Starmer says ‘bulging benefits bill’ is ‘blighting our society’

Not Superman but the Mail on Sunday's bailiff in the small claims court... The thieving privatised rail and utility companies will have to beg a little harder for their bonuses... But never fear Clark of Kent is here...to serve you Red Tories...

Crackdown on benefits alwaya speaks as if big benefits bills are about fraud, laziness, unemployment and sickmess. What about the massive Housing Benefits? Which goes into the pockets of landlords. So it's Landlord Benefit. The biggest payment we make is for our homes. Rents are high (Landlord Benefit) because social housing is scarce. If a lot of people can get social housing then not so many need commercial rentals. If few can get social housing then lots are forced into commercial rents or mortgages. Up they go. Landlord Benefit transfers the dosh from government to the rich. Before Thatcher a single person could rent or buy a modest home on 25% of their monthly income. I know because I did just that (low female income too). Then "right to buy" removed most social housing. The big landlords snapped up the new pool of private property. Landlord Benefit soared. Reeve has spoken of modest restrictions on "right to buy" rightly explaining creating social housing is like filling a bath without the plug in the hole. Hopefully this modest step is only the start. But meanwhile benefits talk is still Tory talk - scroungers and cheats. Tory-lite Labour.

If you want to deal with the fact that there is an increasing number of people claiming incapacity benefits you have to deal with the causes. The two major causes are: Long Covid which ultimately requires an increase in Occupational Therapists and Nurses; an increase in Mental Health problems caused by the Pandemic in the medium term and the retraction of the state in the long term. You can't make people work when they're unfit for work. That's what the Tories tried to do and we know that at least 100,000 people died as a result of those immoral actions. We don't need Tories 2.0! We need a progressive party that seeks to provide complex solutions to complex problems. We know Keir Starmer doesn't get it, but I had some faith in Liz Kendall. What a surprise though 🙄 Yet another Labour MP that doesn't get it or just pretends not to. I don't know which is worse?! 😔😒😠

His choice of rag to appear in, speaks volumes of his ambitions. Use the traditional Labour vote as given. On his knees for the far right. And people wonder how's fascism rises, when nobody stands up to them.

Not corporate welfare? Not the parasitic royal scrounger family? Oh no, it's working class people who are to blame for the country's ills. Fancy that - a human rights lawyer who wants to gatekeep basic human rights from society's poorest and most vulnerable.

If Whitehall wasn't obsessed with hoarding the wealth and opportunity in London, people wouldn't be forced to take a cut in income to take a low waged insecure job. Fix the economy and you'll fix the benefits bill. Very few people are going to choose to sit at home on benefits if three days a week working a part time job ten minutes walk away would double their income.

"Get people working" is something obsessed upon by the Tories but now is an obsession for Labour too. Is there any real difference between the two parties these days? Yes, there maybe a large benefit system - but why? Could it possibly be as a consequence of a poor working environment? Poorly paid with long hours? Benefits needed to top up the dross paid? Rather than constantly targeting the more unfortunate in our society - it's time the Labour party acted like a proper socialist party and started targeting those on higher incomes and bulging bank accounts.