Back to main newsIt's the poor who are paying for this rich man's recession - dole queues, huge sums thrown at bankers & cuts to public services
Wed 09 Sep 2009
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It's the poor who are paying for this rich man's recession. That was already evident from the growing dole queues, the huge sums thrown at bankers and the threats to cut public services.
And it was confirmed on Monday by TUC research proving that the lowest paid are the hardest hit.
For workers in shops and warehouses, office juniors and unskilled staff in a host of industries, talk of a recovery is so much hot air.
And so is the rhetoric that they're being asked to swallow by politicians and the City.
"We're all in this together, so tighten your belts and accept that there must be cuts" - that's a line that rings hollow when the people spouting it are showing no signs of tightening their own belts or losing their own jobs.
Never has new Labour's contempt for the working class been laid so bare as during this recession.
This government may not be solely to blame for the recession, but its policies ensured the slump will hit far harder and last far longer.
New Labour chose to abandon manufacturing in favour of an economy based on City speculation, low-paid service jobs, temporary work and cheap personal credit - an economy built on air.
Now this economy has come crashing down, but there is no sign of new Labour rethinking its obsession with the finance industry and its utter disdain for workers.
Among the long list of its failures - failure to step in and back the Vestas workers, failure to assert control over the banks which it effectively nationalised and failure to scrap the anti-union laws, to name just a few - one particularly damning fact stands out.
New Labour has failed to take one basic step which would both boost the economy and help stave off the misery of unemployment.
That is, to raise the pitiful level of jobseeker's allowance beyond its current record low of 10 per cent of the average wage.
That's one of the lowest rates in the developed world - and even less than Margaret Thatcher's government gave to the millions of coalminers, steelworkers and shipbuilders it threw on the dole.
The TUC's recent call for a mere tenner a week extra for the jobless is affordable, sensible and would show basic human decency.
New Labour's silence on this proposal speaks volumes about its contempt for the workers and workless, the low-paid and the vulnerable who look to it in vain for help.
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