While everyone was looking the other way, the Tories sneaked through some major changes to rules for benefit claimants.
Jobseekers must now accept jobs below their occupation from the fourth week of making a claim for benefits, rather than three months, or face sanctions.
They must also be willing to travel 90 minutes each way from home to any work offer.
That could mean three hours of commuting between Glasgow and Dundee or beyond.
These rules, with the threat of sanction, are another trap to get people off benefits.
Someone becoming unemployed must wait at least five weeks before their first Universal Credit payment.
If they succeed in getting through that, they could then lose disastrously if after a month they are forced to take a low-wage temporary job which would soon take them in a circle back to unemployment and signing on.
Add to that the requirement to commute 90 minutes each way to a job not matched to your skills, and quickly it becomes clear how Universal Credit is designed to grind people out of claiming and on to food banks.
The ministers, who at the stroke of a pen decide on these rules and sanctions, have no idea what it is like to live in the real world, on the edge of poverty and desperately looking for work.
But the ultimate cruelty of the system is that people who find themselves on the receiving end of Universal Credit sanction threats have done nothing to deserve these callous workhouse rules.
Starve RT of air
Russia’s outrageous attack on Ukraine has inevitably thrown the spotlight on the rogue state’s UK activities.
Top of the list is so-called “broadcaster” RT, which is little more than a crude propaganda outfit for the Kremlin.
Nicola Sturgeon, who has blasted Russia, yesterday backed calls for RT to be banned in the UK.
Her support came after Labour leader Keir Starmer demanded the move as part of a range of actions.
Anyone who has had the misfortune to watch RT knows it is not a proper media company.
The station’s reporting is biased and it is heartening to see Starmer and Sturgeon issue the demand.
In the meantime, no politician in the UK should be giving legitimacy to RT by appearing on their shows.
And nobody in their right mind should be presenting a programme on the channel.
The time has come to take RT off the air.
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