THERE IS SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF WESTMINSTER

WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF "BENEFITS"?

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON SATURDAY

I'm stuck in the house with a throat infection, feeling rotten, and for the want of anything else to do, I'm passing the time looking at Twitter and Facebook.

And how depressing is that today?

Here's just a small selection of the stories that are coming up on my feeds.

A million elderly Brits are malnourished as councils reduce the meals on wheels service. The welfare state is being dismantled on a daily basis. And there is often nothing left to take its place. There are, of course, families and volunteers to fall back on. But that's not really like it was before when millions of people, often middle and upper class women, had time on their hands for good works. Everyone has to work so hard now just to get by, that there is not the same amount of free time for helping others. Cameron doesn't seem to see this.

There has been a 600% increase in the last four years on people with mental health problems being sanctioned by the DWP. It seems Iain Duncan Smith has hit upon the idea that folk with mental health issues are less likely to kick off about being sanctioned... and it's a neat way to make money.

Then there was this beauty. Someone needs to tell the DWP that a man who has suffered 4 heart attacks, and has a variety of other illnesses, including fluid on his lungs, and all at the age of 61, is truly unlikely to be able to find a job, and should be left in peace. How many people need to die for IDS to save enough money for DWP management bonuses. 

And there is this story about a guy who, on hearing a threat that his money was to be stopped, had a heart attack and died. More money saved, Iain. Maybe some fresh underwear on expenses? Or another £40 breakfast?

Some of the comments on Paris have been sad. Johann Lamont joined Humza Yousaf to respect the dead in Paris. It's something you would have thought might have promoted a bit of harmony between Labour and SNP... but no. Some of the comments made dreadful, sickening and disheartening reading.

Then I saw this story. It seems that if you live in England you must be careful not to upset Mr Cameron. This lady was protesting at cuts which were causing people to die, and shouted out to Cameron that he had "blood on his hands". She was charged (and allegedly beaten) by the police. 

The judge said that her comments "must have hugely upset" the prime minister, and what she said could "hardly have been more insulting to anyone, whether a politician or not".

For the judges information (and from the safety of Scotland) I'd liek teh judge to know that I can think of thousands of things that I could say to Cameron which would be far more insulting. Never mind that her particular comments were true. He is responsible for his government and his government is responsible for death and misery across the four nations of the UK. He has got blood on his hands both in the home countries and in Libya where he took part in a campaign that completely wrecked a reasonably stable if unpleasant regime. And one which had excellent public services, unlike the ones he oversees.

Worrying that it is now a punishable offence in England to upset the Brit PM as if he were one of his Gulf royal mates or his Chinese buddy. The company he keeps has been rubbing off on him.

IT'S MONDAY MONTAGE

You wouldn't want to make it up, 
unless you were writing a horror story.

Still, it's true to say that they seem to be doing a job of work on things that matter to people

And it the Queen can bother to turn up and read the drivel she did, the least that the MPs could do was turn up to the debates about it.

But don't let the truth get in the way of a bit of Jock bashing

Oh look, there they are again showing the place disrespect by turning up to work instead of sitting in the bars.

Well said. They will sink to any depths to make a hit show.

Here's a suggestion.
I noticed Airmiles was sporting one of these watches
 that cost something in the order of £12,000

But soon they will have got rid of the problems of the sick scrounger.
They can speed up the death rate now that the Liberals won't whine about it.

The difference is that he has class and knows the right people,
 and she...well... doesn't. Lovely country

A vast amount of the benefits in this country go straight to landlords in housing benefits...and indirectly to employers, who can get away with paying less in wages than the average rent in the area.

If you though McVile was a bitch,
I suspect you may be in for a surprise.
The Priti one looks like she is shaping up to
take home prizes in foulness.

Good old Professor Stephenson.
Thicker than a thick thing that has been covered in 190 coats of thickening paint.

The question is, who the hell would want that worm addressing their conference.  I'm proud to say that I once refused the opportunity to meet him, most insistently too.

At least thank goodness, he has resigned from the Middle East job Bush gave him for being a totally faithful little puppet
and plunging the region into utter chaos. Actually as peace envoy he kept at it and achieved much the same result but more of it.
 I hope he never has another night's sleep for all the blood he has on his hands.

Nope, he doesn't look any more sensible or statesmanlike standing on his head. I think they have chosen badly.
 Mundell maybe would make a reasonable councillor,
or even a back bench MP, but a Cabinet Minister he is not.
But then...who else was there? Oh yeah, no one!

I truly hope he bursts. Loudly.

They were always a loving lot, the Tories, although he may have been a Liberal when he said that. Who knows? He put himself about a bit.

This one was a Liberal.. or rather, a Whig.

Can't argue that.

What a pleasant man. Has he met IDS? They'd probably get on.

Disabled man gets benefits reinstated- A rare DWP story with a happy ending

We have heard, over and over again, sad stories of people being denied benefits that they need, particularly those benefits which are there for people who are sick or disabled. 

Almost invariably these stories have had a sad ending, often involving the death of the claimant.

But for once we have a story with a happy ending, and possibly we can learn something form this. 

Firstly the family concerned went to to the local newspaper with their story, and so got it publicity. 

Secondly, of course, we are but 40 odd days away from a General Election. The two may or may not be connected.

Anyone with a legitimate grievance against the DWP might think that this an appropriate time to air their views through their local press. And just to be sure, to do it before the election while politicians pretend to give a damn.

Here's the story:

A disabled 62-year-old man whose benefits were stopped because the DWP said he was fit to work, has had them re-instated after his story appeared in the Chronicle.

Richard Ashby, of Sandy Lane, Goostrey, has Pagets Disease, a bone disorder in which the normal repair process is disrupted. He also has osteo-arthritis, is diabetic and says he keeps falling asleep because of the medication he is on.

On January 6, following a medical inspection by Atos in December, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) stopped Richard’s £70 a week Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

“He was called in for the medical in December and on January 6 they sent a letter out to say they were stopping his money and he’s fit to work,” Richard’s cousin, Sarah Thorne told the Chronicle at the time.

Richard appealed against the decision explaining he was in constant pain and not fit to work but, despite repeated calls to the DWP, Sarah said they made no progress with getting the benefits re-instated, so she contacted the Chronicle.

The story appeared on January 28.

“Two days after they reinstated his money – after it had appeared in the Chronicle,” said Sarah.

“He’s got his money reinstated and they’ve now put back what he was stopped. I’m sure it’s to do with putting it in the Chronicle.”

Richard, who lodges at his cousin’s house, has also since had an apology and been told he is eligible for another benefit payment.

The former lorry driver who left school at 14 and had worked all his life until he became ill in 2011, said at the time he had been made to feel like a scrounger by the DWP.

“In the end it’s turned out better than we could have hoped for,” he said.

The emphasis and illustrations are ours.

WE VOTED FOR TORY RULE, SO WE MUST ACCEPT IT

Well, we Scots voted for Tory rule, so we should suck it up gratefully.

Ewww, Gids, you're looking rough.
You should get more expensive stuff.

George Osborne, bless him, has just announced that he will save the £3 billion cost of bombing Iraq, killing lots more people and stirring up even more hatred against the West, Britain, and therefore Scotland, but putting a two year freeze on working age benefits.

Benefits were set many years ago to be the lowest level of income you could reasonably live on and were, therefore, traditionally raised annually by the rate of inflation. As the published rate of inflation was always far less that actual inflation, particularly for the poor who have a far narrower band of purchases over which to spread the inflation…  rent, food, electricity and gas, bus fares, clothes…all of which seem to rise relentlessly, people generally got poorer and poorer.

Last year when inflation was laughingly quoted as 2%, working age benefits were allowed to rise at 1%, and now with a war to pay for to keep in America’s good books, George finds that the £3 billion cost can be met by cancelling even that megre rise in working age benefits. This of course will affect working people too, who depend upon top ups from the state to make their poverty wages stretch all week.

Doubtless Duncan Smith, McVile and Fraud, the SPIV aristo, will be rubbing their evil hands together in glee. That should get the unemployment numbers down when they start to die of malnutrition or the cold.

He also wants to build a powerhouse in the North… 

Oh Inverness I though… or maybe even Wick? 

Nope. Wrong. Manchester and Leeds! 

Oh well, I guess that Gideon didn't do geography at school and doesn't know his North from his armpit. 

Or maybe he knows in his, well I was going to say heart of hearts, but that’s clearly not likely, maybe he just feels in his water that Scotland won’t be in the UK by the time they build their railway. 

The Noble Digby

Ex Labour minister, Digby Jones, who introduced Gideon, says that “we” all want the low-paid to get more money. But it has to be earned. Otherwise inflation goes up. Presumably unlike when his type get massive pay rises and bonuses.

He says he wants an end to the situation where half of school leavers do not get grade C or above in maths and English, which is very interesting, because he doesn’t seem to know how to achieve that.

He says that you do not set “the poor” free by giving them money but by giving them an education. I wonder if he knows how many people working on minimum wage plus a few pence are working on tills in Tesco and Asda, and having to claim in work benefits.

Not only is not everyone capable of getting As and Bs in Maths and English (never have been; never will be) but, even if we all got  As in Nuclear Physics, Latin, Ancient Greek and Metaphysical Poetry , there aren’t enough jobs out there, that pay enough money for what he patronisingly calls “the poor” to be patronisingly “set free”. 

Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau 

And John Redwood, says that companies should be penalised if they campaign for staying in the EU, which is also interesting. I mean if your company is dependent on the EU for most of its sales, or indeed is a company from Asia which has situated itself in the UK in order to access the 500,000,000 EU market, isn’t it a little unreasonable to stop them campaigning to stay in business?

Isn't in any case, the Tory Party itself, planning to campaign against leaving the EU?

And shouldn’t John Redwood go and join Nigel Farage in UKIP and stop pretending that he’s a Tory?

Oh, and I think, Mr Redwood, that people who become secretary of state for a country and don't bother to learn enough of its language to sing its national anthem, should also be penalised. Hard.

The party faced embarrassment after a memorandum sent to MPs reminding them of the price of groceries that ordinary people have to buy with their own money, including bread, milk and Mars Bars, was leaked. The list was designed as an aide-memoire in case members were quizzed about prices and the cost-of-living crisis. 

Back in the real world I was speaking to the manager of the food bank today. He is so grateful to so many people for their donations. Massive amounts form the local derby match and from the Churches' Harvest Festival.

They do, however, need more Long Life Milk and no matter how much they got last week, they will need more for next week.

Our fellow Scots voted  by 55- 45 for more food banks. The least we can do is to try to make sure that they have some food. 

BENEFIT TOURISTS? MUST HAVE BOUGHT THE WRONG TICKETS!

We are forever hearing about how generous the UK is when it comes to benefits. Why, apparently according to the Sun and the Mail, and of course the London Government, the world and its dog, cat and tadpole, are turning up in good old Blighty just to rip off hardworking taxpaying families of strivers not skivers, up and down the country...

Which would be worrying, if it weren't a load of utter garbage.

IMF research has shown that the UK is towards the bottom of the list of generous countries when it comes to the value of their benefits. In fact it is downright grippy. Unless of course you are talking about the benefits paid to members of the royal family or the House of Aristocrats.

Here is the truth.

Country		Gross Replacement Rate year 1		Ranking
Netherlands		0.7		1
Switzerland		0.687		2
Sweden		0.685		3
Portugal		0.65		4
Spain		0.635		5
Norway		0.624		6
Algeria		0.612		7
Taiwan		0.6		8
Ukraine		0.56		9
Italy		0.527		10
Denmark		0.521		11
Russia		0.505		12
Tunisia		0.5		13
Finland		0.494		14
France		0.479		15
Bulgaria		0.473		16
Canada		0.459		17
Romania		0.45		18
Hong Kong		0.41		19
Austria		0.398		20
Belgium		0.373		21
Argentina		0.354		22
Germany		0.353		23
Greece		0.346		24
Azerbaijan		0.338		25
Egypt		0.329		26
Venezuela		0.325		27
Belarus		0.313		28
Israel		0.307		29
Japan		0.289		30
United States		0.275		31
Kyrgyzstan		0.255		32
New Zealand		0.254		33
Latvia		0.253		34
India		0.25		38
Korea, South		0.25		37
Uruguay		0.25		36
Uzbekistan		0.25		35
Ireland		0.238		39
Hungary		0.235		40
Poland		0.226		41
Czech Republic		0.225		42
Australia		0.21		43
Turkey		0.206		44
Albania		0.202		45
United Kingdom		0.189		46
Brazil		0.152		47
Estonia		0.132		48
Lithuania		0.117		49
Chile		0.115		50
Georgia		0.09		51

Look, there is the good old UK, just under Albania. Didn't someone once say that Scotland without England to look after it would be just like Albania? So, if they were right, we can look forward to a little step up.

Data taken from: Mariya Aleksynska and Martin Schindler (2011) Labor Market Regulations in Low-, Middle- and High-Income Countries: A New Panel Database. IMF Working Paper.

Iain Duncan Smith is bent out of shape about it. He looked positively ill as he decried the Council of Europe (not the EU: this has 47 members) for criticising the UK for its niggardliness. 

Nothing serious I trust.. It doesn't pay to be sick here. Better off in Uzbekistan.

Update: Niko drew my attention to this story about the way Finland deals with redundancies and unemployment. Oh to live in a country like that.

MAGGIE, MAGGIE, MAGGIE

'Angus' just posted this over on WoS (where Stuart unveils another series of out and out lies from Anas Sarwar, this time about the Joseph Rowantree Foundation's report into poverty. Labour and the No Campaign need to watch how many different people they slander. Ms Lamont may have protection if she lies in parliament, but Anas might find himself being sued for this kind of "misrepresentation").

I thought it was worth watching, just to remind ourselves of a couple of things:

Firstly, that this is the level of argument we can expect if we stay with the UK and in the decreasingly likely event that the UK elects Ed Miliband and his team to government. Curren was pathetic;

Secondly, that it looks to me that Labour isn't going to do anything much about the people at the poorer end of the scale. 

You can say that she argues that it's only the richer pensioners that will lose their heating allowance, but even Curren said that she believed that universal benefits should be universal. 

That's not because the poor pensioners need it the money; it's because once you means test, you make the benefit a handout to the poor. No one in power then has personal interest in it, except that they pay for it. It becomes as resented as benefits for the unemployed and the sick...and people who do need it, and are entitled to it, are made to feel like scroungers.

Once these changes are made, they will never be reversed. It's not "while we are in this terrible financial situation". It's forever. 

Click to enlarge

And what follows? If heating benefits are only for the poor, then why not other benefits? Most obviously the retirement pension itself. 

Already one of the most niggardly in Europe (as a percentage of average earnings), most well-off people don't desperately need it. So the next time the government needs to save money, why not cut the pension for the rich? Then the retirement pension becomes a hand out for the poor in which the rich have no stake and poor pensioners become scroungers.

Of course what Mrs Curren and Labour fail to consider in their quest for savings (£100 million in nothing in governmental terms) is the massive tax fraud that is allowed in the UK. 

Indeed the whole of the London economy appears to be based on the fact that tax fiddling here is like taking candy from a baby. It's hardly fashionable to be paying more tax than your servants, dear boy!

The figures show that even by HMRC's own figures there is a sum of £30 billion (approx Scottish government's running costs) of uncollected taxes annually.  According to the Tax Justice Network the figure is actually four times that size. 

We know that the Tories neither care that pensioners should be made to feel like paupers begging for their pension, nor do they wish to make any inroads into the excellent tax avoidance schemes that have been set up with government acquiescence over the years. But instead of making poorer pensioner feel like they are scroungers, why doesn't Labour (the party of the workers, remember) look to these tax evaders to lay their hands on the £100 million that Margaret needs for her houses. 

Incidentally, why does Labour let this woman anywhere near a tv or radio studio? She is a car crash every time she goes near a mic.

It appears the media can no longer quote Billy Connolly as a supporter of the NO Campaign, Project Fear. He has said that it is not the place of a comedian to tell people how to vote. He said he spoke against devolution because it added another tier of government, but he has been in Scotland for a few weeks on holiday prior to some filming engagements and he says it has changed for the better. So NO, you should take him off your list.
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Channel Four News has revealed that costs for tribunals for benefit sanctions have risen dramatically. In 2012/13 the cost was £66 million up from £22 million in 209/10.  The number of appeals had risen by 66%. Liam Byrne apparently said that it's the fault of Atos which is spinning out of control. Well, there you go, Liam. You left no money and a Benefit system spinning out of control. Isn't Labour clever!
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According to the Guardian's Money Blog, to achieve their current pension on the open market MPs would need to save about £60,000 a year for every year they are in parliament. They actually only contribute £9,100, so they are getting a benefit worth £51,000 a year, or 75% of pay. Contrast this to IPSA's view of the value of the pension: it says it costs the taxpayer 20.4% of MPs' pay or £14,000 a year.

After the pay rise an MP with 15 years of service will get an extra £2,850 a year in retirement. On the open market this would need a pension fund of £100,000 to provide. Across 600 MPs this translates to about £60m of value.

So don't believe everything they tell you.... like you would!

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Danny...our man in America... sent me the following cartoons. The first was one of a series used years ago to explain to kids how the federal government of the country worked. The second is what happens now, as Danny says, since the radical right wing of the Republican Party decided that they preferred gridlock in Washington, because they hate the idea of government itself!

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If anyone is in the least interested, apparently hundreds of babies were successfully delivered all over Scotland today. In no case was the state broadcaster obliged to have a team of experts on hand to give a blow by blow account and there were no loonie's standing outside wearing butchers' aprons. But for all that mothers and babies are doing well... and fathers are playing their traditional role getting drunk. Munguin's Republic wishes them all well for their future, hopefully in an independent country.

**********

SOME THINGS WE CANNOT COMMENT ON...YOU KNOW, THE THINGS THAT MAKE US LOOK RIDICULOUS!

Why would we be surprised at this double standard?

I seem to recall exactly the same argument being used when Labour supporting Jimmy Carr was discovered to be a bit creative about paying his  taxes, in that he wasn't much doing it. 

Cameron was on him like a ton of bricks, and only remembered that prime ministers don't comment on individual cases when it turned out his mate, the Tory Gary Barlow, obe, from Take That, was also on the fiddle. 

At least their double standards are consistent. 

++++++++++

Now that BetterTogether are Better Apart, run by the Conservatives and the Liberals, we discover that the joke ex prime minister and part time MP, Gordon Brown, has renounced his North British nationality, which he so proudly trumpeted whilst on his first visit to the USA as prime minister some years ago, just before he saved the world. He has presumably applied for, and been granted Scottish nationality, of which he is also proud.

Cometh the day, cometh the appropriate nationality.

++++++++++

Has anyone told Alistair Darling that the Tories and The Liberals, are now running Better Together? Is there redundancy pay?

THIS MAY COME AS A SURPRISE, BUT THE GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN LYING ABOUT BENEFITS...

For some time I have wondered about the claim from Iain Duncan Smith that people can be better off on benefits than in work....a claim widely accepted now as the truth (although in fact not), the acceptance of which leaves him free to reduce these benefits and and vilify those on them.

I thought, surely if it were true people would leave low paid, unsatisfying work in droves to take advantage of life on the Costa del Unemployment.

I feel somewhat justified in my assumptions having read this article (below) by Mark Serwotka taken from the New Statesman. (Lifted with full credits but without anyone's permission.) 

What it shows is that IDS, Osborne, Cameron and indeed Liam Byrne and Ed Balls are wrong about this, and are playing to the Daily Mail reader who needs to hate several things before breakfast just to get through the day.

The policy of the Tories is to engender in the public a hated of the unemployed in general, (and the sick and disabled) so that it is justified in taking away their benefits leaving them and their kids hungry and cold. Instead of being shocked, the taxpayer, in turn, feels justified in rubbing their hands together and wondering how long it will be before the top rate comes down to 35%. 

After all, these people are wicked skivers, aren't they?

Never mind the facts of course: Around nine million people looking for proper full time work, and very very few vacancies. 

Well Mark has done the research and they are...simply put...lying. Read on...

Earlier this month work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith and chancellor George Osborne claimed their changes to our welfare system mean, "no longer will it be possible to be better off on benefits than in work". The prime minister wrote the same in the Sun, calling it a "crazy situation".

The government's line, as it very gradually rolls out Universal Credit from today, that it is "making work pay" has cross-party support. "We would make work pay," promises Duncan Smith's mini-me Liam Byrne, while shadow chancellor Ed Balls affirms that "it must pay more to be in work than live on benefits."

My union's members, tens of thousands of whom work on the benefits and tax credits system, are confused. A jobcentre worker told me: "All the calculators that we use in jobcentres are designed to show that you would be better off in work."

So if politicians are telling us all that you can be better off on benefits, and jobcentre advisers are telling claimants that they would be better off in work, someone is being lied to. But who? Iain Duncan Smith should come clean. But not being one to look for pots of gold at the end of rainbows, I asked my union researchers to look into it.

They found the DWP’s "tax benefit model" – data which showed how much better off people out of work, in a range of circumstances, would be by moving into employment. Publication of this data was, intriguingly, abandoned in 2010 – just after the coalition government was elected, but a similar calculator is still used by DWP staff. It shows what would happen if someone moves into work for 30 hours per week. Even on the minimum wage, the legal minimum, benefits only deliver 79 per cent of what you would be paid in work.

We looked again to see if the same was true for only 16 hours of work – after all there are 1.4 million people working part time because they can’t find full-time work. This time benefits were only worth 81 per cent of a working income. Jobcentre advisers tell me these figures closely match the ones they use today.

For verification, we checked against data collected by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on all major countries’ welfare systems, including the UK’s. Like the DWP calculator, it factors in housing costs and benefits, and it assesses what is called the "replacement rate" for moving from benefits into work for 30 different household types – and in not one single case would a household be better off on benefits.

It does not feature in either the DWP's or OECD's models, but work might not pay for those who work very few hours in low paid jobs. But the irony here is that Duncan Smith has himself actually made this more likely by increasing the number of hours people need to work before they receive working tax credits.

The "better off on benefits" fallacy has become common. In truth, there has always been a clue that it is an urban myth: no one who claims it exists has ever actually given up work to live the benefits high life. And why not? Probably because deep down they do not believe it, but it is also true that even when the benefit of working is highly marginal, most people want to work. As unemployment climbs above 2.5 million, and 6.8 million counting as underemployed, the reality is there are fewer than half a million job vacancies. The real issue for the government is not making work pay, but making work exist.

PCS members working in jobcentres face a bullying management driving down their own living standards and setting targets that staff are told to deny exist. Low pay is so endemic that up to 40 per cent of the DWP’s own staff will be eligible for Universal Credit themselves. It is grim, far worse than when I started working for the DHSS in the early 1980s. Back then we helped claimants and took as long as was necessary to get them the benefits to which they were entitled.

On the other side of the counter (or more likely now on the other end of a phone) it is even worse, with claimants subject to more and harsher sanctions, unprecedented demonisation from ministers and a Pavlovian press trained to foam at the mouth at the mention of scroungers and skivers.

As well as challenging ministers’ myths, we have a duty to challenge their hatred-inciting rhetoric. So the next time Iain Duncan Smith – or anyone else for that matter – claims people are better off on benefits, hand him a pen and paper and ask him to show you how.

Mark Serwotka is the General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union 

*Illustrations are mine as are the red emphasis in Mark's text.