Sick & disabled people and carers would be much more assured of their rights being respected if the liberal left openly supported the WOW Petition, crowd sourced by and for sick & disabled people and carers, we know what we need, we know what we are talking about because we live the lives that are currently under such devastating stress caused by Freud et al, who have zero awareness of the realities of life with illness or disability and who have treated us all like criminals, it cannot go on. We are sick of being talked about in the classic ‘do they take sugar’ style, listen to us and stop this war on our welfare and the attack on our human rights. Time to be an ally and listen, This piece is a useful start, thank you Don I hope more can come from this and People’s assemblies to counter the neoliberal consensus of brutal persecution.
http://wowpetition.com

Sick & disabled people and carers would be much more assured of their rights being respected if the liberal left openly supported the WOW Petition, crowd sourced by and for sick & disabled people and carers, we know what we need, we know what we are talking about because we live the lives that are currently under such devastating stress caused by Freud et al, who have zero awareness of the realities of life with illness or disability and who have treated us all like criminals, it cannot go on. We are sick of being talked about in the classic ‘do they take sugar’ style, listen to us and stop this war on our welfare and the attack on our human rights. Time to be an ally and listen, This piece is a useful start, thank you Don I hope more can come from this and People’s assemblies to counter the neoliberal consensus of brutal persecution.

7 and 8 don’t really count, you may as well say “the Left beleive in developing a strategy to turn the UK into a utopia by 2020″ and leave it at that. Otherwise some good suggestions here. I’ve been saying for ages we need lots of state-built homes to drag house prices down to sane levels.

How about a nice simple guaranteed minimum income? Hand everyone in the country enough money to survive on (say, the equivalent of income support+housing benefit), and then tax every penny that everyone makes over that.

If you balance it right then you don’t give any money (net) to people that earn well, and you make it much easier for people to take small, part time, jobs to increase their income, while removing a massive amount of bureaucracy.

From that point on, nobody starves, people in godawful low-level jobs can quit if their working conditions are too bad, and you can also get rid of minimum wage legislation, because people can choose to just not work if the pay is too low (or choose to work for a pittance if they feel it’s worthwhile, meaning that jobs that are otherwise not worth it for employers are now feasible).

@Andrew Ducker – How about a nice simple guaranteed minimum income?

“a flat rate kind of welfare, call it Citizen’s Income or Citizen’s Dividend if you will, which is paid out to every citizen regardless of circumstances”

http://www.citizensincome.org/

Andrew Ducker hits the nail on the head. Citizen’s Income will hit the spot (Mad Bad Bob links to the website, the new booklet with updated 2012-13 figures should appear shortly).

And of course, you can make an enormous saving on the “Housing Benefit” bit by simply building more social housing and renting it out at cost (or paying every family enough HB to cover that cost, i.e. about £100 per week for a family home, half that for a studio flat).

Further, and this is the really radical bit, you can fund that Citizen’s Income out of a tax on rental values, no need to tax earnings at all…

“Welfare reform” is code for privatisation and cuts. Unfortunately Simon Danzcuk is clearly a red Tory.

Sod the “liberal left” though. They are enemies of socialism.

I started reading this list with interest as up until halfway it made sense. Unfortunately after point 5 Don Paskini reverts to metropolitan liberal type and we get meaningless waffle. Example, point 7 says to ensure people don’t rely on food banks we need to “develop a national strategy” but what on earth does that mean? Anyone of any political bent could say the same.

So basically spend more money on people on welfare?

This ignores the fact that we do not have more money to spend. We continue to increase the debt by a deficit measured in the billions. Britain is looking more and more like Argentina or Greece. Spending more money is not a solution. It also ignores the fact that welfare changes behaviour. We have enough people in the feral underclass. We do not need to add to it. Welfare reform must include obligations on the welfare recipients so that there are changes in their dysfunctional behaviours.

It is pointless to talk about reform without noting these two facts.

@ So Much For Subtlety “Welfare reform must include obligations on the welfare recipients so that there are changes in their dysfunctional behaviours”.

“dysfunctional behaviours”? You wouldn’t care to expand on that, only it is my uunderstanding that over have of the welfare budget is spent paying the state old age pension (ok, so the elderly are often accused of being dysfunctional) and of the reaminder of the budget, the vast majority is paid out as “in work benefits”.

” We have enough people in the feral underclass. We do not need to add to it.” Care to try and explain that too?

What is “affordable childcare” ? Affordable to whom, and unless you want the carers to work for nothing who pays for it. How is paying for middle class women to keep their careers on track part of a welfare strategy.

10. Mad Bob Bob

You wouldn’t care to expand on that

Not really.

Care to try and explain that too?

I don’t need to *explain* anything. That makes it sound like I said something that is not true and 100% universally acknolwedged. By all sensible people anyway. Deal with it.

The demand by far right reactionaries for the left to be equally reactionary is amusing. There is nothing courageous about the war on the poor by the trustafarians of New Labour and Tory/ Lib Dems.

Tax the rich and big business; build council houses; restore the welfare state.

These “ideas” read a bit like a wish list of stuff we could do if we had a magical bottomless sack of money and we could also magic away all the inevitable, negative consequences of doing many of these things. As we don’t have a magical bottomless sack of money, and the ideas don’t even acknowledge the negative consequences let alone have any sort of address for them, we can conclude it’s just the stuff of fairytales. As they stand these “ideas” are just as plausible as the idea that an invisible pink unicorn will make it all better.

@ So Much For Subtlety – 12:58 am, May 31, 2013

Excellent response to what “all sensible people” would regard as a couple of sensible questions.

“Not really” when asked if you might explain what you meant by “the dysfunctional behaviours of welfare recipents” and “I don’t need to *explain* anything.” when asked to explain your “We have enough people in the feral underclass. We do not need to add to it.” comment. Your nom de plume is well chosen. But then you presumably think the same of mine, given my propensity for expecting people to back up wild allegations and throw away assertions with the odd fact or two. You don’t moonlight for the Centre for Social Justice by any chance?