The Minister for employment, Guy Opperman has been quiet on this.
He has had issues with the Sycamore Tree felled in his constituency.
Sadly it is true that the iconic tree 🌲 at #SycamoreGap has been deliberately cut down overnight.
Too early to speculate who did it, but this is criminal damage, and an attack on one of the nations most famous trees. I was here only ten days ago: everyone in shock 1/ pic.twitter.com/HxVWyjEjv9
— Guy Opperman (@GuyOpperman) September 28, 2023
I’ve been warning for some time that benefits are at risk to fund tax cuts and I’m wondering if our man Opperman is complicit.
Come on Guy – what’s more important – keeping people out of poverty or a Sycamore tree?
No doubt we will find out later today!
It would be interesting to see any detail about who is leaving the labour force each year for a life on benefits, given the current restrictions on doing so. There are certainly some who are using their DC pensions to span the gap between stopping work and claiming their state pension. These people will generally not be claiming any benefits at all, apart from the few who can claim Carer’s Allowance for looking after somebody else.
That sycamore tree was all or nothing. It was not a sycamore tree in the abstract. It was a sycamore tree that had cultural significance. Meanwhile benefits are an amorphous mass, undefined, contested as too high or too low, that vary over time as pertains to adequacy by current social mores.