Taking sides: the dividing lines of British politics

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Fantastic article from the "New Statesman", sums up politics as is?

Taking sides: the dividing lines of British politics

All parties love the easy, polarising rhetoric of “us” against “them” – but how distinct are their ideas?

By Rafael Behr, Published 31 January 2013

There is a reliable way to tell if David Cameron is rattled. When the Prime Minister is on shaky ground, he hurls the charge of being “left-wing” at Ed Miliband as if it were the foulest thing he could say within the bounds of parliamentary protocol. The “Red Ed” label has never been a plausible line of attack but it is a comforting fiction for senior Conservatives who deride the Labour leader’s agenda as a slide into unelectable socialism.

Take time out from tribalism and read the article!

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2013/01/taking-sides-dividing-lines-british-politics

Interesting passage in yesterday's PMQs concluding with an absolutely scandalous non-response by Cameron. You can watch the whole exchange via the link below

But it boils down to:

Chi Onwurah: Can you expect this man, a real striver, to live on £1.57 a week 'thanks' to the bedroom tax?

Cameron: ignores question

Can't get the embedded video to work, but the link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-WvQa9h0_M&feature=youtu.be&t=16m26s

bobby wrote:What really irks me is every time a Tory gets near a podium or a microphone, they keep repeating “the tough decisions we took or have to make”. Yes they do take tough decisions, but the thing is tough for who, its never them the decision makers but the poor, sick and elderly. Its like the tough decision General Douglas Haig made re his attack across no mans land at Passchendaele in 1917. 310,000 dead British Soldiers dies and not a Haig amongst them. The decision makers then as now make sure they are out of the firing line, in fact now they are even worse that the Bastard Haig as today’s Government actually profit from the decisions they make. And the casualties die of Hypothermia, Hunger or Suicide.

Yes bobby they do have to take tough decisions for the normal working man/women, but they find it much easier for the high earners bankers and the rich Backstuds that fund the Tory party no hard decisions there, I just wonder how they will justify this when they come knocking our door looking for us to vote for them in the 2015 general election I give them fair warning "Do Not Dare" and just to finish off Scotland does not vote Tory since the Thatcher years and now that same rule applies the L/Ds as they have found out in every election since 2010.

bobby wrote:What really irks me is every time a Tory gets near a podium or a microphone, they keep repeating “the tough decisions we took or have to make”. Yes they do take tough decisions, but the thing is tough for who, its never them the decision makers but the poor, sick and elderly. Its like the tough decision General Douglas Haig made re his attack across no mans land at Passchendaele in 1917. 310,000 dead British Soldiers dies and not a Haig amongst them. The decision makers then as now make sure they are out of the firing line, in fact now they are even worse that the Bastard Haig as today’s Government actually profit from the decisions they make. And the casualties die of Hypothermia, Hunger or Suicide.

Gonna go 1 step further and Every time this country has to endure another Conservative Government, the UK that is known becomes less and less recognizable and yet another thing that we always promoted such as NHS, a state that supports its residents, Thriving manufacturing/industry towns in all their forms disappear. Is this country being run by Paul f**king Daniels and his glamourous assistant Debbie Magee??? Now you see it, Now you don't?

Tory Policy has been 68 years in the making. It may take a little time for decent people to counter it.

oftenwrong wrote:Tory Policy has been 68 years in the making. It may take a little time for decent people to counter it.

There is going to be a shit load of Tory Bills to REPEAL .

Original including key links at http://wp.me/p2sftc-6Kg



Well, this is fun. Tim Worstall, a right-wing ‘economist’, who 9 months ago wrote a nonsense post calling me a ‘blithering idiot’, has surfaced again. Mr Worstall takes pride in a somewhat ‘fruity’ approach to language and considers himself an exemplary ‘straight-talker’, passing off a lack of tact and insight as directness.

Well, the passage of time hasn’t mellowed his approach. Apparently, I’m now a ‘lying lefty scumbag. Time hasn’t improved his grasp of fact and logic, either. I won’t link to his post, as I have no wish to stroke his ego by directing more traffic to his site – if you’re really keen enough to go and look, you’ll find him quickly enough via Google (other search sites are available!), but I’ll quote him directly and without editing his claims so you can make a fair judgment.

Mr Worstall attempts to go straight for the jugular:



Now, given the topics I write about, I expect a fair amount of insult and diatribe. It never troubles me overmuch, because I know that insulting language and ad hominem attacks are a common tactic for those lacking a credible counter-argument.

The second-most common tactic is to fixate on a particular detail try to cast doubt on a whole argument by finding fault with a point that’s secondary at best and often entirely irrelevant. Mr Worstall has obviously been reading the ‘Rabid Right-Wingers’ playbook’. He goes on a bit, so I can’t fit all his next passage into a single screen-capture, so excuse me for inserting it as several images – hopefully they’ll read clearly:



And then, he comes to his denouement:




Followed by (I’ll leave out what I ‘shout and scream’ in my post, since you can read that in full here)



The only small problem with Mr Worstall’s ‘demolition’ of my argument is that he’s demolishing something I haven’t said. My case, entire or otherwise, doesn’t rest on the existence or otherwise of disability claimant statistics up to 2012.

The government’s latest statistics on some aspects of disability claimants does, of course, go up to the recent past. But the government’s statistics on the drop in claimants when Incapacity Benefit (IB) was replaced by Employment Support Allowance (ESA) only goes to 2008.

It only can apply to 2008 – because that’s the only time the switch took place. Which is exactly what I said in the first place.

Of course, we often give away more than we intend when we get a little, er, irate. Mr Worstall has done so on this occasion. As you can see above, he looks at the statistics up to 2012 and confesses:

I will agree that I cannot see any mass fleeing of disability allowance in those figures.

That’s right. Of course, he can’t see any such thing – because it didn’t happen. The statistics on claimant changes because of the IB-to-ESA switch (not DLA) can’t apply to the statistics Mr Worstall ‘discovered’ – because it happened only once, in 2008.

The government and its tame media are presenting something that happened 5 years ago as if it happened now, to imply that the government’s ludicrous and callous benefit changes are not only necessary but are actually working.

The statistics don’t show anything of the sort – and in fact, because of when the period they do apply to, they show the exact opposite.

That was (and is) my ‘entire case’. If Mr Worstall is able to show that to be untrue, he should do so – and if he can’t, he’d be better keeping his mouth closed rather than 'removing all doubt'.

Mr Worstofall's silky scribblings tell us all we need to know about him and sum up what it is to be a Tory apologist. Panic has clearly set in...

I've been trying to think through the implications of this particular bit of statistical nonsense - if I'm right in my thinking, it tends to demonstrate that all the 'tough' decisions mad e by the current government that are causing so much hardship are actually based on an even greater lie than we first thought, because the previous administration had in fact already sufficiently 'reformed' the benefit system as to take a significant tranche of people out of benefit and back into the labour pool.
Please, someone, if I'm completely barking here, do let me know (gently if you can)

boatlady wrote:I've been trying to think through the implications of this particular bit of statistical nonsense - if I'm right in my thinking, it tends to demonstrate that all the 'tough' decisions mad e by the current government that are causing so much hardship are actually based on an even greater lie than we first thought, because the previous administration had in fact already sufficiently 'reformed' the benefit system as to take a significant tranche of people out of benefit and back into the labour pool.
Please, someone, if I'm completely barking here, do let me know (gently if you can)

No, you're exactly right - and it means that those who are on the benefit now are almost all people whose claims already made it through the ESA 'filter' and are justified being on the benefit.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it - unless you are a Tory in need of some justifying publicity.

Original including links at: http://wp.me/p2sftc-6Mb

More information on the government’s distortion of information on disability claims has come to light, thanks to a pointer from Declan Gaffney via Twitter. While the new information changes the focus slightly, it makes the government’s deceit, in the picture Grant Shapps and others are trying to paint, even worse than was at first obvious.

Shapps & co, along with their friends in the press, have claimed that 878,300 people decided not to pursue their claims for benefit because a change in the benefits system meant that they’d have to be assessed for their level of disability – and that this showed how much malingering there was under Labour and how necessary this government’s attack on disabled people is (though of course they euphemistically call it ‘reform’).

The additional data is a Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) spreadsheet showing the caseloads and outcomes for the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) process for Employment Support Allowance (ESA). This spreadsheet tells a completely different picture from that which Shapps & co have been peddling.

The change from Incapacity Benefit to ESA took place in 2008. If, at Shapps is trying to portray, a huge number of claimants decided to drop their claims because they knew they’d be discovered as cheating, you’d expect to see a graph something like this, showing large numbers of ‘faking’ claimants getting spooked by the fact they’d have to undergo assessment under the new system and withdrawing their claims:



This is the picture Shapps was trying to paint.

In fact, we see a completely different picture:



In this graph, the red line shows the total caseload of WCAs and the blue shows discontinued claims. As you’d expect, in both cases you see a ramping up when the rules first come into force, as it takes time to switch over from one system to the other.

But then you see an almost constant blue line, with around 20,000 a month (or 60,000 a quarter) being discontinued. This represents nothing more than ‘churn’ – a turnover of claims withdrawn because of perfectly normal things like people getting better, or finding a job they can do even if they’re ill. As Declan Gaffney points out in his article, every month around 130,000 people come off ESA anyway – it’s not a lifetime benefit, it’s something you claim for as long as you need to. Because of the huge numbers of cases always in the pipeline and the amount of time it takes for them to be assessed and decided, some of the people who no longer need to claim haven’t even had their WCA yet – and they become part of that month’s ’20,000′.

Now look at the relationship between the two lines. Until around April 2011, they stay more or less in sync, with the ‘total caseload’ red line obviously higher, but the blue line tracking it proportionately.

From April 2011, the caseload line rockets – but the blue line stays constant. This shows how the current government intensified its WCA scrutiny of disabled people – but the number of discontinued claims stays the same, and even goes down slightly toward the end of the data while the red line climbs steeply.

If, as Shapps is claiming, the scrutiny was revealing large numbers of people on disability benefits who shouldn’t really be claiming, you’d see the blue line keep pace with the red – or even start to close the gap.

But you don’t – all you see is the same old ‘churn’.

Imagine we were talking about death rates in a particular city. It’s a big city, so every month 10,000 people or so die of various causes. Then the government opens a new hospital. A year later, someone looks at these figures and uses the total of people who had died since the hospital opened to support a headline:

New hospital kills 120,000 people!

It would only take a look at the data to see that the death rate was the same as usual, and that the headline was nonsense – but a lot of people wouldn’t know where to look, or want to bother to look, and so might be fooled. You might have mobs attacking the hospital to burn this ‘deadly edifice’ down – all because of the cynical, knowing abuse of information.

This is exactly what Shapps is doing with his ESA claim, with the support of the usual suspects in the media. If people are fooled, it can lead to increased attacks on disabled people as the ignorant assume they’re probably just idle lead-swingers – and even of those not moronic enough to attack people physically, many will be fooled into standing by while the government conducts its no less deadly financial assault on the vulnerable (disabled or not).

This makes Shapps’ ploy even more cynical, even more damnable and even more criminal than it first appeared. The ‘man’ should be railroaded out of office faster than you can say ‘employment support allowance’.

But in this government, it probably means he’s in line for a promotion.

oftenwrong wrote:If it ain't broke, don't fix it - unless you are a Tory in need of some justifying publicity.

I agree OW the only problem is the Tories think they are the "Great I Am" or they have to get out there with HUGE Spoonfulls of Spin to justify what they are doing to pull the wool over the eyes of the UK public. I tend to think they are nothing more than a shower of LIARS

More from the Declan Gaffney article to which Steve Walker referred above:-

Grant Shapps owes us all a correction and an apology

Shapps issued a news release over the weekend claiming that 878,300 people claiming incapacity benefit – more than a third of the total – had chosen to "drop their benefit claim entirely /rather than/ face a medical assessment”.

What is being asserted is not just that a certain number of people dropped their claims, but that they all did so for a specific reason - in order to avoid assessment. This assertion is clearly inaccurate. Every month, about 130,000 people leave Employment Support Allowance (ESA). Of these ESA leavers, about 20,000 have not yet undergone a Work Capability Assessment (WCA).

During the gap between the initial claim and assessment, many people will see an improvement in their condition or will return to work (with or without an improvement in their condition), and DWP research has shown that these - and not a wish to avoid assessment - are the overwhelming reasons for people dropping their claims before the assessment:-
http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rports2011-2012/rrep762.pdf

The same research found that in 'only a handful' of cases had people who had dropped their claims failed to attend a Work Capability Assessment. Thus to claim, as Mr Shapps seems to have done, that everyone who leaves ESA before assessment is leaving in order to avoid the assessment is patently inaccurate. It is not just that he has no evidence to back up his claim. There is evidence, and it shows he is wrong. He should issue a correction and apology.

Source:-
http://lartsocial.org/shapps

I wonder how many of those on Incapacity Benefit, died as a natural course of illness before being able to be assessed as fit or not to work?

astradt1 wrote:I wonder how many of those on Incapacity Benefit, died as a natural course of illness before being able to be assessed as fit or not to work?

That is quite possible astradt1, I have heard of some that where passed fit for work and died with weeks of that decision.

The thing that bothers me about this false claim re the 878,300 figs is that even if Shapps decides to apologise, how will it reach the masses unless it becomes front page of The Sunday Times?
Can anyone seriously claim that that will happen? Pigs flying and all tht IMO.

At least we now have the Internet to ameliorate the lies of the Popular Press.

oftenwrong wrote:At least we now have the Internet to ameliorate the lies of the Popular Press.

I do not need the internet to spot a tory Lie I can spot one at ten paces OW, Osborne in his speech yesterday was nothing but LIES from start to finish.

I've just been mooching through various political web pages and come across a party called "The Pirate Party". They lay out an interesting manifesto (part state sponsored, part private) and throw in a a good few libertarian ideas for getting the country moving again. Does anybody else have any info on them or are they a group of cranks?

Would their being a 'group of cranks' be an especially compelling attraction for you, landy...?

Absolutely Phil, how else could I cope with some of the stuff written here?

tlttf wrote:Absolutely Phil, how else could I cope with some of the stuff written here?

tittf I will tell you about a party that is not a crank and could take seats at the next general election NHA party, they will take a few seats of the Tories and maybe the Lib-Dems.

It would be a mistake to assume that just because the Tory Party has a poor record as Administrators, that they lack a political determination to match the Borgias.

Today I received an E Mail from Ed Balls and MSN placed it in with junk mail

bobby. Not to worry, Ed sent it to me as well:-

Hello,

In difficult times people want and need a government that’s on their side. Who’ll help make things a little bit easier. They want to know the government has a plan for the future, to deliver the jobs and investment we need to succeed. And they want fairness – an understanding that everyone’s doing their bit, that we are really ‘all in it together’.

That was the mantra of David Cameron and George Osborne’s government – and today we’ve seen the truth.

At midnight 13,000 millionaires received a tax cut worth an average £100,000, while millions on low and middle incomes will continue to pay the price of this Tory-led government’s economic failure

While millionaires get an average £100,000 tax cut today, the average family will be £891 worse off this year because of tax and benefit changes since 2010.

And the new changes this week mean the poorest 10% are losing £127 on average while the richest 10% gain ten times that - £1265.

A One Nation Labour government would not be making these deeply unfair choices this week. We’re on the side of working people, and we want an economy and a tax system that’s driven by the many, and works for everyone, not just a few at the top.

Don’t let them get away with it.

Thank you,

Ed Balls

bobby. Not to worry, Ed sent it to me as well:-
Yes he has sent one to all Labour party members . My point is that MSN saw fit to put it in my junk mail whereas any other Labour party E Mails find there way to my inbox. Not only that but the missing article re his use of a disabled parking space, even worse imho than trying to fiddle a few quid from the railway companies.

The Labour party are looking extremely weak. Do we really think the next election is a foregone conclusion?

They won't fight welfare reforms because they are frightened of losing votes.....it is extremely disappointing.

sickchip wrote:The Labour party are looking extremely weak. Do we really think the next election is a foregone conclusion?

They won't fight welfare reforms because they are frightened of losing votes.....it is extremely disappointing.

I think you will find that the Labour party will come out with reforms for the Welfare state "But it will be a FAIR ONE" and not the one that the Tories are rolling out at the moment which treats everybody on benefits as if they where related to Phillpott.

Redflag,

Fair? In what way? The only fair welfare reforms would be to increase income support and JSA by about 10%.

Are the Labour party going to do that?

Apart from that the system didn't, and doesn't, need any reforming.

sickchip wrote:Redflag,

Fair? In what way? The only fair welfare reforms would be to increase income support and JSA by about 10%.

Are the Labour party going to do that?

Apart from that the system didn't, and doesn't, need any reforming.

To a certain extent they do sickchip, they're people like Phillpot who need to be brought to book so that we can afford the rises in all benefits to help people who are in need of it. The first thing they should do is build council homes that will leave the private landlords on there butts and cut the housing benefit bill halved or even more, plus stop the rhetoric public services bad private good when in reality it is the other way around.

Redflag,

The first thing they should do is build council homes that will leave the private landlords on there butts and cut the housing benefit bill

I agree.....but have little faith in the Labour party doing that. They had 13yrs last time and Gordon Brown's 'no more boom and bust' comment was largely the result of the 'created' housing bubble, ie. false economics. They could have, and should have, embarked on large scale building of council homes then......I said this at the time, but they didn't appear to have the will or inclination.

Do you really think Labour will do this IF they are elected? I hope you're right, but I doubt it.

sickchip wrote:Redflag,

The first thing they should do is build council homes that will leave the private landlords on there butts and cut the housing benefit bill

I agree.....but have little faith in the Labour party doing that. They had 13yrs last time and Gordon Brown's 'no more boom and bust' comment was largely the result of the 'created' housing bubble, ie. false economics. They could have, and should have, embarked on large scale building of council homes then......I said this at the time, but they didn't appear to have the will or inclination.

Do you really think Labour will do this IF they are elected? I hope you're right, but I doubt it.

Ed Miliband is NOT Gordon Brown or Tony Blair, using your ananology there is no difference between a Tory voter and a Labour voter sickchip, but the Labour party did build many houses in 1945 they need that core value with a 21st century twist.

It is an odd thing that the British public will willingly donate tens of millions annually to the likes of 'Red Nose Day' and 'Children in Need' and yet they seem to resent state benefits going to people who are in dire straits week by week.

We all recognise that there is, inevitably, a small minority of people who will grasp anything they can for the minimum ( or no ) effort, but we generally discriminate between them and the truly needy. So why is the Tory propaganda currently so persuasive to so many who should know better...?

Phil Hornby wrote:It is an odd thing that the British public will willingly donate tens of millions annually to the likes of 'Red Nose Day' and 'Children in Need' and yet they seem to resent state benefits going to people who are in dire straits week by week.

We all recognise that there is, inevitably, a small minority of people who will grasp anything they can for the minimum ( or no ) effort, but we generally discriminate between them and the truly needy. So why is the Tory propaganda currently so persuasive to so many who should know better...?

There is another question needing to be asked PH, why are normally sensible people letting the Tories lead them by the nose down the path of nastiness allowing the Tories to place a wedge between the low paid and the Unemployed when in reality the Tories and L/Ds economic failure caused quite a lot of the unemployment plus Cameron sacking so many from the public sector and the NHS ??

1. Nobody really LIKES the idea of someone else deciding how their money is to be spent.

2. When publishing a Budget, a Chancellor should be bound to take into account Rule One.

3. The National Press should publicly and frequently acknowledge the above.

Sometimes I just think there's no hope.
I'd like to move to a proper socialist country (preferably one with mild winters)

Part of an article by Mark Latham:-

"We have to realise that Osborne and Cameron think this administration is doing very well. The NHS has been dismantled by enforced competition and the bizarre idea that commissioning groups can commission themselves; school’s freeholds are handed out to Tory donors and no longer require qualified teachers; banks are still unwieldy, ungovernable, socially useless and reliant of taxpayer subsidised capital. Tories are happy to cut benefits, block the construction of social housing, price education beyond reach, move the poor, the unfortunate or the ordinary out of homes, communities and networks because they have no experience of upheaval or deprivation and less interest.

These cuts are reducing taxes and making the rich much richer. They are not just embarked on tax cuts for millionaires; they are actively subsidising multimillionaires. This government has been hijacked by ‘graft’ and corruption working solely for its paymasters.

So keep looking at the immigrants, your neighbour’s curtains, the disabled scroungers, the single mothers, the beggars, universal benefits for mothers or old people, keep looking anywhere but at what Osborne is doing. Cameron and Osborne think everything in our nation is going well because it is going very well for them, and theirs."

http://labourlist.org/2013/04/mick-philpott-george-osborne-and-the-bankers-distraction-division-and-deceit/

Original at http://wp.me/p2sftc-71A

Today made me think of a couple of Westerns. In one of my favourites, Tombstone, a member of Curly Bill’s gang has been killed. Even though this gang of Cowboys has terrorised the town for years, the gang arranges a grand funeral and marches the coffin through the streets expecting everyone to pay their respects.

In the other, The Magnificent Seven, the bandit tyrant who has impoverished the villages for years justifies leaving them to starve by explaining how onerous are the responsibilities of leadership. He is so wrapped up in his own myth that he expects the people he is robbing to feel sorry for the ‘weight’ he has to carry.

In similar fashion, the Tories have paraded the pomp of Margaret Thatcher’s ‘state in all but name’ funeral in front of us all, with no regard or sensitivity for the misery inflicted on ordinary people by Thatcher’s policies when she was Prime Minister – or for the miseries that are being re-intensified by the current government and inflicted on vast numbers.

Just like Eli Wallach’s bandit character in The Magnificent Seven, Tories have shown no embarrassment as they have shamelessly distorted the truth and rewritten history to eulogise Mrs Thatcher. If they were to be believed, she all but saved the world and turned Britain from a 3rd-world country into a paragon of prosperity.

The divisiveness of her policies, and the misery they inflicted, are brushed aside as ‘tough decisions that had to be made’. One former Tory minister, who claimed to have been elected by a mining community, even went so far as to blame the victims. After all, his community in the Midlands had ‘picked itself up and got on with it’ after their pits were closed – so those in South Yorkshire, Derbyshire, the North, Scotland and Wales just didn’t try hard enough to get back on their feet. They only have themselves to blame, apparently.

Poor old Eli Maggie. Rotten, lazy old villagers miners and their families. Don’t they realise the burden of power and responsibility? How dare they bemoan their miserable little wounds when Maggie was only doing it all because she had to.

The crassness of it all was no less staggering for the plummy voices of those justifying it.

A million miles away from the vile pomp and circumstance, a very different set of events was taking place. A very different ‘Maggie’ was at the Job Centre facing the consequences of the policies initiated by Margaret Thatcher and continued by her ideological children.

Her name isn’t really ‘Maggie’. I’ve changed it to protect her identity. But as she represents the end of the supposed rainbow that Thatcher’s ‘light’ created, it’s as good a pseudonym as any.

The living ‘Maggie’ is 29 and barely literate. Her only experience of work is a temporary Christmas job in a shop, and she has a couple of young children. She lives on one of the town’s poorer estates, where the unemployment rate is extremely high even for part of a town which has one of the highest rate of unemployment in the country.

Magge had received a letter from the local Jobcentre Plus on behalf of the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) advising her,

You must do everything you reasonably can to find work and to improve your chances of being employed. In order to help you with this, we require you to take the following action:

(I’m going to paste an image of the description of ‘the following action’, so you believe it really was written like it was)



Maggie would struggle to read good English. I’m a writer, yet even I struggled to parse that passage, which has various random capitalisations, lacks commas where they are needed and misses the occasional word – and which runs one clause into another without punctuation.

To make things worse still, the letter refers to a ‘my skills questionnaire’, when in fact the questionnaire is called a ‘my strengths’ questionnaire – more than enough to terrify someone with poor reading skills and low self-confidence that they might be completing the wrong documents and suffer a benefit ‘sanction’.

But even if the letter had been perfectly worded and completely accurate, the expectations it contained are ludicrous:

- Apply for 3 jobs via websites
- Register with 3 agencies and apply for jobs through them
- Complete 15 prospective jobs (whatever that means – we worked it out eventually)

All in the space of the couple of days from the arrival of the letter to today. I’m highly literate, and I like to think I’m no stranger to organisation and effort – but I would have struggled to complete all that in the time available. Especially with a couple of young kids.

‘Complete 15 prospective jobs’ turned out to mean completing this form:



‘Identify a list of employers…business directories..or the internet may be useful’.

‘Identify why you would like to work for the organisation; think about the type of organisation..how your personality and skills would fit…research the company ethos’

Identify a contact name; to maximise your chances of success, identify the person who deals with employment for your chosen organisation, and contact them directly’

‘This will allow you to build up rapport with an employer’.

‘Ethos’, ‘rapport’ – and a detailed, intensive series of actions, to be completed for 15 companies in a couple of days. By someone who can barely read or write. And if you can’t do it – we’ll sanction your benefits.

The ‘My Strengths’ task was no less ridiculous. The worksheet begins:

When applying for jobs it is important to emphasise your strengths and abilities..This exercise has been scientifically shown to find people’s strengths..

Instructions:

Go to http://www.behaviourlibrary.com/strengths.php

The website will ask you to complete 48 questions. This should only take you 10 minutes.

48 questions?! A woman who can barely read is told to enter a website address, answer 48 questions in less than 10 minutes – one of the early ones is “When the topic called for it, I can be a highly rational thinker”! – and all in addition to the ’15 prospective jobs’, working out how to apply for jobs on 3 job websites and visiting 3 employment agencies to register and apply for at least one job at each.

And, just to put icing on the cake, once the strengths questionnaire is completed and the respondent has entered his/her email address and received a copy of the 5 strengths (!), he or she is expected to:

aim to use each of your strengths in a new way everyday (sic) for at least a week.

Leaving aside the impossibility of using strengths in a new way for at least a week in a period of a couple of days, what staggers me about all this is the absolute lack of even the remotest commonsense appreciation of the reality and limitations faced by a lot of long-term unemployed people. Whoever wrote this letter and the forms that came with it clearly had not the faintest idea of the lack of skills and confidence of a lot of unemployed people from poor backgrounds, nor of how to communicate in a way they might understand.

‘Maggie’ was absolutely thrown into a panic by this letter when she received it. Life is hard enough with state support, and the fear that her benefits would be stopped if she couldn’t complete this impossible set of tasks in a couple of days. Fortunately, she went round to see some friends of mine who live near her, and they were able to help her get at least the basics done, even if the exercise and its results were meaningless. She has more chance of winning the lottery than of finding a job via that process, even if she manages to complete it with help.

The process, the way the letters were written and the ridiculous expectations betrayed a staggering callousness, lack of empathy and a complete ignorance of the daily reality faced by millions of people; people that this country has failed, abandoned – and then blamed for their plight, just like the idiot former minister blamed mining communities for not making enough effort.

That social psychopathy, and the swaggering arrogance of those who ordain it, is Margaret Thatcher’s real legacy – that and the misery of millions that it ignores.

And on the day she was buried, the way our living ‘Maggie’ was treated showed what a travesty the decision to award her a state funeral in all but name really is.

If the Head of State is there, it's a State Funeral. God Save The Queen.

Original including a lot of links at http://wp.me/p2sftc-74o

I wrote yesterday about the psychological bullying being inflicted on unemployed people by Jobcentre Plus on behalf of the Department of Work and Pensions, as huge, intimidating tasks are inflicted on people with minimal literacy, confidence and computer skills – backed by the threat of benefit ‘sanctions’ if they are not completed by a very short deadline.

But it gets even worse. One part of the series of tasks being imposed is an online ‘My strengths test’, consisting of a series of 48 multiple-choice answers to questions about your personality.

I can reveal that this ‘test’ is a completely bogus scam designed to manipulate unemployed people into performing a completely random, week-long exercise of incorporating supposed ‘characteristics’ into their daily behaviour.

How do I know this? Because the ‘test’ is fake – it allocates you a ‘personality’ even if you don’t answer the questions.

Try it for yourself here (at least until the government finds out it’s been rumbled and changes or removes the test). I clicked ‘next’ on each of the 48 questions until I reached the end. This is what came up after the last question page:



The page goes on to list 5 ‘strengths’ and to instruct respondents to enter their email address so they can discuss the ‘results’ with their Jobcentre Plus advisor. Not only this, but the covering letter that comes with the instruction to complete the ‘test’ tells the recipient that he or she must

use each of your strengths in a new way everyday (sic) for at least a week.

Untold numbers of people running around trying to use ‘strengths’ that actually have nothing to do with their actual personality – all under the threat of losing their income if they fail to comply.

A quick search of the root directory of the site reveals that, even though this site is called ‘Behaviour Library’, there are no other tests on the site. The title of the site is selected to give the impression that there is a scientific basis for the test and that it is conducted by some kind of specialist organisation competent to conduct psychometric testing – but there is not even any information to identify who devised the questions.



What there is, however, is a couple of Tory white papers – and a very revealing Powerpoint presentation. While the information in the presentation is clearly designed to provide prompts for someone to speak over, it is clearly about a particularly dark version of the government’s ‘nudge’ theory to influence behaviour.

This PowerPoint file contains some very sinister images about the kind of psychological impact the government is aiming for:





There is no doubt at all that the point of this ‘test’ – and the process of which it is part – is to terrify unemployed people into compliance and to set many up to fail so that they can be ‘sanctioned’ and have their benefits stopped.

Could there be any clearer demonstration that this government has no concern at all for the unemployed and the unfortunate? The Tories don’t even want everyone to be in work because they fear it would push up wages from the pathetic levels we see in many jobs – and it’s on the official record that this is the case.

But it goes beyond that. Chillingly, this Tory-led government has taken a cynical decision to terrify disadvantaged people into jumping through hoops to manipulate them into taking even the most insecure, unsuitable and low-paying jobs – or else be cast onto the ‘sanctioned’ heap and cut off from support anyway.

And this is not the only way they do it, as you’ll find out if you ask any disabled person about their experiences with the DWP – while they demonise them to turn so-called ‘strivers’ against them. Divide and conquer.

This ‘test’ is a tool for abuse and psychological torture and a ruse to fool the electorate into thinking the Tories are interested in getting people back to work. They’re interested in cutting them off from their benefits, but that’s a different matter altogether.

If you’re not worried about this, you should be. This is a government that wants the right to access all our emails and the right to try us in secret. If this is how they behave in one area, can they be trusted in any other?

This sinister government ploy needs to be exposed as the ‘Big Brother’ mind-control torture that it is – and its perpetrators must be held to account. Including David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith.