whatever the figure is- people are living longer) is simply unsustainable. Get real.
Anon: If ‘managers’ that are clogging up the public-sector struggle to pay their way, that’s not a bad thing. There are too many people doing too little work and it’s a waste of public money.
When you get into the real world, actually get a good job and pay 40% (maybe 50% now) tax, you too will get hacked off at the lazy benefit grabbing culture that dominates a large group of people. Tucked up in your leftist student bubble (I was a student not long ago), I don’t blame you for holding these views.
ARP – you are clearly the one living in a bubble if you fail to observe and understand that, in a recession, the job market contracts (because financial pressures on businesses and services force them to go bust or lay off/avoid hiring workers). Unemployment has risen in line with the financial crisis/recession – has that passed you by?
There were/are always a limited number of jobs available compared to those seeking work, and that problem has been exacerbated by the recession. Keeping the elderly in work for longer will only exacerbate that problem (because there will be more people in an insufficient job market). So there will be more people unable to find work…and you think they should then have their job-seeker’s allowance cut off? What then – starvation, the workhouse? In order to get them into work, job creation is needed – and that, directly or indirectly, at the moment requires government intervention and investment. Such would be the fate of any savings made from the Tories’ proposals.
I don’t know who your comment about ‘managers’ is aimed at, or why you mention it (I don’t think either myself or the other anon mentioned it). Since you mention “waste of public money”, though – there is an argument that retirement is beneficial to business/services, because it allows workers at the end of a career (with salary built up over time) to be shifted onto a pension, to be replaced at the bottom of the chain by an inexperienced young person entering the market who can be paid less. Not that I think much of that particular argument, you understand, but it’s certainly a convenient way of preventing the development of a bloated public service dedicated to keeping the middle classes in work.