The real betrayal of Britain's poorest and most vulnerable people was
Labour with 13 honourable exceptions -
Diane Abbott, Ronnie Campbell, Katy Clark, Michael Connarty, Jeremy
Corbyn, Kelvin Hopkins, Glenda Jackson, John McDonnell, George Mudie,
Linda Riordan, Denis Skinner, Tom Watson and Mike Wood - who all deserve
praise for actually doing what they were elected to do, Labour MPs
acquiescently lined up behind the welfare cap. If an antelope feeds its
calf to a lion, that's pretty shocking. Obviously Plaid Cymru MP's voted AGAINST the cap along with the 13 'real' Labour MP's.
For a party that apparently wants to cut child poverty, Labour is going a funny way about it.
According to Save the Children, the welfare cap will push 345,000 children into poverty in four years.
The
measure will cap welfare spending at £119.5billion in 2015-16. Because
cyclical benefits like pensions and jobseekers' allowance are excluded,
Save the Children believes the £3billion in savings necessary for the
government to come below this ceiling will fall disproportionately on
working age benefits vital for parents.
Another group that will be hit hard will be disabled people.
In a letter praising the 13 Labour rebels for being "decent people",
Merry Cross, an activist for Disabled People Against the Cuts and a
leading member of
Left Unity,
the new party of the left in Britain, said that disabled people are
feeling persecuted, having been hit by all the benefit cuts affecting
non-disabled people, including sanctions, as well as those dreamt up to
target them in particular.
"So in addition to everything else we
are subjected to the thoroughly discredited Work Capability Assessment;
the eight months wait or more for Personal Independence Payments
assessments (equally flawed) and perhaps worst, the closure of the
Independent Living Fund for those most in need of help to live in the
community," Cross said. "Of course the welfare cap only makes matters
worse, because our needs are most likely to tip our benefits payments
over the top. I pity those who only wake up to the horror of all this
when they become disabled themselves, through accident or illness, for
horror it truly is."
"Disabled people have been attracted to Left
Unity in droves because it has been serious about including us and
backing our campaigns from the start," Cross added.
I recently
heard from a woman named Silvia who fell ill while she was studying to
be a nurse. Shortly after going for an operation, she attended an ATOS
assessment. Despite still having a tube in her leg attached to a pump,
she was declared fit to work and ineligible for Employment and Support
Allowance. It took seven months to get the decision overturned and her
money refunded, but by then it was too late. Her rent was in arrears and
the bailiffs were at the door.
Labour's betrayal of impoverished
parents and disabled people was designed to avoid a carefully laid trap
set in Osborne's Budget last week. Labour doesn't want to appear "weak"
on benefits. But in supporting the welfare cap, Labour has shown itself
to be a weak opposition.
Miliband and Balls have wholly bought into the myth of scroungers round
every corner. That people are claiming benefits because they're too lazy
to go out and look for work. We know this to be a lie. In Dudley last
week, 1,500 people queued three hours for 40 jobs at
Aldi.
Last year, 1,700 people applied for eight jobs at Costa. It's even not
that people won't accept low-skill jobs for poverty wages. It's that the
jobs aren't there.
Britain's economy may be picking up at last after three years of growth
being stifled by austerity, but the recovery has not trickled down for
those at the bottom of the heap.
If the government wants to bring welfare spending down, it needs to be
investing in the economy and in people, not cutting vital public
services.
And instead of supporting an ideologically-driven and punitive welfare
cap, Labour should call for a mandatory living wage. It will lift
millions out of tax credits and save £6 billion a year. Anything less is
quite simply a betrayal of the people the Labour Party was founded to
represent.
I am very proud that Plaid Cymru has taken an anti-austerity approach from the start. You don't create an equal society by attacking the most vulnerable. In Plaid Cymru we believe in investing in the people, boosting the economy - creating jobs by investing in infrastructure - giving people hope and ambition not gloom and despair.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/salman-shaheen/welfare-cap_b_5042380.html
My first job was as a paperboy. It was a job that paid pocket money. I enjoyed the paper-round very much - I would dart around with the papers then off to school - I always hated Sunday's as the bag would weigh a ton. Monday's however the bag was featherweight.
I worked at Stena Line throughout my time at university - after all not all of us are born with golden spoons in our mouths - I realised that I would have to earn my keep while studying. 
Labour's vote shows us the truth.
When asked what Plaid would do in such
circumstances, the party’s Hywel Williams, MP for Arfon, said: “Propping up
a damaging Tory government will not be among Plaid Cymru’s commitments for the
election.
