IDS – Try living on £53 a week!

Campaigners in Youth Fight for Jobs (YFJ) have joined a chorus of voices condemning government welfare reforms.

Bobby Cranney, an unemployed activist in YFJ who has been on and off JSA for several years said:

“If Osborne and IDS think living on £53 a week is easy then they are living on another planet. On that kind of money it is all you can do to exist.

“I’m sick of millionaire ministers, whose lives have been steeped in privilege, trying to make out that it is those of us struggling on the breadline who’ve had it easy.

“Why is the cost of the economic crisis being picked up by those living on £53 a week, when corporations that make £53,000 a week get their tax cut?”

Claire Laker-Mansfield a spokesperson for Youth Fight for Jobs said:

“Rather than trying to paint unemployment as some sort of moral failure, the government should be doing something about the fact that there are more than five job seekers chasing every vacancy.

“They could start with a programme of job creation, paid for by taxes on the rich, not the poor. Our campaign is supporting the petition calling on IDS to put his money where his mouth is and try a stint on £53 a week.

“Perhaps afterwards he might feel less inclined to place the bill for an economic crisis created at the top of society at the feet of those at the very bottom”.

Bobby and Claire are available for interview. Call 0208 558 7947 or 07749 379 010

From a YFJ press release