96%

https://twitter.com/RFord4

Jobs after jail scheme fails 96%

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article3844201.ece

*****

Work Programme official statistics: Published 2 July 2013 (GOV.UK) 

"On 27 June 2013 we published the latest Work Programme statistical summary (June 2013) – official statistics covering the period to the end of March 2013."

Evaluation of Support for the Very Long-Term Unemployed Trailblazer (RR824) (DWP) (2012) (GOV.UK)

*****

Nigel

Universal Certainty

07-01-2013 17:32 PM 

Universal Credit - anyway of getting Rent Paid direct to LL?

Request ... 

"Universal Credit - anyway of getting Rent Paid direct to LL?

hi, We have two houses that we let out to tenants on housing benefit, income support etc. With the new universal credit coming in, I have read the rent will be paid direct to the tenants. I have had lots of problems with tenanats in the past where rent was paid directly to them. They just use up the money on everything, apart from the rent! Is there anyway I can have rent paid to me directly?

Thanks Aero"

Reply ...

"Under normal circumstances --- No. suggest if you always have problems, that you remove the problems. Let to working people, then most of the problems go away. Simples."

R.a.M."

*****

January 22, 2013

Rents Set To Soar as Wages and Benefits are Slashed

"Over one third of landlords are planning rent rises already this year, with around a quarter set to inflict an inflation busting 3% hike on struggling tenants a new survey has revealed.

The stark warning was issued by letting agents Spareroom, who also recently revealed that rents for rooms in shared houses had rocketed by a staggering 7% in the last year."

Nigel

Moral? Priceless

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill (Hansard)

*****

The Welfare Bill: A government of millionaires just made the poor poorer - and laughed as they did it (Independent) 

MPs’ pay demand signals end of ‘Austerity Britain’

MPs call for, in private at least, a 32% pay rise

All in it together?

Who are Britain's real scroungers? (Hint: they want a 32% pay rise (Herald)

 Deconstructing Iain: Coalition benefit lies fall apart at debate

In work benefits – who really benefits from them?

Stuff the workers: Osborne mugs 1.7m breadwinners with Tory welfare reforms (Mirror)

Capping welfare benefits is the moral thing to do (DT)
 
Pensioners could face universal benefit cuts after election, says Iain Duncan Smith (DM)

Clegg criticises Cameron's 'irrational' pledge to protect pensioner benefits while imposing cuts on everyone else (DM)

MPs vote for 1% benefits cap (ITV)

Benefits cuts for ‘shirkers’ passed after angry debate (Scotsman)

MPs vote on 1% benefits cap: Politics live blog (Guardian)

Duncan Smith defends benefits squeeze (Guardian)

There is a problem with welfare, but it's not 'shirkers' (Guardian)

Poorest households will be hit hardest by benefit changes, Whitehall admits (Guardian)

The Welfare State, 1942-2013, obituary (Guardian)

The Tories’ Big Lie on Tax Credit Cuts

Tell a lie often enough….

The BBC: helping the Tories force-feed falsehoods to the masses

8 January 2013

Demonisation of people on benefits is a 'stain on our society' (PCS)

"The comparison between benefits and wages is unfair and misleading. The main unemployment benefit has dramatically fallen in value from just under 21% of average wages in 1979 to 11% now. At 21%, jobseekers allowance would be £135 a week today, instead of just £71."

Nigel

Moral? Priceless

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill (Hansard)

*****

The Welfare Bill: A government of millionaires just made the poor poorer - and laughed as they did it (Independent) 

MPs’ pay demand signals end of ‘Austerity Britain’

MPs call for, in private at least, a 32% pay rise

All in it together?

Who are Britain's real scroungers? (Hint: they want a 32% pay rise (Herald)

 Deconstructing Iain: Coalition benefit lies fall apart at debate

In work benefits – who really benefits from them?

Stuff the workers: Osborne mugs 1.7m breadwinners with Tory welfare reforms (Mirror)

Capping welfare benefits is the moral thing to do (DT)
 
Pensioners could face universal benefit cuts after election, says Iain Duncan Smith (DM)

Clegg criticises Cameron's 'irrational' pledge to protect pensioner benefits while imposing cuts on everyone else (DM)

MPs vote for 1% benefits cap (ITV)

Benefits cuts for ‘shirkers’ passed after angry debate (Scotsman)

MPs vote on 1% benefits cap: Politics live blog (Guardian)

Duncan Smith defends benefits squeeze (Guardian)

There is a problem with welfare, but it's not 'shirkers' (Guardian)

Poorest households will be hit hardest by benefit changes, Whitehall admits (Guardian)

The Welfare State, 1942-2013, obituary (Guardian)

The Tories’ Big Lie on Tax Credit Cuts

Tell a lie often enough….

The BBC: helping the Tories force-feed falsehoods to the masses

8 January 2013

Demonisation of people on benefits is a 'stain on our society' (PCS)

"The comparison between benefits and wages is unfair and misleading. The main unemployment benefit has dramatically fallen in value from just under 21% of average wages in 1979 to 11% now. At 21%, jobseekers allowance would be £135 a week today, instead of just £71."

Nigel

Not So Small Print

Explanatory Memorandum for the Social Security Advisory Committee, Universal Credit Regulations 2012, For the meeting of the Social Security Advisory Committee on Wednesday 13 June 2012

"Limit on Payment of Housing Costs - Owner Occupiers

91. There is to be a time-limit of two years on payment of housing costs to claimants in the full conditionality group of Universal Credit. When such a claimant has received help with housing costs for a period of two years these payments will stop and will not be reinstated until a claimant has had a break in claim and has served a further waiting period. This is underpinned by the principle of providing short-term help through the benefits system and because it is not considered appropriate that this help is provided indefinitely. This is intended to focus the help that is given through the benefits system on those on low income when they need it most."

Housing Costs

"If you are someone who has an “all work-related requirement”, you will only get the housing element for two years."

HOW WILL THE HOUSING ELEMENT OF UNIVERSAL CREDIT PERFORM?

"Limited to 2 years for those in the all work requirement group."

Thread: Am I the only person who reads the news?? Universal Credit

Thread: Housing benefit limited to 2 years under new Universal Credit

Universal Credit Key Facts
 
Escalating conditionality

Nigel

It's What They Do - Does Not Matter Who They Are

Friday 04 January 2013

Voters 'brainwashed by Tory welfare myths' (Independent)

"Survey shows public ignorance of the level of benefits and who gets them

Ministers were accused last night of demonising benefits claimants in an attempt to justify their controversial decision to increase most state handouts by less than inflation.

Polling commissioned by the Trades Union Congress suggests that a campaign by Tory ministers is turning voters against claimants – but only because the public is being fed "myths" about those who rely on benefits.

The criticism comes before a crunch Commons vote next Tuesday on the Welfare Benefits Uprating Bill, which will ensure that most benefits and tax credits will rise by only one per cent for the next three years. Labour, which will vote against the measure, will try today to answer Tory claims that it is "soft" on scroungers by announcing a "tough love" plan to force adults who have been out of work for more than two years to take up a government "job guarantee" or lose their benefits."

Editorial: Who said the nasty party had gone away? (Independent)

Friday 4 January 2013

Labour proposes 'tough but fair' jobs and welfare scheme (Guardian)
Labour urges temporary jobs for long-term unemployed (BBC)
Making work pay: Balls announces compulsory jobs guarantee for long-term unemployed (LFF)
Job Guarantees give hope to long-term unemployed (LFF)
Labour's job guarantee (PH)
Labour revisits old welfare ghosts with its jobs guarantee (Spectator)
The Trouble with a Job Guarantee
Ed Balls: Britain needs real welfare reform that is tough, fair and that works
Working reforms will introduce job guarantee plan for long-term claimants over 25, announces Ed Balls

"Shadow chancellor Ed Balls says the £1bn jobs subsidy would be linked to a cut in tax relief for higher earners' pensions. Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer

Labour will move to protect itself from the politically damaging charge that it is soft on welfare claimants, by proposing that every adult aged over 25 and out of work for more than two years should be obliged to take up a government-provided job for six months, or lose benefits.

The "compulsory work or lose benefits" announcement by the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, and the shadow work and pensions secretary, Liam Byrne, comes ahead of what threatens to be a fraught second reading debate on Tuesday over Labour's refusal to back a government bill restricting increases in benefits and tax credits to 1% a year for the next three years – which is likely to represent a 4% cut in real terms."

Friday, 4 January 2013 

Back to the future?

"On many forums, including the comments on newspaper articles, it has become commonplace for people to forecast a return to the workhouse.  As a historian, in an amateur sort of way, I have begun to see genuine parallels between the plans and attitudes of the current governing classes and the climate of opinion which brought about the Poor Laws of 1834.".

January 9th, 2013 

Labour’s real guarantee: Workfare

"Last week saw the Labour Party announce its own form of workfare: the Job Guarantee. Labour, who introduced workfare and welfare reform into the UK whilst in government, now guarantees a number of things: It guarantees that yet again politicians will give billions of taxpayers’ money to subsidise big private businesses – probably the likes of failing and government contract reliant A4E, and workfare-users ASDA – helping them to drive up their profit margins. It guarantees to further undermine real job vacancies as companies replace job roles with subsidised compulsory short-term placements."

Labour’s Job Plans, Concerns After Some Serious Thought

Isn’t it time Labour’s plan for jobs and growth was different from the Coalition’s?

Nigel

“Think Of The Press As A Great Keyboard On Which The Government Can Play.”

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually

come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can
shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences
of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to
repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension,
 the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Monday, 31 December 2012 11:00 AM

Labour 'squandered £10bn' on tax credit blunders
IDS: Tax Credit System 'Haemorrhaging Money'
£10bn lost to fraud in tax credits system ‘not fit for purpose’ says IDS
Iain Duncan Smith: we’ve brought back fairness to welfare
Iain Duncan Smith launches scathing attack on tax credit abuse
Iain Duncan Smith: universally challenged
UK Minister Iain Duncan Smith condemns tax credits
Number of foreigners claiming tax credits 'unknown', ministers admit
Tax credits and a fairer system
David Cameron: we’ll help the strivers, not welfare claimants
Keeping up the attack

"Labour's tax credit system resulted in £10 billion being wasted on fraud and error, Iain Duncan Smith has claimed.

The work and pensions secretary used an article in the Telegraph paper to mount a sustained attack on the New Labour government's "sorry story of dependency, wasted taxpayers' money and fraud""

Monday 31 Dec 2012

FactCheck: is Britain a tax credit haven?

"It’s also worth pointing out that of the £11.16bn lost to fraud and error under Labour, just £1.27bn of that was actually down to fraud. Or 0.7 per cent of the total amount spent on tax credits."

December 31, 2012

IDS on welfare reform -how do I lie to thee let me count the ways

"How do I LIE to thee? Let me count the ways. I LIE thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach….

That sums up Iain Duncan Smith’s latest attempt at spin about welfare reforms. Perhaps this is just to deflect that the word ‘reform’ means to improve and his reforms will cost everyone more but his latest diatribe is simply plagiarizing the most loved poem of Elizabeth Barratt Browning and should be seen for what it is."

31 Monday Dec 2012 

Iain Duncan Smith: Monster of the Year 2012

"It seems Iain Duncan Smith, the creature whose Department for Work and Pensions launched an ethnic cleansing programme (in all but name) against the sick and disabled in 2011 and 2012, has now turned his baleful glare on the working poor."

31 Dec 2012

Duncan Smith's attack on working poor a 'smokescreen', say critics

"For many, it may be additionally shocking that a punitive approach which seems to lack both compassion and understanding towards the most vulnerable in society is being pursued by a government minister who uses the cloak of 'Christian values' for such policies and appears to have no regard for his own church's social teaching," said the Ekklesia co-director."

Tuesday 1 January 2013

IDS’s rebirth is one of the wonders of the age

"So far at least, this false distinction between workers and shirkers – those who trudge off to the office or factory, in Osborne’s malevolent fantasy, while the feckless neighbours drowsily prepare for another day in front of Jeremy Kyle – is working as planned. The popularity of this wicked misrepresentation and the dilemma that poses for Ed Miliband is the one visible oasis on an otherwise arid Conservative trek towards the 2015 election.

More than morally repugnant, it is unbelievably dangerous for the country and the Tories themselves. Some 30 years after Thatcher opened the divide, the party has no councillors, let alone MPs, in Liverpool, Newcastle and other Northern cities. Messrs Osborne and Cameron, clad in tails and throwing bread rolls at the time, have either learned nothing from the residual damage inflicted on their electoral chances, or are too preoccupied with short-term survival to care about the consequences of this thuggish reawakening of the monied South’s contempt for the destitute North. A year ushered in by the strains of “We pay your benefits, we pay your benefits” from the mouths of beery London arrows fans does not sound, to these ears, like one that can possibly end well."

Welfare Whoppers

A Year of Lies and Blunders at the DWP Part 1

2012: A Year of Lies and Blunders at the DWP Part 2
 
Monster of 2012 starts the New Year as he means to go on

Nigel

If The Establishment Breaks The Social Contract ...

Thursday 27 December 2012

Odd job UK: booming black market economy is propping up jobs figures

"The “jobs enigma” of 2012, that saw unemployment fall despite the gloomy economic outlook, is likely to continue next year, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)."

Friday December 28,2012 

WARNING OVER 'SCRAMBLE' FOR WORK
 
"The unemployed will find it harder to get a job in 2013 as the "scramble" for work gets fiercer, a new report has predicted."

Saturday, 29 December 2012

Mystery unemployment figures

"There's a bit of a mystery surrounding the fall in the unemployment figures.  The economy is flat-lining; so why is the number of jobless predicted to continue to fall.  Several papers have addressed this."

Nigel

Bijou

Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates applicable from April 2013

"The April 2013 LHA rates are set out below.

Please note, the LHA rates currently published on LHA-Direct will continue to be effective until 31st March 2013.

Any policy enquiries should be directed to the Department for Work and Pensions."

December 27, 2012

LHA in 2013/14 – the final straw for the benefit claimant and homelessness through the roof!
 
"LHA is going up by 2.2% we were told and after 2012/13 when it has been frozen it attracted little if any attention. Yet the official figures show the actual increase is 0.59% and not 2.2% and in some areas it is being cut by over 7%!!"

No change, here ... will still need to top-up, from my JSA (as I do CT).

Wednesday 5 December 2012 15.32 GMT

Housing benefit to rise less than rate of inflation  

"Payment increases to landlords to be capped at 1% from 2014, while plan to end housing benefits for under-25s is dropped."

Wednesday 5 December 2012 22.12 GMT

Cap on benefits to target 'shirkers, not workers' will worsen poverty, say critics

"Allowing only a 1% rise for the next three years will save the government billions in the face of fierce opposition."

*****

Universal Credit Service Charges – guidance for landlords (DWP)

Private Landlords and Universal Credit

Olympic borough fights the Tories’ new Rackmanism

*****

Nigel

On The Move

24 December 2012

Young claimants shut out of private rented sector

"Leslie Morphy, chief executive of Crisis, said: ‘This snapshot of a typical rental search for a single person builds a picture of desperate shortage, particularly for those restricted to lower housing benefit levels, and shows that landlords are reluctant to take on benefits claimants.’"

No room available: study of the availability of shared accommodation (Crisis)

"Ben Sanders and Lígia Teixeira."

Saturday 22 December 2012

UK needs more houses not higher benefits, thinktank says

"Raising housing benefit is an expensive fix that fails to tackle the problem of high house prices and rents, says Institute of Economic Affairs."

Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - 09:37 GMT  

Expensive transport costs hit job seekers

"Transport costs are becoming a big hindrance to young people trying to get a job, according to new research from the Work Foundation. The research concluded that 20% of young people are finding transport costs a big hindrance to find employment or continue with education or training. This is especially true for those living in rural areas, the report said."

Tuesday 25 December 2012 

Landlords fear introduction of Universal Credit

"Of the 500 landlords surveyed in the National Landlords Association’s latest Quarterly Landlords Panel, 96 per cent are concerned over problems with the introduction of Universal Credit.

This is clearly linked to the two leading priorities cited for 2013, arrears avoidance (64%) and minimising voids (56%).

Universal Credit will replace the current benefit system in April 2013. Under the new system, most benefits, including Local Housing Allowance (LHA), will be rolled into one monthly payment. In addition, direct payments of LHA to the landlord will cease."

Nigel

Die Groß Gesellschaft

The Big Society, Berlin, Germany, 1930

22 Saturday Dec 2012

The rise of food banks and the fall of the Big Society

"Isn’t it a shame that in the season of goodwill, the Prime Minister cannot extend any to those who are worst-off in his bold Big Society?

Instead, all they’ve been given are bad statistics and platitudes.

I’m referring, of course, to his performance in the last Prime Minister’s Questions of 2012, when he was asked to explain why there has been a sixfold increase in the number of food banks in the UK during the last three years – the time since Mr Cameron’s Coalition government took over."

LAST UPDATED AT 09:56 ON Tue 18 Dec 2012

Mothers 'steal to feed children' as poor rely on food banks

"Shoplifters in deprived areas target essential items, say police, amid growing economic hardship

YOUNG MOTHERS in South Yorkshire are being forced to steal to feed their children as the economic downturn continues to bite, according to police.

In deprived areas like Rotherham, where crime has increased by 28 per cent in the last 12 months, the poor have been reduced to stealing groceries and other essential items just to survive."

15 August 2011 

The well-trousered philanthropists: Tory party chums and food parcels for the poor

"Active citizen Mel Kelly discovers how private companies with Conservative connections are benefiting from 'reform' of the British welfare state."

Saturday 22 December 2012 20.34 GMT

Christmas food handouts double as millions face 'financial precipice'

"Debt-ridden households could kill off economic recovery when interest rate rises, says Resolution Foundation."

*****

2012 review – are we looking at a decade of destitution? (JRF)

Autumn statement and the Office for Budget Responsibility (Inclusion) 

Councillor in attack on food bank

How does the Coalition score on food poverty and living standards?

Nigel