That's what Mark Hoban calls criticism of the "work experience" schemes. He's written a piece for the Telegraph explaining away the need for emergency legislation and justifying what most call "workfare" with the usual buzz phrases. I won't bore you with them. As always, the comments under the article are much more informative than the article itself.
But the Left Foot Forward website has an interesting piece called "Five things the government won't tell you about workfare". What the five points amount to is that the schemes don't help people get into work. So all that Hoban and the government are left with is what the last administration actually called "work for your benefit", and they are happy to cite the findings of a survey, that 85% of respondents believe that unemployed people should do just that. So who is being misleading?
Labour, by the way, has decided to abstain in the vote on the emergency legislation (which stops the government having to pay back the £130m they took from claimants while the schemes were illegal). There are a lot of Labour people unhappy about that. But there's talk of Labour pressing for an enquiry into the sanctions regime.
As a postscript, a piece on the BBC News website reports a housing association, Eastlands Homes, sending a disgusting newsletter to its tenants. They asked people affected by the welfare cuts, "Can you really afford Sky, cigarettes, bingo, drinks and other non essentials?" They've apologised. But it's very telling that someone responsible for the newsletter could put it out in the first place.
I follow many blogs, read lots of articles, and think about how the governments cuts are going to work out.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the point? It's inevitable that within the next five years poverty on a scale and depth not seen in Britain since the turn of the last century will become common place.
The poor are isolated, disorganised, and disconnected from the rest of society.
The churches don't have any influence, the Unions are self-serving hypocrites, and the Labour party ceased being a crusade a long time ago.
We are hemmed in on all sides, and have no option but to be slaves.
I watched the proceedings with amazement,basic maths seem to survive in another dimension. 200,000 unemployed have been helped back into work due to the Work Programme(from Hoban,IDS and ERSA) between 800,000 to 900,000 have been attached to the WP,So if this is the case the success rate should be 20% or above,not 3.5%(or less) please feel free to correct me if I have missed something here.
ReplyDeleteAfter attending JCP,a new system for appointments has been brought in,rather than being assigned an Adviser,you are assigned a time and see the next available(may work?)the Adviser that I saw was almost hysterical that I would not allow access to my UJM account,I presented 30 screen prints from UJM,not allowed "You will have to write them out"...retaliation? At the WP appointment,I asked my Adviser if the UJM was making a difference? the reply was very frank "We have had zero success"
The thing that amazes me (read: p's me off), is that the government is still moaning about not wanting to give £130m back to claimants who lost their benefits, yet they still think that the £5b they've spent (read: wasted) on the WP is justified. Incredible logic, Parliment, truly incredible. It's been said before in comments on this blog that the government could actually save some money if they just got rid of the stupid WP. Do they think the same as us? No. Their way of thinking is that if you can't solve the problem with a few simple changes to the rules, maybe throwing £5b of tax payers money (or wherever it comes from) will do the trick.
ReplyDeleteTory policy on unemployment amounts to no more than beating the public over the head with rigged unemployment statistics until they fall unconscious.
ReplyDeleteBUT I do sense that the public are not buying it. Which is why we see IDS, Hoban and Osbourne attempting to defend their failures it seems on a daily basis.
Ultimately they are deluding themselves and betraying the potential improvement of the UK economy.