ARMS in the North West believes the claim that IDS resigned on the basis of his opposition to attacks on the disabled is cynical and hypocritical. He pushed the bedroom tax, Universal Credit, ATOS, the persecution of disabled people who were sanctioned when incapable of work. He presided over the increase in suicides among those deprived of benefit.
We particularly note that his letter targets pensioners with the words: 'You are aware that I believe the cuts would have been even fairer to younger families and people of working age if we had been willing to reduce some of the benefits given to better-off pensioners…', another cynical ploy to divide the old from the young.
Such a notion is part of a growing and insidious campaign to attack pensions and related entitlements. As well as ID Smith, Frank Field and assorted journalists have trailed the idea that pensioners are 'privileged'. Hamish McRae of the 'I' declared 'If pensioners get more, then someone has to foot the bill'. Patrick Wintour of the Guardian headlined 'Pensioners now have a bigger share of the wealth than under-45s.' Darling of the establishment Field says 'The so-called triple lock on state pensions is paid for by squeezing the real incomes of working people.'
These people see the banker-induced crisis as a zero-sum game of a single cake of a shrinking size baked by the Tories in which every slice is reduced or increased as long as it stays within the spending cap determined by history's most mendacious government.
Ignored are the £billions in tax dodged by the fat cats who bankroll the Tory party; as is the £350billion of quantitative easing gifted to the banks; the £billions paid out in bankers’ bonuses is a sealed book; the tax cuts to the top 1% is not even mentioned by the sainted Frank Fields or his kindred spirits.
Nor is it mentioned that British pensioners are among the lowest paid in Western Europe. The OECD reported that British workers receive, if private and state pensions are combined, 38% of their wages, this figure would dramatically reduce for workers without a private pension. In contrast the level in Holland and Austria is 90% and in Spain and Italy 80% of average wages.
We believe now is the time for the TUC to join with the National Pensioners Convention to act on its policy of preparing a massive campaign of opposition to these attacks on pensioners and to all austerity. This campaign should initiate mass industrial action to include a 24-hour general strike, a policy adopted by the 2013 TUC, to force this shambles of a government to retreat.
Tony Mulhearn
Barack Obama sees the EU with its commitment to neo-liberalism as an instrument of American foreign policy, and TTIP as the goose that lays the golden egg. He is concerned that Brexit could jeopardise that arrangement, hence his audacious comments.
