Dear Editor,
Myself and many Newtonians are highly concerned about the future of our community. In April we will see an unjust tax hit the poorest hardest. The ‘bedroom tax’ will potentially see thousands across our town who are struggling to eat and heat their homes hit abject destitution.
Most Newtonians I’ve spoken to signed their tenancy agreement when ‘social housing’ was still council housing. In practise, most single people and couples were offered two bedroom properties because the available stock for single occupancy or a single bedroom property was highly oversubscribed.
The bedroom tax is unfair on every person it is levied against, precisely because it is a retroactive tax. Millions will suffer nationally because the Tories refuse to implement changes that go against their free market principles.
Other issues are at hand in Newton Aycliffe that adds to that misery. We live in a region with little prosperity and wealth creation. Over the last decade, recruitment agencies have monopolised the scant local employment opportunities.
The law sets a pitiful minimum wage they cannot downgrade; but some recruitment agencies have found other legal ways to make themselves competitive at the expense of the worker. I’ve spoken to a number of workers on temporary contracts through recruitment agencies, who inform me that on their assignments, they’ve had to serve up to eight weeks unpaid labour under the guise of ‘training’, a ploy these agencies are using to compete with their rivals.
A typical unemployed Newtonian now faces a retroactive tax on their accommodation and cannot afford to escape it. The local job market saturated by recruitment agencies will not entertain them if they’ve been out of work for over six months, leading to a cycle of permanent unemployment.
For those who find work, they are offered poverty wages, and in some cases asked to work unwaged for up to two months without benefit entitlement. The job they do is only a temporary contract which sees them periodically cycle between the unemployed and working poor without any hope of social mobility.
The bedroom tax, combined with other cuts and current social conditions sees 21st Century citizens face the same social reality that devastated communities in the 1930’s crash. People who cannot afford the bedroom tax potentially face prosecution and eviction, those who direct money from their budget to meet the tax will have to make use of food banks.
I’m not surprised the Con-Dem coalition have implemented policies which lead to these social conditions, they are profoundly out of touch with how the vast majority of us live our lives and the challenges we face.
What does surprise me though, is how silent the Parliamentary Labour Party are on all of these issues. Each week, someone from the shadow cabinet following closely the sums of the coalition cries ‘foul’ over some administrative detail; this is just shameful political posturing in my view.
It shows that the Labour Party are pretty much singing from the same song sheet, raking around the fringes of Con-Dem policy, to see where they might shift a few quid here and there.
After all, the Parliamentary Labour party doesn’t suffer from a lack of public school boy millionaires; they dominate the political class of all colours.
The staunch commitment against the bedroom tax found in the local Labour party representatives has no impact on Labour’s national policy.
Somewhere between Kinnock and Blair, the threads have been broken between Labour’s front bench and Labour’s voters. The Labour front bench should be its ordinary voters, from the factory, office and supermarket floor.
Until the parliamentary Labour party furnish their shadow cabinet with talent risen up from the shop floor, there is no hope of ever hearing the voice of the ordinary person trumpet the needs of ordinary people in parliament.
Warren Saunders.
