(Info sent to us via email by Ben Golightly)
Solidarity with Youth Fight for Jobs who will be protesting in Wales against the housing benefit cuts to the under-25s and the devastating effect that this will have on young people!
Protests are planned in Llanelli, Swansea, Cardiff, the South Wales Valleys and Newport.
One of the organisers, Ben Golightly writes:
“I have a deaf-blind and learning disabled brother who is living with friends in Exeter so that he can access support there. If housing benefit was axed, he would have to move back to Swansea where there is no appropriate support at all.”
Scott Jones (24), a shopworker and YFJ West Wales organiser, said:
“These attacks would undoubtedly lead to homelessness and misery for an estimated 210,000 young people.
If you’re young in Britain today, you are justified to feel a bit victimised by David Cameron’s government.
After the trebling of tuition fees, the cuts to EMA and the Future Job Fund and cuts to youth services which had a hand in leading to last summers riots, now we have the proposed scrapping of housing benefit for anyone under-25!”
There will, correctly, be mass outrage at these attacks for a number of reasons.
Firstly, many of the claimants are actually in work and need to claim housing benefit due to only having part-time employment or being paid far less than a living wage.
Secondly, most of the benefit claimed ends up in the bank accounts of private landlords to do with as they please. They charge extortionate rents because there is a lack of houses to go around and this is being exploited.
Finally, the fundamental reason that Housing benefit expenditure has increased and the reason there is a lack of housing is down to the failure of both New Labour and the Tories governments to build social housing.
These cuts are yet another attack in the name of austerity like public service cuts and slave labour workfare schemes which will be the primary target of a week of action by Youth Fight For Jobs across the towns and cities of Wales in the week beginning 30th July.
Youth Fight For Jobs campaigns against any attack on the youth of this country and aim to put youth unemployment at the top of the political agenda.
The week of action will climax with an Austerity Games, an alternative Olympics that will provide an opportunity to highlight and fight attacks of the living standards of the young and poor whilst big business and their friends in government have a tax payer funded party.
Contact Scott Jones, YFJ West Wales Organiser: 07812 406194 cottfrankjones@hotmail.co.uk
Scott Jones, YFJ West Wales Organiser: 07812 406194. Scottfrankjones@hotmail.co.uk. Scott is 24 and is a shopworker. He lives in Llanelli.
Other YFJ contacts available for interview: Jaime Davies, YFJ South East Wales Organiser: 07506 218523. Jayne Timson@hotmail.co.uk. Jaime lives in Caerphilly and is an activist in the trade union USDAW. He is 20. Lloyd James, YFJ member: 029 2086 7525.
Lloydianjames@hotmail.co.uk. Lloyd is 20, is unemployed, and was one of the organisers of the Occupy Cardiff protests. Emma Griffiths, YFJ member: 07963 013936.
emzie360@hotmail.co.uk. Emma is 19 and is a student of Sociology and Poliics at Newport University.