Welfare reform: pushing and pulling
Mark Steel on New Labour ongoing welfare ‘reform’:
You can tell what they’ve got in mind when they begin an article, as the Work and Pensions Secretary did yesterday, by insisting they have to make tough decisions. It means they’re tough enough to cut benefits for the weakest people in the country, because they’re hard. It’s like if Ricky Hatton did an interview at the start of a fight, saying “I’m going to show the world tonight just how tough I am”, then walked into the audience and smashed an old woman in the mouth.
But let’s just see if I’ve got this straight. Under one law, single parents with children as young as one year old are to be forced to look for work. Under another law, once those single parents are in work, they’re going to be allowed to ask their bosses for time off to look after those one year-olds.
And that law only allows employees to request flexible working, not expect it. Who knew there was a bar to someone walking into their boss’s office and asking for flexible working conditions? You live and learn.
Posted on December 3rd, 2008 at 12:56pm under Uncategorized
It can’t be too long after this is implemented before we get a moral panic over latchkey kids and out of control children because their single parents, who do the most vital job in society, are forced into wage slavery.
It seems less than joined up to force single parents of young children into low paid employment and then to pay other parents to look after their children whilst they are at work.
Perhaps we could just cut out the middle man of employers and just pay each other to look after each others kids?
Or maybe, working smarter rather than harder, pay parents to look after their own children?
Watch out for Daily Mail knashing of teeth headlines over widows with young children of servicemen killed in the Middle East being forced into work.
Don’t start me on this, as someone who used to work with young mums I hated the fact that the government agenda was get rid of your kids into childcare and get into work/college.
If a young mum sais she wanted to ‘just’ be young mum we had to hassle her into some kind of program, which most of the time the decent ones amongst us refused to do.
It’s becuase in government stats they count as NEET: not in employment, education or training.
*rage*
Perhaps we could just cut out the middle man of employers and just pay each other to look after each others kids?
Any really smart group of single parents would set themselves up as a childcare collective and bill the government accordingly.
“Any really smart group of single parents would set themselves up as a childcare collective and bill the government accordingly.”
If only.
The experience of local communities trying to access and use regeneration funding from Europe has been that if your group are not under the control of the local party political gatekeepers (of any of the 3 major parties) you don’t get a look in.
[...] There’s been uproar on many of my favourite blogs regarding the governments proposals on getting people back to work. Minister James Purnell said it would “transform lives” and said public money should not be wasted “on people who are playing the system”. Harpymarx. You can tell what they’ve got in mind when they begin an article, as the Work and Pensions Secretary did yesterday, by insisting they have to make tough decisions. It means they’re tough enough to cut benefits for the weakest people in the country, because they’re hard. It’s like if Ricky Hatton did an interview at the start of a fight, saying “I’m going to show the world tonight just how tough I am”, then walked into the audience and smashed an old woman in the mouth. Chicken Yoghurt. [...]