Government To Help Poor Families By Robbing Them of £75 A Week
Posted: February 11, 2012 Filed under: Politics | Tags: Cathy Jamieson, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Government, Labour, Rachel Reeves, Treasury Rachel Reeves, Working tax credit, Working time Leave a comment »
photo by sirqitous
What a government this is. It thinks that the way to help the unemployed is by making them homeless, the way to help the employed is by making them jobless and the way to repairing the British economy is my driving us back into recession. Now a new gem, you can help poor families by changing the family credit rules to cost them £4 000 a year! The change in the, to come in this April, will mean more than those earning under £17,700 will have to up their hours of work by a minimum of eight hours or lose out on all their working tax credit.
Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Rachel Reeves describes the figures as a “bombshell.”
“In this climate, very few people in part-time work will find be able to increase their hours by up to 50 per cent at the moment. And for a couple with children losing around £4,000 a year, or £75 a week, from this change could mean going out to work makes no sense. This tax credits bombshell is now just a few weeks away. For thousands of families it means going out to work won’t pay and they’ll be better off on benefits. That makes no economic sense at all. The government urgently needs to think again.”
Cathy Jamieson MP, Labour’s shadow Treasury minister, who uncovered the figures said: “This out-of-touch government doesn’t seem to understand what life is like for families on low incomes who work part-time and look after their kids. Parents can’t just increase their working hours when the government’s failed economic policies mean the extra work is simply not there. And the government hasn’t even exempted families with disabled children and full-time carers. Unless Ministers see sense by the time of the Budget this deeply unfair policy risks plunging thousands of families into poverty and worklessness.”
Like this:
Bob Blizzard, Labour Candidate for Waveney Open Letter on Lowestoft Gridlock
Posted: February 2, 2012 Filed under: Politics | Tags: Beccles, Bob Blizzard, England, Lowestoft, lowestoft journal, Oulton Broad, Suffolk, Suffolk County Council, Waveney Leave a comment »
Labour Candidate for Waveney, Bob Blizzard has spoken out about the ridiculous traffic situation in Lowestoft that is harming businesses and making residents lives a misery. Bob’s comments were made in an an open letter to The Lowestoft Journal, which is reproduced in full here from www.backbob.org with kind permission from Bob.
Dear Sir
Once again, everyday life in Lowestoft is being heavily disrupted by road works causing traffic chaos.
Business suffers and people are put off from coming to the town. We already know that many
residents of south Lowestoft shop in Beccles instead.However, I can’t see the point in blaming Anglian water. We need and want our sewers to be
repaired so that people don’t suffer from flooding and foul sewage overflows. I remember, as
Waveney’s MP, on more than one occasion, pressing for work to be done to help residents in central
Lowestoft whose homes were regularly affected.The gridlock caused by the current road works is further evidence of Lowestoft’s hopelessly
inadequate road network. Because traffic from all over town has to funnel into the harbour bridge,
any road works anywhere near it will bring the town to a standstill, when the only alternative bridge
is three miles away. It doesn’t have to be a bridge breakdown for us all to suffer.The problem is that there is ONLY one place in Lowestoft to cross the river, except for the Oulton
Broad alternative with its railway gates. It’s not that there’s too much traffic wanting to get into the
town centre. If that were the case the shops wouldn’t be struggling. It’s simply that it’s all too often
a pain to get into town. That’s why fewer people are bothering and shops are suffering.During my time as MP, the road infrastructure was improved by the South Lowestoft Relief Road
and the Northern Spine Road. A feasibility study was completed which showed that a third crossing
would meet the government’s benefit cost criteria and it designated the best location. But our
representative on the region’s transport prioritisation committee (Suffolk County Council) never put
the scheme forward.Now we hear little about a third crossing. Instead, we are being fobbed off with a £6 million
footbridge. I fail to see how such a folly would help us overcome the disruption we are currently
suffering. Lowestoft will continue to struggle unless we get a third crossing.
