Tag Archives: benefits

As Henry Tapper puts it, today is WASPI day. Today is the day that "Women Against State Pension Inequality" get the Westminster debate for which they have campaigned.Eh, wait? Wasn't there a debate on this back in early January?Yes, there was. It was a backbench motion proposed by the SNP MP Mhairi Black. It called on the government to re-examine the acceleration of the equalisation of women's and men's pension ages in the 2011 Pensions Act, which added up to 18 months to the state pension...

I'm collecting here all the pieces I have written on the UK state pension and its problems. What a shambles. Here are my recent posts, in disaster order. WASPI As I explain in these posts, I would be supportive of WASPI if they were only concerned with addressing the blatant injustice of the 2011 acceleration of the pension age rise for women. But they aren't, and what they are actually after is seriously unfair to other groups. So I can't support them. And I don't like the way they and...

I do not like the direction in which our society is travelling.From a joint statement by several Christian churches, published in the Methodist Times in October: In March this year, the Churches published a report showing that nearly 100,000 children had been affected by sanctions in 2014 alone and that people with mental health problems were being sanctioned at a rate of more than 100 per day.  Seriously? 100,000 children are affected by sanctions imposed on their parents? Let us...

The Chancellor's Autumn Statement contained an apparent U-turn on the cuts to tax credits outlined in the July budget. Predictably, this was presented as the Chancellor "listening" to those concerned about the impact of sudden large falls in income for working families at the bottom end of the income spectrum. The Conservatives continue to position themselves as the party for "hard-working families".However, this isn't quite what it seems. The income cuts for low-income working families are...

At Prime Minister's Questions the other day, Jeremy Corbyn produced a case study of a working single mother who would suffer a substantial real fall in income due to tax credit cuts despite the NLW and tax threshold rise. In response, David Cameron claimed the new National Living Wage and tax threshold rises would mean that working people on low incomes would be better off by 2020. Who is right?The National Living Wage will improve earned income for a high proportion of families. The...

No, says The Times' David Smith. He says that the notion that there was a pause in austerity is an "austerity myth".He points to this chart from the Office for Budget Responsibility that shows fiscal consolidation as a percentage of GDP (relative to the 2008 Budget) continuing on throughout 2013 and 2014 and 2015:But the OBR's chart doesn't actually show what I would define as austerity. It shows the size of the government budget as a percentage of GDP relative to...