The media keep running stories about benefit fraudsters living it up, paving the way for drastic changes to the benefits system. Catalyst spoke to one of the supposed benefit scroungers to find out what it’s really like to live on benefits.

Since finishing a postgraduate course, Teresa has been looking for a job in Brighton. “I have been applying for at least 4 to 5 jobs a week for the past 4 months but did not get any job. Often I have been told I am overqualified for the positions and even though I tried to impress on them that I would like to work – I was told that they can get someone less qualified to do the work on minimum wages.”

“When renting any place I have to keep in mind that I will not get any help towards any heating or water rents etc. I only get £62 a week for unemployment benefit, which also has to cover heating and water bills together with food, travel expenses or any other bills that I may have to pay.”

2010 saw huge social unrest sweep France in response to proposed pension reforms which would have upped the retirement age, amongst other cuts. Jean-Marie Cosson, a striking teacher from the town of Saint-Nazaire talks about the revolt at one of the last bastions of the worker’s movement, where the entrance of the lyceéns (young students) into the movement was given an ovation by ‘their fathers in blue collars.’

What’s the situation  at Saint-Nazaire?

October 20th saw the unveiling of the long-awaited Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), the coalition government’s detailed blueprint for attacking jobs and services. Little within the CSR was a surprise, with cuts roughly at the level that had been predicted in the run up. It is significant that the the scale was below the 40% that had been mooted, this was a blatant attempt to ‘soften us up’ and feel lucky the cuts were “only” 20%, as if it had been taken straight out of the pages of ‘Negotiation for Dummies’.

The idea of the revolutionary social general strike occupies a central place in anarcho-syndicalist theory. It marks the breach between those socialists who seek to capture the state - by revolutionary or democratic means - and those who see the need for the state to be shattered before libertarian communism can be achieved.

For anarcho-syndicalists it is the declaration of the independence of the labour movement, an independence that can only be brought about by the efforts of the working class itself.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Hitler’s accession to power, it is appropriate therefore to look again at fascism, and to remind ourselves of those salient features of fascist movements and regimes which have become obscured with the passage of time. There is more to fascism than the legacy of war and genocide. That was where fascism ended, but during its rise, and where it took power in the years before the Second World War, many observers, particularly those on the left, noted its anti-working class bias and the nature of the economic system over which it presided.

    The portentous development of our present economic system, leading to a mighty accumulation of social wealth in the hands of privileged minorities and to a constant repression of the great masses of people, prepared the way for the present political and social reaction and befriended it in every way. It sacrificed the general interests of human society to the private interests of individuals, and thus systematically undermined the true relationship between men. People forgot that industry is not an end in itself, but should be only a means to insure to man his material subsistence and to make accessible to him/her the blessings of higher intellectual culture. Where industry is everything, where labour loses its ethical importance and man is nothing, there begins the realm of ruthless economic despotism, whose workings are no less disastrous than those of any political despotism.

Rudolf Rocker (1873-1958)

    I asked the president, “What can we do to show support for America?” He said, “Mom, if you really want to help, buy, buy, buy”.

(Barbara Bush, 2001)

During the 1950s, at a time when the U.S. was in recession, Victor Lebow outlined what was to become one of the enduring tenets of global capitalism in the years to come:

    Our enormously productive economy demands we make consumption our way of life, that we convert buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things to be consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever accelerating rate.

After winning the 1959 election, Harold Macmillan, a Tory Prime Minister announced that "the class war is over" - and promptly formed a cabinet boasting four lords. Forty years later, Tony Blair, Labour Prime Minister, declared that "we are all middle class now" and politicians, academics and social commentators continue to tell us there is no longer such a thing as class in modern Britain. Notions of belonging to the working class are, we are told, outdated and belong to era of flat caps, factories, steel works and going down the pit. However no matter how many times we are told this we seem determined not to believe it. In a Guardian/ICM poll in October 2007 most British people still felt bound by class, with a massive majority - 89 per cent - of those surveyed feeling their social standing determined the way they are judged by the rest of society.

Sixty years after its birth, the process of auctioning off the most profitable sections of the NHS is now well and truly underway. GPs who have traditionally run their own small, locally-based surgeries are now being forced to compete with huge international companies as a result of legislative changes introduced in 2003.

Primary Care Trusts who manage and oversee local healthcare budgets are increasingly being swayed by a new Alternative Provider of Medical Services (APMS) contract model which enables GP surgeries to be sold off to big profit-making companies like Virgin, Boots and the US corporation, United Healthcare Europe. The latter body is the British section of the largest healthcare provider in the United States – which is under investigation there for allegedly using subsidiary company Ingenix to defraud patients by manipulating benefits below the usual costs.

You must be Joking: reports and comment from the health and social care frontline

Putting Profits First

In the last couple of years, the Government has announced far-reaching plans to radically transform the way in which social care is delivered to vulnerable members of our community. With the Our Health, Our Care, Our Say White Paper and “Putting People First”, plans to massively extend the use of individualised budgets and self-directed support schemes have been outlined.

So what does this mean in practice? And what are the implications for both service users and their carers?