Revealed: the reality behind Workfare and why it doesn’t work
The government has spent all this week defending its exploitative Workfare programme, which forces unemployed people to get ‘work experience’ at companies for short periods of time. The ‘experience’ pays nothing and is usually mandatory – they risk losing even basic benefits unless they sign up.
But how effective is this programme really? Liberal Conspiracy was contacted by a consultant working in this industry. He told us the Workfare programme was, in his own words, “the biggest scam since records began”.
Here is roughly how it works.
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Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
One of the numerous job creation schemes of the Thatcher years was known officially as Employment Training, although the acronym was colloquially translated into ‘Extra Tenner’, because that was how much it paid on top of the dole.
These days, it seems, even an additional ten quid a week is a bit much to ask. Many of Britain’s most profitable employers are securing staff for nothing, with the state picking up the tab for Jobseekers’ Allowance and a bus pass.
What yesterday’s Welfare Bill defeat means for the government and activists
Lots of people have already asked me: “But what did yesterday mean and I’m afraid it will be a while before anyone can properly answer that.
The House of Lords scrutinises a bill “line-by-line”. They are there to go through every last detail of policy and amend it where they find fault. There are no big-bangs, no fireworks, just lots and lots and lots of technical details. They get harder and harder to report and harder still to explain.
What I can tell you is what it meant politically.
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Releasing Lansley’s Risk Register is key to saving the NHS
contribution by Neil Foster
Almost year ago I wrote here how the huge mismatch in public trust levels meant the Government was always going to struggle to win support for its controversial NHS Bill.
We’ve seen a steady stream of groups representing health professional formally oppose the Bill, with the Royal College of GPs among the most recent and significant.
As Dr Hamish Meldrum of the British Medical Association has argued: “If the Prime Minister wants to put clinicians in control, he should listen to what they are saying – louder each day – and put this increasingly confused legislation out of its misery.”
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On Welfare – MPs please vote for what you know is right
Today, at 12.30pm the welfare reform bill will return to the House of Commons.
Let’s be very clear – it is a dangerous, incomplete bill based on flawed evidence and unpleasant ideals.
It is vast and impenetrable – most of the ministers arguing for it have very little understanding of the detail within it. Yes, that’s right, they don’t understand the details or effects of their own policies.
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Have Labour realised the election is more than three years away?
I don’t think Labour really know that the game has changed. The move to fixed term parliaments means Ed Miliband find themselves in a totally different position to someone like Cameron circa 2005 or Blair in 1994.
In 2005 Cameron suspected the next election wouldn’t be for five years – and he turned out to be right. But he nearly had to fight an election in 2007 against a newly inaugurated Brown.
This meant that Cameron spent a lot time and effort trying to appear electable, trying to appear “in-touch” by visiting the arctic, liberal by hugging hoodies and as a better heir to Blair than Brown could ever be.
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Does Labour have a broader charisma problem?
contribution by Mark Thompson
I was thinking the other day about the Labour Party and its recent history and I realised something that had not really occurred to me before.
Despite having held power for almost half of the last 50 years, there are only two Labour PMs from that period who have actually won an election. They are Harold Wilson and Tony Blair.
I think perhaps this sometimes gets a bit lost in the detail of the 7 election wins and 24 years of power they yielded.
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Messages matter: Why Miliband’s speeches need emotion
contribution by Martin Shovel
Ed Miliband continues to have trouble getting his message across, and he knows it. In the wake of a poor conference speech and a 2011 beset with difficulties he attempted to stop the rot by appointing a new chief-of-staff and speechwriter.
However, on the evidence of last week’s speech on the economy, things are going from bad to worse. It was billed as the relaunch speech that wasn’t a relaunch, which is just as well as it appears to have sunk without trace.
The Labour party needs to focus more on new institutions than policy
contribution by Joe Sarling
Perhaps the lack of concrete policies at this stage is not such a problem for the Labour Party.
Policies are often designed to be no more than quick hits or media sound bites, often trying to be a magic bullet for a multi-faceted problem.
But this approach only panders to the current media culture rather than delivering change. The electorate says they want a change in politics so let’s grant them their wish.
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Alex Salmond is not the canny operator many paint him as
Canny is a word often used to describe Alex Salmond by journalists who seek to impress on an audience who have hitherto not paid too much attention to our First Minister or the political threat he represents.
The description is not entirely without foundation. Salmond is an impressive political operator who has consistently wrong-footed his opponents on the political scene in Scotland. One of his advantages is that he has simply been at it longer than the leaders of any political party in the UK.
But his talents have also been greatly exaggerated.
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» The real agenda behind Telegraph’s abortion investigation
» How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists
» When disabled people want to work – employers can hold the back
» Revealed: the reality behind Workfare and why it doesn’t work
» Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
» Why country-by-country reporting matters to our wellbeing
» If Unions want to become stronger, they need to modernise
» Why work “reforms” in Spain are a warning for workers across Europe
» Five things you need to know about the NHS bill
» Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier. More Racist.
» Laziness levels in Britain getting lazier, wails government
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