A heartless and cynical ploy from David Cameron

Today David Cameron announced under-25-year-olds who are not ‘earning or learning’ face losing their jobseekers allowance. This has been triumphed by The Daily Express among others as ‘a return to True Blue values’. If these are true blue values, then I wholeheartedly hope the UK wants nothing to do with them.

            This policy is a cynical attempt by David Cameron to frame the youth as being lazy and good-for-nothing in an attempt to appeal to his party’s core vote of older, conservative voters. He knows full well unemployed under-25-year-olds are not going to vote Conservative anyway, so he has nothing to lose.

            But it couldn’t be further from the truth. I am 20 years old myself, and had planned to go to University this year, but for personal and family reasons had to defer until next year. I want to stress I am not expressing pity for my situation, as I know I will be one of the people ‘learning’ next year. But I feel it is worth expressing here to show how simply unjust and untrue the claim that my generation are lazy and simply do not want to look for work is.

            I have had four jobs since 2010 and have worked hard in all of them. My most recent job I only left as I had thought I was going to University before circumstances changed. I achieved A*AB in my A levels and I also have a Level 2 NVQ qualification in Retail. I am currently unemployed and I have lodged a claim for jobseeker’s allowance. Since doing this I have spent every day searching and applying for jobs and have either been turned down for the ones I have applied for or not heard back. I am a young person with ample work experience and good qualifications, how hard would it be for a person who only had GCSEs and experience in one job? Or even less than 5 GCSEs and no previous work experience.

            I have many friends who have chosen not to go to college or decided it wasn’t for them or who have left with qualifications and are looking for work. Some are in employment now and some are not. However, none of them have chosen to live on the dole. The ones who did find employment took months to find it and some have been in insecure, low-hour work where they have often been left unpaid or without enough shifts.

            Of course, the role of government should not be to allow a life on the dole. Everyone agrees with this. However, the role of government should definitely not be to unfairly stigmatise a group of society who already find it hard to find jobs which do not require previous experience of the workplace which they often don’t have. The youth I know is one of people desperate to find work and afraid of the stigma of being unemployed, and to withdraw any support from them is irresponsible and morally bankrupt. If Cameron truly wants to make a future Britain a ‘land of hope’ then he should treat our age group with some dignity and respect, and recognise we are the country’s future, and do not deserve to be treated in this way.  

Link - There is an alternative, and it’s Labour

Here is the article I did for Somerset Labour concerning the party conference and the new policies this week.

For the press, it's fine to support UKIP's principles, but not UKIP. How telling.

Any follower of the British press will notice how anti-UKIP they have become recently. There are some exceptions, such as the Daily Express, largely down to Patrick O'Flynn's influence as chief political commentator. However, the rest of the press has been attacking Farage and his party as out-of-touch, sexist, racist, whatever.
      Ah, well that's fine isn't it? I hear you cry. About time the Mail et al adopted some more progressive stances. Indeed, if this had been the right-wing press discovering a liberal bent it would be very welcome. But it's not. It's a hypocritical about-turn which is frankly sickening to see.
      I'm no UKIP supporter, although I do believe we should withdraw from the EU, but the fact is the Right of  the British press has spent the best part of this century attacking 'lefty liberals', immigrants, the poor, 'soft justice' and practically any disadvantaged group they can find. They have created the perfect atmosphere for UKIP to flourish, with the British public being persuaded that we have a rising tide of threatening immigration being exacerbated by a liberal elite. Is it any wonder the anti-establishment, anti-immigration, anti-government spending UKIP have been able to thrive?
    But here's the thing, the press were fine with this while UKIP were a joke, they continued to spread their poison as they did not believe they could ever become a contender. However, as soon as UKIP have begun to threaten their precious Tory party they've been quick on the attack. And the reason? Plain and simple, Fleet Street wants to protect their financial interests and their sway on politics, and there is no one better way to do this than by keeping the Conservative party in power. Even though they added to UKIP's rise and write in support of its principles, they want to destroy it as it threatens their power and privilege. Sickening.

Well done Miliband, you are forgiven.

Apologies from myself to Mr Miliband are in order following the developments of the Labour conference this year. I criticised Miliband for failing to strike a different note from the Tories and being too centrist, but today I feel he has begun to forge a separate platform from the coalition with a distinctively left-wing edge. Admittedly, he did not go as far as some of us may have liked - renationalised the utilities, for example - but the policy announcements on housing, halting NHS privatisation and nationalising the railways are very welcome. It is worth noting that these announcements sound almost spirit of '45-esque, when the Labour government promised to embark on a large-scale housebuilding programme, create the health service and nationalise key industries. If it was good enough to lead a battered nation from a crippling World War, it's enough to lead a battered nation from crippling austerity measures. In keeping with this early pioneer spirit, I feel this image should sum up Labour's approach to 2015.

A UKIP gain, a Labour gain, a Tory loss and a Lib Dem loss. Oh, and a Tory hold.

A drubbing for the coalition parties and a boost for the opposition and the anti-establishment UKIP in tonight's by-elections. Labour gained Oxford North from the Lib Dems by a very narrow margin, the Tories lost Seasalter in Canterbury to UKIP and Labour held Coseley East with UKIP beating the Tories into third place. The only thing the coalition can be happy with is the Tories holding Four Marks and Medstead on East Hampshire.

So I've joined the Fabian Society ... and the Social Liberal Forum

Having left the Labour party in August, I have made another foray into the world of politics by becoming a member of the well-established centre-left Fabian society and the Social Liberal Forum, a left-wing pressure group within the Lib Dems. I am not a full member of either of these, as you need to be a Labour party member or Liberal Democrat member respectively, but I have followed these groups closely of late and feel they both have promise and great ideas to communicate. I just hope I get a membership card for both.

A disappointing vote, but top marks to Vince Cable.

Well, sadly, the Liberal Democrats did not approve the (oustanding) Social Liberal Forum's economic motion, and with that it is hard to see how the LD's will possibly be able to present themselves as an alternative from the Tories.

However, a little refreshment did come from the ever-fresh Vince Cable, who launched a scathing attack on the 'hated' Tories, with my favourite lines being:

'The Conservatives’ spiritual home is the United States. They’ve become the Tea Party Tories; they want to throw overboard any tax or regulation that gets in the way of their blinkered, small-state ideology ...
Deep down they believe there is no alternative to unhindered self-interest.'

Fantastic stuff from Vince. One cannot help but wish that Miliband and the Labour front bench would say something similar. When the official 'centre-left' opposition is being rhetorically outgunned from the Left by a man sitting opposite Cameron and Osborne in the cabinet chamber, you've got to ask yourself some serious questions about the effectiveness of the Labour party.