Some people just don’t know when to keep their mouths shut.
It seems Iain Duncan Smith, the creature whose Department for Work and Pensions launched an ethnic cleansing programme (in all but name) against the sick and disabled in 2011 and 2012, has now turned his baleful glare on the working poor.
Tax credits – the system devised by the last Labour government to try to relieve poverty for people who work but receive low payment – has created “a sorry story of dependency, wasted taxpayers’ money and fraud”, according to the Immoral Delusional Sadist.
Let’s remember that this is the man who is using recorded fraud of 0.4 per cent, among sickness and disability claimants, to force at least 20 per cent of them off benefits altogether. His understanding of the extent of fraud is, well, flawed.
Let’s also remember that his planned replacement for tax credits – the Universal Credit – is already far over budget and still far from ready, despite pilot projects being scheduled to start in April. Its expected national roll-out in October may be put back to 2014. This man knows how to waste taxpayers’ money with the best of them!
As for tax credits creating dependency – this is the only part of his argument that could possibly be justifiable, and even then it is only because of government laxness regarding pay. If the national minimum wage had risen in line with company bosses’ average pay, it would currently stand at more than £18 per hour – three times its actual current level. That should explain everything you need to know about why low-paid workers may be dependent on tax credits to survive.
Tax credits – and other state top-ups for the working poor, like housing benefit and the soon-to-disappear Council Tax benefit – are only paid in high amounts because they subsidise employers who refuse to pay a living wage. If the private sector paid working people what they are worth, the benefits bill would drop like a stone.
The Insidious Dole Snatcher is currently leading an overhaul of the welfare system that will see a number of benefits replaced by a new universal credit that is designed, he says, “to make work pay at each and every hour”. He keeps saying this. I don’t understand why. Cutting benefits to less than what people are paid at work won’t “make work pay” – it’ll throw more and more people into poverty, debt and destitution.
But this is a creature who is determined to do his worst – actually refusing to be moved from Work and Pensions in David Cameron’s autumn reshuffle in order to continue inflicting his wrath on the defenceless poor.
The latest attack on the unemployed is the Universal Jobmatch computer system. Jobseekers are coerced into signing up (they don’t have to) and into ticking a box which allows Job Centre Plus staff to view their activities and pass their personal details on to possible employers (again, this is not a legal requirement). Advertisers on the site have, so far, included identity thieves and pimps.
Obviously, if you don’t have a computer – and many claimants don’t because, in case you’ve missed it, they’re poor – this system is impossible to use.
That’s not good enough for the Irrational Debt Starter. Under a headline that stated “Log on or stop signing on”, he told Metro: “I’m a job adviser and I’ve got someone who doesn’t want to do this. I will haul them in a lot. Instead of them going in every two weeks, these job advisers can bring them in every day if they want, if they think they are not getting out of bed in the morning.”
If the adviser does not believe the claimant is looking for work, their benefits will be withdrawn, he added.
In other words, not owning a computer is not, in this lunatic’s world, a good enough reason not to use a computerised jobsearch system.
I wasn’t going to do an ‘end-of-year awards’ feature but it is for the above reasons that Mr Smith takes the biscuit – ahead of other heavyweight contenders like Andrew Lansley (ruined the English NHS), George Osborne (expenses cheat, continuing to ruin the national economy), Maria Miller (expenses cheat, threw disabled people out of work by closing Remploy factories), Michael Gove (ruining our education system), Jeremy Hunt (too close to certain media barons) and of course David Cameron (living embodiment of dishonest with an embarrassing combover to boot) – to take the title.
Smith – YOU are Vox Political’s Monster of the Year!
Of course, in Britain we have a long tradition – look at Beowulf and Grendel, or St George and the Dragon – of killing monsters…
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