Insecure, low-paid jobs are leaving record numbers of working families in poverty, with two-thirds of people who found work in the past year taking jobs for less than the living wage, according to the latest annual report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
The research shows that over the last decade, increasing numbers of pensioners have become comfortable, but at the same time incomes among the worst-off have dropped almost 10% in real terms.
Painting a picture of huge numbers trapped on low wages, the foundation said during the decade only a fifth of low-paid workers managed to move to better paid jobs.
The living wage is calculated at £7.85 an hour nationally, or £9.15 in London – much higher than the legally enforceable £6.50 minimum wage.
They go on
As many people from working families are now in poverty as from workless ones, partly due to a vast increase in insecure work on zero-hours contracts, or in part-time or low-paid self-employment.Nearly 1.4 million people are on the controversial contracts that do not guarantee minimum hours, most of them in catering, accommodation, retail and administrative jobs. Meanwhile, the self-employed earn on average 13% less than they did five years ago, the foundation said.Average wages for men working full time have dropped from £13.90 to £12.90 an hour in real terms between 2008 and 2013 and for women from £10.80 to £10.30.Meanwhile the Wasting Mule reports that
Jobseekers in Wales have had their benefits stopped a whopping 70,000 times in the last two years,
Figures show show the scale of the Government’s attempts to get tough on people who don’t meet tough criteria to prove they are actively looking for work.
The Mule goes on to say
.The coalition’s tough new rules allow jobcentres to withhold benefits if claimants fail to accept a job they are offered, refuse to attend training, don’t follow instructions from a Jobcentre advisor – or cannot show they are actively seeking work.Failing to meet those tough criteria will see job seekers allowance stopped for between four weeks and three years – depending on the severity of the offence.The sanctioned then face applying for rent and food money through a hardship fund.
Pontypridd MP Owen Smith said the sanctions were being used as a punishment to “penalise some of the most vulnerable people in Wales”.
“Of course the benefits system has to be fair, and of course we want to encourage people out of work to actively seek work,” he said.
“However, the use of targets by the Department of Work and Pensions is discrediting the system and leading to people genuinely in need of support, either because they are unable to work or because of some other issue that has legitimately prevented them reporting to Job Centre Plus, being unfairly penalised.”
He said that he met people every week who are struggling to cope with sanctions.
“Each week I see in my surgery people being forced to use food banks, or unable to provide essentials to their family, because they have been sanctioned often on the flimsiest of reasons,”A DWP spokeswoman claimed the sanctions were “necessary” but denied job centres were set targets.
She said
“more than 70% of claimants said they are more likely to follow the rules if they know they risk having their benefits stopped.”“They are used as a last resort in a small percentage of cases and fewer people were sanctioned this year compared to last year, showing more people are now doing all they can to find work,”If it is"a mall percentage"70,000 in two years indicate a higher rate of unemployment that current figures appear to show..
I am reminded of a Women who had turned to prostitution claiming that the Money was better than the dole and the humiliation not much worse
No one can argue that unemployed people must actively seek work but there appears to be a culture appearing in which no matter what people do at some time or other they will be sanctioned in order to teach them a lesson in life.
It also shows that the much vaunted Con/LibDem government figures on falls in unemployment should be taken in contest.
People rarely use the term Working Class these days but it is extraordinary that our politicians including Owen Smiths leader can go on and on about "A squeezed middle class. when the Working Class are being stamped on".
It seams nothing has changed
As the Old goes
She was just a poor man's daughter,
Victim of the rich man's whim,
For he f***ed her and he left her,
With a sore and bleeding quim.
CHORUS:
It's the same the whole world over,
It's the poor that get the blame,
It's the rich that get the pleasure,
Ain't it all a bloody shame.
Oh, she went up to the city,
For to hide her bleeding shame,
But a Labour leader (the landlord up and) f***ed her,
Put her on the street again.
See him in the House of Commons,
Passing laws to combat crime,
While the victim of his evil,
Walks the streets at night in shame.
See him with his hounds and horses,
See him strutting at his club,
While the victim of his whoring,
Drinks her gin inside a pub.
See him riding in his carriage,
Past the gutter where she stands,
He has made a stylish marriage,
While she wrings her ringless hands.
See him at the fine theater,
In the font row with the best,
While the girl that he has ruined,
Entertains a sordid guest.
See her on the bridge at midnight,
Throwing snowballs at the moon,
She said, "sir, I've never had it,"
But she spoke too f***ing soon.
Standing on the bridge at midnight,
Picking blackheads from her crotch,
She said, "Sir, I've never had it,"
He said, "No, not f***ing much."
See her standing in Picadilly,
Offering her aching quim,
She is now completely ruined,
It was all because of him.
See him seated in his carriage.
Riding homeward from the hunt,
He got riches from his marriage,
She got sores upon her c***.
Standing on the bridge at midnight,
Throwing cunt-rags at the moon,
First a scream, a splash, Oh goodness!
Has she done a f***ing swoon?
When they dragged her from the river,
Water from her clothes they wrung,
And they thought that she had downed,
Till her corpse got up and sung.....
Then there came a wealthy pimp,
Marriage was the tale he told,
She had no one else to take her,
So she sold her soul for gold.
1 comment:
Charming. A bit much, perhaps...
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