Saturday 13 October 2012

Odd bits of news

You may be interested to know that A4e is ranked 164th in the Sunday Times top 250 league table of medium sized private companies.  Apparently the table is of companies which reported increased sales or operating profit.

Another bit of news concerns the civil servant Alan Cave, who was in charge of welfare-to-work schemes.  he has now taken a job with Serco.  Paul Flynn MP, a member of the Public Accounts Committee, condemned the move as an "egregious example of the revolving door" between government and industry.  There is nothing to stop the move, because Cave is apparently "not senior enough" to come up against the government's Advisory Committee on Business Appointments.  So that's all right, then.

You might have missed this in the Telegraph today.  "120,000 troubled families could be legally banned from spending benefits on alcohol and tobacco."  It doesn't matter how often this lie is exposed, it keeps coming back, because it's so convenient to press and government.  The 120,000 figure was plucked out of the air, a guesstimate done for completely different purposes some years ago.  It gave Emma Harrison her temporary exalted position as family tsar.  Now, local authorities identify those households which cause a lot of problems and are involved with lots of different agencies.  Some councils have been doing it for some years, and assigning a single officer as the conduit for all services and advice.  But of course the government wanted the private sector to have a profit opportunity, so private companies are now contracted to do this.  So those families, however many of them there are, will now not be able to spend their benefits as they wish. No more fags, booze or drugs.  And all spending on essentials to be done through designated supermarkets. So no more buying clothes in charity shops, or household essentials in the pound shop.  Go to Tesco or wherever, present your card at the till and proclaim to the checkout girl and everyone around you that you're a troubled family.  You can bet it won't stop there.  The far right want all benefits claimants to be paid in this way, and if it doesn't come before the next election, it will surely come after it if the Conservatives get in.

16 comments:

  1. This really annoys me, that they think about doing things like this, yet they don't even check to see if the unemployed actually apply for jobs. We write in down in our diaries, but frankly could be writing anything. People still work cash in hand while signing on. I live on my own and live from fortnight to fortnight with every penny accounted for, but am put in the same group as everyone else and not cared about at all. I really weep for society and hope to God I get a job before April next year or I'm pretty much stuffed. (sorry for the rant)

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    1. Hi Helen

      Please cheer up. I'm in the same boat as you, so at least there are two of us in the said boat.

      In recent weeks, I've suddenly seen a splurge of interest in my job search activities by the JCP. This is despite a large notice, highlighted in blue, on the front of my signing-on documents, which says, "Work Programme customer. Check conditionality and change of circumstances only." The JCP have made no attempt to remove or replace this notice. Instead, they suddenly produced a brand new form on which I am required to list all my jon-searching activities from the last fortnight. I was told that, from then on, the JCP would collect and keep these new forms, every time I go there to sign on.

      I wondered why the JCP have suddenly taken to duplicating the work that A4E are supposed to be doing instead? The lady at the JCP said she didn't know why this has happened. My personal adviser at A4E also says that he doesn't know why this has happened - he had merely heard from other customers that it has.

      Then yesterday, when I went to sign on and to hand in my second form to the JCP, the JCP guy produced my first form and gave that back to me! Presumably it spent two weeks being photopied since the chances of the JCP being able to read my scrawl are zero.

      God knows what the idea is of the WP providers and the JCP duplicating each other's work in this way. Do they not trust one another, one wonders?

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    2. "I wondered why the JCP have suddenly taken to duplicating the work that A4E are supposed to be doing instead? The lady at the JCP said she didn't know why this has happened. My personal adviser at A4E also says that he doesn't know why this has happened - he had merely heard from other customers that it has."

      I think it is because there was a TV programme recently that showed the JCP don't read the forms and they had someone handing in a shopping list and getting away with it? Someone mentioned this on my last job search session as the reason JCP are now checking the forms as well as A4E. Afterall, if you are only seeing A4E once a month because they have so few staff/too many customers, then JCP have to check the rest of the time.

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    3. Judi, earlier this year (february I think) I was moved over to a new signing regime wherein I merely had to present my signing on book at the front desk of the JCP (I'm also a WP "customer"), and was presented with a fortnightly jobsearch book. This was retained by me, however, and no copies were taken. This made signing on much quicker, more than halving the time I spent in the JCP. But that ended a few weeks ago, and I now sign-on pretty much the same way as everybody else, with a more thorough check of my jobsearch record, and I am usually offered a jobsearch. It seems each JCP has its own way of doing things. Odd, isn't it?

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    4. The One True Elg14 October 2012 at 00:38

      Helen, the idea of checking every position a person claims to have applied for might sound all right on paper, but it's near impossible in practise. I'm sure there's information protection laws to consider and companies aren't forced to disclose their employment process.

      Then there's the practicality. Firstly, you aren't compelled to list the jobs you applied for just the actions you've taken. You could say for example you used the JC+ website and applied for 5 jobs as one of your 6 actions, that's not the detail they need to look into what you've actually done as a matter of fact to find work. So that would have to be changed. Then there's the logistics, hundreds of thousands of people sign on a daily basis. If each of those list at least 10 jobs they applied for, millions of positions need to be checked a day. It's just not possible.

      I found the BBC Panorama investigation on this a bit aggravating, because they made it sound like it's the job centres responsibility to check the facts but the task of doing that would require an army of bureaucrats and employment legislation, costing the tax payer astronomically more than benefit fraud. It also tarnished the reputation of job centre staff unnecessarily for not doing a job they're not there for. It contributes to the scrounger narrative and it certainly helps the right wing press/Conservatives justify their views that the public sector is feckless.

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    5. Long before New Deal the Jobcentre required you to list what you'd done to find work. Of course, there's no way of checking each application; it's about trying to make sure that you are "actively seeking work", a condition of your benefit.

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  2. People like to be able to shop around for the food they like and at the best prices. No supermarket offers everything.

    I suspect the specialised Government supermarkets would contain bad for you prduce and probably aid further to the demise of the unemployed healthwise.

    Different if the “designer” supermarkets were to concentrate on healthy food and lifestyle. ..... Maybe too they could also be distribution centres for stuff ordinary supermarkets cannot sell .....

    Cigarettes, alcohol and drugs are oobviously bad for you, so to me, yes the concept is not a bad one, but needs to be clearly thought out. There again I see choice is taken away from you. Maybe you, could have the option ..... ?

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    1. No, Simone, you couldn't have the option, and I think you've missed the point. You may think "cigarettes, alcohol and drugs are obviously bad for you" but I might argue that junk food is bad for you. Where do you stop? And who is to be subjected to this? The mythical 120,000 or everyone on benefits?

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    2. So, assuming you live in a rural area and don't have access to a supermarket? I am 7 miles from the nearest supermarket and the council is going to cut the bus services. Would I be able to use my card in my local shops? I guess in the Highlands and parts of Wales it's even further to a place with a supermarket and knowing what I know of transport in Yorkshire, if you lived in a rural area it could take you a whole day just to do a supermarket shopping trip.

      I don't think this will come off actually, or at least if it does, you'll find places like the CO-OP, Londis and Spar included as being the place the unemployed must do their shopping at.

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    3. Also missing from the argument is the fact that these cards will inevitably become currency, as they have in other countries. You have a card worth, say, £20 for food in the shop. But you want to buy some fags or cans. I will buy the card from you for £15. Easy. The poorest become a source of profit for the not quite so poor.

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    4. Plus we have the inevitable costs of producing the cards and administering the whole database driven back end of the system. Along with the technical errors that are often associated with big IT contracts.

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  3. Ive just read this article, IDS makes my blood boil. Stop people from using their benfits to buy drugs and alcohol and we will definately see a massive rise in crime and put more strain on the taxpayers, this is not a solution to stop people from using their benfits to buy drugs and alcohol, people with addictions will go to any lengths to get the money they need to feed their addictions....and place even more of a strain on soceity. GET REAL IDS !!!!!!!!!!!!

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  4. Iain Duncan Smith has refused to be moved out of office at the DWP when the cabinet was re-shuffled, I thought David Cameron was the leader of the conservative party.

    Come on David Cameron tell IDS IF HE DOESN'T GO HE'LL BE SACKED.

    IDS has openly defied an order from Mr Cameron, that at any company would be regarded as insurboardination and would be grounds for dismissal, so why haven't you sacked him Mr Prime Minister?

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    1. The card could have your photo on it surely. If you loose it not a problem as your photo would be stored on the database. I can see though should you fall ill then the card would be redundant!

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  5. A little bit off topic and a bit of fun to boot. You can vote for the 'fishiest' outsourcing firm from this list from the False Economy site:

    http://falseeconomy.org.uk/outsourcing

    Our favourite A4e is not surprisingly on the list!

    iMatt

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    1. Uhm, I voted for "our favourite"but Atos is way out in the lead which doesn't surprise me! Good website too iMatt. Thanks.

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