Reblogged from Michael Meacher MP:
Iain Duncan Smith of happy notoriety has told us he could live on £71 JSA if
he had to for a week (or for a month or for 6 months as many jobseekers have to
endure?). I don’t believe that for a second, and he wouldn’t dare trying to do
it. He’s also told us everyone should get a job and stop whingeing. So how
would he get a job in Salford, Hull, Rochdale and the Wirral where last month 76
unemployed persons were applying for every vacancy? It’s easy enough in
Cambridge, Guildford, Winchester and Reading since 9 out of 10 easiest areas to
find a job are found in southern England. Perhaps he’s never looked around
northern England before he fires his peashooter giving us the benefit of his
advice.
The elementary observation which seems to have escaped IDS is that what
pushes up unemployment is not shirkers or skivers refusing to take jobs, but the
sheer lack of vacancies in areas of low economic activity and poor growth
prospects. Almost half (46%) of all UK job vacancies were in London and
south-east England last month. The comparable figure last month in the
north-east was just 3.3% and in Wales 1.7%. The real fault here lies with the
Tories’ crass economic policy squeezing the economy ever harder in the interests
of a deficit-reduction programme which isn’t even working. The fault lies with
the abandonment of a full employment policy with all the investment required to
launch and maintain it. And the fault lies too with the exacerbation of the
regional divide through cosseting the City of London and neglecting
manufacturing.
This policy of punishing people for living in the north in areas of high
unemployment is made even worse by the wicked cruelty of cutting or removing
benefits even from severely disabled persons who would be hard put to it to get
an employer to take them on even in conditions of near-full employment. Those
who were previously on Incapacity Benefit are now being assessed at the rate of
11,000 a week, often in cursory interviews without consulting the person’s GP,
and then declared able to work. As if that were not enough, an ATOS manager
turned whistleblower has now testified that often when he came up with the
‘wrong’ assessment, he was told to amend his report (i.e. declare them fit for
work). In other words, severely disabled persons who could not possibly get
work even at the best of times are being told they’re fit for work in areas
where the number of vacancies is pitifully small, where they have several
able-bodied competitors, and where government policy has overwhelmingly driven
jobs south.
Come on, IDS, show us how it’s done by getting on yer bike, riding north
perhaps with a disabling injury incurred on the way, and then try getting a job.
And if you can’t, stop victimising the jobless and disabled – and get a new
Chancellor who believes in job creation, not job destruction.
