New Labour vs Wheelchair Layabouts... posted by Richard Seymour

If you thought there was no remaining defenseless group New Labour could pick on, you were wrong. Now, they're after the disabled . They're going to make it tougher, apparently, to receive these benefits, despite the fact that they are desperately needed by those who receive them and research by the TUC shows that:

a) "[L]ess than 1% of claimants were fraudulent".

b) Many disabled people face "prejudice when trying to find work", even though four in ten of those who are on incapacity benefit actually want to be in work.

c) "The number of people who get [incapacity benefit] has been falling for years."

d) "Britain spends much less on employment help for disabled people than other European countries."

This has to be understood as part of Blair's strategy of temporarily paying for the pensions crisis, which he intends to do through "cutting welfare costs by making changes to incapacity benefits" . Instead of forcing companies to run decent pension schemes and putting a tax on the stupendous profits of recent years (ie by raising rather than cutting corporation tax) to pay for decent pensions, they would rather lead an attack on one of the weakest sections of society on grounds that are utterly spurious.

This weak and nasty government seems determined to perpetually make the most eloquent case against its re-election.