This morning, Philip Hammond caused outrage by telling Andrew Marr (video) that ‘there are no unemployed people’ – when there are 1.4 million in the UK, alongside those termed ‘economically inactive’ and not counted among them.
Blairite ‘journalist’ John Rentoul quickly leaped to the hapless and heartless Tory chancellor’s defence on social media, trying to justify and explain away the callous and fallacious remark:
Apparently, because Hammond was talking about shorthand typists, that makes it ok – because he somehow magically knows that none of the 1.4 million unemployed people would have a job as a shorthand typist if they still existed these days.
In fact, the context makes Hammond’s nonsense even worse, because it betrays the innate Tory dishonesty and incompetence on the economy and jobs – and dismisses the plight of an enormous number of our people.
The UK has seen a massive increase in low-paid, insecure work considered unskilled or low-skilled – so much so that a term had to be invented for it: the ‘gig economy’. And the Tories celebrate that – while trying simultaneously to pull wool over the eyes of the electorate – every time they challenge Labour at Prime Ministers’ Questions to ‘welcome’ the latest employment figures.
Almost a year ago, one in every eight working people in this country were in poverty.
One in eight.
Working people.
It has not got better since then.
The Tories have overseen a dramatic impoverishment of huge numbers of people – who are in work.
Hammond’s ‘shorthand typists’ are a symbol of countless other skilled, secure, well-paid jobs that have vanished.
In part that’s because of technological progress and global trends – but the job of a government is to find ways to replace those jobs with as good or better jobs, not to simply ‘make work pay’ by making unemployment so punishing that people have to take any awful, low-paid, insecure, soul-destroying jobs that don’t even pay them enough to live on.
Millions of people in this country are working – and poor – alongside the 1.4 million brutalised unemployed people that Hammond’s party has pushed into grinding, abject poverty and seems intent on attacking further through the ridiculous, unfit Universal Credit system.
And Hammond clearly thinks that’s ok.
Marie Antoinette is supposed to have said ‘Let them eat cake’ when she heard that the poor had no bread, sparking the French revolution.
Hammond’s ‘there are no unemployed people’ may be – needs to be – the Establishment’s ‘Marie Antoinette’ moment that pulls the wool off our eyes and ends the UK’s blighted status quo and the media machine that obscures it.
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Reblogged this on MAL's MURMURINGS.
Reblogged this on Jaffer's blog.
rentoul is a fraud , i have tweeted him many times & he has replied a few times , he seems to go silent when i ask him about the owner of the paper he works for (ex kgb )
THE 1.4 million shorthand typists have probably been re-employed to do fitness to work tribunals to cover for all the consistently bad assessments caused by the process, infact the tribunals service has probably been a growth business since this process started, then again this is just another true example out of touch with reality, no doubt his budget is going to be strong and stable as well
The Tories were never worried about unemployment.
It is on the record that they considered unemployment and recessions to be prices worth paying. Unemployment and recessions created a benign environment for them to funnel the country’s wealth to themselves and their donor class.
The Tory party’s policies and objectives have not changed in 30 years. Tories believe that stagnant wages, food banks, underfunding the NHS and 120,000 people dying avoidable deaths are all prices worth paying to allow them to continue funnelling the country’s wealth to themselves and their donor class.
In fact the more people they kill, the more profit they make.
The Tory party is, quite literally, a killing machine.
“Hammond’s ‘there are no unemployed people’ may be – needs to be – the Establishment’s ‘Marie Antoinette’ moment that pulls the wool off our eyes and ends the UK’s blighted status quo and the media machine that obscures it.”
Unfortunately, because of the MSM either glossing over, or burying things like this altogether (Yes, I’m pointing at you again, bbc) most people have become desensitised to this sort of crap.
Instead of a french revolution – you’ll only get the stereotypical french reaction from joe public these days.
¯\_(‘ _ ‘)_/¯
It’s exactly as though people aren’t arsed anymore…. :/
We’ve got 90 people dying a month because of ESA, WCA’s, welfare cuts & sanctions…Where’s the publicoutrage?
We’ve got child poverty increasing at an alarming rate – Where’s the public outrage?
The NHS it’s on it’s arse; almost about to be flogged off if they get their way – Where’s the public outrage?…Need I carry on?
What ‘spreadsh*t phil’ said is f***-all on the grand scale of things – as idiotic, arrogant and aloof as it was. The rats are doing as they please because we’re letting them.
Something needs to be done to FORCE the bastards to take notice.
Reblogged this on sdbast.
Yes and perhaps a Labour Government could set up manufacturing centres for solar panels and wind turbines in the areas of the UK with industrial decline so we have joined up thinking on policy. John McDonnell made a very good video recently on Labour harnessing and investing in new technology. The latest Tory ruse is to get more years of work out of working people with retirement soon at 66 then in a few years at 68 and for current 18 year olds up to 70! But again with joined up thinking we could have retirement for all at 65 (60 for manual workers) and this would create jobs for young people who would then pay tax! Plus a 35 hour week to make the lives of diverse working people better. LAB 4 HOPE!
A few years ago, Rentoul criticised people who had sought to verify the claim that President Ahmadinejad of Iran had threatened to ‘wipe Israel off the map’.
Read the following and decide for yourself:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2012/04/18/israels-deputy-prime-minister-admits-ahmadinejad-never-said-israel-should-be-wiped
https://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2012/03/israel-iran-rentoul