You probably know that Iain Duncan Smith is on the Marr programme tomorrow (BBC1, 9.00). Lots of people have been contacting Marr and the show's producers asking for a real interview, lies challenged and all that, but we don't have any real hope. There's a piece written by Smith on the Telegraph website today which amounts to his testament. Ludicrous, delusional, stomach-turning - but that's the line he will take, and the increasingly toadying BBC will let him spout it and thank him for gracing them with his presence.
It was Stanley Baldwin, Conservative Prime Minister in the 20s and 30s, who said that the press had "power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages". It seems to me to apply to individuals who write for particular papers, giving support to the likes of Duncan Smith without any glimmer of knowledge of the subject. Take a piece by Simon Heffer in today's Mail online. I suspect it was the subs who wrote the disgusting headline - Let's get the feckless to buy food - not fags and booze. But that's Heffer's thesis. Yes, the push is there again to determine what the poor are allowed to spend their pittance on by giving them swipe cards to ensure that they don't buy any luxuries.
Who is Simon Heffer, you may ask, and what qualifies him to pronounce on this subject? Well, he was educated at King
Edward VI's School, Chelmsford, and Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge, where he read English and subsequently took a PhD in
modern history. He wrote biographies before joining The
Daily Telegraph as a leader writer in 1986 and later held the posts
of chief leader writer, political correspondent, parliamentary
sketchwriter, comment editor and deputy editor. He has since rejoined the Daily
Mail and
edits a new online comment section, called RightMinds. That CV, I suppose, makes him an expert on the subject of welfare reform.
What he's advocating is familiar, but I want to pick out one sentence. "Retailers would be invited to sign up as part of an approved merchant scheme and would benefit by having guaranteed custom in return." Think about that for a moment. And then turn to an article in an American online newspaper, slate.com. In the US the poorest get food stamps, which haven't been actual stamps for a long time. It's all electronic now, and it's the system which Heffer wants to see here. The major supermarkets reap huge profits from the system, because people are forced to buy their food there; and the biggest beneficiary is Walmart, which owns Asda over here. The figures are not disclosed, because of that old get-out clause "commercial confidentiality", but when the numbers on food stamps go down, so do the profits of the supermarkets.
Now, call me suspicious, but could it be that behind the cant about saving the poor from their fecklessness and saving the taxpayer from exploitation, there's another agenda? Could it just be that there's a massive profit opportunity here?
A young graduate called Cait Reilly is pursuing a legal case against the government which will be of great significance to all unemployed people. Read the story in the Mail Online first. Her case is that it was against her human rights to be forced, on pain of losing her benefits, to work for two weeks at Poundland stacking shelves. This meant that she had to stop volunteering at a museum, in a role that was related to the work she wanted to do. The comments which follow reflect the lack of sympathy of Mail readers, and the thuggishness of many of them. Then read the version in the Express. They have brought in Tory MP Philip Davies who was a senior manager at Asda, having worked his way up from shelf-stacking. Unsurprisingly, he is gung-ho about the system. There is a statement which no doubt the case will challenge: "Anecdotal evidence suggests Poundland is one of the best employers at converting work experience into jobs." The lawyers "are understood to be fighting separate rules under which the long-term unemployed can be required to do up to six months’ unpaid work. Her solicitor Jim Duffy said: 'The Government has created, without Parliamentary authority, a complex array of schemes that allow job centres to force people into futile, unpaid labour for weeks or months at a time.' "
If I had to bet on the outcome, I would think she will lose. It will be argued that the scheme she was put on by the Jobcentre, the "sector-based work academy", was voluntary and she knew what she was getting into. Anyway, the government can't afford to lose this one; too much hangs on it. Ironically, the Independent carries a piece about the firms (including Asda) which have signed up to new rules about interns. "The Government is sending out new guidance saying interns who do 'real jobs' must receive at least the legal minimum." Wait for the twist of logic which says that it doesn't apply if you're claiming benefits.
