'Red Ed' to get tough on "evil" benefit "scroungers"

[ed miliband]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2080776/Now-Ed-Miliband-gets-tough-onslaught-evil-benefits-scroungers.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Oh God, this bit makes me feel so sick:


He will argue that widespread benefits abuse flies in the face of one of the ‘five giant evils’ identified by Beveridge: idleness.

Mr Byrne believes there is a new ‘giant evil’ – the evil of benefits dependency.

A source close to Mr Byrne told The Mail on Sunday: ‘When Beveridge wrote his report, the main idea was that you only got paid by the state if you paid in first.

‘He would never have agreed with anyone choosing to spend a lifetime on benefits. Idleness was one of his “giant evils”.

‘The benefits system has expanded in a way that Beveridge would never have foreseen, such as the new evil of benefits dependency. He would be turning in his grave if he knew we spend £20 billion a year on housing benefits.’

And the Daily Mail like what's to come, if this editorial is anything to go by:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2080878/Ed-Milibands-Labour-Party-live-brave-words.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

I mean, Ed Miliband is so incredibly pathetic and dull that Labour need to pull out all the cards to attract voters. Who will they attack next? We've already had 'Blue Labour' saying that the Labour Party should seek to connect with EDL members, all that "faith, family, flag" bollocks (which always reminded me of Kinder, Küche, Kirche in its own way...).

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I think it has more to do with capital seeking out a return to a suitable rate of profit via austerity than the need for Labour to attract votes... Or, to put it another way, it's about Labour arguing that it is the best party to enforce the austerity that capital needs to implement.

[Ocean Seal]

Wow I always thought that this kind of rhetoric was unique to the Reganities over here.

[farleft]

You're quoting the daily mail, what's more pathetic that Ed... The Daily Mail.

Give it a rest.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Wow I always thought that this kind of rhetoric was unique to the Reganities over here.

Not even unique to "the left"... when they are the servants and representatives of capital. Seen the austerity programs carried out by the Socialists in Greece or Spain?

[ed miliband]

I think it has more to do with capital seeking out a return to a suitable rate of profit via austerity than the need for Labour to attract votes... Or, to put it another way, it's about Labour arguing that it is the best party to enforce the austerity that capital needs to implement.

No doubt, but these proposals are coming out of reports that are primarily concerned with how to capture a chunk of the electorate that Labour has lost. Within the Labour Party there a currently a number of different groups jostling over the direction Labour should take, from the 'Refounding Labour' campaign to the aforementioned 'Blue Labour'. The Guardian is full of this shit too - weekly articles on some new policy speech aiming to capture 'Middle England', editorials about Ed and direction of the Labour Party, etc.

And anyway, Labour have already proven that they can enforce austerity at a local level and have continually pledged to do it at a national level. I don't think they have anything more to prove on that front...

[ed miliband]

You're quoting the daily mail, what's more pathetic that Ed... The Daily Mail.

Give it a rest.

The Daily Mail > Ed Miliband any day. You know what you're getting with the Mail.

lol, and I mean... can't the Daily Mail be read critically? I don't read their articles and go 'oh hey, the Mail says this it must be true...', I say 'the fact the Mail are saying this is interesting', for example. And the fact that the Daily Mail are writing quite positively about Ed Miliband after months of deriding him as some mini-Stalin is interesting.

[Agathor]

"people should get state handouts only if they have paid their taxes first." This sounds like a proposal to turn the benefit system into a state run unemployment insurance plan, like the sort that existed in the private sector before Asquith introduced National Insurance. It seems inevitable that we will eventually adopt the frugal welfare system the US and Germany have, where unemployed people are given benefits for a couple of months and then they're off the system and it's not the government's business what happens to them. Miliband's top-up plan is even more extreme than that.

I hope this is just something Miliband's PR team invented to squeeze some sympathetic coverage out of the Daily Mail. Considering that his favourite subject in the commons is youth unemployment, it would be very weird for him to now start saying that young unemployed people don't deserve their benefits because they haven't paid into the tax system.

I propose a reality show whereon a selection MPs, newspaper editors and journalists try to live for six months on fifty pounds a week.

[Firebrand]

New labour bastard.
He's thick as well. Labour need to face up to the fact that the capitalist classes have returned to their real party. There is no point in trying to appeal to middle class floating voters, labours only real chance of getting back into power is to mobilise their core support. The working class outnumbers the bourgeosie, if labour could moobilise their support they'd be back in power. But no they are insisting on sticking their fingers in their ears and pretending its still the blair years and everyone still loves capitalism.
The trouble is that there are now too few working class labour MP's, and those that they do have have been MP's for a long time. As a result they are totally out of touch with what the majority of people actually want.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I hope this is just something Miliband's PR team invented to squeeze some sympathetic coverage out of the Daily Mail. Considering that his favourite subject in the commons is youth unemployment, it would be very weird for him to now start saying that young unemployed people don't deserve their benefits because they haven't paid into the tax system.

I propose a reality show whereon a selection MPs, newspaper editors and journalists try to live for six months on fifty pounds a week.

I think it's more about carrots and sticks. Youth unemployment discussions were meant to be carrots for getting more youths to vote Labour and do other pro-Labour activities instead of abstaining, but with carrots there are sticks nearby, for staying away from Labour.

Wanted: Left-of-Labour political alternative

[Agathor]

I think it's more about carrots and sticks. Youth unemployment discussions were meant to be carrots for getting more youths to vote Labour and do other pro-Labour activities instead of abstaining, but with carrots there are sticks nearby, for staying away from Labour.

Wanted: Left-of-Labour political alternative

There are a couple. Plaid Cymru and the Green Party are to the left, but they don't constitute a threat to power because they don't yet understand that running for parliament is a pretty minor part of politics, and unless they organize a working class base like labour had before the 90s they will stagnate.

A big problem is that a lot of the decent, principled activists that we need are still loyal to Labour. I volunteered for the Labour Party in the last election and half of the people I was working with were socialists. This is a problem of the working class: they have a very sentimental political culture. I think it has something to do with all the singing. Even Tony Benn still identifies with the Labour Party and naively believes that it's redeemable.

Labour is slowly haemorrhaging it's affiliated unions. An article in today's Indie indicates that Milliband wants to hurry them on. A lot depends on whether they are interested in forming the base of another party.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

It seems inevitable that we will eventually adopt the frugal welfare system the US and Germany have, where unemployed people are given benefits for a couple of months and then they're off the system and it's not the government's business what happens to them.

Most likely. And that's exactly what it is here in the states: unemployment insurance, which you get for a short period, only if you worked enough / paid enough into it, and loose your job in the "right" kind of way.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I think it's more about carrots and sticks. Youth unemployment discussions were meant to be carrots for getting more youths to vote Labour and do other pro-Labour activities instead of abstaining, but with carrots there are sticks nearby, for staying away from Labour.

Wanted: Left-of-Labour political alternative

No, you reformist.. Wanted: Socialism, emancipation, liberty.

[Firebrand]

No, you reformist.. Wanted: Socialism, emancipation, liberty.

Stop sugar coating it Wanted: Riot, Rebellion and bloody revolution :lol:

[Die Neue Zeit]

No, you reformist.. Wanted: Socialism, emancipation, liberty.


Stop sugar coating it Wanted: Riot, Rebellion and bloody revolution :lol:

Both of you are so wrong. The underlying message beneath my "Wanted" above was Wanted: Class Struggle and Social Revolution.

[marl]

Wanted: Class struggle, revolution, liberty

Best of the 3.