If you liked the Bedroom Tax you'll love the new £30 a week tax on the sick and disabled. George Osborne is slashing the ESA WRAG group to almost the level of the very miserly JSA.
One wonders what the advantage of jumping through the immense hoops to claim the benefit are, perhaps immunity from the rip-off "work for your benefit" schemes that the government says will help claimants fill out their CVs (can't paid work fill out a CV too?) although some on the WRAG have been hastled to join just such schemes.
People will wonder what they paid national insurance for all their life. Of course, unlike the rich that evade and avoid £120bn a year in tax, taxes on working people can't be ducked.
Other attacks include rent hikes for those in social housing, reductions in the benefit cap and unprecedented attacks on in-work benefits that subsidise employers who pay scandalously low wages.
If they really want to save the benefits bill they should raise wages to £10 an hour and introduce a rent cap, funny how austerity always seems to redistribute money upwards. The Sheriff of Nottingham would have been proud.
A £10 an hour minimum wage and co-ordinated strike action are official TUC policy so the unions should step up and initiate a serious fightback against the failed program of austerity.
Daniel Thorburn, Upperby
Daniel Thorburn, Upperby
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