X% Of A Lot More, Is Better Than Y% Of Very Little - Fix X, Not Y

10:00AM GMT 01 Jan 2013

Benefit increases far outstrip private sector pay, DWP figures show

"Benefit claimants have seen their handouts far outstrip increases in average private sector pay for those in work, figures show."

Wednesday 2 January 2013 

Benefit rises outstrip private sector pay, says government
Benefit wars: IDS on offensive before uprating vote

"Labour party accuses Tory-led coalition of being out of touch with reality over plans to stem rise in working-age benefits."

12:17pm UK, Wednesday 02 January 2013

Benefits Rise 'Almost Double Salary Increase'

"Out-of-work benefits increased by 20% in five years, compared to a rise of 12% in the private sector, official figures say."

Wednesday 02 Jan 2013

FactCheck: are benefits rising faster than pay?

"So from what Mr Duncan Smith has said, he’s correct – benefits from 2007 have gone up by 20 per cent, and private sector wages by just under 12 per cent.

However, it’s worth bearing in mind that the period he talks about includes the recession and the credit crunch, when private sector wages were badly hit.

FactCheck went back further, by nine or 10 years or so, to a time before the recession and depressed earnings. Incidentally, this seems to be roughly the way the Labour Party has approached these figures as well.

That found that from April 2003 to April 2012, JSA for a single person above 25 went from £54.65 a week to £71 – up by 30 per cent.

Over the same period, private sector weekly wages rose from £351 in April 2003, to £468 – an increase of 33 per cent. Which is high, but not as high as the pay rise the public sector saw over that period – of 35 per cent, from £355 to £481."

3 January, 2013 - 18:09

Are wages failing to keep pace with rising prices and benefits?

"All three claims about the relative speed of rises to wages, benefit claims and rail fares can be substantiated, however each can be measured in different ways, which means a plethora of different interpretations can be supported, given the right time period and metric."

2 January 2013 Last updated at 14:57

Battle over plan to cap benefits ahead of Commons vote

"Labour, which will fight the 1% cap, says that jobseekers allowance has risen by 32% over the past decade, whereas wages have gone up by 36%."
 `

02 Wednesday Jan 2013

Why do governments only ever quote statistics that mislead?

"According to financial journalist Paul Lewis on Twitter, this means unemployment benefits have risen by just £11.85 per week, while average private sector pay has risen by £49 a week.".

"IDS is living in a world of his own, though. He’s arguing for a cap of one per cent on benefit rises, for the next three years – effectively removing six per cent of jobseekers’ income by the end of that period."

Overall Benefit Cap – It should be abandoned not just delayed

Welfare Cuts Row, Lies and ‘Statistics’

Is IDS Sick or just Vile?

Wednesday, 1 February 2012 6:21 PM

Resorting to the rulebook: Ministers bypass welfare clash

"Ministers are using parliamentary rules to prevent the Lords causing further setbacks to the coalition's welfare reforms. Employment minister told MPs he intended to invoke the Commons' financial privilege, as ministers sought to reverse seven Lords defeats to the welfare reform bill.

Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne told politics.co.uk that the opposition was working with parliamentary authorities and lawyers to force a vote on its proposals for a regional benefit cap.

"We think they've crossed the basic line of British decency and they're trying to use financial privilege to prevent it being reopened again," he said."

Published 02 January 2013 8:43

Memo to Duncan Smith: low wages are not an argument for cutting benefits

"The fact that benefits have risen faster than wages [sic] is an argument for higher wages, not lower benefits."

11th January, 2013

Wages and welfare benefits are not comparable 

"The Coalition’s line on benefits will not hold water. The Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith claims it is unreasonable for benefits to rise in line with inflation when wages are not doing so. This ignores two things: what it costs to live even at a subsistence level and the effects of those in work drawing benefits, especially working tax credits."

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