They seek him here, they seek him there. Those lobby hacks seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That damned elusive … Chancellor of the Exchequer. Okay, so my reworked rhyme lifted from the Scarlet Pimpernel doesn’t work. But neither do Osborne’s sums, so all is balanced in the world. […]
Posts Tagged ‘IDS’
Good riddance IDS: long may this internal warfare continue
Mar 19th, 2016 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.When you’re the head of a department that has meted out cruel and inhumane treatment to disabled people, when you’ve sat in the Commons and nodded through cut after sanction regime after tightened eligibility criteria, at what point do you say enough and call time over your complicity in these proceedings? Does one draw a […]
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Ian Duncan Smith’s policy: starve the poor into committing crime
Dec 1st, 2014 by Michael Meacher.The papers are full-on when members or ex-members of the government make a fool of themselves behaving badly when they can’t get their way – Andrew Mitchell foul-mouthing a policeman with the toxic ‘plebs’ allegedly added in because he couldn’t ride his bike through the No.10 gates, and David Mellor ranting at a black cab […]
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Iain Duncan Smith and the race to the bottom
Aug 14th, 2014 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Here we go again. In the topsy turvy Tory world of our beloved Department for Work and Pensions secretary, joblessness is not caused by a lack of jobs but instead “cultures of worklessness“. To his mind, there are millions living it up on the taxpayer dollar – skivers being kept in e-cigs, iPads and Jeremy Kyle appearances. They do […]
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Everyone, including DWP staff, think universal credit is a disaster
Aug 5th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Universal credit was supposed to be introduced by Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) and the Department for Work & Pensions in September, but the roll-out date continually gets postponed. The aim is to replace several in- and out-of-work benefits – job seeker’s allowance, income support, employment and support allowance, tax credits, plus housing benefit and support […]
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Welfare Reform Bill: why won’t anybody say it’s wrong in principle?
Jan 23rd, 2012 by David Osler.So many of London’s £1m-plus houses are occupied by workshy immigrant families of ten that whole swathes of Maida Vale have been transformed into vast welfare ghettoes, where Afsoomali has become the dominant spoken language on street after street. That, plus I understand that huge numbers of City Boys have jacked in all that private […]
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Pension reforms – inefficient, unfair, a disincentive to save, deflationary and wrong
Mar 10th, 2011 by Richard Murphy.As economists we are opposed to the public sector pension reforms proposed by this government and Lord Hutton. Public sector pensions are far more efficient than private pensions. The net cost of paying public sector pensions in 2009/10 was a little under £4 billion. The cost of providing tax relief to the one per cent […]
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Beware a unified universal benefit
Oct 28th, 2010 by Michael Meacher.If there is one innovation amid the cuts landscape which seems at first sight attractive, it is the IDS brainwave of a universal benefit, joined this week by the proposal of a high-value universal state pension. Gone would be the almost impenetrable complexity of interlocking benefits, gone would be the hassle and indignity of means-testing, […]
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Frank speaking on welfare dependency?
Jun 5th, 2010 by Dave Semple.You have to hand it to the Tories. Hiring Frank Field as ‘poverty tsar’ to do a seven month study with no implications for the ‘financial’ side of things (e.g. benefits) is a brilliant stroke. Not only will they be able to parade in their non-partisan laurels when the report is delivered, but it’ll be […]
