Ordinary people paying price for Tory ‘revival’

ACCORDING to Chancellor George Osborne and his useless Tory-led government, the economy is reviving!

This claim I very much doubt. However, if it is, the revival has been brought about by the Government heaping financial pain on millions of people.

I refer, of course, to both savage benefit cuts and the imposition of the ‘iniquitous’ bedroom tax on hundreds and thousands of welfare claimants, unable to work due to disability, sickness or lack of employment opportunities.

Similarly millions fortunate enough to be in work are forced into employment or part-time working on pitiful incomes. Some, however, approximately one million, work on zero hours contracts where income is very much a lottery.

This Tory economic strategy of turning the clock back 250 years to the conditions existing at the birth of laissez-faire capitalism, I predicted 30 years ago in a university lecture entitled ‘the Tory time machine – stuck in reverse gear’.

Terrible as present government economic policy is, one aspect stands out in the widening gap between rich and poor – the prevention of workers seeking justice for unfair dismissals due to lack of finance.

I refer to a Government measure, introduced this summer, whereby workers have to pay up front fees of £1,200 to pursue claims of unfair dismissal. In low-wage Britain, most will not have the capital to do this. A classic example of lack of democratic rights in Britain, as a cornerstone of a healthy democracy is that no one should be denied justice on grounds of lack of finance.

I urge all workers to join trade unions to gain protection from the latest Tory hire-and-fire free-for-all granted to employers.