RUTH
KELLY, the minister for communities, was in Leytonstone Tesco to launch
her new initiative on women and work which, she claims, will make it
easier for women to combine part-time work with childcare.
(Picture: Ruth Kelly, left, tries to answer Hannah
Sell)
She did not expect to be questioned by local Socialist Party
members.
Hannah Sell, Socialist Party deputy general secretary
We asked how the women working as cleaners at local Whipps Cross
hospital, currently taking strike action over low pay, were meant to
take up her proposal for flexible working, when they had to work 60
hours a week to make ends meet.
She
could only reply that Labour was "doing its best to make things better"
and had introduced the minimum wage.
When it was pointed out that the minimum wage is poverty pay and that
workers, especially in London – the most expensive city in the world,
could not live on it, she could only reply that it would be improved in
the future.
She gave no reply when we pointed out it had been nine years
already.
Nor did she respond to our question about how much she earned.
Finally, we asked if she really believed that the government’s brutal
foreign policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Lebanon was totally
unrelated to the 7/7 bombings.
Unsurprisingly, she held firm to the government’s line and argued
that they were just caused by a "perverse ideology"!
