According to Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian Robert Peston of the BBC called the spending review 'the Wonga budget'. He was right to do so. The plan to make people wait seven days for benefits after signing on as unemployed is a complete gift to the predatory lending market.
Osborne's claim was that people should not be allowed benefits for seven days after losing a job because they should be using that period to find another job. There are at least three fundamental flaws to that logic.
The first is that jobs are instantly available. Maybe has hasn't noticed there are 2.5 million people unemployed in the UK. Or perhaps he really does believe that they are all, actually, voluntarily not working as his neoliberal economist chums assert to be the truth.
Second, he assumes that you can pick yourself up after losing one job and immediately find another. This denies the obvious point that people often have a shock reaction to losing a job, and need to adjust to that fact before they can move on. Perhaps George has never known someone who has been made redundant.
And third George assumes people have savings. The following table comes from the ONS survey on wealth in the UK for 2006-08 and covers the lowest three deciles of wealth holders in the UK, who are of greatest concern here:
Net financial wealth for 30% of the population is negligible or negative. That's a fact. But Osborne says that despite that they cannot have benefits for a week when losing their jobs - and some people now, inevitably, move in and out of work often due to the nature of the 'flexible' job market. These people have no reserve to call on in that situation, but Osborne is going to penalise them anyway.
That is an act of deliberately inflicted malicious harm that will drive people, as Peston predicted, into the arms of the waiting predatory lenders.
It's ironic that the Office of Fair Trading is, according to reports, planning to investigate that market. I'm not sure why they're bothering: Osborne's about to give it an enormous boost.
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Even if, by some miracle, you find a job the day after being made redundant it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll start that job immediately. In most cases the paperwork alone will take more than a week.
Of course
That’s why this is malicious
Not that Osborne or any of his advisors/cronies have ever, or are ever, likely to experience life at that end of the labour market, Richard, so what would they know, and indeed why would they care.
But I would add this, despite being deeply pessimistic over recent days (in light of what I always suspected would be the case, but wanted to believe otherwise – that Ed Miliband’s Labour would revert to its neo-liberal instincts) I do think that it’s spiteful, malicious policies like these that can tip the balance in terms of public opinion.
At present the “scrounger” narrative still holds sway. But this kind of policy will hit many. Combine that with the ever more noticeable impact of other policies (e.g. rough sleeping up by a massive amount in the last two years, etc)and more and more people will be directly impacted by the ugly face of contemporary Toryism.
Unfortunately, I don’t expect that to happen for another year – maybe two – by which time significant damage will have been done to areas (geographical, social, and cultural) of this nation that will, I suspect, dwarf that acheived under Thatcher.
Just watched a Newsnight item which seems to confirm that the Govt’s agenda of the vilification of the poor is gaining ground and that, like America, there is a perception amongst the young that being on benefits is shameful. So job well done by Osborne and Co. with there little sound bite od opprobrium towards the poor. Poor people will be utterly engulfed by debt and food banks will be running out of supplies – an underclass in debt to Wongo and drug barons (to cope with the meaninglessness)- and the banksters have achieved their goal – the enslavement of everyone to big finance.
Having lost my job at the end of May, I can attest to the fact that in the current economic climate you don’t just walk into another job the very next day. The process can take weeks or months ..(if you are fortunate!)
Well, I am sure it can’t be anything to do with venture capitalist Adrian Beecroft, an adviser and major donor to the Tory party, (having handed over £593,000 since David Cameron became leader and author of that “nice” little Beecroft report on employment law!). He is chairman of Dawn Capital, which has a large stock in Wonga Group. I should also imagine it has nothing to with David Cameron’s senior adviser,Jonathan Luff, that left to lobby for Wonga…. or….