I wonder if Rachel Reeves knows what long-term unemployment looks like.
I do. Plenty of people do.
Last Monday, I spent a long time outside the Kilburn jobcentre with a guy who said his name was Chug, or Chuck, or something like that. His speech wasn’t always clear. He mumbled a lot and clenched his jaw when he spoke. He said he was 35. He was thin and jumpy, and so pale that he was translucent. Heroin, I thought. Maybe crack. I didn’t know and I didn’t ask. I see a lot of guys with that wasted, nervy look.
Anyway, we talked for a while. And here’s the thing. My heart sank early on in the conversation, as it often does now when I talk to guys in this sort of situation. This wasn’t necessarily because the life story this guy told me was harrowing. It was a bit, but I can usually hear people out when they tell these stories. Pity isn’t really my bag. The heart-sinking bit came entirely from the knowledge that there was absolutely nothing to be done for this guy – certainly as far as drawing major attention to his problems went. As soon as I saw him, I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell of raising sympathy for him outside of the usual support-group channels. I certainly couldn’t think of anyone big to take his problems to. I couldn’t imagine a senior MP backing him, or a major mainstream media outlet campaigning for him, or whatever. He ticked just about all the boxes that Reeves and other welfare hardliners have on their shared hitlist. He was Romanian by birth (he said he’d lived in the UK since he was ten), maybe ill, a long time out of work and hanging around the jobcentre asking for cash (he asked me for money. People often do). He was clearly unwell, underfed and in a mess. He wasn’t coherent a lot of the time. That’s the reality of a lot of these situations. That’s what you get.
That’s the part Rachel Reeves needs to get, too. Probably she does. Probably she has for while. The thing is that people in the sort of situation I’ve described above already have nothing as far as political representation goes. Those of us on the ground already know that Labour doesn’t care to represent people who are out of work, or to try and explain the complexities of long-term unemployment, or to accept that everyone is entitled to social security and representation, whether people are politically palatable or not. It’s a pity, that. The world needs to know that people in these tough situations exist. They exist, no matter how firmly Reeves clamps her hands over her eyes and pretends otherwise. That’s the point I keep trying to make. People who have serious problems don’t just disappear because nobody claims them. They don’t magically vanish because Reeves or Osborne or whoever decides to draw a line through them in some ledger in Whitehall. They exist. So do basic human needs.
You can forget this Deserving and Non-Deserving garbage too. The back story doesn’t matter a damn when people reach the point where they’re hanging round jobcentres begging for coins. I meet people who’ve committed despicable crimes, done time, or been lost for years in addiction. None of that matters a stuff at the moment of crisis. There’s absolutely no point re-litigating someone’s criminal past when some thin, exhausted-looking bloke is standing in front of you saying that he has nowhere to live and no food. I can’t be bothered trying to decide whether or not someone’s deserving when those moments roll around. I certainly can’t see a point where I’d find the energy or inclination to fish around in my handbag for a copy of Reeves’ One Of Us/Not One Of Us checklist at such times.
All that matters at a moment of crisis is the crisis. This guy last week seemed to be having one. He needed something to eat. He showed me a foodbank voucher, but he thought it had expired a few days earlier, so he wanted to know if he could get another one. He went into the jobcentre to ask. People sometimes go into jobcentres thinking that they might get food and help then and there. They don’t realise that there’s an awful lot of form-filling to do before you even get sight of first base. He came out of the jobcentre and said that he couldn’t sign on, or get a foodbank voucher, because there was a problem with his immigration status. So, there we were – ie nowhere.
I imagine the likes of Reeves and Osborne would say that I was gullible and that this guy was taking the piss. I’d say that things are always a little more complicated than that. We don’t do complicated today, though. We don’t do nuance. We cut people loose.
We’ve had New Labour, now we’ve got Blue Labour.
They are only interested in maintaining Tory policies, with a bit of re-branding round the edges. They are little more now than a Tory clone.
Quite clearly nothing is going to be done for the disabled,or the unemployed.
I had three leaflets pushed through my letterbox last week, one from each of the main political parties.
I must admit I tore up the one from the Conservatives, because personally I would rather receive a letter from Satan.
But I did read it first, because as everyone knows, he has all the best tunes.
I couldn’t help noticing that all the leaflets were essentially the same.
A grinning candidate, their grinning assistant, and a large coloured logo.
Then a series of vague promises about ‘Moving Forward’, and ‘Getting It Right’ etc.
Though the Libdem leaflet did seem to be tinged with a sort of half-hearted regret, like the confession note of a reluctant collaborator.
Strangely enough, in the Labour leaflet the words, ‘Independent Living Fund’, ‘Work Capability Assessment’, ‘Jobseeker Sanctions’ or even ‘Foodbank’ were completely missing. And I looked through it most carefully.
There was no mention of the ‘Long-Term Unemployed’, the ‘Disabled’ or indeed ‘Workfare’. These people have now been quietly airbrushed out of the political debate.
To them all these leaflets were about as much use as three flying ducks stuck on the wall.
LOL I did like the bit about Satan and the best tunes… you’re absolutely right, though. These clowns have no intention of representing anyone in the categories you list… I was just taken aback to hear Reeves actually articulate that. I thought they had some sort of agreement that nobody ever actually put the awful truth into words…
“confession note of a reluctant collaborator” – great phrase.
The aim of politicians these days in elections is to get over a hurdle, after which they can carry on doing pretty much what their masters, the financial elite, tell them to do. The election leaflet, as part of election bluster, is purely a means, as you suggest, of filling the minds of voters with issues which, although important, are not the key issues i.e. about how the wealth generated by a country is divided up. The public share of it has been reduced year after year for decades. This is what they want to keep from voters.
…Labour doesn’t care to represent people who are out of work, or to try and explain the complexities of long-term unemployment, or to accept that everyone is entitled to social security and representation, whether people are politically palatable or not. It’s a pity, that. …
The unemployed are not the only people on benefit,
being only 3 per cent of the welfare bill.
97 per cent of the benefits bill goes to the working poor and poor pensioners.
Poor pensioners have come (and remain) inside the working poor.
Poor pensioners are on the lowest state pension of all rich nations bar poor Mexico, and usually with only a tiny works pension, nil private pension and so more like on 4 per cent lowest income.
The working poor include people out of the welfare state,
as their wages are so low
they are below the Lower Earnings Level
to get automatic National Insurance credits.
They will also get nil state pension for life
(payable if remain in work or not).
Because the flat rate state pension from 2016, grants
nil state pension for life
for less than 10 years National Insurance record.
See why under:
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now
People losing benefit under welfare cuts and even more coming with the Universal Credit from 2016 replacing most benefits, face never getting benefit nor a state pension. Many benefits end after age 64.
There is another Labour being ignored.
Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is made up of
ex Labour MPS and councillors who left Labour or were expelled from the Labour party for going against austerity cuts.
TUSC is getting ignored by the media and blogs, despite having reached the threshold of over 122 MP candidates and rising that should give it the right to fair media coverage.
TUSC MPs in Westminster would be natural allies to Labour and would bring Labour back to the party it once was, representing the poor.
The poor are now half of UK’s population from 18 to 100 (and their kids and grandkids), whether citizens or not.
Labour by itself cannot form a government,
as both Tory and Labour will not get sufficient votes to form a government on their own
in the predicted most severe hung parliament
(when no single party can rule).
Labour – even with the SNP – will not reach the threshold of over
323 MPs to run a majority government in
London’s UK Westminster parliament.
But there are sufficient Tory and Lib Dem marginals in the biggest nation of the UK nations, England, where the sitting MP is in a voting area where the poor vastly outnumber all other voters.
If the poor knew of these other parties and
that voting them in as MPs would actually bring change
in this greatest chance in a generation,
then success would be made in ending
the threat to the end of the welfare state and
nil state pension and
leaving the poor in penniless starvation even more than today.
I have tried to bring together information, as a voter, to help the poor voter, on my personal website, as well as blogs start to promote the various small left wing parties without the tens of millions of ads’ funding of the big parties, that still will not bring them sufficient votes to make stable government, but one that will fall again and again every 6 months:
http://www.anastasia-england.me.uk
Hi, Kate
My blog piece today includes a link to DPAC blog piece that helps clarify and source what Rachel Reeves said. And more.
And thanks for your accompanying us yesterday at Willesden Jcp and for the photos included in that blog piece, United against benefit cuts.
Dude Swheatie of Kwug — KUWG’s ‘honest poliician’ answer to George Osborne
I think there are two types of people in the world: those who think that everything that happens to someone is a result of choice, or at least that whatever happens to someone, they can ‘pull themselves up by the bootstraps’ and become like they are; and there are those who are born with something which could be called compassion or understanding, but which is also really the natural ability to see the world in a more spiritual way, to see that freewill, when it is analysed, has little practical meaning.
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