Brown to target parents of ‘anti-social’ children

The death agonies of New Labour are truly ugly. In a last ditch attempt to scrape a few Daily Mail votes Brown is planning a host of coercive and repressive measures against the Britain’s burgeoning underclass.

Few deny that in Britain’s broken society - now more unequal than at any time since 1945 - steps need to be taken to provide jobs, social help and wealth distribution for those inhabiting junk estates and the inner cities. Yet the swelling of these ghettos is the direct result of New Labour’s market fundamentalism, a policy resulting in mass unemployment, inadequate and insecure housing leading in turn to family breakdown and crime.

For Brown to court so-called Middle England voters by kicking the working class victims of New Labour’s own policies just about sums up Brown and his party.

Child Poverty in Britain

It has now been revealed that one in five households with children In Britain are surviving only on New Labour’s meagre state benefits, and with a no-hope future.

Both the Thatcherite and New Labour versions of market fundamentalism told us that growth was taking place and that any pain that we suffered in the new market-led society would lead to material rewards tomorrow. The truth is the exact opposite: businesses and those professions that serve them grew richer, while working people ended up only with mortgage and other debts, unemployment, poverty and the threat of destitution.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/26/more-children-in-workless-homes

New Labour was never soft on the poor

Even in the boom years of New Labour, life was not soft on those at the bottom of Britain’s unequal society. Relative and often absolute poverty has increased for those ensnared in the crime and drug ridden ghettoes. Lives have been scared by insecure employment and housing; and psychologically by exclusion form the “good life” seemingly enjoyed by the richer two thirds of Britain.

What is happening now in the 2009 recession - and what is politically significant - is that poverty is penetrating upwards.