This week the letters come from the Socialist Worker and the Guardian, I often wonder if government Minister like James
Purnell, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions give any thought to the distress they cause when they condemn the sick and disabled as work-shy etc; and continuously tinker with the Benefits they receive. Thomas Maughan comes out with all guns blazing in a letter published in the Socialist Worker and lets these political minnows know the contempt they are held in by most benefit claimants.
Whilst David Miliband's grab for Brown's wobbly crown may have gone down well with the New Labour's glitterati, our two correspondents below expose him for what he is, a centre right empty vessel on the make.
These days politicians and the media set fashionable benchmarks which people stray out of at their peril, no where more so than over 'global warming' and the north of Ireland peace process. If you speak out against the political structures put in place after the Good Friday Agreement, you will quickly be branded a dissident, which as far as the UK State and its tame media is concerned is code for terrorist, Kevin Rooney writes about the dangers of this.
Finally Martin Stubb's pours scorn on the latest global warming publicity wheeze that humanity has only 100 months left to save the World.
MH.
Dear Editor
Work and pensions secretary James Purnell’s proposals for the benefits system do far more than just the usual slashing of benefits and bashing of the poor familiar from 11 years of New Labour (» Benefits ‘reform’ will mean misery for the very poorest, 26 July). By “rebranding” incapacity benefit as an “employment support allowance”, he achieves a similar sleight of hand to John Major’s transformation of unemployment benefit into a “jobseeker’s allowance”.
Just as unemployment is apparently not structural to capitalism, but a consequence of the “jobseeker’s” own actions, illness itself is being abolished. Everyone, whatever their situation, is assumed to be able to work. The incapacity benefit regime is already draconian. I suffer from a chronic illness which, while not barring me from all work, certainly means that the number of jobs I can take is limited, as I am frequently ill or visiting hospital.
Although there was no problem with my doctor’s notes, I was sent to one of the job centre’s assessors who asked a series of questions clearly irrelevant to my condition.
Could I walk up the stairs? Yes. The fact that I was at best in frequent pain and at worst incontinent was apparently unimportant to my prospects for finding work. Since then I’ve been on jobseeker’s allowance, where their big idea for getting people off to work was management training style “motivational courses” – as if all we really need is to “aim high” and work will fall into our laps.
But, regardless of the fact that – at least in my experience – most people on the dole want to work. But why should they? Why is it that 40-plus hours a week entering data on a computer, sweeping roads or cold-calling is considered so important to well being? Why should we pretend that alienating, tedious jobs are some sort of cure for depression, let alone long-term illness, when all the evidence points to them being a leading cause?
New Labour’s work ethic is sick – it’s just Victorian puritanism clumsily dressed up as social concern.
Thomas Maughan,
South London
Socialist Worker. [http://www.socialistworker.co.uk]
Dear Sir
No, we don't have 100 months to save the world. The planet was around for millions of years before we came along and will get along fine with or without us. "Save the human" by all means, but the planet doesn't need saving.
Martin Stubbs
London
The Guardian 04.08.08.
Dear Sir
Unlike Polly Toynbee, I find David Miliband's intervention in the Labour leadership crisis offers not "an adrenalin shot of optimism" but another lethal injection of despair.
What does Miliband have to offer other than slick presentation? What policies are on offer? More PFI, privatisation, wage restraint and foreign military intervention. The policy differences between Brown and Miliband are minor, but the "man with the plan" does offer "breezy ease" in delivery, according to Toynbee. What optimism is there in that for ordinary working people?
Like many ex-Labour party members, I am looking with optimism for a new real alternative and now support the campaign for a New Workers' party. This campaign brings together those who want a real broad-left alternative to Brown, and Miliband for that matter.
Rob Bishop
Cheltenham, Gloucesterhsire
The Guardian, 05.08.08.
Dear Sir,
So David Miliband may become the new leader of the Labour party and he wants to stand on "a platform of change" (Against the odds we can still win, July 30). Does he really believe that change in itself can be a political ambition? Does he think the electorate are so foolish as to believe that his new New Labour will be any less of an electoral gimmick than old New Labour? Designated by Alistair Campbell as "brains", he shared the lack of wit of most of the parliamentary Labour party in failing to see through his mentor's flimsy rationale for the war in Iraq. Even with hindsight, he makes no apology for that criminal adventure, though he thinks that "winning the peace" might have been better planned. Where in that planning is his concern to restrain British oil companies taking the profits that belong to the Iraqi people?
He has been part of a massively centralising administration, yet preaches local decision-making. The years since 1997 have witnessed growing inequality of wealth as well as power, yet he flashes the poorly worded message on the Labour party card to obscure his Blatcherite allegiances to the rich and powerful. I have scoured his article to find one clear policy commitment, and the closest seems to be a wish to "facilitate ... new nuclear power stations". No comprehensive energy policy, just waste to litter the lives of future generations.
Perhaps a day will come when someone will emerge to lead that once great party who actually cares about and will act to reduce inequality, increase an ethic of public service, struggle to provide universal high-quality local public services, block the destruction of the environment and take up Robin Cook's challenge for an ethical foreign policy that no longer links wealth creation to lives and limbs lost through our arms exports.
Yes, he is younger and prettier, but like Brown he lives in the shallows, terrified to face up to reality and think deeply about the past and the future, and the place of the British people within it.
Professor Tony Booth
Canterbury Christ Church University
The Guardian 30.07.08.
Dear Sir
I disagree with dissident Republicans' use of violence and would appeal to them to think again. I do agree with them, however, that Northern Ireland is an illegitimate state still occupied by Britain. No doubt Sinn Fein and others would label my views as out of touch with the "new Northern Ireland", as Northern Ireland secretary Shaun Woodward put it. Sinn Fein may have abandoned their principles, but as someone who has opposed to British rule in my country all my adult life, I wish to maintain mine. What worries me now is that MI5 may target me and the many thousands like me who, though not engaged in violence, simply do not accept the partition of our country.
Kevin Rooney
London
Guardian 29.07.08.
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