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Post by nickd on Jan 2, 2013 0:03:48 GMT 1
Can't the Tories fight the welfare debate
without the Daily Mail? Has IDS & Co sunk to an all time low? Surely this has gone a step too far?
These headlines will be appearing on the front cover of every Daily Mail on Wednesday morning. It's a further contemptible attempt by the Tory led government to vilify those on benefits as being in receipt of disproportionally higher income amounts than their working counterparts.
IDS has certainly shown no spirit of goodwill over the Christmas break, he appears to have foregone all of the festivities and spent much of his time furiously plotting away in a further attempt to alienate the general public from just about anyone who find themselves having to rely on the welfare state.
These deplorable headlines come on the back of a a previous outbreak when benefit bashing IDS went to the Daily Telegraph with the following equally inaccurate and contemptible headlines:
The claims made in the Telegraph over tax credit claim rises were quickly rebutted by Channel 4 'Fact Checker who corrected a statement made by IDS that tax credit claims had not risen by 58% in the run up to the 2005 general election - their verdict on IDS's claim being 'That’s an increase of 8 per cent, not 58'.
The Conservatives promote the Telegraph headlines on their Conservative home website along with an extract from the Sun over the number of 'benefit fiddlers' being jailed alongside the following comments:
"The number of benefit fiddlers being jailed has HALVED despite a big Government crackdown"
"Official figures show 430 cheats were caged by judges or
deported in the past 12 months — compared with 957 last year
and 893 in 2010. Fewer than one in four handout fraud cases now
leads to a court conviction and only one in 50 ends in a prison
term. The failings come despite a massive push to root out
benefits cheats, who cost taxpayers more than £1billion a year." -
The Sun
The actual article in the Sun blames judges for going 'soft on welfare' cheats...
"Official figures show 430 cheats were caged by judges or deported in the past 12 months — compared with 957 last year and 893 in 2010.
"Fewer than one in four handout fraud cases now leads to a court conviction and only one in 50 ends in a prison term.
The failings come despite a massive push to root out benefits cheats, who cost taxpayers more than £1billion a year.
In contrast to the disappointing results, the number of cases investigated across Britain ROSE from 36,000 in 2010 to nearly 40,000 in 2011 and 41,000 in 2012.
Officials at the Department for Work and Pensions, which is headed by Iain Duncan Smith, signalled the blame for the jail let-offs lay with lenient judges.
A spokesman said: “We always push for the toughest sentence but that is in the hands of the courts.”
You can see which way the IDS is steering the DWP in an impact assessment on their fraud and error strategy here, it doesn't take a lot of working out to notice the accent is all about fraud rather than departmental error.
IDS is fast building his reputation as a fact bender as he pushes on with his insistence that his plan to implement Universal Credit is on 'track, on time and on budget'. It's a claim which is doubted by one of his own ministers as pointed out by Daily Mail online who reported a forthcoming calamity:
"Universal credit plan 'is a disaster in the making', says minister just months ahead of launch"
The Daily Mail consistently report the failures with IDS's welfare reforms on the on-line version of their paper but continue to prop IDS up in his war on welfare when it comes to printing the tabloid headlines.
Why don't we take a look at this claim of IDS's on benefit increases? The following figures plot the rates of personal allowances paid to benefit claimants from 1988 to the present:
The left column shows the basic allowance paid to a single claimant, the second shows how much the benefit rose in cash terms on the year before, the third shows the amount paid to a couple and the fourth again plots the cash increase. The figures make interesting reading:
11/04/1988 --- 33.40 --- 0.00 --- 51.45 --- 0.00
10/04/1989 --- 34.90 --- 1.50 --- 54.80 --- 3.35
09/04/1990 --- 36.70 --- 1.80 --- 57.60 --- 2.80
08/04/1991 --- 39.65 --- 2.95 --- 62.25 --- 4.65
07/10/1991 --- 39.65 --- 0.00 --- 62.25 --- 0.00
06/04/1992 --- 42.45 --- 2.80 --- 66.60 --- 4.35
12/04/1993 --- 44.00 --- 1.55 --- 69.00 --- 2.40
11/04/1994 --- 45.70 --- 1.70 --- 71.70 --- 2.70
10/04/1995 --- 46.50 --- 0.80 --- 73.00 --- 1.30
08/04/1996 --- 47.90 --- 1.40 --- 75.20 --- 2.20
07/04/1997 --- 49.15 --- 1.25 --- 77.15 --- 1.95
06/04/1998 --- 50.35 --- 1.20 --- 79.00 --- 1.85
12/04/1999 --- 51.40 --- 1.05 --- 80.65 --- 1.65
10/04/2000 --- 52.20 --- 0.80 --- 81.95 --- 1.30
09/04/2001 --- 53.05 --- 0.85 --- 83.25 --- 1.30
11/04/2002 --- 53.95 --- 0.90 --- 84.65 --- 1.40
01/10/2002 --- 53.95 --- 0.00 --- 84.65 --- 0.00
07/04/2003 --- 54.65 --- 0.70 --- 85.75 --- 1.10
05/04/2004 --- 55.65 --- 1.00 --- 87.30 --- 1.55
11/04/2005 --- 56.20 --- 0.55 --- 88.15 --- 0.85
10/04/2006 --- 57.45 --- 1.25 --- 90.10 --- 1.95
09/04/2007 --- 59.15 --- 1.70 --- 92.80 --- 2.70
08/04/2008 --- 60.50 --- 1.35 --- 94.95 --- 2.15
06/04/2009 --- 64.30 --- 3.80 --- 100.95 -- 6.00
12/04/2010 --- 65.45 --- 1.15 --- 102.75 -- 1.80
11/04/2011 --- 67.50 --- 2.05 --- 105.95 -- 3.20
09/04/2012 --- 71.00 --- 3.50 --- 111.45 -- 5.50
The figures are sourced from data tables prepared by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, the 'personal allowances' shown are the basic amounts payable to benefit claimant in receipt of main - stream 'income based' benefits such as Jobseeker's Allowance, Income Support, Employment & Support Allowance and are also used in the calculation of Housing & Council Tax Benefits.
IDS will be all too well aware that the issue of uprating benefits is a complex matter as well illustrated by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The figures shown are blue for the periods when the Conservatives and Coalition government have presided in power and red for Labour so a comparison can be made as to how the amounts increase under different governments.
More on this in percentage terms later....
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Post by nickd on Jan 6, 2013 20:54:57 GMT 1
Could you survive on £71 a week?
Really? Tomorrow is the day government debates the 'benefit uprating bill'. It is government's contention that those on benefits should see them increase by only 1% rather than by the rates which have previously been used to determine how much benefits must increase each year to keep track of the very basic cost of living.
An argument has broken out over where the line needs to be drawn between helping the 'strivers' rather than 'skivers'. What about those that can't strive and don't skive?
Just £71 per week is the amount currently set as the 'minimum amount of money which a person (aged 25 or over) says the law needs to live on. In the previous post we looked at how this had gone up in monetary terms but before looking at it in percentage terms why not simply ask yourself how you would manage if this was all you had to survive on?
Remember this is what a person will receive as their Jobseeker's Allowance or when making an initial claim for Employment & Support Allowance (when placed in the 'assessment' phase) or if claiming Income Support. Amounts paid to pensioner's are enhanced as are other claimants who have a family, caring for someone or if claiming on the grounds of disability. However the starting point is to consider the 'basic allowance' upon which almost all 'means - tested' claims are based.
The basic allowance is also used in the calculation of a claimant's Housing and or Council Tax Benefit. I've knocked up what I'd call a pretty basic budget for someone on this level of income and wonder how someone would get by on such an amount. In my day job in an advice agency clients on this level of income are commonplace and I regularly hear how they struggle to survive - it's a far cry from all the stories you hear about claimants living in a land of luxury on £100,000 per year! I'm sure some will manage a lot better than others but how would you manage?
The following budget isn't related to any academic study, it's purely and simply an attempt at wondering how you would stretch £71 a week. For the purpose of this little 'exercise' I'm assuming no rent or council tax is being met out of the basic allowance it relates to just one person living in a household where he or she is solely responsible for their own finances. Remember for the purpose of this exercise you have no overdraft, the only way you can borrow is via high interest lending, no credit cards, nothing of value to sell, no one to lend you a few quid, think of it as you - your wallet and just £71 a week....
How would you relate to it?
'Your weekly budget'
£7.50 - Household
£2.50 - TV license
£35 - Food
£8 - Electric
£5 - Phone
£5 - Travel
£8 - Gas
£71 Per week total
A little guidance....
I've put down £35 per week for food which equates to the grand sum of £5 per day. With all the accent these days being on eating healthily how would you get on? Bear in mind how much even the most basic of foods are these days, bread, butter/margarine, milk, vegetables, cereals, tea bags, coffee, ham, eggs, cheese, tinned food, fresh meat, soups, ready meals, fruit and so forth. Remember how the accent should be on maintaining a balanced and nutritional diet.   
Remember that some people living in certain areas or caravans will have to buy separate bottled gas or oil which is prohibitively expensive. These are not commodities which people can simply do without, we are in 2013 rather than the days of Charles Dickens and temperatures are set (as far as my reliable weather tweeter predicts) to be quite cold in the year ahead. 
What about the plastic, the loans, the insurance, the pension policies, the critical illness cover, the savings scheme, the Christmas and birthday cards & most basic of presents, a well wishing card for a wedding or a sympathy card for a funeral? These are all items of expenditure which people may have been perfectly happily paying off before losing their job or before falling ill, or perhaps facing some totally unexpected and unforeseen happening like a car crash - all of which can happen to you and I at any time, you never know what destiny has in store for you and what awaits you around the corner.
Let's just have a little think about how quickly your luck can just run out...
'Strivers - v - Skivers'
I have to say I absolutely hate all this talk of 'strivers' and 'skivers', it's terminology which I can see having political appeal but does it reflect the reality of what this welfare debate is really all about? I really don't see that it does - it infers that if you're not a striver you are by default and definition a 'skiver'. How can that always be right?
I remember coming across what government would no doubt call a 'striver' around 20 years ago. You could say this 29 year old was striving to get to his place of work, a workplace not far too from where our paths first crossed at around 7.00am one drizzly Thursday morning near a slip road somewhere off the M25 south of London as I made my way to work. He'd driven his HGV from somewhere near Cambridge to where I first caught sight of him or rather his truck. It was a sight I'll always remember, not a pleasant sight as the truck veered precariously (it looked as though it was all in slow motion) towards the roundabout which I was waiting to enter. First the truck tipped one way, then it lurched the other way and as it did so it tipped over on to the armco barrier around the island in the middle of the roundabout.
I'll spare you the gory details of what I went on to witness after I got out of my car to see if anyone had been hurt. It was an incident in which this 29 year old father of two went from being very much alive to being un-mistakenly very much dead within the space of no more than five minutes from my first sight of his truck to my last sight of him gasping for life. It has to this day installed in me a sense of how quickly things can change for absolutely anyone, not through recklessness or wilful neglect, just sheer 'misfortune' as the coroner later went on to confirm.
Likewise in my work I see any number of people who are neither strivers or skivers. There are people who simply suffer from some misfortune, a run of bad luck or an error of judgement. In some cases they're born with disability, in other cases it hits them later on in life. If it's not disability it can just be down to a change in fortune, life can change dramatically in less time than it's taken you to read this post. What absolutely appals me in this day and age is how some see themselves as possessing what they see as 'aspirational' ability - it's their very own 'striving license' which they use to condemn all others as skivers. What on earth gives them the right to make the lives of the less fortunate far more difficult than it already is?
The value our government places on a benefit claimant
on just £71 per week is an extra 1% if the benefit
uprating bill is passed
71 pence doesn't even stretch to a ...
Welcome to 'Breadline Britain'
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Post by nickd on Jan 7, 2013 9:52:15 GMT 1
Comparison with RPI & CPI I'll leave the complexities of Retail & Consumer Price Indexing to the experts such as BBC's Stephanie Flanders who writes a very informative piece on how it all work and what it all means.
However I know sufficient to know that there are other factors apart from wage rises which need to be taken in to account in the way benefit rises are considered. The following table from Stephanie's blog shows how UK food prices have risen between 2004 and 2010; you will note the sharp rises in wholesale (how much food trades at before you buy) pricing over and above that which you pay in the shops (retail pricing). The table undoubtedly reverberates around the significant recessionary time we saw in the economic crash around 2008 to 2009:  Annual Benefit increases & percentage rates:
11/04/1988 --- 33.40 --- Start
10/04/1989 --- 34.90 --- 4.6%
09/04/1990 --- £36.70 --- 5%
08/04/1991 --- £39.65 --- 7.5%
07/10/1991 --- £39.65 --- 0%
06/04/1992 --- £42.45 --- 6.6%
12/04/1993 --- £44.00 --- 3.5%
11/04/1994 --- £45.70 --- 3.7%
10/04/1995 --- £46.50 --- 1.7%
08/04/1996 --- £47.90 --- 3%
07/04/1997 --- 49.15 --- 2.6%
06/04/1998 --- £50.35 --- 2.4%
12/04/1999 --- £51.40 --- 2%
10/04/2000 --- £52.20 --- 1.6%
09/04/2001 --- £53.05 --- 1.6%
11/04/2002 --- £53.95 --- 1.7%
01/10/2002 --- £53.95 --- 0%
07/04/2003 --- £54.65 --- 1.3%
05/04/2004 --- £55.65 --- 1.9%
11/04/2005 --- £56.20 --- 1%
10/04/2006 --- £57.45 --- 2.2%
09/04/2007 --- £59.15 --- 2.9%
08/04/2008 --- £60.50 --- 2.2%
06/04/2009 --- £64.30 --- 5.9%
12/04/2010 --- £65.45 --- 1.8%
11/04/2011 --- £67.50 --- 3.1%
09/04/2012 --- 71.00 --- 5%
Here how it maps against Consumer Price Index 
Government talks about people on benefits spending all their money on drink and cigarettes, it may be true of some but how would you afford it placed on the breadline income? Government has promised tax breaks to those earning less than £10,000 a year..... The single person's benefit allowance
equates to an annual income of just: £3,692 Per Year[/center][/b][/color] |
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Post by nickd on Jan 21, 2013 21:42:11 GMT 1
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