Cameron’s £750,000 pile – got a spare bed?
The government is determined to boost tax revenues. But instead of collecting some of the £70million+ illegally dodged in taxes by the super rich every year, Cameron says young people must pay – by being denied access to jobs and houses. Of course, a government whose ministers are almost all millionaires isn’t likely to demand their rich mates pay their share.
Amid a recession and huge youth unemployment, in a speech on welfare he said that people under the age of 25 should be stripped of their housing benefits and made to remain at home until they can afford to move out with no government support.
With youth unemployment hitting 1 million, minimum wage being frozen, EMA being cut and tuition fees rising, they’ve got it bad. A lot of young people couldn’t live with their parents till the age of 25 because of personal reasons or simply because their families couldn’t afford it.
More importantly why should young people be made to live at home, we want them to become independent adults who can make their own choices in life.
These proposals will increase homelessness. By removing the housing benefits the state provides and with no jobs available people have little other way of receiving money and paying bills. While there are no jobs because of the situation our government and banks put us in, then they should be supporting individuals and families until they are able to support themselves. Low interest rates fixed by the Bank of England encourage housing speculators to keep properties empty until rents are profitable enough.
His attack particularly affects single parents or families with children. With 1 in 8 leaving a job and 1 in 5 turning down a job due to the cost of childcare it is clear these families aren’t being supported enough with free crèches and nurseries to enable their parents to work. Instead the government wants to import a crazy scheme from the USA where parents are supposed to take their children into work…
His new proposal includes benefits cuts to those families with 3 or more children ‘to stop the out-of-work being better off by having children.’ With child benefits already having been slashed having another child barely gives you enough extra money to feed them let alone any left over.
‘Consider paying some benefits “in kind” rather than in cash,’ is Cameron’s way of saying ‘all these benefit scroungers spend their money on booze and drugs.’ As this is the case in some situations, support should be given through rehab schemes. Giving ‘money’ in tokens won’t get rid of the issue and it’ll mean that some children have even less to live on. The US already has 14 million people living on food vouchers – and this number is going up not down.
The disabled are being attacked too with Cameron saying that 2/3s of those on Disability Claimant remain on it for their whole lives. He believes these people should be forced to do full-time community work and take steps to improve their health.
During his speech Cameron clearly stated that pensions wouldn’t be affected in the next wave of reforms. ‘If you work hard all your life, you deserve dignity in retirement.’ The implication being that those young people deserve nothing because they’ve given nothing to the state yet. The youth are an easy target because with no money and living with mum and dad, it’s more difficult for them to organise.
This is another attack on the working class, this time the young and he uses this to drive a wedge between the young and old. Young people didn’t cause the crisis and our future shouldn’t be sacrificed to pay back millionaire crooks like Barclays boss Bob Diamond – who carried out a giant financial fraud and got off with £2million hush money.
It’s not even like Benefits are bankrupting the country – each year more than £15 billion worth of welfare is left unclaimed, and goes back into the pot. The politicians live in giant homes and have refused to build enough decent housing for over 20 years. The private sector isn’t taking up the slack, and why would they? It’s not the capitalists’ job to look out for ordinary people. If we want a society with proper communities and opportunities for young people, we’ll have to fight for it.
