Actually existing news

The Labour Party is abstaining from a bill being rushed through Parliament that will create a retroactive law overturninghundreds of thousands of benefit rebates due to unemployed people wrongly sanctioned. What is more incredible, the fact The Party of Labour refuses to oppose workers exploitation, or the government’s explanation for the bill, that it will “protect the economy”?

Firstly the estimated total pay-out is £130 million, which is of course next to nothing in the grander scheme. It is nothing compared to Trident, nothing compared to Afghanistan, nothing compared to uncollected tax... You could go on. But there’s also a disturbing tendency in public life, which is fast becoming a blood sport, where the weakest in our society are hounded, sometimes to their literal death. These people have been wronged by a government department but because they're unemployed the rules have to be rigged so they always lose out. For shame!

There’s more though. The national economy is being dragged down by suppressed demand, job losses, part-time work, VAT rises, service cuts and closures all add up. Using the unemployed to fill entry level, often minimum wage positions saves a little in the short term, but only for favoured companies. The government is effectively subsidising companies like Poundland. But is depressing wages and knocking the bottom out of the economy. Without effective demand there is no recovery, just a downward spiral. 

Thoughts for the Brain... Geology vs Iain Duncan Smith

Here are a couple of stories to talk about. Firstly Geologists Erupt After Iain Duncan-Smith Shelf-Stacking Jibe. If nothing else the headline is a nice little pun. When Mr Bowel-Syndrome compares geology to shelf-stacking he is of course having a go at Cait Reilly, a geology graduate who quite rightly argued that stacking shelves for free in Poundland was a waste of time when she was already volunteering in a museum and searching for work herself. IBS really is a wretch. He is far too thin skinned to be in politics if he feels the need to denigrate a woman in her twenties looking for work. He most likely kicks puppies, squashes ants and breaks the wings off butterfly to pass the time between insults and hare-brained schemes.

But it is also indicative of a ruling class mindset that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Geology doesn’t make immediate profit for people with shares in retail but, as one of the secretaries of the Geology Society of London pointed out:

Geologists are a vital part of the [food] supply chain: mining the minerals essential for fertilisers, obtaining metal ores, discovering the fuel which transports produce to the store…

Furthermore geologists work in tough conditions, from oil rigs to mines, and in all weathers. Manual labour is part of what they do.

Meanwhile the government is proposing 40-year deals for new nuclear reactors to be built. It’s worth pointing out firstly that the estimated price of generation is just below £100 per gigawatt hour, currently double the market price of electricity. The pricing system for wholesale power is byzantine and reflects firstly the practical monopoly that private companies effectively have, there is no meaningful electricity market, but also the essential role it has in the wider economy. Since the formation of the UKAEA in 1954 nuclear power has been tightly bound to the state.

But the other thing to note is if new power stations were built tomorrow on 40 year contracts that would not mean they are done and dusted by 2053. I grew up near a nuclear power station that was closed down well over twenty years ago. It is still being dismantled and the site being decontaminated today and that will still be going on in another twenty years. This government is setting problems that our grandchildren will have to deal with.

Because everything looks bad if you remember it

Iain Duncan Smith is mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore:

Campaigners accused the welfare secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, of "losing his cool" after the cabinet minister launched an extraordinary attack against a charity for challenging the government's proposed housing benefit reforms in the courts, describing the action as "ridiculous … irresponsible behaviour (and) an ill-judged PR stunt" which resulted in "a massive waste of taxpayers' money and court time".

The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) had sought to overturn the government's cap on housing benefit, arguing in the high court that such a move would result in the "social cleansing" of expensive areas of the UK.

How dare anyone attempt to use the state and law to anyone's benefit...? Anyone except defence consultants and arms dealers... and Vodafone... and News Corporation... not forgetting the City of London... How dare they point out the likely shortfalls of my policies?

The caps mean that benefits paid to the poor to cover rents cannot exceed £250 a week for a one-bedroom property, £290 for two bedrooms, £340 for three bedrooms and £400 for four bedrooms. The government's own assessment shows that groups affected include people with disabilities, teenage mothers and ethnic minority families.

Charities had argued that the effect would be felt first in the capital, saying 9,000 London households facing would have to leave their homes as a result of the caps – and about 4,600 would be unable to find anywhere else to live "locally".

This could mean upwards of 20,000 children having to move, 14,000 out of their local area, resulting in disruption to education, health and social services.

Oh that's how. It could be argued that the way to reduce the housing benefit bill would be to tackle unemployment, poverty pay, introduce rent control and a building and renovation programme (it's not as if there isn't large unemployment in the construction sector, hey!). But that would involve siding with the poor against employers and landlords, and that would be wrong, wrong, WRONG!