ABSOLUTE LUNACY ON BENEFITS

This Blog is for EVERYONE.

Thanks to @thethirdestate 

This is VERY SCARY....

What are we to do? how can we shock these decision makers into the fact that their "I'm alright jack" mentality is not sufficient?

The article I and many others want you to read is this: 

THIS IS ABSOLUTE LUNACY!

As we know, under new rules the unemployed could be stripped of their benefits for up to three years if they are judged to have breached their duty to seek work and take up offers.

Today in parliament Sian James, MP for Swansea, asked a rather pressing question about how that decision will be made:

Those sanctions will be applied after a decision by the Independent Decision Maker. What assurance can the minister give me about the role and the criteria that will be used by the independent decision maker? I’m particularly concerned about the appeal process because as one can imagine mistakes can be made. There can be and should be a right to appeal and I am very concerned that that is made accessible and open to anybody who is sanctioned in this way.

Well, you would think so. Considering people’s incomes will be reduced to £0, we are talking about pretty high stakes.

The answer from Duncan Smith was a particularly obfuscatory refusal to guarantee such a right:

We are going to strengthen the role of the independent decision maker, to make sure that such decisions that are being made, cough, are being made for the right reasons , and therefore if they are being applied the are being applied for those reasons, and she should rest assured that we will make sure that is the case.

Well that’s ok then. Duncan Smith has an uncanny ability to assume the demeanour of a nice man, even when he is handing down often quite damaging decisions. This is not so much the case with his honourable friend Tony Baldry, who then chipped in to tell Sian James’ constituents in Swansea to get off their back sides.

“The implication of the question”, he snarled, “is that there aren’t jobs available in the market place.” A survey, he told us, had shown that there were 700 jobs were available in his Oxfordshire constituency, and “people in Swansea will be as welcome to take up those vacancies as people anywhere else in the country.”

How awfully generous of him. Problem solved.