Iain Duncan Smith 'has lived on breadline'

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

Solidarity from IDS! He knows what it's like to struggle so that makes it OK that he makes you struggle...
With that logic in mind, I got punched in the face once *clenches fist and gives Ian a knowing look*

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has insisted he knows what it is like to "live on the breadline".
The comment comes after 330,000 people signed a petition urging Mr Duncan Smith to try living on £53 a week.
He dismissed this as a "complete stunt", telling the Wanstead and Woodford Guardian he had been unemployed twice in his life.
The debate follows a welfare shake-up including cuts to housing benefit for some social housing tenants.
Campaigners argue this will hit vulnerable families, but ministers say they are making difficult decisions to incentivise work.
Mr Duncan Smith told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Monday, the day the changes came into force, that he could survive on £53 a week.
This was the amount another speaker on the show - market trader David Bennett, from County Durham - said he would be left with.
Mr Duncan Smith's remark prompted an online petition, hosted at Change.org, calling on the work and pensions secretary "to live on this budget for at least one year".
It says: "This would help realise the Conservative Party's current mantra that 'We are all in this together'.
"This would mean a 97% reduction in his current income, which is £1,581.02 a week or £225 a day after tax."
More than 330,000 people had signed the petition by 22:30 BST on Tuesday.
But Mr Duncan Smith, MP for Chingford and Woodford Green, told the Wanstead and Woodford Guardian: "This is a complete stunt which distracts attention from the welfare reforms which are much more important and which I have been working hard to get done.
"I have been unemployed twice in my life so I have already done this. I know what it is like to live on the breadline."
Chancellor George Osborne was also challenged about whether he could survive on £53 a week.
He said: "I don't think it's sensible to reduce this debate to an argument about one individual's set of circumstances.
"We have a welfare system where there are lots of benefits to people on very low incomes."

(from BBC News)

[RedAnarchist]

Between leaving university in 2008 and getting a two day a week part time job last July (now four days a week), I was on benefits of about £400 a month (I now earn more than three times that). I don't drive or smoke, I live with my father (and I pay him £20 a week in board) and I pay for my own food. Even without needing to pay for things like fuel or cigarettes, it was hard to keep much in the bank and I rarely had more than £1000 in there at a time. If I did smoke, rent and drive, I would barely have any money left for food and other necessities.

People voted the Tories back in a few years ago, and since then every sacrifice made for the economy has been made by the working classes. No political party with any chance of getting into power in this country will change that. Sadly, the level of class consciousness in this country is very low. Labour will almost certainly be back in 2015 promising better days just like they did in 1997, but I bet it won't be long before the Tories get back in.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Campaigners argue this will hit vulnerable families, but ministers say they are making difficult decisions to incentivise work.

WHAT FUCKING WORK??

How in the ever-living fuck can you "incentivise" people into jobs that don't exist? When there are thousands of applications for less than a dozen jobs (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/feb/19/eight-jobs-costa-attract-1701-applicants), what fucking purpose, apart from the obviously mendacious, is there is in harassing claimants with onerous and ultimately pointless box-ticking exercises and below-inflation increases in payments (effectively amounting to a cut)?

I really, really wish that people wouldn't let politicians come out with shit like that unchallenged. It's fucking bullshit and it needs calling out.


"I have been unemployed twice in my life so I have already done this. I know what it is like to live on the breadline."

Fuck off you prick! Rich public-school educated fuckheads like yourself have never had to worry about getting by. Do you think we've forgotten about all that "old boys network" crap that blue-blood scum like yourself take full advantage of? That you've been unemployed twice counts for jack fucking shit!

[Q]

I sneezed twice in my life, so I know what it is like to be very sick.

/logic

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Give it a couple of years and this bastard will be unemployed for the third time in his life, too.

[TheEmancipator]

The man's so outdated £53 in his world was a fortune.

[Agathor]

WHAT FUCKING WORK??

Fuck off you prick! Rich public-school educated fuckheads like yourself have never had to worry about getting by. Do you think we've forgotten about all that "old boys network" crap that blue-blood scum like yourself take full advantage of? That you've been unemployed twice counts for jack fucking shit!

IDS was educated in a comprehensive and then in a merchant navy training school, and he didn't go to university.

But he 'asnt 'ad it rough like us working class lads.

Reality doesn't always resemble caricature. Some of the most savage Tories came from humble beginnings. See: Margeret Thatcher, John Major, William Hague etc etc.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

IDS was educated in a comprehensive and then in a merchant navy training school, and he didn't go to university.

But he 'asnt 'ad it rough like us working class lads.

Reality doesn't always resemble caricature. Some of the most savage Tories came from humble beginnings. See: Margeret Thatcher, John Major, William Hague etc etc.

Alright, so I got my facts wrong about Duncan Smith's education. Mea culpa.

But I don't think it's unreasonable to surmise that IDS has the kind of social and professional connections that the majority of working people could never hope to acquire. I think the fact he married a daughter of the 5th Baron Cottesloe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fremantle,_5th_Baron_Cottesloe), would support that suspicion.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

I signed the petition.

[ed miliband]

IDS was educated in a comprehensive and then in a merchant navy training school, and he didn't go to university.

But he 'asnt 'ad it rough like us working class lads.

Reality doesn't always resemble caricature. Some of the most savage Tories came from humble beginnings. See: Margeret Thatcher, John Major, William Hague etc etc.

eric pickles, baroness warsi, michael gove...

[brigadista]

the signatures on that petition possibly amount to the number of people who actually voted in the last election :D:D:D

dont know anyone who votes

none of these fuckers give a toss about anyone but theirselves and their mates - and labour are the same...

[Jimmie Higgins]

Gutting welfare in the US really helped incentivize work... That's why unemployment is so low compared to the 90s.:rolleyes:

I guess "incentivizing a race to the bottom" doesn't have the same ring to it.

[RebelDog]

I signed the petition but I'm not happy with the £53 a week figure. Its too much.

[Beeth]

Isn't this common throughout the world - I mean, everybody tries to reach the top and once they get there they look down upon the rest? What's so shocking about this? You and I would probably do the exact same thing.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

'Legitimisation done, time to accumulate' is basically what the capitalists are thinking now, hence the changes to welfare and tax in the last budget.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

It's clear to me that the Tories think they have no chance of getting back into to power during the next election and so they're doing everything they can to destroy all the institutions that the Labour party set up during the post-war boom. The LibDems are destroyed, UKIP is cutting half their voting base away, they're extremely unpopular throughout the country... the only thing that could potentially save them is the fact that Labour is just as unpopular these days. So now they open up the NHS to privatisation, destroy the benefits system and propagate the dehumanisation of the poor and establish overall a climate of complete detachment from anyone who is actually on the breadline.

[Agathor]

It's clear to me that the Tories think they have no chance of getting back into to power during the next election and so they're doing everything they can to destroy all the institutions that the Labour party set up during the post-war boom. The LibDems are destroyed, UKIP is cutting half their voting base away, they're extremely unpopular throughout the country... the only thing that could potentially save them is the fact that Labour is just as unpopular these days. So now they open up the NHS to privatisation, destroy the benefits system and propagate the dehumanisation of the poor and establish overall a climate of complete detachment from anyone who is actually on the breadline.

Labour were almost consistently ahead in the polls throughout the 80s and 90s, but during elections all of the leading newspapers became pamphlets for the Tories for a month. I think Michael Foot had a double digit lead over Thatcher at one point.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

'Legitimisation done, time to accumulate' is basically what the capitalists are thinking now, hence the changes to welfare and tax in the last budget.

But isn't that stupid in a really complacent and potentially dangerous way (for them)? Legitimacy can be lost as well as gained.