http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34440479



Yeah, spot on, George.

The best response to this would simply be a poster : Photos of all the Conservative front bench, with a list under each one of how much they're worth, where their money came from and what jobs they had previous to becoming an MP.

(and yes, I know Corbyn is a career politician too but as far as I'm aware he's not also an inherited millionaire like a large chunk of the cabinet)

I can see his point. Corbyn has already said there'll be no benefits cap for the jobless. Most working people of all social classes see it as unfair if people can earn more not working than they do working. It's one reason why the benefits call was very popular in general when it was introduced. Given the Labour Party is supposed to represent working people, his point is valid.

It's going to get massively less popular once a lot of those people realise the benefit he's cutting is the one they get.


No, it isn't, or at least it would be valid if he said 'Labour is now not the party of working people' but he didn't, he claimed that title for the Tory party while effectively doing nothing to help 'working people'. Changing the benefit rules should hardly affect 'working people' at all, because in theory we should only be giving benefits to people who aren't earning enough to live on and everyone in a job should earn enough to live on. The problem is the UK has become such a screwed up place (and it's both a Tory and labour generated problem) that a lot of benefits are actually paid to 'working people' in the form of tax credits, child allowance and etc and they're what's keeping their head above water. The party of 'working people' would be sorting that situation out before cutting the benefits some of those 'working people' rely on. But they're doing it the other way around.

It boils down to this - he's making life worse for some working people, making life actually no better for the rest of the working people and saying that's still good for them because he's making life much, much worse for another group who are nothing to do with working people. If you can figure out how that allows them to claim to be 'the party of working people', well, good luck to you. He's basically saying that making it worse for other people of itself makes it better for you. You may subscribe to that view, but it's quite unrealistic.

This is completely aside from the point that it's pretty laughable for a man who has never worked a proper day in his life, who heads up a group of people quite a few of whome have also never had to work a day in their lives, claiming to represent 'working people' but anyway...

Benefit fraud is the biggest aunt sally in the Tory arsenal - they love benefit fraud, because they use it to drive down benefits for people who need them. The cost of benefit fraud as around £1.2bn per year but the Tories have used that to justify cuts of far greater magnitude. (I'm scrambling to find the cuts figures, but I'm failing at the moment)

I agree, lets go after the cheats, but not use it to cover this continued assault on the poor and working class. There are plenty of people I used to see, when driving home from work and passing by the local pub - the same faces sat outside on the benches with their pints, waving betting slips and racing pages at each other. Work-shy sponges, one and all. Those people are still there despite the mighty efforts of the government to catch the cheats. However, a mate of mine lost his job earlier this year and is struggling to find another, having worked all of his adult life, and is getting almost no help from the social.