There Is No Such Thing As A Fair Benefit Sanction And They Are Not A Tory Invention

Excellent piece

the void

A pregnant women who was sanctioned in disguise at a recent protest so Jobcentre staff don’t recognise her. From The Poor Side Of Life

Iain Duncan Smith’s mass use of benefit sanctions is driving people to their deaths.  But it began under Labour, and was not opposed by most trade unions or charities established to support people living in poverty.

In 2008 the Labour government published a green paper entitled ‘No one written off: reforming welfare to reward responsibility’ (PDF).  Gordon Brown himself wrote the forward to the document pledging “tough responsibilities that respect tax payers” for all of those on some form of out of work benefit.

Even for a Government which had already introduced workfare and the despised Work Capability Assessment, some of the measures proposed were shocking.  These included mandatory work related activity – a vague term that often means workfare – for both sick and…

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Bell end of the Union

Wee Ginger Dug

When it comes to Scotland, the Guardian’s cartoonist Steve Bell is an uncomprehending humourless twank who long ago crossed the line between satire and a casual patronising racism. In his right on politically correct zeal to condemn everything he suspects may be nationalism, which is of course always bad when it’s not of the invisible British Labour variety, he traduces and shows contempt for an entire country. Steve Bell swims in his Labourite British nationalist sense of superiority exactly like a homophobic Ukip oaf wondering why there are no heterosexual pride marches, and displays the same blank incomprehension of a phenomenon he doesn’t understand yet which he feels threatened by.

As a result the drawings of the left wing cartoonist scourge of Thatcherism would not look out of place in the Daily Mail. Actually, even the Daily Mail might pause and consider whether to publish them – their racist contempt…

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Loki: The Scottish National Collective Party

Can you smell the fear?

Wee Ginger Dug

Can you smell the fear? It’s reeking, rising in a fog of incomprehension, wafting up from the sweaty furrowed brows of Unionist politicians, dripping from the pens of the metrocommentariat columnists. It’s the rank odour of a rotting and rancid Project Fear which is now eating itself, consumed in hubris, dissolving in its arrogance. Confused and lost by how events have turned against the winning side in the referendum. The wind has changed. It blows fair for Scotland.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Better Together was supposed to mean that Scotland better listen passively, Scotland better do what it was told what was best for it. But Scotland isn’t listening any more. We no longer listen to those who don’t hear us. Scotland wants Home Rule. Scotland was promised Home Rule, we were vowed the closest thing to federalism it was possible to get. We were told that…

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