Today sees the Coalition introducing Welfare reforms. I think the BBC coverage is…ahem..interesting and wondered what you make of their impartial world class coverage?
THOSE WELFORM REFORMS
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The BBC live off the State and so reducing the size of the State is ipso facto opposed by them – that is all you need to know about their coverage.
If I were a coalition MP I would want an explanation as to why the bBC deliberately ignored the ‘failed sick benefit claimants’ story.
probably because it’s a government manipulation of the figures into what most people would call a lie. Figures produced by the government & published by the Daily Mail add up to a million more people than are actually claiming so something is very definitely amiss.
The problem with people claiming disability for various reasons is that many of them recover and withdraw their claims, or die, and the government is trying to suggest that these people are somehow fraudlent claimants who are too scared to undergo the ATOS tests. Now I’m not suggesting that there aren’t people who have been swinging the lead, but a nearly a million of them? surely even the most hardened Tory supporter would realise that is so fanciful as to be a joke.
We also know from other stories that the ATOS test is at best extremely stringent even the dead have been found fit for work, and cancer sufferers with more than months prognosis are deemed fully fit to work, yet still people talk of the disabled as if they’re scrounging. This is no longer tenable as a line of thought.
I’ve worked in benefits for nearly ten years. I read about 100 case files a week. I’ve interviewed or been quizzed in person at our offices by hundreds of claimants and spoken to many hundreds more on the phone – many of them receiving Disability Living Allowance. In that time I’ve seen one guide dog, one set of crutches and one stump where a severed thumb used to be.
I continue to read files and talk with customers who’ve borne children while they’ve been receiving Disability Living Allowance and /or Incapacity Benefit – and not just once but multiple times. Or big, healthy people who have ‘anger issues’ that consist of trying to intimidate benefits staff into sympathizing with them and paying up despite whatever lack of evidence they are in the office for. And then there are the ‘depressives’ who manage to survive for months after they stop claiming main benefits for subsistence without work or savings or income of any sort but who somehow don’t starve and freeze but who still need to have their rent and Council Tax paid. And there are the alcoholics and other addicts who got more pay than the unemployed in order to, presumably, avoid the requirement to look for work but about 30 quid a week extra can buy a few bottles or maybe some drugs.
Some people receive DLA becasue they have ‘panic attacks’ – which when you interview them turns out to mean they hate it when someone sends them on work experience or asks them to attend work training or any kind of appointment.
There are also genuinely sad cases out there for whom proper psychiatry might help (but not necessarily enable them to work soon or ever), and of course some people do get injured or otherwise sick so Incapacity Benefit/DLA/ESA are temporarily needed and I’d not like the disabled element of Universal Credit to disappear. And it won’t.
But so many uninjured people have ‘issues’ it seems obvious that doctors have been handing out disability assessments more or less wholesale, and that has helped to create a permanently non-working ‘disabled’ welfare caste who do not even have to seek work. They aren’t imaginary. They aren’t a tiny minority – they are a hard core on the scrounge and are taking scarce and shrinking resources away from people who actually need medical or welfare payment help and the taxpayers who might otherwise get to keep and spend their own hard-earned money on themselves and their families. It’s not ‘demonizing’ them; it’s called actually meeting them.
One third of Northern Ireland’s working age welfare recipients were ‘incapacitated’ until Incapacity benefit was phased out? I didn’t know the IRA was that effective. There’s a welfare aristocracy out there that needs to be abolished, and it’s a pity that (as seems likely in this bureaucratic day and age) ATOS is going the tick-box route, but ‘disability’ is a way of life for those shameless enough to claim it. It’s being stopped, and though I won’t be voting for the Conservatives (probably ever) and haven’t for years, at least they are doing something.
But all this is ancient history! I can accept that what you have written was true, but if you believe the figures the government has issued (which are extremely dodgy) then a mere 250,000 people have been assessed as disabled and unfit for work.
The problem in your post is well illustrated, disability is in your eyes, if you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist, you can’t see mental health issues like schizophrenia would you like to be left alone with one when working?
You can’t see a congenital heart defect or cancer – none of these are apparently disabled because their disability can’t be seen.
Then there are the problems with employers who simply will not take on an employee who has the slightest mention of time off for stress, those people effectively banned from the workplace deserve better than the harassment of pointless JSA.
We know people have been swinging the lead, but at what point are we going to accept that ATOS which is incredibly harsh has weeded those people out, and what is left is a core of genuine claimants, because it seems from many posts here that the disabled are going to be permanently labelled as feckless scroungers.
After the First World War factories were set up to help returning soldiers, often with horrific injuries, to learn trades and live as full a life as possible.
That’s the attitude we should have rather than a ‘you’re disabled you must go on benefits’ one.
‘….it seems from many posts here that the disabled are going to be permanently labelled as feckless scroungers’.
Straight out of the Labour party handbook on how to do nothing about benefits by demonising those who approve of weeding out the cheats.
thoughtful, you also kept trying to divert yesterday’s ‘blessed are the idle’ thread by saying that the figures didn’t add up. But your post (March 31, 2013 at 1:35 pm) said:
878300 chose to drop claims
837000 immediately found fit to work 1715300 total
367300 able to do some work 2082600 total
232000 too ill to work at all 2314600 total
Much closer to 2.5 million and this is what the figure would have been rounded up to if it was realistic.
Well, as I posted yesterday, the Department for Work and Pensions (http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/index.php?page=statistical_summaries) says there were indeed 2.52 million claimants of incapacity benefits in August 2012.
So, the figures do add up and we still want to know why 878,300 people withdrew their claim for our money instead of being medically assessed. Just because the bBBC won’t mention it doesn’t mean that it isn’t true, and you can’t keep wishing the numbers didn’t exist.
Fred Bloggs,
“If I were a coalition MP I would want an explanation as to why the bBC deliberately ignored the ‘failed sick benefit claimants’ story.”
Because it’s a crock?
The Telegraph article is little more than a Conservative press release; but read closely what the subtitle says:
“Nearly 900,000 people who were on incapacity benefit dropped their claim to the payments rather than undergo a tough medical test, latest government figures show.”
http://goo.gl/jQaHo
Ah yes, except the “latest government figures” are from 2009.
http://goo.gl/4lU8d
And:
“A massive 878,300 chose not to be checked for their fitness to work under tests brought in when the benefit was replaced by Employment Support Allowance in 2008.”
http://goo.gl/cJA7u
2008 (in case you’ve forgotten) was two years before the current government came into power.
So where would you cut spending, Dez, just out of interest?
Except they aren’t. If you follow the “4lU8d” (the latest government figures) link and scroll down to the bottom half rather than just copying from the Guardian you’ll see that the data has been updated in 2010 and 2013.
If you follow the link to the actual data you’ll see that it goes to August 2012.
In the Telegraph this morning the new BBC chief , Lord Hall of Birkenhead, says that trust must come first.
The question that this begs of course is the trust of whom? Is it the British people who pay for the BBC? I doubt it because the BBC doesn’t even trust the people enough to tell them the truth !
If the BBC did tell the truth then you find a dramatic swing in voting intentions and Labour would struggle to get 200 seats at the next election.
Much more likely he means that he wants the continued support of the Liberal Left establishment elite and will cooperate with them in keeping the British people peacefully sleeping whilst the great and the good continue with their policy of turning the UK into a multicultural , multifaith , welfare state with a hopeless education system , a health service which kills its patients and a bloated public sector who live off the backs of the increasingly marginalised wealth creators.
Would Lord Hall of Berkenhead “trust us” to pay the license fee voluntarily?
So if we do not “trust” the BBC does Lord Hall give us the option not to pay for it?
If he does not give us that option his talk about “trust” is hot air.
Indeed it is self-serving lies, like those sermons against our unequal society by those professional socialists Peter Mandelson – who has just spent 6 million on yet another house – and the EU funded multimillionaire Neil Kinnock.
The BBC are a nepotistic and talentless middle class nomenklatura who make tax payer funded GP’s and legal aid barristers look like paragons of conscientiousness in comparison because at least they have some connection with reality.
BBC drama on the other hand is churned out in Five Year Plans to meet politically correct targets, utterly devoid of intelligence, originally, or any semblance of a connection with life in the UK.
The same goes for BBC Current Affairs. The BBC is the One Party State incarnate. Strike for higher pay? Don’t make me laugh. Do the country a favour and don’t bother turning up for work – you never know you might even grow a conscience.
You’ve hit on the key point, Wild. Lord Hall and all the rest of them shedding crocodile tears over the perceived lack of public trust in the BBC has zero effect on the validity and future of the license fee. It’s a force of nature, a fact of life, beyond question, and doesn’t even enter into the conversation. Nor does, apparently, the fact that, aside from the politicians who decide every few years on how much the fee should increase, the BBC is ultimately accountable only to itself, and exists only for itself.
So once they do enough polls to show that “trust” has been reestablished, the rest of it can be safely ignored as usual.
‘once they do enough polls to show that “trust” has been reestablished’
The LSE and Graun are, as we speak, on standby.
‘Made it! Trusted around the world, Ma!’
(what happens next may prove, to use the new BBC sad face… ‘disappointing’).
That the BBC still thinks that bandying around a word they have in word and deed obliterated as credibly to be associated with them, shows either a great deal of delusion or an awesome confidence in the restorative powers of telling it often enough.
I suspect the latter.
The only thing I’d ‘trust’ the BBC Trust on is to keep flat out proclaiming their belief in the rectitude of their colleagues in the face of clear fact.
Are you sure that he didn’t slip the tiniest of words in there because the word ‘the’ would completely change the meaning! The trust must come first i.e. the BBC trust?
I am totally pissed off that every BBC news item regarding politics or the economy always contains the phrase “but Labour says” as though that is the true and only viewpoint that matters.
Too true, its the Butlaboursays Broadcasting Corporation
Indeed. Such is the BBC’s willingness to give airtime to anyone attacking the govt, they should rename their news programs as “Labour says…”, with the occasional news bulletin entitled “trade unions say” or “the church says”… Not that the BBC is interested in what the church says, unless of course they are attacking the government
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/04/why-the-left-are-so-angry-about-todays-welfare-reform-because-its-popular-and-right/
Interesting who is mentioned in the comments garnering the most support for acting contrary to the wishes of the public.
Well done Grant Schapps! Saw the Minister for Housing telling off a beeboid Sunday afternoon for asking stupid questions and “THE BBC BECOMING PART OF THE STORY”! The beeboid was using Labour terminology referring to a bedroom “tax”, while failing to understand the new concept and not understanding that the whole daft welfare system really stinks.
I liked the way Norman Tebbit dealt with A. Milne back in the 1980s. Milne looked really bruised and surprised that someone had at last stood up to the BBC.
They appear to have gone a bit further and are pretty much framing the story, as only a £4Bpa tribally-motivated media monopoly can.
I have no problem with sensible debate and hearing all sides (equally), but the BBC dragging along counter-arguments and spokespersons behind their narrative drive is really counter-democratic, in a way unique to the UK.
Who they invite on, who they promote, who they invite in… vs. what is consigned to the edit bin, gives them a power to shape policy they have no business enjoying.
And it doesn’t help when almost every story on the ‘news’ website is from an opponent of whatever government policy is under discussion.
Couple that with the latest updates on Saint Nelson’s health and the rest of its ‘important news for Guardian readers’ stories and you have an unfolding and irrefutable demonstration of the BBC’s bright red political agenda.
Amazing, no, that with all their ‘brilliant journalists’ the British Palace-building Corporation can’t seem to find one that is anything other than completely satisfied with the reply by a Labourspokesman,
‘We would reduce the benefits bill by getting people back into work’.
And these same ‘brilliant journalists’ are able to find council-house tenants by the 100,000 who have one or two spare bedrooms. But they can’t seem to find a single-family anywhere who might benefit from the freeing up of these unused rooms.
Byrne said that, under Labour’s scheme (he had the fag packet with him as proof of its existence), if someone is still jobless after 2 years they will have their benefits withdrawn BUT also said they would ensure people get into work because they will CREATE jobs for them by hitting the pension provisions of the better off.
Needless to say ‘create jobs’ didn’t ring any alarm bells in the BBC studio and things moved swiftly on.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21940859
it’s all bad from 1st April according to BBC….. but nothing about changes to tax helping millions of people….
I think the Tories are idiots but , they have done more in 3 years than Labour did in 13 for the low/medium earners… without them all having to become state dependants….
Why can’t the BBC and Labour get their biased heads round the following simple maths:
(1) Our debt is GBP 1,000,000,000,000 (I’ve actually rounded it down from GBP 1.15 trillion).
(2) Let’s assume we can service the interest on all this at … 1% per annum (It’s much higher but the maths is easier this way!)
(3) This means paying out GBP 10,000,000,000 per annum JUST TO PAY THE INTEREST not the capital.
Think how many nurses, teachers, civil servants and BBC chat-show hosts you could get for that!
Come on Andrew if you’re going to give economic data then at least show you understand it!
Point 2 is a real giveaway that you don’t! This government has printed £375 billion in quantitative easing which it has used to buy its own bonds the interest is set by the bank of England and the government pays the interest to them, in other word the Treasury in other words they pay the interest to themselves !
Why do they do this? Well it’s to keep markets & credit reference agencies happy.
Why hasn’t it causued inflation as printing money always has? because the banks lost so much money QE hasn’t even made much of an inroad to replacing it.
It would be nice if some broadcaster was able to produce a dispassionate balanced informative set of programs on economic theory but alas it’s impossible, I guess even the bBC won’t dare try it.
Thanks for your explanation. I’m sure I don’t understand all this! There are different ways of borrowing. We can print our own money here in the UK. My understanding is that even Germany has to borrow at >3% on the open market, and that figure goes up if the market loses confidence. The sums are bewildering to non-economists.
There is inflation, though. Lots of it, if one cares to look for it. For example, next time you go shopping, notice whether or not the packaged goods you buy are actually giving you significantly less quantity (or even quality) for the same price you’re used to paying. Much like the added cost imposed by VAT, it’s hidden, but affects you all the same.
Inflation caused by over heating the money supply has a particular symptom which where the price of almost everything rises, the classic too much money chasing too few goods.
The inflation of certain goods in the shops has a number of causes
Energy prices have risen especially as the government loads them with new ‘levies’
The Pound has fallen making imports more expensive.
Weather last yeat the dreadful summer and freezing long winter has led to much lower crop yields. Did you know the UK Winter wheat harvest has failed? even if summer is good it’ll still be a poor year.
All these (and more) have specific inflationary pressures, and the products affected experience price rises.
That is how economists are able to tell that this is not a reflection of quantitative easing.
‘This government has printed £375 billion in quantitative easing which it has used to buy its own bonds the interest is set by the bank of England and the government pays the interest to them, in other word the Treasury in other words they pay the interest to themselves !
And the interest on the ‘remaining’ £700 billion?
Something in the order of £45 billion last year.
So my very crude figure of £10 billion, even allowing for the £0.375 trillion of QE that was Thoughtfully pointed out, understates the problem, as I thought.
Cannot believe they are still giving air time to that traitor Liam babyface Byrne who left a note in 2010 saying ‘There’s no money left’
I know, it’s as if 13 years of history has been simply erased from time. How the BBC can apotheosize any of the Labour fraudsters beggars belief, really. But then, again, ideology trumps rational thought every time; the BBC is saturated with young, urban leftists hence the pervading socialist agenda. I simply do not understand why the Tories tolerate it.
And not remind Liam about his note when he is being interviewed? Must not upset Labour MP’s because you never know when they might become your boss.
The ironic thing is that by resisting cutting government spending the BBC is hurting everybody with their lips clamped firmly on the state teat.
Only cutting our unsustainable spending will keep the whole show on the road. There’s more on that in: “Debasing Britain” at:
http://john-moloney.blogspot.com/
And who exactly is John Moloney? Other than an American comedian?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/10/12/imf-austerity-is-much-worse-for-the-economy-than-we-thought/
Olivier Blanchard chief economist of the IMF says austerity is damaging economies, and I think I’d rather believe him! Thatcher believed in monetarism, that didn’t work, wealth does not trickle down, it never does & it never will. Keynes was discredited, although it’s looking like he might be reinstated again.
The world has changed, putting money into an economy in a global system is not going to work unless it’s managed properly. Give a middle class person £1000 and they’ll most likely spend it on foreign manufactured goods immediately sending it out of the economy.
Give £1000 to someone rich and they’ll probably save it of little use to the economy.
Here comes something which the Tories are going to find impossible to swallow.
Give £1000 to someone poor (not all at once of course) and the chances are they will spend it on UK manufactured goods.
I’ll never forget my economics teacher (an irredeemable old leftie) telling us that in economic terms if a doley spent the money in the pub & the bookies it was still going into the UK economy, keeping bar staff landlord brewery workers etc employed. He had a point. Distasteful though it might be the whole point is in keeping as much money as possible in the UK economy and this latest round of cuts does just the opposite of what is needed to help the economy recover.
What use is is to say that your taxes pay for the idle to laze all day, if as a result of cuts you end up laid off yourself and joining them?
My generation has had to pay for WWII the IMF bailout of Liebour in the 1970s the wrecking of industry by the unions, and countless wars started by BLiar, we’re also having to pay for the unfunded ridiculous pensions of our parents. By far the biggest proportion of the benefits bill is spent on the pensioners yet they aren’t having to suffer any cuts at all!
Leaving debt for the next generation is not something I’m losing sleep over !
I agree re. £1000 given to the rich, who only have one stomach & pair of hands, and so will most likely take it out of circulation by saving. I agree about the middle class being more likely to spend it on foreign goods. But surely the poor are benefiting from (a) single person’s allowance now > £9,000 and (b) benefit money to spend on essentials within UK. Why would Tories not understand this? Credit to Nicholas Clegg for the £10,000 tax- free idea, which has now nearly been realised, though Cameron said it was a great idea but unaffordable in the TV debates in 2010.
The poor are indeed going to benefit from the raised tax free band, but then so is everyone else! So someone on say £30 K also doesn’t pay tax on the first £10K either.
But what the government give with one hand the take away with the other in a hugely disproportionate manner.
The bedroom tax can take away, but more than that the loss of housing benefit covering the council tax as well plus cuts to family credit have more than taken away what has been given by a factor of 3 times.
The cuts aren’t just affecting the ‘lazy scroungers’ in fact the most affected are the working poor and the disabled.
Carry on spending, eh?
Personal debt rocketed under Labour from something like £600 billion to £1.4 trillion. People were greedy, banks were greedy, the government was greedy and that’s why we are all paying the price now. The country lived beyond its means in every respect and now it’s payback time. It’s utterly and completely gobsmacking that the majority of the country, let alone a good chunk of Parliament, still don’t seem to have grasped that inconvenient fact and think we can all somehow get off lightly. Unfortunately the prudent ones, the ones who still believed in saving, have been hardest hit.
‘I’ll never forget my economics teacher (an irredeemable old leftie) telling us that in economic terms if a doley spent the money in the pub & the bookies it was still going into the UK economy, keeping bar staff landlord brewery workers etc employed. He had a point’.
That sounds like the economics of the madhouse. If that were plausible, everybody would be employed by the state to keep everyone else in a job.
“That sounds like the economics of the madhouse. If that were plausible, everybody would be employed by the state to keep everyone else in a job. ”
Please explain why it sounds like the economics of the madhouse?
Also what this has to do with state employment seeing as every single person in this chain is private sector employed.
Economics isn’t concerned with the morals of how people spend their money just the effect, and because the government is such a big spender it can influence the way economies & markets behave as per the latest housing announcement is predicted to affect house prices.
When the government cuts its spending then the economy shrinks, if we continue along the Austerity path then we are likely to enter the death spiral of cuts leading to more cuts leading to more cuts until there’s nothing left and the economy is virtually destroyed.
Then see how easy it is to pay the debt back!
‘When the government cuts its spending then the economy shrinks…’
Should read ‘When the government cuts back on taxing and spending the wealth earned by the private sector and the money it has borrowed from other countries, the economy shrinks’. Yes, for some bizarre reason government spending funded by borrowing is included in GDP, which I don’t pretend to understand.
The only alternative is to expand the private sector where genuine wealth is created and from where we can export goods and services to improve our lousy balance of payments deficit. But this takes time as we are seeing. Over 1 million public sector jobs created by Brown, paid for through borrowed money. 1 million private sector jobs have been created under the coalition. I know which I’d rather have, and it’s not the pseudo-Soviet model you seem to be advocating.
And as for ‘austerity’? Our council are in the process of replacing perfectly good street lamps across the borough with more ‘environmentally friendly’ ones. Call that austerity?
The problem is not the doley spending money in the pub & the bookies (although the profit probably leaves the area and has to be replaced through benefits) it is the doley spending money on imported goods (as we all did – the balance of payments deteriorated from £2 billion a month in 1997 to £4 billion in 2008 just before the credit crunch) and the money leaving the economy.
Had we had a balanced trading account £240 billion extra would now be in circulation in this country.
Good point and it reminds me of the ‘spam’ email that did the rounds (in various countries adjusted for currency etc):
“Please find below our suggestion for fixing England ‘s economy. Instead of giving billions of pounds to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan; you can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:
There are about 10 million people over 50 in the work force: give them £1 million each severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:
1) They MUST retire (up to ten million job openings – unemployment fixed)
2) They MUST buy a new British car (ten million cars ordered – Car Industry fixed)
3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage (Housing Crisis fixed)
4) They MUST send their kids to school/ college /university (Crime rate fixed)
5) They MUST buy £100 WORTH of alcohol/tobacco a week (and there’s a good part of the money back in duty/tax etc)
It can’t get any easier than that!
P.S. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back their
falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances”
Now 3 & 4 would need rewriting so it could work but you get the idea! There was a point 6 but it was clearly a greenie afterthought.
Charter renewal time in 2016 so that’ll be Labour in power again and the outcome a foregone conclusion.
Here are a couple of historical articles, a Guardian one with Mark Thompson predicting all kinds of dire consequences, see how many have come to pass:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/23/mark-thompson-bbc
The second a Telegraph article from around the same time but very different :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/9672466/The-BBC-must-do-lessand-do-it-better.html
“I’m a ducker and a diver: “Truth about BBC ‘welfare victim’ who dared Iain Duncan Smith to live on £53 a week.”
By VANESSA ALLEN and JAMES CHAPMAN.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2302545/Truth-BBC-welfare-victim-David-Bennett-dared-Iain-Duncan-Smith-live-53-week.html
“Don’t let the Left hijack welfare debate”
By DAILY MAIL COMMENT.
“To witness the hysterical shroud-waving of the BBC and the apocalyptic headlines in the Left-wing Press, anyone might believe yesterday marked the beginning of the end of civilisation.
“In fact, it was the day the Coalition began at last to rebalance an unsustainable welfare state that has brought the country to its knees, placing a hugely unfair burden on wage-earners while condemning families to hopeless dependency.
“True, any changes are bound to throw up hard cases of the kind so eagerly sought out by the liberal media – though, in its hunt for downtrodden ‘victims’, couldn’t the BBC have done better than the self-confessed gambler and ‘ducker and diver’ it dredged up to challenge Iain Duncan Smith to live on £53 a week?”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2302549/Could-Iain-Duncan-Smith-live-53-week-Dont-let-Left-hijack-welfare-debate.html
‘couldn’t the BBC have done better than the self-confessed gambler and ‘ducker and diver’ it dredged up’
Like offence, one tends to find what is seeking you.
There’s a whole industry supplying the BBC on a variety of ‘topics’.
According to this guy:
‘I put a comment on saying David Cameron can stick his Big Society where the sun doesn’t shine, or words to that effect,’ he said. ‘As a result I was invited to go to Newcastle and be interviewed by John Humphrys.’
It’s understandable why his words would be ‘music to the BBC ears’, so they got him to come from his home in County Durham to Newcastle to appear on the programme, and ‘lay it on’ Tory MP Ian Duncan Smith, which he dutifully did.
He told Today he had worked as a credit manager for most of his life, until he was made redundant three years ago.
He set up a new business as a self-employed market trader and said he worked up to 70 hours a week, sometimes working every day, but that he had earned only £2,700 in 14 months.
Mr Bennett said he was forced to borrow money to pay his rent after his housing benefit was cut from £75 a week to just £57, and he was made to pay £5 a week toward council tax.
So we are to believe he works 70 hours a week as a market trader to make less than £200 a month. meaning he makes considerably less than £1 an hour. 🙄
Anybody believe that?
Clearly that’s what he states to Income Tax and the welfare people, and being self-employed in a cash business, unless somebody is going to watch his transactions, it would be impossible to prove otherwise, except for common sense. Hard to swallow especially as he sells cold weather clothing like hats, gloves, scarves and duvets. One would think this must have been a bumper year for him.
The Daily Mail did a little investigation into this man and found out the divorced father of two is a regular gambler who boasts his hobbies are ‘football, poker and beer’.
So where does the money come from for this ‘poor hard working welfare receiver to indulge in these pastimes?
The BBC were obviously too excited about having this man to challenge IDS to use any common sense surrounding his claims. So when confronted with the Daily Mail findings they said:
A BBC spokesman defended Mr Bennett’s interview on the Today programme and said the corporation stood by his account.
The spokesman claimed staff had checked his story, adding: ‘We stand by the interview, which was used to illustrate how the changes to the welfare system might affect people within a wider piece, including a lengthy interview with Iain Duncan Smith. Mr Bennett outlined his circumstances, but was also questioned robustly.’
The BBC will believe anything that suits their agenda, or at least look the other way.
Didn’t somebody highlight something here a week or so ago about another BBC vox pops guy equally pleading hardship who was also an online poker junkie?
How much is enough to live on? One question which no one not even the BBC dares to ask. We all know it is impossible to live on the £71 pw JSA without severe hardship, and the cuts to this are to be honest indefensible.
How many people posting here would find it acceptable if their insurer put up their premium by over 10% and then told them that the cover would be halved. This is exactly what the coalition has done, and the cuts would have gone deeper if the fib dems hadn’t stopped the Tories.
The £53 a week IDS said he could live on is extraordinarily generous considering that some are in the position of now owing more than they are paid because of state clawbacks.
It is internationally recognised that JSA is insufficient to live on and is the reason why asylum seekers receive more (yes I know Tony BLiar fudged the figures to make it look less but it isn’t).
So here’s a question which you should ask yourselves, how much money per week should be given to benefits claimants, because it seems there are some here who believe that even a penny is too much.
You ask a lot of questions but appear to be asking them in odd places.
Whilst an interesting line of thought and worthy topic for discussion on a social or political forum, may I again ask where the BBC Bias aspect is here?
Sticking ‘not even the BBC dares ask’ in doesn’t cover for the fact you seem to be on a campaign, replete with ‘what is all known’, and in the wrong place.
This is a thread about the way the BBC have dealt with the benefit cuts, my post is a response to the BBC finding some one who is a ‘questionable’ example challenging IDS to live on £53 a week.
If we can’t agree on what is a reasonable level of benefits then how can we make a decision on what is biased and what is not?
‘So here’s a question which you should ask yourselves’
Your thread conduct definition is noted.
And this thread is indeed about the way the BBC has ‘dealt with’ benefit cuts.
However, your post clearly is seeking expansion into areas not sensibly covered to the detail you demand on a site that addresses inaccuracy or objectivity failures from our national broadcaster.
It’s cute to ‘only’ be ‘seeking’ to get ‘us’ to ‘agree’ (one presumes with you, which will take ’til the end of days if you can drag it out that long) on what is ‘reasonable’ to come to a ‘decision’, but your strategy is as flawed as your possible idealism.
Even with almost none of what you want happening first, or at all, debate can still proceed on the topic at hand.
This new plan of drowning threads in questions and procedural demands on anything from gender issues to race or theological origins can be interesting, and indeed form worthy aspects of framing BBC coverage, but not in the way or level you are clearly trying to force or, if given the keys, enforce.
You lobbed in a vague reference to the BBC in what was essentially a manifesto akin to those cluttering my inbox now from 38 degrees and a raft of over-funded, narrow representation activist megaphone organisations who have sussed that screaming loudest, and most often, does work. I read those there, and/or on political or welfare forums. And use what’s learned there to inform and discuss the BBC response. Porting the whole thing over to be rehashed before getting to the BBC cherry-picking is unworkable.
Also your last paragraph was not a question, it was a statement from the ‘you lot’/’I’m not a Daily Mail reader if I read it to mock’ school of irony failure.
Want to get the thread back on track? Try these:
Why did the BBC opt to run with a sob story vox pop designed to hijack a much more complex issue?
Why did this then get picked up and run with by so many with whom the BBC has shared so many shock and awe stories in the past? NoTW. McAlpine. Mitchell.
I gather Mr. Monbiot is a prime mover in this latest. He seems on firmer ground than the last one he stirred up.
Was this person the best example, all things considered?
Do you really feel the needs of genuine welfare beneficiaries are best served by the usual suspects (including the BBC) going off on one over a person who seems to view money as a right to be squandered as opposed to a lifeline to provide the basics of a humane society?
IDS is no poster boy of mine, and clearly a PR-ingenue still in matters media bear-trap. But I can see where’s coming from and seems to be stumbling towards.
Those hell-bent on stopping him, and anything from changing, have as vanguards a collection of role models it is hard to see as recommendations.
Expecting ‘reasonable’ to be agreed, much less defined sensibly, is an objective demand on a subjective matter that clearly cannot be for these pages.
As the BBC is totally impartial, I was surprised to see a link to “Change.org” at the end of their lead story on Benefits, which encourages the following letter:-
“To:
Iain Duncan Smith, Department for Work and Pensions
I call on Iain Duncan Smith to prove his claim to be able to live on £7.57 a day, or £53 a week, by doing so for one year.”
Do they link websites for BiaseBBC for balance, I wonder?
‘I was surprised to see a link to “Change.org”
I wouldn’t be.
But I’d still like to run it by a few folk who might be surprised to be asked to explain the thinking.
Do you have a link to the story with this on it?
There are, again not so surprisingly, an awful lot of BBC ‘reports’ under the heading ‘benefits’. Bedroom tax alone provides a ‘so-called’ 109 results.
As with Stuart Hughes promoting the Addison Lee campaign (flatly denied by the entire CECUTT damage control kapos), or Paul Mason quoting Ms. Penny’s texted kick-off times for rumbles, this appears a step beyond covering all the bases to mis-using the BBC resources for tribal advocacy, even under their usual one-degree of separation weasels.
I imagine the RT’s on twitter to this by BBC staff are ‘balanced’ too.
The link to the story is : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21998784
In fact the promo is actually in the body of the report – surely worse than a separate link.
Many tx.
Putting my ‘comfy in the belief’ CECUTT Director hat on, I fear this would struggle.
If it had been hyperlinked anywhere, especially as a separate issue, my eyebrow would have been up there with Paxman after a ‘you mean to tell me that…’.
But it’s not.
They are simply ‘reporting’.
Yes, it’s an idiot creation by an idiot and was doubtless part of an overall nudge-nudge Hughesian off-the-books strategy, but IDS walked into it, and they have played it for all they can milk.
200,000 is now ‘news’, no matter how originated and by whom, with whose help.
To get to it I would have to search a bit. A point and click would have been a facilitating step I would deem a clear breach.
It is reporting a fact; one that cannot be ignored, even though it was set up and driven by the BBC.
‘ in response to a question posed by a working benefits claimant… A petition challenging Mr Duncan Smith to prove his claim was set up on the Change.org website. It had been signed by more than 200,000 people by Tuesday afternoon.
The form at the bottom, like a QT application, is of course a pre-filtering researcher’s dream. Odd they have managed to base this all on the guy they did. Hardly an empathetic welfare beneficiary to hang a shame on you deal around.
https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/iain-duncan-smith-iain-duncan-smith-to-live-on-53-a-week
‘David Bennett, a market trader, said that after his housing benefit had been cut, he lives on £53 per week.’
Mr. Bennett’s notion of what is needed and what for is not how I see helping the needy being prioritised when there’s no more money left.
Even if the BBC’s raft of £300kpa annum market rate managers (those not enjoying 2 x rate hush money parting wedges and living on seriously fine golden pensions) and £1mpa market rate talents may feel it serves to push.
It’s the source of the story. We’d have to do a Craig-like analysis to figure out if the BBC is equally helpful with further reading on the other side of issues. In any case, with this one, did they mention that Change.org is a Left-wing organization dedicated to “social justice” and attacking the evils of Capitalism?
I think the page was updated in between your view and mine. The original said, on its own and within its own paragraph: “A petition challenging Mr Duncan Smith to prove his claim was set up on the Change.org website.” Never seen this before and certainly not iro Labour politicians. The beeb could have mentioned it for this, for e.g., in one of its many Iraqi war reports, purely as a fact that the petition exists, of course: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/parliament-charge-tony-blair-with-treason-and-war-crimes. There it is.
‘I think the page was updated in between your view and mine.’
Entirely possible.
The BBC is rather notorious for ‘evolving stories’ to ‘tidy up’ excesses that can serve to haunt them.
I wish I was more adept with the sites that can check such things. Often the change is more damning still.
But as DavidP has mentioned already, the BBC still seems coy on how objective Change.org and its aims actually are anyway.