首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
With a gnashing of teeth, the employment minister Chris Grayling backed down as companies shied away from his unpaid work scheme
With a gnashing of teeth, the employment minister Chris Grayling backed down as companies shied away from his unpaid work scheme
admin
2014-09-09
64
问题
With a gnashing of teeth, the employment minister Chris Grayling backed down as companies shied away from his unpaid work scheme that threatened young people’ s already meagre weekly benefit of 53. 45. Protests and a Twitter storm against unpaid shelf-stacking alarmed Tesco into paying the minimum wage and guaranteeing jobs: a brilliant result. UK Uncut exposing Barclays’ tax avoidance has finally led HMRC to act, so as St Paul’s Occupy protesters move on, don’t say protest is pointless.
However, objections by bishops were bootless as the welfare reform bill passed, barely amended. The government revels in a majority heartily supporting its ? 18bn benefit cuts. A drip-drip of scrounger stories did the heavy lifting, so most people have no idea what brutality is to be done in their name. The BBC has failed to inform the nation, bolstering the "scrounger" narrative with ill-timed documentaries on the workshy by Panorama. With dole claimants rising towards 3 million, and 6. 3 million in all seeking work or longer hours, the government has devised a strange sociology suggesting an epidemic of laziness, ignoring the worst depression since the 1930s.
But has it finally gone too far? When the public discovers what’s happening, attitudes may change. Remember Gordon Brown’s catastrophic miscalculation in abolishing the 10p tax rate for the lowest paid; using the money to bribe middle earners by cutting their taxes backfired badly. Fickle voters can’t be relied on to be selfish all the time, so when people hear what’s about to happen, they may react in the same way.
On 6 April, low-paid working couples with children will lose a colossal ? 3,870 in tax credits from a typical income of ? 17,000. Where previously someone in the family had to work 16 hours to qualify, now they must work 24 hours a week or lose tax credits. But what if no extra hours are available? Hundreds of thousands of households will be caught in this trap, with 470,000 children. Most already want longer hours. TUC research says 3 million part-timers seek full-time jobs; Usdaw, the shopworkers’ union, finds 78% of its part-timers can’t get extra hours. Government figures for people getting jobs forget to say most are part-time. Nor do they proclaim the severe punishment about to fall on families failing to work 24 hours. Oddly, the victims are the very people Conservatives praise—working couples with children, struggling to stay off the dole. Will this enormous drop in incomes fall below the political radar—or will voters discover and be shocked?
Everyone asks for extra hours: in Liverpool there are 8. 5 unemployed for every vacancy. Without more hours, they expect to lose about ? 300 a month in tax credits. But just as existing workers struggle for crucial extra hours, the Department for Work and Pensions puts the unemployed to work for free at shelf-stacking and cleaning— 34,200 young people have been put on unpaid work experience so far, with weak evidence it finds them jobs. Jonathan Porte, of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, finds the ministers’ claim that 50% leave benefits compares poorly with the 60% who leave jobseeker’ s allowance anyway within three months with no scheme.
Conditions have always been attached to benefits—the "no fifth option of continued full benefit" of Labour’s New Deal, for example. Compulsion for the unemployed to join programmes seems reasonable so long as schemes are high quality with a good chance of leading to jobs. Until now, great care was taken not to displace real jobs through free labour for large companies able to pay minimum wage. Work experience for the young has drawn all the flak, but the "mandatory work activity" programme forces adults to work up to 30 hours a week over a month for free, or lose benefit. The DWP’s own assessment shows those mandated into unpaid work are more likely to be from an ethnic minority and disabled than other unemployed people.
So on the one hand the DWP imposes draconian cuts on families who can’t find 24 hours a week paid work, yet at the same time puts tens of thousands of free labourers into their workplaces, making those extra hours ever harder to find. This week I had a run-in with the former social security secretary Peter Lilley on Radio 5 Live as he tried to defend the government’s schemes, but it was plain he had forgotten the essential ingredients in Project Work, his 1996 initiative, which I praised at the time: people were paid extra above their benefits, and worked for charities and community programmes to avoid displacing other workers—and compulsion was applied at a time of rising employment, with a good chance of leading to real jobs. None of these principles applies now. Worst of all, depriving existing staff of extra hours of work will contribute to families losing their tax credits. Unemployment pay had dropped in 35 years from 17% of average earnings to just 10% : now it’s falling far faster.
April will bring plenty of Nick Clegg’s promised social mobility—but it will all be downwards. Raising tax thresholds does nothing for these people, as hundreds of thousands of children are pushed into poverty by a monumental drop in family income. This cut denies everything the government says about "making work pay" and supporting couples. Politically, will this finally shock enough voters?
Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
选项
A、Families that want to work will suffer, not workshies
B、Families that do not want to work will suffer, not part-timers
C、Families that work up to 30 hours a month for free will suffer most
D、Families that work extra hours will receive the income of 3870 a month
答案
A
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/uXSO777K
本试题收录于:
NAETI高级口译笔试题库外语翻译证书(NAETI)分类
0
NAETI高级口译笔试
外语翻译证书(NAETI)
相关试题推荐
Itneveroccurredtohimthatheandhisdoingwerenotofthemostintenseandfascinatinginteresttoanyonewithwhomhecame
Theoceanbottom—aregionnearly2.5timesgreaterthanthetotallandareaoftheEarth—isavastfrontierthateventodayis
Inthepopularmind,theInternetistherealizationoftheglobalvillage,wheretheflowofinformationandideasisunimpeded
SirMartinSorrell,thechiefexecutiveoftheadvertisingconglomerateWPP,wasatKensingtonWade,Britain’sfirstprimarysch
Historicallybeingdevotedtocatchingparkingoffenders,themetropolicenowhasananti-gangunit.
从目前全球经济发展看,一些重要的特点和趋势值得我们高度重视。主要是:科技进步日新月异,前所未有地提高了人们认识和把握宏观世界和微观世界的能力,为人类推动生产力发展和创造美好生活提供了强大支持;国际生产要素优化重组和产业转移加快,各国经济发展更加紧密地联系在
A、10million.B、7million.C、5million.D、22million.C根据原文第一段第二、三句可知印度七年来有10million的移动电话使用者,而在中国,每个月就有该数目一半的人成为移动电话的新用户。经过简单计算可
A、Thelightsshouldbecomingbackonsoon.B、You’llknowthestormhasstartedwhenthelightsgooff.C、Thelightswentoffju
A、Theyarefascinatedbyallkindsofsounds.B、Theyareinterestedinnoises.C、Theyarekeenonplayingthepiano.D、Theyare
Historicaldevelopmentsofthepasthalfcenturyandtheinventionofmoderntelecommunicationandtransportationtechnologiesh
随机试题
学习马克思主义哲学的根本方法是()
“医乃仁术”是指
根据《反垄断法》的相关规定,下列哪些说法是不正确的?()
下列各项中,属于非营利性投资项目的有()。
划分施工段应注意( )。
You’rebusyfillingouttheapplicationformforapositionyoureallyneed;let’sassumeyouonceactuallycompletedacoupleo
一般资料:求助者,男性,21岁,大学三年级学生。案例介绍:求助者的一位女同学主动与他交朋友,交往了几个月后,他感觉对学习有影响,主动提出分手。分手后又后悔,又提出和好,可女友不同意。为此非常痛苦,睡不好觉,看不进书去。后来在同学中有一些关于他们的传
传统的交换机作为第二层设备,只能识别并转发(1)_____地址,要支持VLAN间的通信只能借助于具有(2)_____功能的网络设备。具有这种功能的设备有路由器和三层交换机。当用路由器解决VLAN通信时,路由器得到一个VLAN包后,根据目的IP地址,
栈和队列的共同点是______。
下列数据结构中,属于非线性结构的是
最新回复
(
0
)