“Workfare” comes into hospitals
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The latest manifestation of the government’s “workfare” schemes sees not only jobseekers being exploited, but also hospital patients put at risk.
Benefits
Single parents struggle to find work
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In 2008 New Labour began to take away unemployed single parents’ entitlement to Income Support (IS) when their youngest child reached a certain age — and the “qualifying age” was gradually reduced.
Expelling London's poor
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The local council of Newham, east London (the main site of the 2012 Olympic Games), has written to a housing association in Stoke-on-Trent (160 miles away) in an attempt to re-house 500 families.
Wages not workfare
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Between January and November 2011 58,000 people in the UK worked for free for high-street shops, charities and government departments as part of the government’s “Mandatory Work Activity” or “Work Experience” programmes.
Welfare reform: attacking the vulnerable
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The government’s Welfare Reform Bill has now returned to the House of Lords.
Who's to blame for the crisis? The disabled!
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The political atmosphere is so dominated by the prejudices and norms of the right that it always a surprise when someone expresses even the most basic of socialist or egalitarian ideas in the mainstream media.
Fight Tory populism
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On 23 January, the House of Lords voted to exempt child benefit payments from a government proposed £26,000 annual cap on household benefits.
The sadistic logic of capitalist cuts
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Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, millionaire Iain Duncan Smith, has pledged to cut the cost of benefits for disabled people by 20% — one of the “reforms” embedded in the Welfare Reform Bill.
Tory benefit cuts could mean a million evictions
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Gradually, and in large steps, the Housing Benefit changes introduced by the coalition government are making big areas of Britain’s cities unaffordable for all but the well-off.
Having chemo? Get to work says the government
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By Jo Maxwell
In November, Macmillan Cancer Support launched a petition against a government proposal to axe benefits for chemotherapy patients who cannot prove they are unfit to work.