If I could give the Labour Party one good piece of advice it is do not talk about benefits. Considering how it was the Labour Party that trapped millions of people on benefit payouts leaving a significant proportion of the population to rot and a few to abuse the system, the British public doesn't want to hear any lectures on welfare from Labour.
However, Rachel Reeves, the new Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary*, has said that “A Labour government will introduce a Basic Skills Test to assess all new claimants for Job Seekers Allowance within six weeks of claiming benefits." #ThingsElliottSays has managed to get a copy of this new skills test that Labour will use if they're returned to power in 2015.
First seen on Guido Fawkes.
Very testing. No wonder this has been easily shown up by the Conservatives who have said "Labour are copying a Conservative policy that already exists and that is superior to the one they are proposing. After 13 years of Labour running our education system, many young people looking for work do not have the English and Maths skills they need to get a job. That's why, starting in some areas at first, anyone aged 18 to 21 signing on without these basic skills will be required to undertake training from day one or lose their benefits."
Its only the Conservatives who can get people off benefits and back into work. Vote for the Conservative Party, vote for the Workers Party.
*She has replaced Baldermort, otherwise known as Liam Byrne, because the Unite union told Red Ed to get rid of him.
I'm quite interested in Sweden at the moment in light of the
riots going on. I'd like to pull out some of the inconsistencies on this Scandinavia
Country that the Left have spun and continue to spin.
Till very recently the only way has been Scandinavian for
the Left. Sweden is apparently one of the few countries in the world where
growth is high, the economy is always booming, everyone loves immigration and
the government is so big that everyone receives a massive pile of cash in welfare.
In short a Social Democratic utopia where everything is rosy. In Sweden this utopia is thanks mostly to
the Swedish Social Democratic Party being in government since 1930 to 1991 and
the Centre Right Party changing few policies when ever in power.
Utopian riots in the Swedish Capital.
That above paragraph could have
been written by a Guardian journalist. A Few Years ago the Guardian wrote this
article saying how the 'Tories can learn from the centre right Swedish Government'.
It said that "For three generations universal, efficient health care, access to
education, child care, generous funding for arts and cultural activities have
been simply assumed in the conduct of people's lives. The result has not been,
as was once alleged, an ant-like conformity, but its opposite: a degree of
individuality and autonomy that is becoming its major cultural challenge." (if
you want to see even more recent Guardian Sweden love see the recent videos
they published in February about how Sweden has bucked the economic trend).
Interesting stuff from the Guardian. Looks like a social utopia.
But now they are saying "After decades of practising the Swedish model of
generous welfare benefits, Stockholm has reduced the role of the state since
the 1990s, spurring the fastest growth in inequality of any advanced OECD
economy. […] successive governments have failed to substantially reduce
long-term youth unemployment and poverty, which have affected immigrant
communities worst." So a complete turnaround. Why is that?
I'm surprised the Guardian hasn't been recategorised in all Libraries as fiction rather than a newspaper.
Well it's because people would realise that what they had
said before about Sweden was one massive Porkie. Sweden has never had this left
wing utopia. The reason why it can spend so much on welfare is because it has
one of the smallest states in the world. There is no minimum wage in Sweden,
taxes are low and the people are free to do what they want. Welfare
consequently is able to be very high in Sweden, they get in more tax with a
bigger economy that has low tax than a small one with high tax. Thatcher did it
in the 1980s, don't you know people from the Guardian.
So why is Stockholm on fire every night? Well the same reasons
why there was problems in London, it's almost a copy. Unlike what the Guardian
has said above its nothing to do with reducing the role of the state and how
now there is no welfare and so everyone is in poverty. It's to do with the open
door immigration policy and its effect on the Swedes jobs market.
Swedes have a big history of emigration as well as immigration.
As it stood in 2010, 14.3% of the population are immigrants more
than 2/3rds of these were born outside of the EU. In a country where the population is just shy
of 10 million, that's a lot of people. Most of these immigrants as with the UK
live in major cities so you get a large proportion of immigrants living in
certain districts. The problem is probably as acute as a cultural divide as in
Oldham, Luton or Tower Hamlets, to give a rough scale of what is going on.
The vast majority of immigrants have come over for jobs and
most are employed. Sweden has a long history of migrations doing low skilled
jobs and coming over to fill the positions. Thus they under cut most of the low skilled workers already living in Sweden. These workers then rely on a substantial welfare state to rely on, a classic situation of a large proportion trapped on welfare. The Swedes are
stuck in catch 22 position of being unable to move socio-economically because
welfare pays best but unable to leave because work pays worst. Thus the Swedes
are not a happy bunch abandoned by their government on welfare and blaming
immigrants for it.
So there you are. Sweden far from being a left wing Utopia
is stuck in a benefits trap.
A very interesting set of statistics came out today. According
to Sky News 58% of people have abandoned buying processed meat and sales at
butchers have increased by over 20% due to the recent discovery that horse is the
most eaten meat in the UK. This is obviously partially caused by there not
being as much processed horse burgers about with half of them seemingly removed from
the shelves. It is clear to see though that there is a genuine consumer switch to real meat products (even kebab houses are switching to real meat from the usual Donner to save their businesses). Perhaps it is too early to tell, but if this
continues, we are in for some real government savings on the health budget.
This how savings could be achieved. People who shop at butchers/ buy real meat have
to spend more money, because meat is more expensive. Even an increase in meat production from increased demand would not lower prices enough. People are thus on
the whole going to be eating less red meat which is healthier. Also eating real/butchers meat is healthier than processed meat because it
contains less hidden hydrogenated fats and all that malarkey. Now I predict that 58%
in the next 5 years will not have stuck with abandoning processed meat, but a fair portion will have.
Obviously there is going to be a saving on the NHS and
welfare budget because of this. But it’s probably not going to be enough to stop their budgets growing experientially until the state is nothing more than a glorified wheelchair. So what I suggest is this. As people hate Horsemeat make sure, like the statutory 42% of meat needed to deem a sausage a sausage, that any processed meats that are not above say 50% in meat content contain 10% horse. That way people will eat less of this meat and this will save us billions. Not a very free market thing to do on the face of it but saving the public coffers a mint from a lot less fat people in the future as no one seems to want to gorge on horse.
If only the idea was workable.
P.S. For all those who actually want to know, I actually like Horse I had it in France and it was fine, I personally find it odd how the British public view it as the meat of the devil.
