James Purnell - what an absolute c*nt

What was interesting was that when the shit was hitting the fan in sept / oct this guy (or someone from his dept) came on the news to say 'oh no, this isn't going to affect the welfare reform programme' - what they meant was 'now you can see there's even more desperate need to make cuts in the social wage'.

The stated aim is to get 1 million people off diability benefits - I presume they mean 1 million out of the 3/4 they pushed on there in the first place to massage the unemployment figures.

What we can be sure about is that we'll see an acceleration of these kinds of attacks, things which have been chipped away at for decades now. Fundamentally they are (another) indicator of the bourgeiosies inability to offer anything real to the working class.

The german governmet has made swingeing attacks (the so-called 'Hartz 4' plan, begun under Schroeder) and what this tells us is that if germany - the richest country in the EU, which has had the best social provisions - cannot afford a social welfare then no one can. It's really the end of the period begun by the creation of post WW2 social welfare...

This is,of course, the same James Purnell who left confidential documents on the First Class carriage of the train he was on a couple of months ago - well, we all make mistakes... They were retrieved by a woman who had observed him strutting up and down the carriage talking on his mobile, trying to show how important he was. While we shouldn't descend to personal abuse, having seen him on the news the last couple of days (he likes to put it about, doesn't he?), he does have what I call 'a punchable face'.

Can someone help me here? The advantages I can see this having for NuLabour is to outmanouvre the Tories and appealing to the archetypal Daily Mail reader by "forcing the immoral feckless into work". It's not going to increase the amount of jobs in the economy -surely all it will do is to increase the official unemployment stats and the likelyhood of a deflationary spiral?

Incidentally Saturday's FT suggested calling the current situation "The Great Recession" and The Observer's William Keegan tentatively telegraphed the possibility of a Depression.

the clinton's administration did exactly the same thing by stealing the conservative's playbook and driving through "welfare to work" reform that would have never passed under republicans. it's about appealing to "the middle" and winning elections.

Quite. The increased amount of poorly trained people being forced off benefits also suppressed wage demands in the poorest and unskilled parts of the workforce. What a cunt.

His record in Afghanistan is hardly dazzling either:

"...during the Clinton years, they [the Taliban] were admired for their "discipline". Or, as the Wall Street Journal put it, "[the Taliban] are the players most capable of achieving peace in Afghanistan at this moment in history".

The "moment in history" was a secret memorandum of understanding the mullahs had signed with the Clinton administration on the pipeline1 deal. However, by the late 1990s, the Northern Alliance had encroached further and further on territory controlled by the Taliban, whom, as a result, were deemed in Washington to lack the "stability" required of such an important client. It was the consistency of this client relationship that had been a prerequisite of US support, regardless of the Taliban's aversion to human rights. (Asked about this, a state department briefer had predicted that "the Taliban will develop like the Saudis did", with a pro-American economy, no democracy and "lots of sharia law", which meant the legalised persecution of women. "We can live with that," he said.)".2

• 1. http://mondediplo.com/IMG/pdf/LMDjun07CaucasePR.pdf
• 2. http://www.newstatesman.com/print/200801100021

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