New Deal and Flexible New Deal Exposed

Hi, Are you able to say which job centre in Plymouth it was as I am in the middle of making a formal complaint – again, my last one was on the 07/06/2010 still no reply only a letter branding me a risk!

This sort of thing is scandalous, but will the media pick up on it? Not likely. A large section of the employed classes they represent want to think of all unemployed people as lazy scumbags who are lucky to be in receipt of any benefit. They want to believe we are all playing the system with the goal of being paid not to work. The media really like to play up to this stereotype and cause a frenzy in the tyrannical attitudes of those particular types of people who feel this way.

Then there were the recent elections with middle-class-pleasing soundbites ‘if you want to work, we will help you; if you are able to work and don’t work…..blah blah blah’; with the intention of cracking down on benefits. Only once did I see the reality of this being represented during the recent budget by a women, who said something I’m sure most critically thinking people must have been thinking: where in a recession, do we find these extra jobs to get people off of benefits? Not once did I see this asked during the general election. What we got was a plethora of ignorant ‘burn-the-benefit-claimers’ attitudes being represented; attitudes I might add, that have the same kind of entitlement complexes of the people they are complaining about.

Thing is, we can’t reduce unemployment in a recession – no MP will admit this though. What will happen is increasingly sneaky tactics by the benefits agencies to shift numbers around, and be even more tyrannical than they already are. There will be more sneaky tactics involved, and people will be kicked off of their benefits for spurious reasons. Doesn’t matter what reason, as long as the numbers show there is a decrease in people claiming – well, of course there will be a decrease in claims if they are sneakily kicking people off. These kind of tactics are already being used, have been for years, but they will get worse. Extreme poverty and homelessness will rise.

And then there was the recent budget, which targeted the comfortably wealthy and the extremely poor. Of course, the comfortably wealthy will barely notice any effect, so we essentially have a budget which attacked the poor/unemployed. Of course, in a recession, sacrifices have to be made, but I didn’t notice much of a shake up for those who are employed average earners – they could of taken more out of peoples wages so the effect of the budget was felt across all areas of society. But of course, that would loose them votes from their target demographic and kick up a bigger storm in the media. So much for the critically ambiguous “fair” mantra the ‘condems’ have been spouting out.