Well they had to have Cameron giving the polling a boost from somewhere, reducing the number would do that.

Very suspicious.

Self deluding bollocks! Watched the speech live – Rousing stuff! Loved it when he turned on Labour and asked how dare they claim to be the party of the poor given 96% marginal tax rates for the worst off!

“Loved it when he turned on Labour and asked how dare they claim to be the party of the poor given 96% marginal tax rates for the worst off!”

Craig Murray on this at http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/ “Cameron bullshit – a viewer’s guide”:

“There was a rather nastier point of using pretended concern for the poor earlier in Cameron’s speech, when he banged on about the poor single mother who works to better herself, and who because of benefit withdrawal effectively is taxed at 96% on every pound she earns over £150 per week. A crafted standing ovation greeted a ringing declaration that the Conservatives would end the scandal of marginal 96% tax rates for the poorest in our society. But of course the Conservatives would do that, not by lowering the single mother’s tax rate, and not by keeping giving her benefit when she works. They would do it by reducing the benefit she can get if she does not work, thus “incentivising” her to search for a non-existent job supported by non-existent cheap childcare for her children.”

Are you still “lovin’ it”?

She wouldn’t have no benefit or job under the TOries.

Strategist

So let me get this straight. You’re defending the benefits trap?

@6

There is no ‘benefits trap’. It is an invention of the right-wing press and think-tanks. What exists is a sizeable minority of people who are long-term unemployed and either on JSA because the industries that once sustained their communities were savaged by Thatcher and her dreams of a nation of managers and accountants, or on Incapacity Benefit because keeping them on normal unemployment benefit would have exposed the Thatcher boom for what it was – a tremedous giveaway to the rich at the expense of the rest of us.

Smiley Dave’s hypocrisy just got that little bit more rancid.

Mark M @ 6

The ‘benefits trap’ is a complete myth. There is no such thing because people are looking at the symptom, not the problem. The real problem is that the price of labour has collapsed, not that benefits have somehow overtook wages; it is the other way around.

Wages have been forced down to the point where they need to be to entice people out of benefits. Push benefits down further, and the price of labour will fall to the same relative point. Cameron’s single mother is not languishing on the dole because benefits are too generous, she is languishing on the dole because a surplus of labour means that there is simply no incentive to pay her a decent wage. If ten people apply for a job, why would you need eleven people to apply for the job.

When you look further into her case, you find that the thing that hurts her is the high rent and the council tax and childcare costs, not a cushy life on benefits.

The price of labour cannot fall below the minimum wage (I know there are a few rogues).

@9

That’s why the Tories hate the minimum wage so much – got to pay the hoi-polloi what we think they’re worth, what?

cjcjc @ 9

No? You think not? It happens all the time, every day. Remember there are other costs than merely the wages people pay. Holidays, overtime (including unpaid), sick pay, safety equipment, uniforms, ‘admin fees’ etc.

Sure, you pay the minimum wage, but you charge someone for the rent of the uniform/safety boots. You deduct ‘shrinkage’ (items lost to shoplifting) from wages or even admin fees to get your wages paid into banks. You lay off staff before they aclumalte holidays or sack them when they are sick. You expect people to work a couple of hours ‘training’, unpaid. Or a simple Zero hours Contract and send them home unpaid for an hour or two.

More than one way to skin a cat.

Jim, how do you expect an ivory tower dweller like cjcjc to know that stuff? So unfair… Give the poor lad a chance.

Neil @ 12

If people are going to make crass statements without even doing any research on the subject they are going to make twats of themselves.

Also @ 9

The cost of labour can still fall in a relative sense, so if the minimum wage is increased by say 5% a year but house prices are going up 10% a year and executive salaries are going up 15% a year, the cost of labour in relation to society as a whole is falling.

Not only that, but do you know how much the minimum wage is? Try telling, for instance, the Leeds bin workers who are out on strike at the moment “Don’t worry chaps, your wages can’t fall lower than the minimum wage!” Try telling that to people up and down the country who are two pay cheques away from bankruptcy.

Neil is definitely on to something!