GAS and electricity prices have gone through the roof leaving families unable to pay their bills, with hundreds of thousands sitting in freezing cold homes with the lights off because they simply cannot afford to heat or light their homes.
Energy bills are expected to go up by as much as 50% in April when the price cap is reassessed with an average family estimated to pay a whopping £2,000 a year.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said yesterday that 10 million people were hit by price hikes that were not matched by any rise in benefits.
In fact benefits have been cut! The £20 up-lift on Universal Credit was snatched away by the Tory government last year. Those on benefits are faced with choosing between eating, heating or paying rent because their benefits cannot pay for all three.
So the choice before families as far as the Tories are concerned is stark … freeze, starve or be made homeless! In fact the only real choice is to rise up and bring down the Tories!
Meanwhile food bank use has soared out of control with millions forced to stave off starvation by getting a three days emergency food parcel. However, if you have no gas or electricity how are you meant to cook?
Those with the an electronic key card, where you pay-as-you-go for your gas and electric are finding that when they put £10 on their key – £3 or £4 is taken in arrears leaving just £6 – enough maybe to have a bath before the meter pings and the gas and electric go off again.
Furthermore in a damning report it has emerged that 118,000 of the most vulnerable people in society were starved of benefits for over a year and then refused compensation by the Tory government.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman said that over one hundred thousand people with disabilities and health problems are being denied the right to compensation following a government blunder over benefit payments.
An investigation by the National Audit Office (NAO) in 2018 revealed that ‘shoddy administration’ in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had meant people did not receive benefits they were legally entitled to.
In one case highlighted in the report Ms U, 62, who lives alone and suffers from multiple health problems, should have received her Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) payments in full when she was moved from Incapacity Benefit.
She was subsequently unable to afford to heat her home or buy the food she needed to stay healthy. Her mental and physical health declined drastically, her hair fell out, she lost weight and her mental health deteriorated, according to the watchdog.
The Tory government’s attitude towards the working class and the unemployed is that of the Victorian era ‘deserving poor and undeserving poor.’
The Tories attack on those on benefits takes the form of using starvation as a weapon to beat them with and attempt to starve unemployed workers into taking a job, any job, no matter how low the pay is.
The total number of people claiming DWP benefits was 22.8 million in the year to August 2020. Millions of workers pay is so bad that they rely on benefits to attempt to keep their head above water.
This is capitalism. To work all the hours of the day and night, seven days a week just to have your entire wage taken by your landlord and the big gas, electricity and water companies, while the big supermarket giants syphon off the remainder of your wage as basic food products spiral in cost.
The entire weight of the capitalist crisis and all its elements: the energy crisis, the debt crisis, the industrial crisis, the coronavirus crisis, the inflation crisis is being unceremoniously dumped onto the backs of the working class and they have had enough!
Strikes are breaking out across the country. Train strikes, bin workers strikes, tube strikes, bus strikes, council workers strikes. Meanwhile teachers, NHS workers and university staff are up in arms. Labour leaders and the trade union leaders limit themselves to calling for Johnson to resign and for him to be brought down by the right, by his own Tory MPs.
There is only one way forward. Johnson and his government must be brought down from the left. We must not tolerate a National Government when all of the phony leaders get together.
The trade union leaders must be immediately forced to call a general strike to bring down not just Johnson but the whole Tory government. The only way forwards is for the working class to take the revolutionary road, by joining the WRP and the YS to lead the British socialist revolution. Then all energy companies, industries, the banks and land will be nationalised in a socialist planned economy. Forwards to socialism!
