DRACONIAN new elements of the Tory Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) are emerging each week as Peter Lilley's moves to scrap the dole grinds its way through Parliament.
Not only will tens of thousands of unemployed be immediately denied benefit under the new scheme, but tousands more each month would be ruled ineligible under brutal new restrictions.
Claimants will be forced to By John Lister WHILE Virginia Bottomley wrestles with a tide of statistics showing that her marketled policies are bringing chaos to the NHS, some important victories are being notched up by campaigners.
The most glaring weakness of the market system is its failure to recruit and train sufficient doctors and nursing staff to keep vital services going.
Nurse and midwife training has been drastically cut back, prompting serious staff shortages in parts of London, while early February has seen casualty units in various parts of the country forced to desperate measures for fack of junior doctors.
Now figures produced by inner London health authorities reinforce the long-standing claims by campaigners such as London Health Emergency that the closure of 1,000 acute hospital beds in the capital every year for the past decade has reduced many key hospitals to state of crisis.
Even before the closure of A&E services at Barts hospital, HE MAY be strong on enrol in a laughably-named "Jobsearch Plan', in which they declare the lowest wage for which they would be willing to work.
This opens up a Dutch auction in which cheapskate employers looking to push down wages take their pick of the applicants with the lowest expectations.
But it also offers another pretext on which claimants who declare more sensible aspirations can be denied benefit. Those asking for too a high a wage will certainly be deemed as not genuinely seeking work.
To make matters worse, the Bottomley the nearest hospitals (Homerton and the Royal London) which are expected to take the strain were running with their beds consistently around or even over 100 percent full.
The new report adds weight to the growing demand for a halt to further hospital closures, which are generating a new wave of agitation across London.
A conference on February 18 Jobsearch Plan would also require an unemployed person to be able to work at just 24 hours notice - in a new step towards to complete casualisation of labour.
Disqualified
Failure to meet this deadline - even if this is because they cannot find care for children or elderly dependents at home -would result in the claimant being disqualified from Jobseekers Allowance.
Stringent conditions will also be imposed on the number of times claimants are forced to apon the state of London's health services sponsored by the Evening Standard has already attracted over 1,500 applicants for just 850 tickets.
Elsewhere, too, pressure is being intensified to block further hospital cuts. After the success in defending London's Central Middlesex Hospital, a massive outcry in Hertfordshire has apparently persuaded health chiefs to shelve plans to close two of the county's four A&E units.
No new closure proposals are now expected until after the next election. A similar retreat by health chiefs in the North West has lifted the threat to rationalise' acute hospital services in the Morecambe Bay area.
And protestors in Birmingham are celebrating the reprieve of services after South Birmingham health authority retreated from imposing £1.5m cuts on the local Community Trust.
For the first time in years, there is confidence among health campaigners that some of the cuts can be fought and defeated. But the fight must still be waged.
In London, efforts will now be focused on halting the threatened run-down of Guy's Hospital.
proach local employers, scour newspaper ads and visit local Job Centres seeking work.
Benefit staff, working to tough new targets for savings to be made through detecting 'fraud, will be pressurised into the most callous reading of these tight rules.
Already most claimants face a reduced rate of benefit because they are assumed to have lost their jobs through their own fault.
But the JSA will not have a reduced rate: many will lose out on benefit altogether.
Amid this carnage - and the imposition this April of the new By Ann Hudson SATs - government-imposed tests in English, Maths and Science for 7, 11 and 14 year olds - were successfully boycotted by the NUT for two years.
Suddenly, in December the NUT leadership met with Gillian Shephard and announced its intention to end the boycott.
NUT activists believe that the leadership has lost its fighting spirit because it has decided to embrace the 'new realist' orientation of the Labour Party leadership.
With Tony Blair sending his son to a (non-union)Grant Maintained school, and David Blunkett indicating that Labour will do little to undo the damage Tory policy has inflicted on education, this is bad news for Britain's youth.
Grant Maintained Schools and SATs are all part of an attack on the notion of equal opportunities and comprehensive education itself.
Many NUT members were deeply disappointed by the reNew storm over education cuts of any talk of quality in education, and turning the national curriculum into a sham.
Though morale has been knocked back after the surrender on SATs tests, unions have begun to resist.
Ballots
In Oxford both NUT and NAS/UWT are balloting on one-day strike action to lobby the crucial County Council meeting on February 14.
Strong pressure for action has come from angry parents, many system of Incapacity Benefit designed to strip benefits from 250,000 people with long term sickness and disability - Labour's front bench remains eloquently silent.
Some of the Tory proposals are horribly close to the plans dreamed up by Labour's own Commission for Social Justice.
The unions must do more than whinge at the injustice of the JSA: they must join forces to fight the Tory offensive, demanding a Labour government reverse these savage attacks, increase benefits and implement a minimum wage. sult of the leadership's lightning ballot in early January. Half the membership voted, with 3 to 1 voting to end the boycott and cooperate in the government's Review..
The ballot was timed in such a way that members had little time to organise meetings and discuss the real issues, and worded in such a way that many thought a 'yes' vote would mean continued union protection against excessive workload and the continuation of a campaign against SATs.
There was a barrage of propaganda for a yes vote - enough glossy leaflets for three times the union's membership.
Despite the reverse, NUT associations and divisions all over the country are actively campaigning against the tests.
The campaign is supported by the London Associations for the Teaching of English and the growing network of Parents against the SATs.
We need to look to the example of Scotland where parents supported the anti-SATs campaign, and won by withdrawing their children from the tests. of whom ioined the 3.000strong march through Oxford last month, and thousands more of whom have since been attending a series of packed local meetings across the county.
At least one school's governors have adopted a deficit budget, while others have joined the call for schools to be closed to back the lobby on February 14.
Elsewhere NUT ballots for one-day stoppages are also being held in Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Islington in London.