Monday, 26 May 2008

LEAP conference report

The new and excellent blog Harpymarx has an illuminating report on this. I am still collating my notes and wil be posting something later.

Posted by susan press at 10:36

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was there any discussion on welfare and benefits, there should be, over 7 million people receieve some sort of state benefit. Speaking of which, the Tories have just announced the re-introduction of employment ‘boot camps’(work camps?) The last time they were tried was in the Thirties in the Fens, though they are now hidden from history, and are of course by certin regimes in Europe!

Its incredible that any 21st political party can be resurrecting such things, though there will be no criticisms from NL as they are busily engaged in the most draconian welfare reform programme since the 1930’s. This is indeed NL ‘s problem:, they are so ideologically locked in to a right wing programme that it makes it near impossible to criticise the other right wing model form the other party.

26 May 2008 at 11:33
Anonymous said...

this from the Guardian, none of this could have happened without Nl and its push to the right on welfare, etc.

'[The measures should cut crime because people would not be hanging around with nothing to do, Grayling will say. For those who decided to embark on a life of crime because they would not work and could not get benefit, there would be "zero tolerance from the criminal justice system".'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/may/26/conservatives.welfare

26 May 2008 at 11:55
Anonymous said...

Thanks for that Susan. I thought it was a good day.

Frenetic: Regards to benefits, I was going to bring that up in the first Q&A session esp. with homelessness being touched on and how that has increased under NL. I think that, as there will be probably more conferences of this kind, then attacks on welfare should be included as it will inevitably to more poverty and debt.
There were lots of things at the LEAP event that weren't covered such as the environment but it is an ongoing process and hopefully next time they will be.

Yes, NL are locked in a vicious right-wing ideological programme but if the Tories win the next election I think their ideological attacks will be turbo charged.

Btw: it has been pointed out to NL that the Child Trust Fund (payments to low income families with kids) hasn't been functioning properly and poor families have been losing out badly.

26 May 2008 at 11:57
Anonymous said...

Louise, it should be axiomatic that a conference looking at economics includes discussion on the welfare state, benefits, etc, particularly now unemployment will be rising. To me, with some exceptions it looks like the left has taken its eye of the ball somewhat.

26 May 2008 at 12:45
Anonymous said...

There's now a LEAP blog to continue the debate on from Saturday at: http://leap-lrc.blogspot.com/

28 May 2008 at 10:22

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