‘No cause can be won between dinner and tea, and most of us who were married had to work with one hand tied behind us, so to speak’. These were the words of Hannah Mitchell, a suffragette, written in the 1940s. They still ring true today. Women’s ability to win a cause, or even their…
So Iain Duncan Smith would like better off pensioners to return their winter fuel allowances. I should declare an interest as a recipient of the fuel allowance. While, like many others, I have donated it to charity, the idea that I should repay it to the government is laughable – and it would seem that…
Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, invariably gives the example of drug or alcohol addiction when arguing that poverty is not just about low incomes. The other week, the Department for Work and Pensions published the findings of public polling , carried out as part of a consultation on the measurement…
The recess provided the opportunity to catch up with some reading. I thought I’d pass on the main conclusions from a recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation report because it’s highly relevant to the Welfare Benefits Uprating Bill, which will be debated in the Commons tomorrow. That Bill will extend the real cut in the value of…
I’m getting increasingly fed up with the way in which the debate about social security cuts is being framed by those two stereotyped figures: ‘the striver’ and ‘the skiver’ (substitute ‘shirker’ or ‘scrounger’ according to taste). Strivers stand for people who do paid work; skivers people of working age who don’t. The main line of…
