Fact and fiction

The party conference season is always depressing, but this year it's frightening as well.  I've taken to avoiding the BBC's news and politics output altogether.  So what are the important issues which are not being talked about?  
Outsourcing (or privatisation - in the public mind they're the same thing) should be in the forefront.  It is in the clamour about the NHS.  As private companies move in to pick up contracts it's pointed out that i) many are American and ii) many MPs have financial interests in them.  But creeping privatisation is happening in lots of areas.  The academy chain AET has gone into an arrangement with accountants PriceWaterhouseCooper to outsource all its non-teaching staff.  It won't stop there.  
There's a great piece by Patrick Butler in the Guardian which shows that outsourcing is about driving down costs by cutting wages.  Around 5.4 million people now work in outsourced public services, and it's being driven, particularly in the "care" sector, by the cuts to local authority budgets.  That's how this government has achieved its aim, by pushing the responsibility back onto local councils and then claiming that it's their fault.
How is that veteran of outsourcing, the Work Programme, going?  Swimmingly if you believe the government.  But the Welfare News Service site did an excellent analysis of the figures showing just how badly it's letting down the unemployed.  A4e, of course, spun it frantically.  "A recent report by Europe Economics, an independent research company commissioned by the Employment Related Services Association, has also estimated that around 100,000 jobs for the long term unemployed would not have taken place without the programme and that £18 billion in value to the UK economy is likely to be generated by the Work Programme."  Neither of those figures bear examination.  
Let's hear some pearls of wisdom from Leo McKinstry of the Express: "Under Work And Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith the Government has rooted out abuses, introduced tough sanctions, ensured that work pays more than the dole and tackled the housing benefit scandal where jobless claimants could live in luxurious accommodation courtesy of the taxpayer."  In any field except journalism and politics this would be regarded as symptomatic of delusional illness.
If you have thoughts on the conferences relevant to this blog, please comment.  (I don't promise to publish unless you stick to the rules, basically be relevant, literate and polite.)

Negativity

I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could ever call anybody was a liar.  Even when they clearly were.  Even when it was Iain Duncan Smith.  But (I'm sorry, Mum) I have to say it.  Esther McVey lied today in the Mail and the Express.  Since the quote is the same in both I have to assume that it's her lie, not the papers'.  "‘I meet with thousands of young people a year and they all say the negative picture painted by opposition politicians about young people and their bleak future has a very negative effect on them."
You can imagine it.  She's got a captive audience of unemployed kids in a jobcentre or somewhere, and every single one of them says, "Well, it's Labour telling us how bad things are, and there's no future."  
You may say it was just exaggeration.  But what about the substance of this mendacious piece?  Try the Mail's lengthy version.  Count the number of assertions which are simply not true.  The Express resorts to quoting the Mail, but at least it gives Rachel Reeves the chance to describe the comments as "pathetic".
We could dismiss all this as tripe, and rather desperate tripe at that, were it not for a piece on the Huffington Post site which makes it look like part of a concerted effort directed by Lynton Crosby, the Tories' campaign guru.  We heard this week that self-employment is at its highest level since records began, and that of the 1.1 million people who have started a job since January 2008, two thirds are self-employed.  (The figures are on the BBC news site.)  Over the last year it's over half of new "jobs".  But all is wonderful according to scary Tory MP Matthew (call me Matt) Hancock.  "There are more jobs available than ever before in this country, the vast majority of the jobs are full-time contracts of employment, and there has also been a very strong growth in self-employment. " [my italics]  This is simply not true.  The article gives plenty of space to voices refuting Hancock's claims.
But it seems that the tactic is simple.  Get out there and lie.  Blame Labour.  Deny the figures.  Just lie.

More lies v. truth

You couldn't have a better example today of this government's contempt for the truth, and how the media collude with them.
On the one hand there are two articles, in the Express and the Mail.  The very names tell you what's coming - a platform for Iain Duncan Smith to lie about some made-up figures.  They are the same article, really.  The Mail says: "Half of those caught out by benefits cap are 'spurred to seek work': New figures show the system is working".  This is based on an Ipsos Mori poll of "more than 1,600 capped households" showed that 28% did more to find work.  Pretty thin, you might say.  Even thinner is the finding that 11% of capped households have found work, although you'll have to get your calculator out to work that one out.  This gives IDS the excuse to claim that the cap is changing people's behaviour, etc, etc.  This is the sort of nonsense which he was rebuked for, but he takes no notice.  
The Express's version oozes hatred, as usual, referring to "handouts", "welfare bonanza", "workshy", "creaming off" and on and on, but it's the same lie based on the same dubious figures.  Bringing in Jonathan Isaby of the Taxpayers Alliance to parrot the right things hardly enhances the credibility of this rotten propaganda.
So for an antidote we turn to the Guardian, and first to an article by Patrick Wintour.  The same Ipsos Mori poll which delights IDS also shows that a third of people affected by the cap have had to cut back on essential items.  Just as important are the findings of Citizens Advice.  The increased ruthlessness of the sanctions regime is driving people to loan sharks and hindering them from looking for work.  They point out that on the Work Programme twice as many people are sanctioned as find work.
And then there's an excellent article by Polly Toynbee.  The latest employment figures will show that more people are in work; but in the last 3 months all the increase is down to self-employment.  And most of it is down to desperation.  Toynbee goes on to look at Help to Work.  Since nobody actually calls it that, let's refer to it as workfare.  She says: "For once, instead of rushing in, the DWP has done a good control trial on this with 15,000 unemployed. The pilot's results, however, were sneaked out just before Christmas with no press release. That's no surprise when you uncover the findings.  First the unemployed were given a 13-week warning period to act as a deterrent, and then 26 weeks of either 'intensive Jobcentre Plus support', or the workfare 'community action programme'. Or they went into the control group with nothing special. Here's what happened: exactly the same number in the control group – 18% – found themselves jobs as those doing the forced community work. Just 1% more found jobs from the group with jobcentre support. In other words, workfare didn't work. Although 68% of the control group were still on unemployment benefits at the end, so were 66% of those who did the community work and 64% of those given jobcentre support."
Help to Work is only two weeks from launch, but there hasn't even been an announcement of the contractors, and Toynbee couldn't get an answer out of the DWP.  She concludes that the only reason for going ahead with this is that it takes people out of the unemployment figures for 6 months.  " Incidently," she says, "these sad long-term cases will do more than twice the maximum any court can sentence a thief to on Community Payback. To be out of work is now officially morally worse than committing a crime."

More hate-mongering

I don't know whether Iain Duncan Smith and Richard Desmond have ever met, but they certainly work to help each other.  Desmond is the owner of Channel 5 and the Daily Express, and he uses both to demonise the poor.  After Channel 4 had screened the infamous Benefits Street, it was Channel 5 which hosted the "debate" on the subject.  Now, Desmond's channel is making a series of its own.  No title has been decided, they say (but the makers of Benefits Street said the same, and they lied) but it's about the benefits "culture", and they are in the process of filming.
We can see how they go about it through the protests of one of the cities unwillingly involved.  Hull has a lot to be encouraged about at the moment, in the midst of one of the worst unemployment rates in the country.  But now the film-makers have been leafletting the poorer estates seeking gullible people to take part, and have already done some filming.  Local councillors are furious, but seem helpless to prevent it.
Of course people should have the freedom to take part, if they are given accurate information and understand what they're doing.  But what about the people who live in the area and have not consented to this?  Benefits Street led to children who live in James Turner St being bullied.  Other residents felt that they had been stigmatised simply for their address.  Many of those who did take part believed that they were misled by the film-makers.  If there's a redress in law, none of them can afford to sue.
I have a suggestion.  Send Katie Hopkins to live on one of these estates for a while.  I'd watch that.

The hate campaign

It makes you wonder why Richard Desmond hates the poor so much.  But perhaps the owner of the Express and Channel 5 doesn't hate, or indeed feel anything except the lure of money for himself.
Yesterday the Express added a new word to the lexicon of far-right poor-bashing - "ghettos".  A ludicrously skewed story reckoned to have "uncovered the nation's Benefit Ghettos".  It draws on data for which it gives no source to show that an area of Blackburn has 71.9% of the working age population claiming benefits.  The rest of the story is what you'd expect, except for the fact that they do quote Jack Straw MP to the effect that there are a lot of hostels in the area, distorting the figures.  But who cares about the facts?  Who cares about the working poor who are so badly paid that they have to claim benefits?  No, these are "ghettos".  And I'm sure Desmond understands the significance of that word.
It's all in preparation for another Desmond venture, a programme on Channel 5 tonight advertised in today's Express.  It claims to be based on a YouGov poll showing that "two-thirds of Britons believe the system of state handouts needs an overhaul".  Now, I seem to remember taking part in that poll, and I realised that there was an agenda behind it.  I must have been among the 45% who thought that benefits claimants were portrayed unfairly.  However, it's an excuse for Channel 5 to put on a "debate" featuring - wait for it - "White Dee" from Benefits Street, Katie Hopkins and Edwina Currie.  Ken Livingstone is also in the line-up.  No, of course I won't be watching.

The future of "welfare", part one

In my last post we looked at the history of the concept of welfare, or social security.  An understanding of that history is essential to any discussion of the future.

First, let's get to grips with Iain Duncan Smith's concept.  There are those who believe that he wants to end the welfare system altogether.  I don't think that was his intention when he came into the job.  He had a messianic sense of his personal mission to transform it, certainly.  First, with the Work Programme, he was going to put the majority of the unemployed back to work.  But the first year's results were so terrible that his own party were furious with him.  The second year was little better, and it was obvious to everybody that people were only finding work because the economy was picking up.  The long-term unemployed, young people and those kicked off incapacity benefits onto ESA, remained stubbornly out of work.  IDS turned his wrath on them.  They were the enemy, scuppering his vision, and he has become more and more determined to punish them.  Then, Universal Credit was going to remould the system, "making work pay"; and it would bear his name as its creator for ever, just as the NHS was the creation of Aneurin Bevan.  But that hasn't worked either.  So IDS is an angry and disappointed man who has no place in the future.

I have said before that the mindset of the right today reminds me very much of the climate of opinion which produced the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834.  There was then no real concept of a "public sector".  Governments and councils (corporations) could hire people to carry out the work.  And there was no thought of insurance against misfortune for the masses, at least not administered officially.  The poor did create "friendly societies" into which they paid a few pennies a week, as well as burial clubs which ensured that there was money for a decent funeral.  But National Insurance had to wait until 1911.  It has now become almost irrelevant.  Worst of all, we have gone back to the notion of the deserving and the undeserving poor, with the former being thought of as very few in number.  (In the mind of the right, of course, there are contradictions.  There's plenty of work out there if people were not too idle to do it; but some unemployment is necessary for capitalism to work.  People should equip themselves with skills and qualifications; but employers shouldn't have the expense of training their workforce.)
A clear demonstration of the "new" thinking comes in an article in the Express today.  It's not so much in the plans put forward by a member of the Conservatives' policy board, Nadhim Zahawi MP, as in the phrases he uses.  Take, "Mr Zahawi said that the welfare state was established as a 'last resort, not a lifestyle choice'" and it was "trapping people into a life of dependency on the state".  Later he says that he wants to "help the next generation think more carefully about their relationship with the welfare state".  His words show no understanding of how "the welfare state" grew up, or why.  He sees it as a project set up by the tax-paying majority to provide benevolently for the non-working minority, rather than as what it was; a system of mutual aid and insurance.  Not a "safety net" (as he also describes it) but a guarantee of security for all.
The right has, in effect, scrapped all the thinking which produced the progress of the twentieth century, the progress towards social security paid for out of general taxation.  Indeed, it has gone further than its 19th century predecessors by putting all services in the hands of profit-making companies.  In this vision of the future there would only be private insurance against misfortune, not public provision.  The state pension will have less and less value at the same time as the pension age rises, so private pensions will replace the state pension.  What about those who never earn enough to pay private insurance?  Tough.  Perhaps they'll come round to the idea that for those who really can't do anything for themselves and would otherwise be littering the streets, there should be special hostels ....

It doesn't have to be like this, as I shall explore in another post.

Burying bad news

In the big news towards the end of this week, stories about "welfare" got rather lost.  Iain Duncan Smith finally admitted that his Universal Credit target isn't going to be met; but everybody knew that.  Various reports should have caused trouble for the government, but few noticed.  There was a report pointing to the failure of HMRC to police the minimum wage legislation properly, said the Guardian.  Only a couple of employers have ever been prosecuted, and only one named and shamed, although 10,777 firms have been investigated.  On the same day the Independent's Charlie Cooper wrote about the "public health emergency" of food poverty.  That's the verdict of a group of expert doctors and academics, following a report commissioned by Defra - a report which, in a familiar move, the government has not published, claiming that it needs a "review and quality assurance process".  The Trussell Trust, which runs a lot of food banks, says that they've tried to talk to the DWP, but been refused a meeting.  Meanwhile the experts cite recent figures showing a surge in the number of malnutrition cases diagnosed in English hospitals.
The people who read those two articles probably didn't read another in the Express.  The paper which has done so much to spread hatred of the unemployed found a story which ticked a different set of boxes.  "Veteran loses his jobseekers benefits for selling poppies" it yelled.  The 60-year-old former soldier gets £71.20 a week and has done everything he can to find work.  However, he "admitted" to the jobcentre that he'd spent 24 hours over a two-week period selling Remembrance Day poppies.  He was promptly sanctioned for a month for not "actively seeking work".  The response from the infamous, anonymous DWP spokesperson was predictable: "We make it clear to people what the rules are and they risk losing their benefits if they don't play by them.  Sanctions are only used as a last resort."  The Express's outrage is commendable.
But none of this made much of an impression on the public as a whole, and it all faded away as other news monopolised the media.

The conversion of the Express?

An extraordinary story popped up in the news feeds this morning - extraordinary because it's in the Express.  Headlined "Food Bank Britain: Thousands need charity handouts because of welfare system failings", it talks about "scores of cases" which their investigation has "uncovered" of "administration errors and punitive sanctions".  It goes on to list cases of ludicrous sanctions and a few admin errors, and it ends with the verdict of the director of Oxfam's UK poverty programme.  They haven't bothered to ask the DWP for a response, just quoting Esther McVey's platitude that sanctions are only used against people who were "wilfully rejecting support for no good reason" and going on to prove her wrong.  The comments facility isn't available under the article.  Why?
What has brought about this startling conversion by the Express?  Perhaps it's just opportunism.  They've realised that there's a story here.  But I bet we see an article about the workshy before long.

Despair

Having read this article in the Express, "Despair" was the only title I could think of for this post.  I remember my own long spell of unemployment in the 1990s, and wonder how I would have coped with this vicious, dehumanising regime.  And I suspect I would not have survived.  I had been working for nearly 30 years; I had paid plenty of tax and National Insurance.  Now it was time for me to claim the benefits to which I was entitled, while I tried everything to get a job (which I eventually did).  I never allowed myself to feel humiliated; I had done nothing wrong, and life was difficult enough without being denied any self-respect.  If it was happening now - I think I would be looking into the abyss.
Some of you who comment here and have been passed back to the Jobcentre after wasting two years on the WP, have already experienced this "claimant commitment" demand, which officially came into force today where UC is being implemented, and are bemused as to how it's going to be possible to meet it.  Others have asked what "commitment" is being made by Jobcentres and government to help them.  The article gives us no answer.  "The radical plan is the idea of Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith who said a job search should be a full time occupation in itself.  The unemployed will be expected to fill their 'working' weeks searching for work, attending interviews, training, assessments and workshops.  If they deviate from their signed commitment, their benefits will be stopped for 13 weeks for a first offence, then 26 weeks and then 3 years."  That's the Express's words in bold, not the DWP's.  But they strike a chill, don't they?  Criminalised for something trivial.  What the DWP's infamous anonymous spokesperson does say is rather puzzling: "Those claiming out-of-work benefits will be expected to dedicate their working week not only to searching for work but also to invest in training and the skills necessary to make getting a job easier."  Apart from lousy grammar, what does this mean?  That the unemployed person has to "invest" in training and skills?

My only advice on how to cope with this is:
 i) keep a detailed diary, not only to prove that you're doing what is demanded, but to show to yourself and others just how punitive and demeaning this regime is.  Start a blog about your experience if you're in a position to do so.  Writing down your thoughts can be therapeutic in itself.
ii) always remember that they cannot rob you of your self-respect unless you let them.

The hate campaign goes on

The Express's disgusting hate campaign against the unemployed continued today with a story which has so many holes in it that not even the editor should have believed it.  Read it carefully before continuing.
Do you see what I mean?  This bloke has a job agency in Worcester.  Now, the idea of these agencies is that they sign up people onto their books so that, when a company contacts them for personnel, they've got clients who they can contact and use, even at short notice.  The agencies then get paid for supplying the labour.  This chap, Danny James, hadn't done that.  When he got an urgent order for 50 people to man a food packing line that same night, he went to the Jobcentre.  (Would James have given the agency commission to JCP?)  The Jobcentre, obviously, couldn't help.  A spokesperson said, "The very short timescale given by the agency and the need for jobseekers to be available to work the night shift, that same day, meant that we were unable to help on this occasion."  So Mr James had to fall back on doing what an agency is paid to do in the first place - phone his own contacts.  He could only find ten.  Now he's ranting on Facebook about people "scrounging from us taxpayers".  And the Express has deliberately misrepresented people who were unwilling to do a single shift at a few hours' notice; people who would lose money by doing so, because the system penalises them for signing off, doing one shift and signing back on again.
But facts don't matter to the Express, or to its owner, Richard Desmond.

Weekend round-up

A4e was at all the party conferences this year, as usual.  They don't record what interest they drummed up amongst the Lib Dems or Labour, but describe on their website the "event" they hosted in Manchester for the Tories.  They've had to amend the story in the last couple of days - it was "former minister" Mark Hoban who led the praise for 6 A4e "customers" (I do hate that word) who have found jobs through the WP.  Apparently 40 people turned up.  Now, as I've always said, I'm happy for anybody who gets work, with or without the help of A4e.  But it seems slightly over-optimistic for A4e to be lobbying just at the point when they've lost market share for getting poor results.

There was a little-noticed piece on the BBC website yesterday about the poor quality of prison education.  Ofsted has been very critical about current standards, and it's pointed out that prison education and training is outsourced to private companies.  No companies are named, but A4e has several contracts.

BBC Radio 4's "The Report" programme last night looked at the state of Universal Credit.  There was nothing which hadn't already been in the press, but the programme pulled it all together to show how the project went off the rails.  Around £200m has been completely wasted, there are no effective financial controls, and there is no chance that it will come in "on time and on budget", as IDS insists it will.  UC is being rolled out to 6 more jobcentres, but it's still limited to new claims by single people with no dependants, on JSA only and with no complications.  It was pointed out that you can't do a change of circumstances, or even sign off, online.  You have to phone an 0845 number, at your own expense.  The whole thing is supposed to be completed by 2017, but as the reporter said, whether IDS would still be in post by then is doubtful.

That dismal excuse for a newspaper, the Express, gleefully reported a survey which purports to show that a majority of people think that benefits claimants "should find a job or work harder".  Surprisingly, a lot of the comments under the article are not supportive of the Express's stance.  For the actual figures, read a better article on a website here.  But all such polls are suspect.  We don't know the sample size, but we do know that sampling methods tend to exclude the poorest people, and that would certainly skew the results here.  Of course, the government is jubilant, and Labour is flummoxed about how to respond.

More dodgy figures from shameless IDS

Iain Duncan Smith is obviously unrepentant.  He was taken to task, you remember, for coming out with dodgy figures to justify his benefits cap, but said he believed it so it must be true.  He still hasn't faced the Work and Pensions Select Committee to answer for this (although his civil servants did).  Now he's doing it again.  The odious Express tells us that "16,500 find jobs after clamp on benefits" in a headline, and goes on: "Tough but fair reforms to Britain's broken benefits system have helped 16,500 claimants back into work, new figures reveal."  The sceptical may already perceive that there's something wrong here.  What's the actual connection between this nice round number and any specific benefits change?  Well, "The people living in potentially-benefit capped households were helped to find the posts by Jobcentre Plus over 18 months."  Now, this is the sort of distortion that the statistics people got cross about before.  There is no proven connection between the number getting jobs (who may or may not have been "helped" by JCP) and the potential for household benefits to be capped.  Yet the article proceeds on the assumption that the cap is making the idle get a job.  "The figures, revealed exclusively to the Daily Express, showed that Mr Duncan Smith's promise to 'make work pay' is starting to change a culture where some lifelong layabouts viewed benefits as a limitless cash machine."
Surely it's time for the select committee to do its job and hold IDS to account.  As well as the dodgy statistics, there's his failure to publish any data on sanctions.  If Dame Anne Begg and her committee are not concerned about this, what is their purpose?

The battleground

Issues of welfare and low pay are set to become the battleground in the 2015 election.  Opening shots have been fired this week, and, as always, factual reports quickly get countered by ideological nonsense.

The stories about zero hours contracts started a little while ago.  The numbers of people estimated to be trapped on these contracts rapidly rose, while noises from government about what they were prepared to do about it petered out.  Then came a report that a relatively sensible Tory strategist has said that his party won't make any headway in poorer areas of the country unless it is prepared to raise the minimum wage and work towards the living wage.  A detailed story in the Independent shows how nervous the Tories are about this.  Naturally their paymasters don't want to pay higher wages; they would much prefer to be subsidised by the taxpayer (which is all of us).  While Labour and the Lib Dems have more or less committed to this, the Conservatives remain ideologically bound to the concept of an untrammelled free market in wages.  Today the BBC news website published some interesting figures from the Resolution Foundation, showing that 20% of all workers earn less than the living wage.

But any attempt to have a sensible discussion on such issues is derailed by far-right pressure groups like the odious Taxpayers' Alliance, which often puts out press releases like a brattish child demanding attention.  As the BBC site headlined it, "Force claimants to work for benefits, government urged".  It displays the TPA's usual ignorance of the current system, but it got the publicity they wanted, not least from the Express.  In a typically hate-filled and untruthful report, the paper repeats the TPA's made-up figures of a saving of £3.5bn a year.  It accompanies this with a photograph, apparently authentically taken outside a jobcentre of the most unprepossessing youths they could find.  The Express also has a piece, complete with maps, to show where the highest numbers of households without work are.  Again, with criminal disregard for truth, all of these households (which include disabled people and their carers, for example) are labelled "work-shy".  And the areas where most people are out of work are called unproductive, as if they could be thrown away.

So, while we need a genuine debate on welfare and wages, we need to base it on truth.  And that will probably be impossible.

Finally, I couldn't resist this from an American website.  Iain Duncan Smith is giving a lecture later this month to a right-wing organisation on "21st Century Welfare Reform".  "He explains how transforming the country's welfare system goes hand in hand with transforming people's life chances - continuing a historic mission that Conservatives from William Wilberforce, Lord Shaftesbury and Abraham Lincoln have always had to help people improve the quality of their lives."  What?????  I don't know much about Lincoln but I know a great deal about Wilberforce and Shafesbury.  IDS, you are no Wilberforce and you are no Shaftesbury.

Helpless - and furious

I feel increasingly helpless.  I'm getting more and more comments, often on old posts, from people who are desperate because they, or someone in their family, has had their benefits stopped.  It's heart-rending, and there's virtually nothing I can do except advise them to go to the CAB.
The situation is made very clear in an article in the Observer online today by the food critic Jay Rayner about "Food Bank Britain".  He doesn't just focus on the Trussell Trust, although they feature.  He also looks at the Real Aid charity in Hull.  The experience is the same.  And Chris Johns of Oxfam's UK Poverty Programme is clear why it's happening.  It's not just changing benefits provision, he says, but "the way government agencies temporarily remove benefits for perceived misdemeanours: a failure to sign the right paperwork, or apply for the right training scheme."  And then the same agency that sanctioned them gives them a food bank voucher.  In Fulham there's a woman getting food from the Trussell Trust who is her husband's full-time carer and has three children.  The benefits agency discovered an overpayment of £600 in 2009, they insist (although the woman says she would have noticed) and have stopped their benefits for a month to recoup it.  (Just as an aside, it used to be the case that overpayments couldn't be reclaimed if the mistake was not made by the client.)  Other cases are cited.  In Hull, Real Aid don't use vouchers, but charge £1.50 for the food.  A lot of people actually prefer this.  And they are giving the help to people who are working or who are pensioners, because they don't have enough money to buy food.
The article cites the claims of Lord Freud, who doesn't accept that the increase in the use of food banks has anything to do with increased need.
The evidence is overwhelming, but the government doesn't care.  It still refuses to publish the data on sanctions.  Why?

And then we get this.  The most disgusting, lying, vile piece rubbish that the Express has managed to come up with, in collaboration with the equally disgusting Iain Duncan Smith.  What is there to say?  It's a torrent of lies, of words designed specifically and unashamedly to lie.  I am too furious to be coherent about it at the moment.

Intensive and uncompromising

You're coming to the end of your two years on the Work Programme.  What now?  After all that "tailored support" (don't laugh) you still can't get a job.  Perhaps now they'll get off your back for a while.  But no.  According to a government press release, "Work Programme leavers will be targeted by a hit squad of specialist advisers as part of a tough approach to get them into a job."
You see, it's your fault.  You've had all that help but you remain stubbornly unemployed, so clearly what you need is an "intensive and uncompromising regime ....... with rigorous monitoring to ensure they are doing everything they can to find work".  This will be delivered by the Jobcentres.  People will be put onto training schemes, Mandatory Work Activity placements or "intensive work preparation" as soon as they come off the WP.  An extra £30m is going on this, for extra training and specialist help such as counselling for drug or alcohol dependency.  Another requirement: "Every Work Programme returner will also be required to register with Universal Jobmatch to aid work search and job matching and to allow their adviser to check their work search activity online."  There has, apparently, been a pilot scheme (where?) which proved, said officials, that "claimants targeted by an intensive approach were much less likely to stay on benefit."  (Telegraph)  No figures, you notice, but we would have no reason to believe them if there were.
This is a tacit acknowledgement that the WP is a waste of money.  Two years in which all this stuff was supposed to be happening and obviously wasn't - so throw a bit more money at it, cutting out the WP providers.  But the attitude is ingrained in this government that people are out of work by choice, and if you just keep cranking up the pressure they'll get a job.  Or, at least, they will disappear from the lists of benefits claimants.  
Labour has said that WP leavers would be forced to accept a paid job, but we wait for them to fill in the details.  It surely has to be better than this government's clueless plan.

One bit of good news: the BBC reports that in 2012-2013, 708 employers have been fined for paying less than minimum wage, and affected workers have got an average of £300 in back pay.  One of the guilty employers is described as a "national retailer", but is not named.  Why not?

Update:  Today, Saturday, the odious Express tells the story in its own disgusting way.  "Hit squads to force workshy back into jobs" is the headline.  It goes on: "At the heart of the Government’s reforms is frustration at a generation of lifelong layabouts, immortalised by fictional Frank Gallagher from TVs Shameless", and there's a photo to illustrate these workshy people.  As we've said before, it suits the government to have its actions portrayed in this lying way, and no recourse for the long-term unemployed who are being traduced.

It's not my fault!

Any parent or teacher knows the scenario.  The child has committed some act of wrongdoing.  You saw him do it, and he knows you saw him do it.  But he keeps on insisting that he didn't do it, because he thinks you will have to accept that and not chastise him.  And eventually he comes to believe that he really didn't do it.  That seems to be the mindset among government ministers at the moment, especially in the DWP.
There's a report out, called Walking the Breadline, by Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty, which calls for an urgent parliamentary enquiry into how "welfare changes and mistakes by Jobcentre Plus staff are causing benefits errors or sanctions, which push vulnerable people into precarious situations".  (Guardian)  There's much more on the report in the article, including the fact that it wants the DWP to publish the data on the number of people sanctioned.  (Remember the DWP has just refused to do so.)  Other papers also report this, including, with breathtaking hypocrisy, the Express and also the Telegraph.  "Half a million can't afford to feed themselves after benefit reforms" is the headline in the Telegraph.  Whether any of the papers went to Iain Duncan Smith for a response I don't know, but there isn't one.
The report is also concerned about the possible impact of Universal Credit.  A recent Cabinet Office report said that UC was in danger of failing.  But that couldn't be IDS's fault.  According to an article by Isabel Hardman in the Spectator, it's all the fault of the civil servants.  "One loyal cabinet colleague of Iain Duncan Smith says the Secretary of State was 'extremely badly let down' by his officials on the 'shockingly bad' set-up of Universal Credit."  Interestingly, if a local councillor blames his officers for anything, it's a hanging offence.  Or rather, he gets suspended.  But MPs can apparently do it with impunity.  There's a longer quote from this article which I find fascinating.  "In his biography of the Chancellor, Janan Ganesh reported that Osborne was suspicious that the Christian sense of mission behind the plan might blind those advocating it to whether it would really work. But those close to the Work and Pensions Secretary believe he has since managed to make the case to the Treasury for this reform. ‘Iain has taken George with him and we do have the support of George now on universal credit,’ says a source close to the minister. Indeed, Osborne seemed happy to praise the Credit in a speech on welfare in April."
So however bad things get; however great the suffering of the victims; it won't be the government's fault.

A lesson in propaganda

The latest exercise in propaganda by combined right-wing forces in this country is a classic of its kind.
It starts with a report by the Centre for Social Justice, the "think-tank" set up by Iain Duncan Smith and run by his adviser Philippa Stroud.  This is reported in detail by the Telegraph.  The phrase "welfare ghettos" is prominent.  That's important.  The word "ghetto" is innocent enough in its original meaning ("a part of a city, esp. a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups") but of course it's a very loaded word now.  The report is full of figures purporting to show that almost 7 million people live in these "welfare ghettos" where more than half the working age population is dependent on benefits.
I haven't looked at the report itself, but I suppose that the Telegraph has reported it faithfully.  If so, there are a great many question marks over it.  It talks about "areas" of various cities.  How is an area defined?  At one point they talk about "neighbourhoods"; again, how do you define that?  This isn't nit-picking.  You can draw lines on a map to produce whatever figures you want.  48 charities were consulted.  96% of them (why can't they just say "46 charities"?) said that "they had come across families where unemployment was intergenerational".  All that means is that both the kids and the parents were out of work.  It tells us nothing else - certainly not how many families were involved.
They do make an important point about aspiration.  Lots of youngsters do not expect to ever have a job, and don't aspire to anything better than they have now, except to become a celebrity.  But the CSJ manage to link that with the benefits cap.
The Express's account is less nuanced, as you would expect.  The headline is "Welcome to the benefit ghettos where the majority live on state handouts".  There's a photo of a young woman pushing a toddler in a buggy; we are, of course, meant to take the point about teenage single mothers.  There is a familiar response from the DWP about welfare reforms improving the lives of these people.
The Mail is, as usual, hysterical.  It uses the same phraseology about "benefit ghettos" but there are graphics for those who need pictures with their reading.  My earlier point about the definition of an area is important in  the context of the Mail's version.  They list 6 places where there are a large number of "neighbourhoods" with more than 30% unemployed.  But to say that there are "nearly 70 neighbourhoods" in Liverpool" in this state is a nonsense.  Are we talking about a large housing estate or a small street?  The article ends by saying that the CSJ is working on a follow-up report with its recommendations.
So a minister's pet think-tank comes up with a report with the message which the minister wants to convey, and the right-wing press runs with it in its own inimitable way.  Goebbels would be proud.

The only game in town

A4e "welcomes" the new contracts to be issued by Chris Grayling for "offender rehabilitation", or so they say on their website.  These contracts will privatise a chunk of the work of the Probation Service, and they're set to be on a Payment by Results basis.  PbR is not a model the outsourcing companies like; but it seems to be the only game in town at the moment.  The Work Programme hasn't been a good advertisement for it, and Mark Hoban (more about him later) has reiterated that the worst-performing providers will be penalised by losing "up to 5%" of their new referrals.  It's hard to see that as a punishment.  The providers have complained that they have too many referrals and not enough money to do anything useful with them.  Hoban is talking tough, saying that he's willing to see providers go out of business if they can't deliver on the contracts they signed.  But if any of the big companies, including A4e, went bust it would cause big problems, as the remaining providers would be expected to pick up the business.

The Telegraph reports that Mark Hoban has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the MPs' second homes scam.  He sold his London flat, funded partly through the MPs' expenses system, in November with a profit of £144,000.  He's only been asked to repay £11,332, because that's all that's due since the new system kicked in.  The article, somewhat tongue in cheek, ends by describing Hoban as the minister "at the forefront of trying to get more people off benefits and into work".  It really does point up the hypocrisy of politicians who milk the system while vilifying the poorest.

Two more articles I'll simply recommend without comment.  The first is in the Guardian: "Recession is a good time to exploit cheap labour, says Cameron aide".  The second, also in the Guardian, is by Nick Cohen: "Lies, damned lies and Iain Duncan Smith".

Finally, a demonstration of how the right-wing press works hand in glove with the government, this time to denigrate the BBC.  The Express has splashed an account of a book which purports to show left-wing bias in the Beeb.

More truth, more lies

Iain Duncan Smith has been taken to task by the official statistics watchdog over his claims that the £26,000 a year benefits cap spurred 8,000 unemployed people to find jobs.  Andrew Dilnot, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, has written to the TUC (following a complaint from them) to say that he did not comply with the code of practice on the way ministers handled figures, and wanting assurance that he won't do it again.  It sounds mild enough, but the language is strong for that kind of official letter.  The Huffington Post has the full letter, and the Independent dissects it.  Channel 4 News' FactCheck has also described the situation.  They all point out that this isn't the first time that IDS has been officially rebuked for making false claims.  At last, this morning, the BBC has reported the story, talking briefly to MP Dame Anne Begg who was copied into the letter.  She talked about using figures to make a political point and referred to the false claims about 1 million people who were supposedly fit for work.
But "lies, damned lies and statistics" are the stuff of much modern journalism.  Ministers are fond of talking about "fraudanderror" (as if it was one word) costing vast amounts of money.  Left Foot Forward publishes the official figures from the DWP, which show that just 0.7% of total benefit expenditure (£1.2bn) is down to claimant fraud.  0.9% is due to claimant error, 0.4% to official error.  A poll carried out for the TUC shows that the public believes that the fraud figure is 27%.  Now, how could they get that false impression?  Could it be the result of disgusting "journalism" like that in the Express today?  Somebody called Martyn Brown writes an article headlined "Call for new blitz on benefits to cut £3.6bn fraud bill".  Hang on, where did that figure come from?  Oh yes, it's 3 years' worth.  And there's a great big photo of "benefit scrounger Mick Philpott" (who is referred to again at the end of the article as if he's typical).  The only reference to percentages in the piece is the fact that the figure for official error has fallen to 0.4%.  Brown dissects the fraud figures to show what huge amounts of money are involved, and drags in the odious Taxpayers' Alliance in support.  There's nothing in the piece which is actually false (I think) but it's pure propaganda, selective use of the figures to create a false impression.

When does spinning turn into lying?

Two versions of the same story appeared in the news feeds this morning, and I had to read them carefully to work out what was going on.
First, there was the Daily Mail's "One million people who are fit to work have been on benefits for three years".  Then, in the Express, "The one million who are FIT TO WORK but live on benefits".  That one, not surprisingly, is the more disgusting.  It goes on: "A MILLION welfare claimants have lived on working-age benefits for three out of the last four years, despite being judged capable of trying to find a job, shocking figures revealed last night."  You might have worked it out by now.  Yes, about a million of the out-of-work are long-term unemployed.  Do we read on to find out how the Work Programme is helping them, or is going to be changed to help them?  Don't bother, there's no mention of it.  This is from a report to be published by Iain Duncan Smith.  He's more interested in family breakdown, and asserts that "local authorities have already turned around the lives of 1,675 troubled families."  This is the outsourcing of the "troubled families" intervention scheme.  Note that there is no indication of what "turned around the lives" actually means.  Someone got a job?  Who knows.  But the Mail has a pretty graph showing "How Britain's benefits bill has risen" with never a mention of the fact that a huge chunk of the benefits bill consists of pensions.  
So these rags intend their readers to infer that a million people out there are too lazy to work, and add to the clamour for a clampdown.  That isn't spin; that's lying.
For a more truthful account, the Guardian looks at a report by the Fawcett Society which shows that since 2010 almost three times as many women as men have become long-term unemployed.  Men have got 60% of the new private sector jobs.  A big factor in this trend is that women are suffering most from the public sector cuts, losing the low wage, often part-time jobs.  Of course, IDS has nothing to say about this.
Another disturbing story appeared in the Observer on Sunday.  The social fund grew out of the long-standing practice of giving emergency grants to people on benefits to pay for necessary items such as beds or cookers (second-hand, of course) which they didn't have the money to buy.  Labour turned these into loans.  Now, local councils are complaining that more and more people are coming to them for emergency loans, because the jobcentres haven't mentioned the availability of the money.  Indeed, it appears that jobcentre workers have been issued with explicit guidance by the DWP that they should not advertise the existence of the loans so as not to "encourage dependency on the benefits system", and simply pass the buck to the councils.  And it seems that the emergencies which cause the need for short-term loans are no longer the one-off large items but such mundane things as food.
We're now told that the publication of performance data for the WP has been put back.  It was due on 28 May but will now be published on 27 June, and will cover the period to March 2013.  The vow of silence on the whole subject of the WP doesn't augur well for the figures.

On a more general note, I want to recommend a book.  Michael Sandel is an economist, but one who writes in a very lucid way about economics in the real world.  His book What Money Can't Buy - the moral limits of markets (pub. Allen Lane, 2012) is an excellent introduction to thinking about the issue of private profit, ethics and the public arena.