An astonishing piece appears on the Guardian site today in which Iain Duncan Smith is given the space to tell us how proud he is of his welfare "reforms". There's no point in my analysing it for falsehood and self-delusion. That's an exercise you can do for yourself. It is, perhaps, significant that the paper disabled comments after 329 - quite a few of them not allowed by the moderator. People were angry. I will just pick out one claim: "Our Work Programme has launched and the industry tells us that so far 321,000 people have found a job through it." This is at worst mendacious, and at best utterly misleading, as all of us who follow the WP know. And it's typical of the whole article.
There's still no sign of the figures for sanctions, figures which were supposed to be published in May but were suppressed because of "doubts about the quality of the data". I wonder why.
In that piece, Smith calls Labour the opposition.
ReplyDeleteNo Smith! The real opposition to you and your nasty, ill thought out, costly and ideological so called reforms is me!
It is others like me who post on this and other blogs, websites and forums. It is those of us who try to inform others via radio investigative programs and phone-ins.
It is those who of us oppose your terribly hopeless and dodgy Work Program that is failing and is clearly unfit for purpose.
It is those of use that opposes exploitative workfare policies.
It is those who of us oppose your bedroom tax.
It is those of us who oppose your misuse of statistics.
It is those of us who oppose the smearing, labelling and scapegoating of those who have to claim benefits, so ably carried out by you and your cabinet colleagues.
And it is those of us that wonder if you truly went into politics to help others!??!??!
Over the last few weeks,I have perused numerous W2W journals and the recurring statement keeps turning up,the percentages change,but the theme stays the same "A break in claiming benefits" this seems to be looked upon as the same as finding Employment and hailed as a success,but after repeated requests of how many of these "Breaks" are Sanction related,the standard reply has been "We do not have the data available to break this down into specific groups" which seems evasive,as how were they able to come up with the overall figure with out sum parts?
ReplyDeleteIn a moment of anger at me for refusing to follow her "advice" my work coach said to me "Look i have targets to meet if i dont meet them im out of a job.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to Mr Duncan Smiths"s article, both Universal Credit and Personal Independabce Payments are a long way from being fully implemented. Anyone who was awarded DlA for a lifetime award will continue to receive it as long as their circumstances remain unchanged until October 2015.
DeleteUniversal Credit? Limited roll out for new single JSA Claimants at the present time,is this success?
DeleteWork Programme? Failure to meet minimum contract requirements in most cases,is this a success?
According to IDS he does not have the hard data, but "He feels it is"
Comments are back up.
ReplyDeleteIDS continues to get a pasting from nearly 100% of contributors. Yes I know it's The Guardian but I find it encouraging that there is an increasing level of public awareness on the social security questions (I refuse to use the Americanism "welfare").
Maybe the tide is slowly turning.
it seems that the DWP have sneakily altered their guidance on Mandatory Work Activity!
ReplyDeleteThe guidance previously excluded those returning from the WP from mandatory work activity:
"Given the policy intent of MWA, the following claimants must not be considered for referral to MWA:
Those taking part in or recently completed another employment measure(contracted or non-contracted) aimed at helping them move closer to the labour market”. The DWp had confirmed that the WP was a work-related measure. See this FOI:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/is_the_work_programme_an_employm#incoming-406022
It would now seem that the words "other than the Work Programme" have been added. The guidance reads:
" taking part in or recently completed a Jobcentre Plus employment-related measure (contracted or non-contracted), other than the Work Programme, aimed at helping them move closer to the labour market".
See this FOI for more information:
Deletehttps://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/referral_of_work_programme_compl
And now the Government are rubbing their hands with glee for it's just been announced that The Bedroom Tax for the disabled has been declared lawful and not in breach of human rights. Shameful. There will be an appeal.
Deletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23503095
Nothing that man says or does surprises me anymore. To be "proud" of what he as achieved is beyond words.
ReplyDeleteWill we get another non IDS day again soon? I truly hope so, because I'm getting sick of hearing his name and what he's done. He's striving to undo all the good that the welfare system - sorry, social security service has done over the years. It's not like him or his ilk need it themselves, is it? If DC fired him from his job tomorrow, he'd either get another job somewhere else in parliment or he would just disappear into his ivory tower and start a blog or write a book about how much he despises unemployed people.
Did he coin the phrase "social housing" which I find totally abhorrent?
DeleteNo, that was Thatcher, I think.
DeleteThat comment about people finding a job through work programme made me laugh. Thankfully I am in employment but was on one of the work programmes for ages. Finding my job had NOTHING to do with attending the work programme as I had a useless advisor, got no help or advice from them and basically just attended to job search for an hour twice a week. Bet my 'fantastic' work programme took the credit for getting me back into work when they did nothing of the sort. Pretty sure I am not the only one who got into work with no help too.
ReplyDeleteThe guy and his ideas and policies are a joke. Work Programmes from my experience throw help at people who will do anything not to work yet not help or advise people wanting to work. These new policies from what I can make out help those not wanting to work and genuine claimants and jobseekers etc suffer more. I'd like to see him attend a work programme and live off universal credit etc.
The stuff in your second paragraph about people not wanting to work has nothing whatever to support it.
DeleteThat surprises me Historian as I have only been aware of the term in the last few months!
ReplyDelete