Boycott Workfare: In 2013 let’s win more!

Campaigners celebrated when A4e lost some of its contracts following corruption investigations

In 2012, people power pushed back the spread of workfare. The campaign to stop workfare is a testament grassroots action: people doing what they can and supporting others. Whether you stood up for your rights or told others about theirs, tweeted, posted on facebook, emailed, leafleted, talked to people, or took to the streets for one of many creative actions, here’s a few highlights of what you helped achieve…

The government believes our campaign could make the schemes “collapse”

In August 2012, the Information Commissioner ruled that the names of all organisations involved in Mandatory Work Activity (MWA) should be released. The DWP has appealed this decision, revealing in its papers that it considers protests could make the scheme collapse:

“Previous targeted campaigns had resulted in the withdrawal of providers from MWA and WE [work experience]… Put simply, disclosure [of names] would have been likely to have led to the collapse of the MWA scheme.”

In 2013, this information could well be released, but we can make the schemes collapse anyway. Every week, people use Boycott Workfare’s name and shame form to tell others who is using workfare and together we can keep up the pressure on those profiting from forced unpaid work.

We have made tens of high street brands and charities withdraw from workfare

A growing list of businesses and charities have pulled out of workfare schemes as result of public pressure. A few examples below…

HMV “I understand that some groups may be planning protests outside various retailers (who participate in the schemes) tomorrow and over the next few days. I don’t know whether you are in contact with anyone involved in this activity, but if you can kindly make them aware that we have now reviewed our policy and announced to national media as you requested that our stores locally are no longer taking part in government work experience scheme”

Oxfam “Oxfam does not offer placements for participants in the mandatory work activity, or compulsory elements of ‘work for your benefits’ schemes…We do this for two reasons: firstly, because these schemes impact unfairly on the support people receive, and so are incompatible with our goal of reducing poverty in the UK.”

Holland & Barrett Withdrawing on the eve of a UK-wide Boycott Workfare day of action, the Guardian reported: “A multinational company that was one of the pioneers of the government’s employment programme has pulled out of the scheme, saying it was no longer prepared to face further bad press and in-store protests and would now pay all its workforce.”

At the start of 2013, following a week of action in December, several large charities look set to join the list of those who will no longer take part.

We have shaped the language of the debate

“Workfare” has been a dirty word since its implementation in the US, so former DWP minister Chris Grayling was particularly annoyed that it has become the language of the debate in the UK. He was quoted complaining:

“One word that kept recurring was ‘workfare.’ In none of our titles of our schemes or any of the principles of our schemes is workfare. It is all about job search.”

We have shrunk the number of workfare placements

Published in December 2012, a DWP report into Mandatory Work Activity complained that it was unable to find placements for everyone because:

“The high profile withdrawal of placements from a number of larger charities meant a sharp reduction in placements.”

We have reduced the threat of sanctions on some schemes

In February 2012, there was a huge grassroots response to workfare, triggered by an advert for unpaid nightshifts in Tescos. As a result, sanctions on three of the five schemes were temporarily suspended:

“staff are asked to take immediate steps to ensure that no claimant of any age is sanctioned under the existing rules for failing to take up, attend or leaving the Jobcentre Plus Work Experience scheme, the Work Experience element of sector-based work academies and work experience arranged by Work Programme providers”

Guidance has now been issued which makes this suspension permanent for the Work Experience scheme, and for placements which are not for ‘Community Benefit’ from the Work Programme.

Given that the sanction regime has been intensified so that people now risk loss of benefits for up to three years, and that the number of sanctions has tripled under the new government, removing sanctions from any scheme is an important success. But we know people are still told that they will be sanctioned on these schemes or threatened with mandatory schemes if they don’t ‘volunteer’ which is why we will keep campaigning for an end to all workfare.

We have helped people defend their rights

As highlighted by lawyers in Cait Reilly’s judicial review, many of the schemes have been rolled out without information being published in the public domain about them which would enable people to know whether their referral was mandatory or not, and whether the correct procedure has been followed.

We have worked with consent.me.uk and donotsign.com to discover what the regulations for the schemes are and to support people to access their rights. One person who successfully avoided workfare told us their story:

“My job advisor told me that I’ve been mandated to work inside a charity shop for which I was expected to work 30 hours a week just to receive my Job Seekers Allowance. When I asked “Is it mandatory, that I have to do it?” my job advisor said “Yes.” At first I believed what my job advisor told me until I found the Boycott Workfare website which had links to other websites like consent.me.uk which highlighted you shouldn’t be referred onto MWA if you’re already doing your own voluntary work, which I was. When I next had my appointment to sign on and see my Job advisor I brought a copy along… it was agreed that it wasn’t necessary for me to go onto the MWA.”

In 2013, let’s keep it up, let’s make workfare collapse!

2013 brings with it the threat of unprecedented attacks on ordinary people who need social security to survive. With the introduction of Universal Credit in 2013, low-waged and part-time workers will be sucked into the jobsearch and workfare conditionality which has until now usually been directed at the unemployed. Sick and disabled people claiming ESA now also face the threat of workfare. But your success in 2012 in campaigning against workfare shows what we can achieve when we all do what we can to challenge injustice. The government fears that workfare could collapse because of public pressure – let’s make sure it happens!

Source

IDS: Politics at its most cynical

How does the secretary of state's conceit, that in-work benefit claimants are essentially fraudsters, serve the public interest?

 

It's been said that the reason the coalition is so shambolic is that it's not two parties but four: economic liberals and social liberals, more different on a moody day than Labour and Tory; and Tory "modernisers" against the Tory old guard. It would explain a lot – the way their internal battles look so much more painful than anything the opposition ever inflicts. But it is increasingly difficult to pin down these two types of Tory. Unless you think gay marriage is the central issue facing the nation and that it's possible to construct a political strategy from the dislike of foreigners, "modernisers" and "traditionalists" makes no sense as the fault line. Conservatives themselves sometimes like to divide into "nice" and "nasty", as if mimicking a fifties marriage will somehow confer on them the authority that their policies alone cannot inspire.

An interesting division has opened up recently that, for brevity, we can call "toff Tories" versus "all the others". The Blue Collar Conservative movement was set up by Carlisle activist Clark Vasey, with the intention of giving Tory candidates a chance in seats outside the south-east. One third of Tory MPs have already signed up to its core beliefs, though how much that differs from clicking "Like" on Facebook, I don't know. That core consists of a simple message: the Conservative vote doesn't have to narrow down to rich people and those who think they will become rich. It can appeal to regular, modestly paid people, but only if it shows some awareness of the cost of living, and accepts that just because you're claiming benefits – in or out of work – it doesn't mean you're scum. These two principles, two and a half years ago, would have seemed self-evident, the kind of anodyne statement that politicians sometimes make to keep their face moving in a slow conversation. Nowadays, it actually counts as a sticking point for this radically unpleasant party.

The architect of this kind of thinking – that the poor are kept so by state handouts, and if only they were left to sink, they would find it in themselves to swim – is, of course, Iain Duncan Smith. Possibly trying to create some diversion around the impending disaster of the universal credit, he wrote a column about in-work benefits at the weekend, blaming Labour's payments to supplement working families' income for the fact that public finances are "at breaking point".

Funnily enough, I agree with him in the first instance – it isn't the job of government to supplement low wages, which in effect subsidises corporate super-profits. Labour should have tackled child poverty by insisting on a living wage and taking seriously the perils of an economy that was increasingly built on low wages.

But there we part, IDS and I, because he attributes the problem to in-work benefit "fraudsters". This is another move that would once have seemed bizarre but is now a cliche – a system is deemed "unaffordable", the culprits are identified as a small core of liars, but since the unaffordability, by their terms, outstrips the dishonesty by such a huge margin, we are left to make the tacit leap that really, all of them are committing fraud. The very act of receiving money from the state constitutes a fraud. Amusingly, in Duncan Smith's article, they're not just fraudsters, they're foreign fraudsters – a piece of baroque nastiness ungrounded in any evidence. The number of foreigners claiming tax credits has never been calculated by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Anyway, let's not split hairs when the whole article was wrong. Channel 4 News did a fact check on the claims and found them wildly out. Tax credits went up by 8% over a period when Duncan Smith had claimed 58%; he had refused to distinguish between error and fraud, which drops to 0.7% once error is stripped out. It was wrong to the point that if he weren't such an unreadable, contradictory man – cantankerous but easily wounded, obsessed with the deficiencies of the poor but superstitiously afraid of them – you would assume he was being wrong on purpose.

And this, I think, is the true division of the Conservative party – the ones who are mistaken versus those who are wrong deliberately. Some of them are simply out of their depth, do not understand the benefits system or a government's realistic prospects of controlling the economy, don't get why well-meaning guys who are prepared to suck up to enterprise and clobber the unemployed wouldn't, on that basis alone, be enough to instil confidence and growth and convince a ratings agency.

Others take the Fox News approach: if you can just get enough misinformation out there, enough people who were only half-listening might half-believe you. Competing claims don't need to relate to facts, their validity will be judged on the manner in which they're delivered. You may have to retract later, but what does that matter? Does it even count as humiliation when the only people talking about it are the ones who disagreed with you anyway?

This is politics at its most cynical, its most rebarbative; this is politics pursued purely for personal advancement and for the game, in defiance of the public interest and the long term. I have a feeling that the first type of Tory would despise this second type even more than I do. The trick now is to tell them apart.

Twitter: @zoesqwilliams

Guardian

Disability Campaign Hits 22,000 signatures

A campaign to save Disability Living Allowance from abolition has reached a total of 22,000 signatures on an official government epetition website. Disability campaigners from around the UK have come together to form the campaigning group “Say No to DLA Disability Living Allowance Reform”.  Campaigners say the abolition of DLA may result in up to two million disabled people being worse off as a result of the changes to Personal Independence Payments.

Campaigners are hoping to reach 100,000 signatures to force parliament to debate the petition.
To sign the petition click the link – http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/38182
Source

Parasitic Tories feeding on misery and fear



The Ghost of Christmas Future



By Gina Ravens

I had an admittedly vague idea about a version of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol featuring the entire Tory party. God knows they need the revelation. I also had another vague idea about the new year resolutions they need to remain the human race, and further ideas about them being helplessness demons in human form sent to blight us. Having revealed these thoughts, I will abandon the theme and get chatty with you all. Now do please join in or we’ll find I’m just talking at you, and we don’t want that, do we?

I’m expressing my opinion here, so please don’t shoot me down for it. David Cameron, in the run up to the 2010 general election, looked down his greasy nose at Gordon Brown and stated that he and his party would take responsibility for their words and actions. Since then he has done anything but take responsibility. Like a soup kitchen he has had only one thing on the menu: Austerity. No alternative, no plan B, and unlike Oliver twist, he has been thoroughly generous in his portions of Austerity labelled out to all of society, with the exception of the wealthy, his pet species. I don’t know about you, but he has created an intense loathing of the wealthy in me. There are some of wealth with a social conscience, but they are rare indeed – an endangered species. I’m not a Christian, but I well understand why it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle etc etc.

Austerity is not working, and it, along with Tory ideals – with the world as it is – do not build the economy, they are destroying it further. How do we rebuild an economy with less money in circulation? It is like giving a tomato plant less water and expecting it to thrive. Anyone who has ever grown tomatoes knows that they require a lot of water to grow. Austerity kills, my friends, and the suffering and death in abundant evidence should have given the Tories a clue. However, it seems an Eton education does not create intelligence, it just convinces their alumni of their superiority. Very sad really, such opinions are inhuman and certifiable in my opinion.

The Ghost Of Christmas Future From The Movie ‘A Christmas Carol’

Imagine if these Tories had a revelation, through visitation by ghosts of Christmas, or having their champagne spiked by LSD or whatever. Imagine they decided to pay people what they were worth. We’d have no need of tax credits, because pay would be realistic and business owners shared the wealth. Benefits would be liveable amounts, with those in employment earning more than they would see on benefits, and nobody in work needing any kind of top up to get by. With money in the pockets of all, there would be more spending, with more spending, demand for product increases, and with it the economy. My state education in Dagenham in the sixties was sufficient to enable me to see these simple truths, much as I hated it at the time. I’m therefore very thankful not to have had an Eton education. The delusions it teaches are apparently very unhealthy.

You aren’t saying much, can I remind you that this is a conversation? Well, hopefully you’ll at least comment when I have finished. The Tories understand that employment should pay more than benefits, but their ideologies prevent them from urging the wealthy business owners to pay more. It suits their purpose far more to encourage the rich to pay a pittance, and their opinion of what is fair compelled them to starve and kill those who are not employed. Like I said, these are my opinions, I can’t be taken to court for having them, so I’ll say it again, in my opinion, they want to kill anyone who does not produce wealth, whether they are unemployed, sick, disabled or elderly. Retirement, it seems, is only for the wealthy, and anything we have paid into for years an illusion. This accounts for their despising the sick and unemployed who have paid in for years, they don’t feel we are entitled to the resources we paid into for so long.

I believe it is time we turned ATOS around and had them interview Tories to see if they are fit to govern. I suspect a rigorous examination would see that they are not the leaders of men they delude themselves to be, but parasites feeding on misery and fear instead.

GINA RAVENS

Keeping up the attack on benefits claimants

For the government, the holiday period is clearly a time to carry on the assault on benefits claimants.  David Cameron started it in his New Year message, covered in the Telegraph, which headlines it "We'll help the strivers, not welfare claimants".  Well, that's everyone who is elderly or disabled branded, as well as those trying to find work.  There's an extraordinary passage which shows just how clueless he is about the reality of unemployment:  “When people say we've got to stop our welfare reforms because somehow it is cruel to expect people to work, we are saying no. Getting people into good jobs is absolutely vital, not just for them, but for all of us."  Sorry?  Did someone say it was cruel to expect people to work?  What are you talking about?  The article points out that the message echoes that put out recently by Tories in marginal constituencies "demanding whether the Government should offer more help to 'hard working families' or 'people who don’t work'. The advertisements have been criticised by Labour as taking the Conservatives back to being the 'nasty party'."  Yes, and I would think they've alienated all the pensioners and disabled, too.

Iain Duncan Smith has been busy too.  Since it was pointed out that around 60% of those claiming benefits are actually working, he has turned his wrath on the tax credits system.  Several papers cover his attack, but the best version, perhaps, is in the Independent.  Now, I have to say that I was never entirely happy with the tax credits system.  It seemed to be subsidising bad employers.  And it goes too far up the income scale.  I knew a man with a young family who was on a good salary (I knew exactly what it was since it was partly my responsibility to pay it) who was eligible for the credits, while a single person under 50 wasn't.  I also knew someone who was offered a job with variable hours who panicked at the thought that he would face the money being clawed back.  But I wasn't aware that "after 2008 HMRC did not attempt to reclaim overpayments of less than £25,000. That is set to be reduced to £5,000 under the coalition, alongside moves to require proof of payments from those claiming for childcare or that children aged between 16 and 19 are in full-time education."  Reform is obviously necessary.

But, as usual, IDS goes over the top.  The Factcheck blog has shown that his figures are either wrong or just made up.  It seems that he will claim anything to justify his hostility to people on benefits.

Happy New Year, folks.

 

Source

Monster of 2012 starts the New Year as he means to go on

I see that Iain Duncan Smith is unrepentantly continuing his war against sanity.

(Yes, we can all see that it is those who receive welfare benefits that feel the pain, but it is the Secretary of State’s own lack of mental health that we’re witnessing whenever he makes a statement).

Yesterday he was banging the drum against the previous Labour government’s tax credit system. I should remind you, for the sake of clarity, that I don’t disagree with claims that tax credits were not a great way forward. The solution is for employers to pay employees enough money that they don’t need to claim social security benefits or tax credits. The principle is simple: If you’re in a job, you shouldn’t need benefits.

Insanity Dementia Smith has a different point of view. Well he would, wouldn’t he? He’s mad.

Instead, he claimed that the tax credit system, introduced in 2003, was wide open to abuse, with fra
ud and error costing more than £10 billion. Oh, and just for good measure, he threw in some good old-fashioned Tory xenophobia by claiming that fraudsters around the world targeted the benefit for their own personal gain.

“Tax credit payments rose by some 58 per cent ahead of the 2005 general election, and in the two years prior to the 2010 election, spending increased by about 20 per cent,” he said in a Telegraph article.

“Between 2003 and 2010, Labour spent a staggering £171 billion on tax credits, contributing to a 60 per cent rise in the welfare bill. Far too much of that money was wasted, with fraud and error under Labour costing over £10 billion.

“It will come as no surprise therefore that fraudsters from around the world targeted this benefit for personal gain. ”

Enter Channel 4′s FactCheck, whose representatives asked HM Revenue and Customs to provide the figures that support these claims. They could not.

Instead, we are told, in 2003-04, £16.4bn was paid, and the following year – the one that included the general election to which Mr Duncan Smith refers – £17.7bn. That’s an increase of 8 per cent, not 58.

The total spent on tax credits between 2003 and 2010 – under Labour – was £147bn, not £171bn.
During that time, £11.16bn was lost through fraud and error, with only 1.27bn of that down to fraud – 0.7 per cent of the total.

Regarding error, as a former tax credit recipient, I can report that HMRC was diligent to the point of harassment when it came to identifying errors and recovering the sums involved. This created considerable problems for me – and many others, I’m sure – as I received notification several times, during my claim period, that I had received large amounts in error. I could not understand this. I had filled the forms to the best of my ability. My only conclusion was that the system was complicated and its administrators had been looking for an excuse to take back money.

The result was that I had to become extremely adept, myself, at using the system. I then used it against the administrators to point out errors that they had made, and won back something like £2,000 from them. For a person living on his partner’s DLA and IB, and his own Carer’s Allowance, that’s a huge amount to have had taken away.

I wonder whether Mr Scream-at-the-moon includes money that had to be paid back after correct appeals in his calculation of error. If so, he’s wrong again because that cash was owed to the claimants (as it was to me).

The claim that fraudsters around the world targeted tax credits is completely unsubstantiated as the system does not record the nationalities of claimants.

However: Everyone claiming Working Tax Credits must have a UK National Insurance number. Everyone claiming Child Tax Credits must be able to show they are on Child Benefit, for which they must produce a birth certificate for each child, thereby proving they were born in the UK. So it seems that, while the system may not record the nationalities of claimants, those facts do, in fact, play a part in determining each claim.

Mr Smith remains a disgrace to the government. What a shame David Cameron is such a weak leader that he can’t even summon up the guts to throw him out.

STOP PRESS: What’s this, in a BBC Newsnight press release that’s just appeared on my screen?

“Aspects of Iain Duncan Smith’s CV, relating to his education, are inaccurate and misleading, an investigation by BBC Newsnight reveals.“

Do we have another Jeffrey Archer on our hands?

The investigation into the Conservative Party leader’s education and early career – broadcast at 10.30pm on BBC TWO (Wednesday 18 December 2002) – was presented by Michael Crick, author of the best-selling biography of Jeffrey Archer. It seems we do.

It seems he didn’t go to the Universita di Perugia in Italy, founded by the Pope in 1308, but to the Universita per Stranieri (University for Foreigners) which was founded in 1921 and did not grant degrees when he studied there in 1973. IDS did not get any qualifications there or even finish his exams.

He wasn’t educated at Dunchurch College of Management either. This was the former staff college for GEC Marconi, for whom he worked in the 1980s. IDS completed six separate courses lasting a few days each, adding up to about a month in total. He quite clearly was not there for a sustained period of time and never earned a recognised qualification there.

Who’s the fraud now, Iain?

Source

IDS gets his facts wrong yet again

Or, as we say in less charitable circles, he flat-out lied, fabricating his figures for Tax Credit “fraud”.
http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-ids-tax-credit-claims-discredited/12160

No surprise there – the man is a pathological liar and couldn’t tell the truth with a gun to his head. And lying so consistently and so blatantly is a major indicator of mental illness, which poses the question “Is he fit to hold office?”

In my view, absolutely not.

It’s must be obvious to everybody close to him that the man is a liability. In the face of overwhelming evidence that Universal Credit is going to be a massive fuck-up – even his own advisors have told him to back off, and have been ignored.

UC and PIP are going to see the lives of hundreds of thousands of people crash and burn, and let nobody in government gives a shit. The Guardian, about a year ago floated the idea that Cameron has set up IDS to fail massively with this insane project. The fact that he allowed IDS to reject the move to Justice and remain at the DWP seems to endorse that idea – Cameron could have insisted. He didn’t.

That IDS will rain down chaos on the sick, the disabled, the unemployed and the simply poor now seems to be a given – but all that matters to Cameron is the IDS self-destructs, destroying whatever credibility and support he might still have in the party. We, of course, are just collateral damage.

If Cameron wants to have any hope at all of electoral success in 2015, he has to act now, to remove this frothing madman from office.

But he won’t.

Ron's Rants

Happy New Year! And here’s the coalition outlook for 2013: grim with no plan for growth

Tony Dolphin is the chief economist at IPPR and a regular contributor to The Guardian and New Statesman 

A year ago I suggested “economic policy has become a matter of hoping that something turns up – and that is why, for the UK economy, 2012 is unlikely to be a happy new year”.

Thinking about prospects for 2013, it seems that time has stood still for the last twelve months and the same conclusion still holds. Policy-makers appear to have little idea how to boost growth in the economy and are left hoping that the news will get better.

In December 2011, most economists thought 2012 would be a year of weak growth, falling inflation and rising unemployment. They were broadly right about inflation, but badly overestimated both growth and unemployment.

Forecasts for 2012:

Forecasts made in:
Nov 2012	Dec 2011	Change
GDP growth rate (%)	-0.2	0.6	↓
Consumer price inflation (Q4, %)	2.4	2.1	↑
Claimant unemployment (Q4, millions)	1.59	1.77	↓
Current account ( £ billion)	-49.3	-18.4	↑
PSNB (2012/13, £ billion)	100.3	119.1	↓

The latest forecasts show economists once again are forecasting weak growth, falling inflation and rising unemployment. The risk is that they are still too optimistic about growth, but that – unlike in 2012 – they will be right about unemployment going up.

Forecasts for 2013 (made in November 2012):

GDP growth rate (%)	1.1
Consumer price inflation (Q4, %)	2.1
Claimant unemployment (Q4, millions)	1.65
Current account ( £ billion)	-35.1
PSNB (2013/14, £ billion)	111.9

There should by now be few who doubt that the biggest problem facing the UK economy is a shortage of aggregate demand. Consumer spending is increasing at a sub-par rate because wages are growing less rapidly than prices and households are choosing to reduce their debts. Export growth has tailed off badly because the UK’s main market – Europe – is back in recession. The government is cutting its spending on goods and services. And businesses, although in aggregate they are sitting on large cash piles, are reluctant to spend until they see more demand for their products.

The text book solution to a lack of aggregate demand is to ease monetary policy, and if that is ineffective, to ease fiscal policy too. Monetary policy has certainly been eased in the UK; interest rates are at record lows and the monetary policy committee has pumped £375 billion into the economy through its programme of quantitative easing. But its effectiveness is clearly waning. Sterling has appreciated by 3.5% on a trade-weighted basis since the start of the year – a sign of tighter monetary conditions. Meanwhile, banks need to rebuild their capital ratio, which means a key transmission mechanism for monetary policy – increased bank lending – is blocked.

Fiscal policy is, however, not being eased; it is being tightened, taking demand out of the economy because the government remains committed to deficit reduction. As an alternative, it has come up with a number of schemes to increase lending to the private sector, most recently through ‘Funding for Lending’ and through the ‘British Business Bank’. At the margin, these will probably be positive for growth but they will not, on their own, turn the economy around.

Growth therefore depends on something turning up. This is literally true in the case of the latest forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which sees growth of 1.2% in 2013, followed by 2.0% in 2014 – in line with the consensus. In the absence of strong real wage growth, the OBR’s forecast for consumer spending, and therefore for real GDP, requires an increase in household debt, commencing in the middle of 2013; this would be a significant change from the trend of the last four years.



Years of experience have taught me to be very suspicious of economic forecasts that rely on a change in trend like this one, unless there is a very good reason behind it. In this case, it is not at all clear why households should suddenly decide to bring debt reduction to an end. The level of debt is still high, relative to the UK’s history (and to debt in other major economies), interest rates cannot go any lower and real income growth will be sluggish at best (and could be negative again following the recently announced increases in domestic energy prices), meaning consumer confidence is likely to remain depressed. Most importantly, since most debt acquired by households is in the form of mortgages, the housing market is likely to remain moribund until prices are more clearly cheap.

Barring an unexpected resolution of the Eurozone crisis, or an even less likely change of heart from the government on fiscal policy, the risks to UK growth forecasts are, therefore, firmly tilted to the downside.

How this plays out politically will depend, to some extent, on what happens to unemployment. In 2012, the double-dip recession did less damage to the credibility of government economic policy than it might have done because employment increased and unemployment fell by more than expected. Few economists expect the government’s luck in this regard to hold. The consensus forecast (for the claimant count measure of unemployment) sees it rising by about 60,000 during 2013; the OBR thinks the labour force survey measure will go up from 2.5 million in the third quarter of 2012, to 2.7 million a year later, and stay at this elevated level until 2015.

The best way to describe the outlook for the UK economy is ‘uncertain’. Unfortunately, uncertainty is not just a useful description; it is a key determinant of the outlook. Fluctuations in the economy are generated by governments, companies and individuals interacting and trying to deal with uncertain futures. The risk in 2013 is that all the talk of years of austerity at home and continuing crisis in Europe creates a huge amount of uncertainty, which will dampen animal spirits to such an extent that the economy fails to grow again.

Source

2012: A Year of Lies and Blunders at the DWP Part 1

The Department of Work and Pensions, under Iain Duncan Smith, has spent the year lurching from one disaster to the next, as the Secretary of State’s long cherished welfare reforms began to unravel in every direction.

Things first started looking wobbly back in February when the workfare row first burst into the headlines.    When word leaked out that companies like Tesco, McDonalds, Pizza Hit and Sainsburys were staffing their businesses with unemployed people forced to work a storm of protest erupted both on and offline.

Thousands of people threatened to boycott companies exploiting unpaid workers on twitter whilst protests in and outside their businesses were hastily organised.

Chris Grayling, who was then the famously bungling Employment Minister, responded with a string of lies, accusing critics of workfare of being job snobs and attempting to misrepresent the nature of the Work Experience scheme, which is just one of several workfare schemes.

Not to be outdone Iain Duncan Smith joined the fray and began lying through his teeth that there was no mandatory workfare on either the Work Experience scheme or the Work Programme – the largest back to work initiative and the one that so much of welfare reform depends on being a success.  When that didn’t work IDS threw a tantrum.

When DWP documents were unearthed which proved the ministers were lying, the documents were re-written overnight, a genuinely Orwellian move which gave an early indication of how low this Government was prepared to sink.  This wasn’t the only document to be ‘disappeared’ to cover up for the Government’s lies.

Despite the DWP’s shambolic attempt to hide the truth about their welfare to work provisions, businesses using the scheme quickly began distancing themselves from unpaid labour in the face of public anger.  When a string of household names abandoned workfare – no doubt calculating that the bad PR was costing more than the gains from free labour – the Government were forced into a humiliating retreat.

Sanctions were dropped from all workfare schemes involving profit making businesses meaning that so called Work Experience became, in theory, entirely voluntary. Whilst this climb down represented an important victory, it only scratched the surface of plans for force down everybody’s wages by requiring unemployed people to work for free.  Workfare with a ‘community benefit’ continued on many other schemes which usually meant working for free in a charity shop.  Details also emerged that those who refused to work for free for High Street names on the Work Experience scheme where simply threatened with other forms of workfare.  The fight to end workfare in all its forms was only just getting started.

Attention in March turned to the brutal Work Capability Assessment (WCA), the computer based test carried out by IT firm Atos which is designed to strip benefits from sick and disabled claimants.  The horrific and stressful process has led to may disabled people living in fear of being called in to one of the endless assessments at which a short interview attempts to prove claimants are ‘fit for work’ .

After some dogged lobbying by activists from the Black Triangle Campaign amongst others, Scottish GPs slammed the brutal regime and called for an immediate end to the WCA.

Sick or disabled claimants who are found capable of some work at some point in the future at their WCA are sent on the Work Programme where failure to attend training sessions, meetings or interviews leads to benefits being stopped.  Figures revealed last March showed that 10,000 sanctions had been inflicted on disabled people in the previous year.  This led to the role of disability, homelessness and anti-poverty charity’s role in the Work Programme coming under increasing fire – another theme which would remain throughout the year.

The Work Progamme itself hit the headlines at the same time when welfare-to-work parasites A4e managed to leak over hundreds of megabytes of commercial secrets onto the internet by publishing them on their own website.

The documents revealed A4e’s atrocious performance figures on the £6 billion Work Programme along with nuggets explaining how they could be paid £13,ooo of tax payers cash for simply asking someone to fill in a form.

April began with the omni-shambles budget and pastygate knocking DWP bungling off the front pages as George Osborne back-tracked on almost every measure he’d previously announced.

It was also the month that the extent of this Government’s plans to demolish the welfare state began to become apparent.  David Cameron floated the idea of ending Housing Benefit for those under 25, an astonishing suggestion coming against a backdrop of already rising homelessness.

There was more bad news for the wobbling Work Programme as homelessness charity SHP pulled out of the scheme warning that homeless people risk being forced to ‘beg and steal to survive’ due to the brutal sanctions regime.   Research also emerged that the Government’s Work Experience scheme, which had led to the earlier workfare row, is of no value in helping young people find work.

May began with yet more demonstrations against workfare, with chaos brought to Oxford Street and businesses picketed and occupied around the UK on May Day.  Reform to disability benefits also hit the spotlight as a report was released warning that the change from Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to the new benefit Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is likely to drive thousands of disabled people out of work.  PIP is due to be assessed using the same crude computer based tests as the aforementioned WCA.  Atos even have the contract to run the tests which are being openly designed to strip benefits from 20% of disabled people.

Atos have identified the difficulty in hiring enough medical staff as one of the major risk factors facing the implementation of PIP.  This was brought into sharp focus towards the end of May when doctors in the BMA endorsed the decision earlier made by Scottish GPs and voted overwhelmingly to end the Work Capability Assessment.

Iain Duncan Smith had another tantrum, this time aiming his fury at the disabled Remploy workers his department was sacking.  Astonishingly the Secretary of State accused the workers of sitting round drinking coffee all day and claimed they didn’t produce very much at all.

By far the best bit of May however was the demise of A4e founder and boss Emma Harrison.  After a string of fraud allegations Emma did what any innocent person would do and scarpered, trousering as much of tax payers cash as she possibly could in the process.  Her decision to step down from A4e, one of the largest welfare-to-work providers, even led to street parties in some parts of the UK.

Her resignation came as it seemed possible that Iain Duncan Smith’s Work Programme may actually be increasing unemployment.

Finally in May a legal ruling threw the bedroom tax into chaos after a court ruled it is illegal to stop housing benefits for disabled people who need a 24 hour care.  This wasn’t be the first time that DWP policies ran into trouble last year because no-one had bothered to check whether they were legal or not.

June began with the news that unemployed people had been forced to not only work for free, but also sleep rough under a bridge during the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations – and that Tomorrow’s People, the charity in charge of the fiasco, are little more than a Tory and business front.

Homelessness continued to rise which led to Lord Fraud, the Minister for Welfare Reform, lying through his teeth by claiming a study carried out before housing benefit cuts were implemented proved that the cuts could not be responsible.

Chris Grayling decided to start a fight with the Information Commissioners Office for reasons best known to himself, whilst DWP insiders suggested that Universal Credit was already running into problems.  This followed a story earlier in the year warning that thousands of children are set to lose free school meals when the new benefit begins, something that had not even seemed to occur to Iain Duncan Smith.  Then horrifying details began to surface of how Universal Credit may force families to split up, will create a generation of latch key kids, and represents the most savage attack yet seen on those working part time or who are self-employed.

July began with the happy news that Holland & Barrett, who had planned to recruit thousands of unpaid staff on the Work Experience scheme had pulled out of workfare altogether.  This move followed relentless campaigning by Solidarity Federation which had led to pickets outside Holland & Barrett stores across the UK.

Then came a new low from Chris Grayling when he attempted to smear all disabled people as criminals, whilst Work Programme contractors G4S smeared Work Programme participants as being unemployable.

With the country soon set to be bored to tears by Olympic fervour, the rest of the month was pretty quiet.   It wouldn’t stay that way.

Source

Tories rob £13bn from poor…

 

The Tories plan to start 2013 by slashing every benefit they can lay their hands on.

From unemployment benefit to in-work tax credits, they are going to cut welfare payments even as prices rocket.

The first debate of the year in parliament will be dedicated to putting through their latest vicious attack.

Most benefits are currently linked to price rises through inflation—but the Tories are putting a stop to that. Instead of going up by 5 percent a year, they will be held down to just 1 percent.

Meanwhile the cost of food and fuel continues to soar, forcing the poorest to choose between heating and eating. This vote alone will take £2 billion from benefits—but that’s just the beginning of the Tory plot.

David Cameron used his new year message to announce his intentions, saying he wouldn’t stop welfare “reforms” just because people say they are “cruel”.

This year he is preparing for the Tories’ biggest overhaul of the benefits system yet, in plans known as universal credit.

Jobseekers’ allowance, housing benefits, tax credits and more are to be replaced by this new scheme—and it will be capped at £500 a week per household.

The Department for Work and Pensions insists this is somehow not a cut. But it has also promised it will “save” an extra £10 billion from the benefits bill. It puts many people at risk of losing their homes.

A new “bedroom tax” will penalise people with “too many” bedrooms in social housing on housing benefit.

People with a spare room, even a tiny one, could lose up to £80 from their housing benefit.

Nowhere

The Tories are hoping that this will force people to move. Some 95,000 are expected to, according to the National Housing Federation. But many will have nowhere to go.

Meanwhile housing benefit will no longer increase at the same pace as rents—at a time when evictions are already soaring. The Chartered Institute of Housing says the 400,000 poorest families will be hit.

And an extra £1 billion will come from disabled people being moved from the Disability Living Allowance to a new “Personal Independence Payment”.

Some 280,000 people who currently receive the highest payments will have it slashed. That will mean 90,000 fewer motability vehicles by 2016, trapping disabled people in their homes.

The Tories aren’t just robbing the money, but meddling with how it’s claimed and spent. Domestic violence charities have warned that lumping benefits together in a single payment to each household will trap women in abusive relationships, putting their partners in control of their finances.

The application process will move entirely online. Already a whopping £12 billion of benefits goes unclaimed—far more than the amount lost to benefit fraud. Moving services online will see this increase.

And minister Iain Duncan Smith has refused to rule out withdrawing housing benefit from everyone under the age of 25.

Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke even put forward a bill calling for a “welfare cash card” which would ban “the purchase of luxury goods such as cigarettes, alcohol, Sky television and gambling”.

The only silver lining to this enormous attack is that they may struggle to pull it off. The Tories had hoped to roll out universal credit this April. Instead it will be trialled in four London boroughs in the hope of going national later in the year.

The Tories are building up to the key battle in their war on benefit claimants—but it’s not too late to stop them.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stop cuts? Perhaps, says Labour

Three Labour council leaders this week warned that Tory cuts could lead to “social unrest” and “the break-up of civil society”. The Newcastle, Liverpool and Sheffield council leaders say they fear running out of money for essential services within five years.

It comes after Labour leader Ed Miliband made the decision to oppose some of the Tory cuts—sort of.

After more than two years of the Tory assault, “senior figures close to” Miliband are starting to make noises about benefit cuts. But they have not yet confirmed that Labour will vote against the cuts in parliament next week.

The most Miliband has been willing to say publicly is that “six out of ten people hit by these cuts are people who get up every morning and go to work”.

That’s true. But he has refused to extend his support to unemployed people, telling them they “can work and try to avoid responsibility”. Anyone looking to Labour to stop the cuts will be disappointed.

The Socialist Worker

Thirty years of Tories trying to look tough

Yet again former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher proved her spite—by not dying at the end of 2012. That wasn’t the only bad news.

David Cameron put his crackdown on welfare at the centre of his New Year message. He said that 2012 was a “tough” year—for us, not him—but claimed the government remained “on the right track”. Like Thatcher, he is apparently not for turning.

Yet in reality she was—and he is too. The release of documents from Thatcher’s government under the 30 year rule reveal some lessons for today.

There are differences between the two governments. Thatcher’s education secretary was Keith Joseph—a self-knowingly clever thug. Today’s education secretary, Michael Gove, lacks any self awareness.

Then as now the Tories were unpopular as they pushed through cuts. Then as now they turned on the weakest and most vulnerable. They claimed that they didn’t want to destroy the welfare state. But they were lying.

Thatcher declared that she supported the NHS. The documents show she wanted to end it and move everyone to private healthcare. Cameron now claims that he has ringfenced the NHS from the cuts. He is lying.

Then as now the Tories presented themselves as tough and determined. But the Iron Lady persona of Thatcher was a myth to make the Tories seem unbeatable. Even in her so-called finest hour of the Falklands War she prevaricated over what to do in case it offended the US bosses.

Importantly the plan for the abolition of the welfare state was scrapped. The Tories were terrified the plan would spark a revolt that would bring them down.

The battles that took place at key moments throughout Thatcher’s 11 years could have broken the Tory government. And for all the bluster they knew it. Our side failed to win not because of Thatcher’s strength, but because of the cowardice of Labour and union leaders.

Steel strikes in 1980 and the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984-85 threw Thatcher’s government into crisis. On each occasion Labour and trade union leaders betrayed workers’ courage and determination. In the end it was mass protest and riot by ordinary people that brought Thatcher down.

Today the Tories are far less confident than they appear. The establishment is continually lurching from crisis to crisis. The Tories have fallen out with their friends in the media. Their relations with their pet boot boys in the cops are a mess.

They all still agree that we should pay for the crisis. But there is growing anger and bitterness at the attacks from the toffs. Now as then they can beaten.

---

 

Benefits divide and rule

When workers leave home in the morning, they should resent “the closed blinds of their next door neighbour sleeping off a life on benefits”—at least that’s what Tory chancellor George Osborne wants us to think.

It’s the argument the Tories wheel out again and again over benefits. Why should unemployed people get anything that employed people don’t? They say that poor families shouldn’t be allowed to live in the wrong parts of London, or have the wrong number of children.

We should see this for what Osborne makes clear it is—an attempt to divide working class people from their neighbours. The Tories hope that as the economy sinks into the mire and the cuts start to bite, we will turn on each other, fighting over the scraps that are left.

The big lie that backs this up is the idea that living on benefits is a “lifestyle choice”. But the idea of a permanently unemployed “underclass” is just a nasty myth.

Most working class people have periods in work punctuated by occasional unemployment. And no one spends their life on the meagre dole because they’re lazy. Fighting the blizzard of new rules to keep your benefits is a job in itself.

People are unemployed for the simple reason that there aren’t the jobs out there to get. Why should they be punished for that?

Source

Petrol bomb attack on Jobcentre

Published on Monday 31 December 2012 13:55

JOBCENTRE staff were left shocked when they turned up for work to find their offices had been targeted in a petrol bomb attack.

Firefighters were called to the Jobcentre Plus office in Queen Street, Kirkintilloch, on Saturday, December 22, at around 10pm.

Two fire appliances attended the incident.

A small amount of damage was caused, however, the office opened as normal on the Monday, December 24.

Police say a 50-year-old local man has been charged with wilful fireraising.

Kirkintilloch Herald

Duncan Smith's attack on working poor a 'smokescreen'

As the government continues its aggressive rhetoric against benefits and claimants, welfare campaigners have pledged to continue the struggle against the government's welfare cuts and changes into 2013.

Yesterday (30 December), the government continued its assault on the working poor in an article by under-fire Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, whose claims about fraud have been described as "very misleading".

The backdrop to Mr Duncan Smith's latest intervention, designed to shape key parliamentary debates in 2013, is deep and substantial.

Back in October 2012, the Children's Society, Citizens Advice and the consortium Disability Rights UK published a report that showed that up to 500,000 disabled people and families could lose out as a result of the current structure of Universal Credit, due to be rolled out over the coming year.

Their research demonstrated that 100,000 households with children may have their incomes lowered by up to £28 a week.

By the same token, 230,000 people with severe disabilities who do not have an adult to assist them are likely to be out of pocket by between £28 and £58 a week. Another 116,000 disabled people already in work are at risk of losing £40 a week.

The government, which is using flawed assessments to remove disabled and sick people from benefits to save money, without proper regard to 'real world' work or domestic needs, says that those currently on benefit will not see a reduction in their support.

But welfare analysts point out that this is not true either, since the "transitional protection" payment created to achieve this will be frozen at the time of the switchover and not index linked. This means that, from day one, it will start to be devalued by inflation.

In addition, some 5 million people will be required to be constantly looking for 'more or better paid' work as a condition of keeping in-work support. Those who fail to meet stiff requirements in this regard may have benefits sanctioned, or be forced onto workfare.

Charities, along with church and faith groups and increasingly vocal and active grassroots campaigns lead by disabled and sick people - like the War on Welfare (WOWpetition) initiative - are urging the government to rethink its welfare and work policies substantially.

Prime Minister David Cameron's claim that overall funding is going up has also been disproved by researchers, but continues to be the line pumped out by Whitehall and repeated in mass circulation right-wing tabloid newspapers.

Adjusting for inflation, disability benefits are projected to go down by £222 million from £13.559 billion this year to £13.337 billion in 2016/17.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail and others are maintaining a remorseless attack on claimants, seeking to brand them workshy, and this week Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith - who has been shocked by the strength of opposition to his welfare-cutting agenda - has launched a broadside against the tax credit system in order to bolster current proposals and refocus his attack on the working poor.

Critics say that this is a "smokescreen" to detract attention from the serious damage that the coalition government's policies are causing.

Last week disturbing testimonies heard by the Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC), a Whitehall body responsible for monitoring Mr Duncan Smith's planned welfare changes, showed that there is a danger of driving vulnerable families out of mainstream society.

The SSAC was particularly critical of the sanctions regime the government intends to introduce alongside Universal Credit, showing it to be inflexible and out-of-touch with the realities of poor, unemployed and marginalised people's lives.

Mr Duncan Smith has swept aside such criticisms and yesterday (30 December 2012) went on the attack again with an article in the Daily Telegraph claiming that tax credits, among the provisions to be replaced by Universal Credit, have "wasted" £10 billion.

Taxpayers are losing out to illicit welfare claimants and fraudsters from "around the world" targeting the system, the Work and Pensions Secretary claimed. His views were being reproduced uncritically by the BBC and other news outlets last night.

But critics point out that the minister's claims are conflating fraud with error, that the "tourism" allegations are unsubstantiated, and that research by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) itself shows fraud to be small, steadily falling and at a ten-year low overall.

Meanwhile, underpayments are running at £1.3 billion and benefits unclaimed by those entitled to them amount to around £12 billion, dwarfing the (mostly) error and (some fraud) estimate of £3.4 billion - 0.8 per cent of total benefit expenditure.

Moreover, tax fraud by the wealthy over the same period has cost £500 billion, 50 times the contested benefit-related sum cited by Mr Duncan Smith.

Last night the Joint Public Issues Team (JPIT) of the Baptist, Methodist and United Reformed Churches described the Telegraph article as "very misleading", adding on Twitter that "fraud levels [have been] decreasing for a decade and [are] now at historically low levels."

Simon Barrow, co-director of the beliefs and values thinktank Ekklesia, commented: "The government is continually trying to justify its welfare changes and cuts, which research shows to be damaging to the most vulnerable, with a raft of misleading claims about those who receive benefit support.

"It is bypassing the fact that the overwhelming majority of those who receive also contribute, in tax and other ways. It is effectively labelling all claimants (the majority of whom are in work), as 'scroungers', all disabled and sick people (irrespective of their real-world circumstances) as 'shirkers', and all the jobless (without regard to the actual availability of viable paid work) as 'skivers'.

"Iain Duncan Smith's latest claims about tax credit look suspiciously like an attempt to divert attention from up to 500,000 disabled people and their families who may lose out under Universal Credit. Equally he is facing sharp and well-researched criticisms from the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Work and Pensions Select Committee, mounting pressure from charities and church groups to change course, and a new e-democracy petition against the government's 'war on welfare'.

"It is important to examine the bigger picture here. Just as housing benefit subsidises high-rent landlords and shows the need for rent controls to support those in housing need, so tax credits subsidise low-wage employers and need to be replaced by a fair credit system alongside real action to tackle poverty pay and lack of sustainable jobs. Policies that stigmatise and punish poorly paid, unemployed, disabled and sick people, along with those with mental health and other problems, are morally, politically and economically wrong, no matter which government introduces them.

"For many, it may be additionally shocking that a punitive approach which seems to lack both compassion and understanding towards the most vulnerable in society is being pursued by a government minister who uses the cloak of 'Christian values' for such policies and appears to have no regard for his own church's social teaching," said the Ekklesia co-director.

The Universal Credit is due to replace Jobseeker's Allowance, tax credits, Income Support, Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and housing benefits with a single payment.

The whole system will be 'piloted' in parts of northeast England in April 2013. It will come into force across Britain, for all new claimants, from October 2013. There are fears that the piloting is inadequate in both time and scope to allow for significant reforms to what the coalition is determined to push through.

* Duncan Smith condemns tax credits as 'not fit for purpose': http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20873180

* FactCheck: IDS tax credit claims discredited: http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-ids-tax-credit-claims-disc...

* 'No (tax) credit for Iain Duncan Smith', by Symon Hill: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/17714

* 'Government told it must face significant Universal Credit problems': http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/17459

* National Statistics report, 'Fraud and Error in the Benefit System: 2011/12 Estimates' (DWP): http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd2/index.php?page=fraud_error

* 'Billions in benefits go unclaimed' (BBC, February 2012): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17139088

* Is spending on disability benefits being cut or going up? Full Fact: http://fullfact.org/factchecks/disability_benefits_cut_universal_credit-...

* 'War on Welfare' (WOW) petition: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/43154

Source

Another moral wrong from IDS on work and welfare

Should the welfare system be reformed? Is the tax credit system flawed? Is a universal credit a good idea in principle? The answer to all these questions is 'yes'. But if the question is about whether the government is tackling these issues in the correct way, the answer is 'no'. A huge change of direction is required.

Rather than listening to constructive and well-informed criticism of its policies, however, the coalition is continually trying to justify its present welfare changes and cuts, which research shows to be damaging to the most vulnerable, with a raft of misleading claims about those who receive benefit support. This regrettably shows that its agenda is not reform but punishment, not efficiency but withdrawal of funds, not support for the poorest but gain for the wealthiest.

In its self-justifying rhetoric, the government is bypassing the fact that all but a handful of those who receive support also contribute to society, in tax and other ways. It is effectively labelling all claimants (the majority of whom are in work), as 'scroungers', all disabled and sick people (irrespective of their real-world circumstances) as 'shirkers', and all the jobless (without regard to the actual availability of viable paid work) as 'skivers'.

Now the government, through an article in the Daily Telegraph by the Work and Pensions Secretary, is highlighting an alleged £10 billion loss through tax credit (mostly government error, according to its own research, incidentally), while glossing £500 billion lost through tax avoidance by the wealthy in the same period, alongside some £10-12 billion per year in unclaimed entitlements by people who deserve and need them.

The article has been shown to be largely inaccurate in its assertions by the Channel 4 News 'Fact Check' team (see below).

In fact, Iain Duncan Smith's latest claims about tax credit look suspiciously like an attempt to divert attention from up to 500,000 disabled people and their families who may lose out under Universal Credit, which replaces it and other benefits.

Equally he is facing sharp and well-researched criticisms from the Social Security Advisory Committee (December 2012) and the Work and Pensions Select Committee (November 2012), mounting pressure from charities and church groups to change course, and a new e-democracy petition (http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/43154) against the government's 'war on welfare'.

It is important to examine the bigger picture here. Just as housing benefit subsidises high-rent landlords and shows the need for rent controls to support those in housing need, so tax credits subsidise low-wage employers and need to be replaced by a fair credit system alongside real action to tackle poverty pay and lack of sustainable jobs.

Policies that stigmatise and punish poorly paid, unemployed, disabled and sick people, along with those with mental health and other problems, are morally, politically and economically wrong, no matter which government introduces them.

Iain Duncan Smith's visible anger at commentator Owen Jones confronting him with the fatal human cost of the government's policies on BBC TV's 'Question Time', and his similar reaction in the Commons to Ian Lavery MP holding out a suicide note from a Wansbeck constituent who had taken his own life after being informed that he was no longer entitled to disability benefits, were among the low points of 2012.

For many, it may be additionally shocking that a punitive approach to welfare (one which seems to lack both compassion and understanding towards the most vulnerable in society) is being pursued by a government minister who uses the cloak of 'Christian values' for such policies, and appears to have no serious regard for much of his own Church's social teaching.

* Duncan Smith condemns tax credits as 'not fit for purpose': http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20873180

* FactCheck: IDS tax credit claims discredited: http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-ids-tax-credit-claims-disc...

* Duncan Smith's attack on working poor a 'smokescreen', say critics: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/17715

* 'How IDS measures up to Catholic Social Teaching', by Bernadette Meaden:
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/17235

* No (tax) credit for Iain Duncan Smith, by Symon Hill: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/17714

* WOWpetition: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/43154

----------

© Simon Barrow is co-director of Ekklesia.

Source

Nudging You Off the Dole Using Head Science

Thalernomics

The State loves breaking down working class resistance and the government is no different. Its’Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) have recently been applying head science to claimants in a trial considered “pioneering” by one liberal newsshoot. It basically involves experimenting with claimants to find the best methods of throwing them off the dole “more quickly” and has its roots in behavioural economics.

BIT, or the ‘Nudge’ Unit, was launched by the Cabinet Office in 2010 and is run by a group of dusty know-it-alls intent on finding ways for “people to make better choices for themselves” and live happily ever after in a land of, well, happily ever after. The Nudge Unit prays to their god Thaler, Richard Thaler —whose surname gives us the noun dollar— an American economist who claimed to have worked out why people make market & investment mistakes and how to not make those mistakes and therefore make more money.

Basically, Thaler and his army think people are stupid and by positive reinforcement, or ‘nudging’, people can be influenced to make better/more-positive actions/decisions. This is why Thaler’s behavioural theory has popped up in the courts of Obama and Cameron, the latter setting up the Nudge Unit that has been bouncing round the country applying Nudge Theory to anything it can get its hands on —including the unemployed.

Government likes to engineer people's lives like it's some fucking giant game of SimCity, so BIT (or the Nudge Unit) have been messing about in Jobcentres seeing if they can ‘save more money’ by fast-tracking the unemployed into work by cutting red tape and subjecting claimants to a “range of different processes”, including getting claimants to write about traumatic events for 10 or 15 minutes every month. Very fucking crafty.

Expressive writing was used by the Nudge Unit in a 3-month trial at 3 jobcentres to apparently “build psychological resilience and well being”. But, by getting claimants to express themselves via trauma, you also gain an insight into a psychological world that would otherwise remain private, no? And what better way to get them a job, any job, by being able to play on their psychology. Seems like it’s less down to building “resilience and well being” and more about suggestion and coercion; and with minimal rights, claimants are the perfect subject to try out these nu-fangled theories without too much resistance.

Behind all the big words and Government backing, Nudge Theory looks and sounds very similar to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, which in turn begins to look and sound very similar to Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) —the latter being used by Work Programme (WP) providers, such as A4e, to 'motivate' their customers towards behavioural patterns that make the WP Provider cash.

“The results are impressive” claim the Nudge Unit, with 15%-20% of claimants more likely to be kicked off benefits and into no-jobs 13 weeks after signing on. And no fucking wonder, when a team led by doctors and lords have employed psychological coercion to get you to that happy place of work, where dignity and money abound.

What real boils the revolutionary blood is nonsense like:

"Developing new tools which seek the active commitment of jobseekers to engage in specific activities, linked to aspects of their daily routines ('commitment devices'), and offering greater stretch".

Erm, you mean finding new ways to pin down a claimant using otherwise private information? A4e have been at these sorts of 'commitment devices' for years, recently culminating in something called Total Person:

"If you are living in deprivation, with multiple problems preventing you from playing a full part in society, what you need is power, options and advice to solve your own problems. You need a single person who understands you, your family, and the place you grew up; sticks with you in the long term; treats you like a human, not a number; and backs you to build a different future for yourself. We call this approach Total Person."

People get scam emails less sickening than this. Yet, the Government is pouring massive amounts of money into the gullets of these programmes —the impeachment, in some form or another, of the welfare recipient always being the end result.

The objective of Nudge, NLP, Total Person, whatever went before —and used in this way— is to invade the psychology of the individual and open it out to the disciplinary engineering of the government. At the same time, the individual is given ‘technologies of the self’ to do the same job —ultimately, we end up being attacked from within and without; and that makes it all the more important that we fuck the ruling classes & their methods right up!

This is a class war against us, a global proletariat in and out of work, who are barely managing to eke out a living during a new epoch of accumulation that's being touted as Austerity. So, these kinds of behavioural devices used to discipline and manage the workforce must be recognised, ridiculed, and finally killed by fire along with the State.

Source

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Appendix
A4e Total Person Document.
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A4e Total Person Page 1



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