"Misleading and insulting"?

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.