Labour’s employment shame

Focus on Birmingham

Recently, we have heard much of the possible Lloyds TSB/HBOS job losses of up to 40,000 as well as the shedding of 4,500 Lehman Brothers jobs in the City.  However, what about elsewhere?  What is going on to the local economies – where most of us live – in terms of unemployment and worklessness?

Nationally, we know from the Office of National Statistics that:

The unemployment rate was 5.5 per cent for the three months to July 2008, up 0.2 over both the previous quarter and over the year. The number of unemployed people increased by 81,000 over the quarter and by 72,000 over the year, to reach 1.72 million.

But Labour has presided over an increase of unemployment in the entrepreneurial city of Birmingham again (this is of personal interest to me as I worked there for over three years).  The birthplace of the industrial revolution is suffering from Brownian economic policy with an unemployment rate of 9.2%.

          Source: ONS (2008)

The ONS report also finds that economic inactivity in Birmingham is a staggering 30.7% much higher than the UK’s corresponding 21.6% rate.

Even more of an indictment for Labour – which is supposed to be the party of ethnic minorities – is that in Birmingham the employment rate for non-white adults is only 50.6% (63.1% for the whole population) and their economic inactivity rate is 41.9% (compared to 30.7% overall). 

So if you’re black or Pakistani and living in Birmingham – or anywhere else in the UK – you can blame Labour for your economic situation.

And no matter what colour, gender or age you are, if you live in Birmingham, you’re much more likely to be out of work than if you live in many other parts of the country. 

The next Government needs to sort this mess out and get people, whatever their ‘demographics’ or background, back into work.

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Labour has allowed violence to spiral out of control

Sainsbury’s in Merton, nowhere more quiet and respectable, you would think?  Not so. 

No one speaks to anyone else in there … not a sign of friendliness or camaraderie … just seething resentment and anger.

Which bubbled up yesterday into a murder of someone in a queue.  An accusation of queue jumping.  A woman allegedly phoned her “partner”, no doubt has who sired her ba****ds who will we suspect by now have been taken “into care”, and he allegedly knocked the victim to the ground, who apparently wasn’t even the guy blamed for queue jumping.

Mindless violence.  An alleged perpetrator so thick that he could not even attack the ‘real’ queue jumper (if there was such an incident).

This incident crystallises and encapsulates how violent our society has become.  People are scared of these ‘alleged’ thugs and other brainless, semi-educated, benefit-claiming, knife-wielding hoodlums.  Labour has allowed violence to spiral out of control, so such an incident isn’t really surprising – just part of every day life. Is it any wonder millions of Britons have voted with their feet and left this country? 

Pensioner poverty – a national scandal

In 1997 Labour said it would eradicate child poverty. It set some targets and has failed to make significant progress on this matter.

But what is more galling, in this New Labour world, is the way that older people are treated, neglected and ignored by the Government.  At least children have rights to education, and other services … what rights to older people have in this country? (unless they have been prudent – yes, that former Brownian word – enough to save for ‘a rainy day’).

As Help the Aged remind us, ageism and age discrimination is still prevalent in this country – for example, on the NHS, if you are “too old”, you can be refused treatment, and granted a death sentence (even though Capital Punishment was abolished); that is, if they don’t do you in with morphine first.  Social care is being cut back by many councils as a result of the Brownian mess that is the public finances. The Help the Aged video is sadly true:

But what is a national scandal is the increase in pensioner poverty, a direct result of this Government’s policies.  Barbara Willis-Brown, writing in the Stirrer, highlights how:

Here in Birmingham, we have too many pensioners living in isolation; struggling to survive on a limited income, with prices rocketing around them.

Their cars have gone, so transport and mobility are key issues; many live in fear, locking themselves away as soon as daylight fades; they cannot afford to socialise (cost, transports, perception, fear); rising costs of social care & diminishing services add pressures to the already hard-pressed.

At a time in life when they need the most help, they find there is precious little available.

Traditionally, there has long been a history of voluntary sector community support, organising trips, outings, hospital visits, befrienders etc.

Yet, due to withdrawal of funding, (Olympics 2012 springs to mind) local support groups have been hammered, as projects simply close down. So, the biggest losers continue to be the elderly – who are also the least able to cope.

As a matter of utmost urgency the government must consider the impact of all these rises on the older population.

The choice between eating and heating the home has been highlighted by Channel 4’s Dispatches already and this holocaust on older people was discussed on this blog. The Government’s inaction on the matter of pension poverty is not only immoral, but also politically inept.  Since the highest turnout at General Elections is amongst over 60s, older people will have their revenge on this despicable Government.

Yes, fix the economy, but please fix society too

Last summer, moved by the murder of an innocent little kid, 11-year old Rhys Jones in Liverpool, I wrote that it was time for the Government to get a grip on teenage gun crime.  Matt Sinclair hits the nail on the head with his analysis of family breakdown and the rise of teenage pregnancy and illegitimacy.

You only have to read this post to see how completely out of touch with the lives of hard-working families some sections of the ‘third estate’ are (despite many of them working and presumably living in LONDON):

The second area of weakness I would highlight is the current Tory fondness for decrying Britain’s “broken society”.

I cannot bear this phrase – as I don’t believe the country as a whole is suffering from social breakdown, despite screaming headlines proclaiming the contrary – and I imagine many centre-ground voters share my displeasure.

It smacks of a carping Opposition-based approach, not of a party ready to govern what remains one of the greatest nations in the world. Please drop it, Dave.

How is society not broken when an 11-year-old can get shot on a nice middle-class estate in Liverpool, if a 16-year-old gets his throat slit by a thug wielding a glass tray from a bakery, and if an 18-year-old boy who was loved by all who knew him (and who had a bright acting career ahead of him) dies at the hands of a murderer outside a pub in a nice commuter suburb of London?  Yes, Sidcup.

Many centre ground voters are actually tearing their hair out in despair, because of what they see around them.  Try wandering round Lewisham or Lambeth at night, where even “good kids” have started carrying knifes to defend themselves against feral youths.  They are scared, so are their parents, so is most of society.

As always, there is a more credible viewpoint in Simon Heffer’s column, where he links youth crime to welfare dependency and the welfare state, and describes society as “destabilised”.  The lack of a father figure in the home in many cases does not help matters (and, after all, Labour MPs essentially abolished fatherhood last week in a notorious parliamentary vote).  Welfare is much adored by the left, as Heffer explains, because it, ‘gives them a clientele to control. All in all, it is a corrupt, corrupting, demoralising and poisonous concept.’  He goes further and says that:

Why is it that the criminal underclass can carry on as it does? It is because the state pays for it to do so. Why do children grow up feeling they have to kill each other at the slightest provocation? Because the state has removed the need for them to grow up in a coherent family unit, in which such feelings would seldom be fed. Why, when sociologists from Charles Murray onwards have linked single parenthood, social and economic failure and crime, does the state still sponsor so extensively single parenthood as a career option for young women? Because it assists the socialist state’s mission to control and expand a clientele.

A lack of responsibility, spending of £620 billion on welfare (in which Heffer admits even Labour MP Denis MacShane can see opportunities for reductions), youth crime spiralling out of control… 

John Redwood has, as always, brilliantly analysed the current state of taxation and spending and concluded that the Government is ‘dithering’ on the issue.  Where better to start than welfare?

Tax cuts would help enhance people’s quality of life and, yes, it is important (absolutely vital, in fact) to fix the economy.  But one of the ways that both the economy and society could be fixed together is by slashing the welfare bill, handing the savings back to tax-payers and encouraging the workshy recipients to go to work – not the folks who are unable to work due to disability or mental health problems.

it is time to sort out two of the greatest ills that afflict the UK today, social breakdown/teenage crime/welfare AND taxation, at the same time.  Not only can people keep more of the money they earn.  But also families can be supported to stay together.  And people can be encouraged to work, rather than be dependent upon welfare, making something positive of their lives.  And youth crime can be stamped out.

You don’t expect baby murderers to ban smacking, do you?

At PMQs the Speaker asked Gordon Brown to use ‘temperate language’.  On this subject I’m afraid I will have to refrain from temperate language.

Yesterday, Brown made a speech about his commitment to liberty, which is a joke given his commitment to increasing the detention limit from 28 days to something like 56 days.  It is a joke, considering his Government’s policies on the liberty of the unborn child.  The liberty to be born.  The right to life.  All thrown aside for the right to a medieval practice that has no place in a civilised country.

Some campaigners, who are often the very same people who support abortion, are furious with the Government for not banning smacking.  I personally could never smack a child, but many parents do; criminalising parents would be asburd.  But do you really expect baby murderers to ban smacking?

The science proves that at 22 and 23 weeks (by the way, around 5 months of pregnancy) babies are not only fully formed, but viable, i.e. they have a chance of survival.  As the brave MP Nadine Dorries points out on her blog, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists study which Dawn Primarolo used to avoid reducing the abortion limit from 24 weeks,

“It failed to mention the Hoekstra study which demonstrates how with good neonatal intervention, 66% of all babies (that is babies born naturally because there may have been medical complications not healthy babies aborted) at 23 weeks live.

“It failed to mention how in the UK at good neonatal units such as UCH London and Hope hospital in Salford, 43% of 23 weekers live.

“Instead it chose to quote a study which averages out births at all hospitals across the UK, which puts the figure at 10 -15%.”

That makes the Labour Government baby murderers (the RCOG are anyway, and they sully the name of doctors), aided and abetted by the likes of Dr Evil Harris MP. 

What exactly happens to a baby (not a foetus, or an embryo, which are dehumanising medical words) when he or she – a potential Ben or Emily – is ripped from the womb?  If not already dead, the baby is murdered by the medical team responsible for the abortion.  We are not here talking about abortion at 5 or 10 weeks, where the baby may look less baby-like though I believe it is equally wrong, but about the killing of a viable baby in the womb (or after being forced from the womb).  Evidence from the US shows that babies feel pain during abortions.

Even Lord Steel, a man who has much blood on his hands for his Private Members Bill to legalise ‘abortion on demand’ in the 60s, is now appalled by the fact that there are around 200,000 abortions per year.  These are due to the social breakdown, and immorality, that has ripped apart the fabric of this country.  Almost 200,000 of our fellow Britons are denied the right to life, so the day after Ms Primarolo’s despicable decision is hardly a day for Brown to make a speech about liberty. 

And, frankly, it would be ludicrous of this Labour Government to ban smacking when it has given the green light to many more murders of babies in the womb who could survive, who are fully formed, but somehow are denied the right to life because they have not yet been born.  Worse still, these murdered little souls will never be able to vote but the babies’ murderous “mothers” do have a vote and that seems to be what the Government is calculating in this decision.  Anyone who cares about the right to babies to life, however, should never vote Labour.