Alan has already covered the BBC onslaught against Lord Freud today. I wish to point out two further thoughts. First, isn’t is SO convenient that the BBC blasted this on the same day that the Government announced the biggest fall in unemployment in YEARS and at the same time as Miliband was given heat for dismissing the concerns of English voters re “English votes for English laws”. Oh, and then there was this….from Guido.
Who is the nasty Party?
And, ten years ago, MENCAP supported paying some disabled people less than the minimum wage.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/feb/04/davidbrindle
An estimated 1,000 people with severe learning disabilities have lost their part-time jobs or had their working hours cut as a direct result of the national minimum wage, the charity Mencap says today.
Many employers have felt unable to pay the £3.60 an hour minimum to disabled people previously paid small sums for work that had low output but high therapeutic value. Other companies are paying the rate, but have reduced people’s hours to keep costs constant.
Mencap, which otherwise strongly supports the minimum wage, calls for an urgent revision of the rules to enable such low output work to be classified as “special placements” exempt from the statutory provision.
David Congdon, the charity’s public affairs director, said people losing jobs or hours were facing social isolation. “Most people with a learning disability want to work and we urge the government to give them that chance.”
I thought it suspicious when the bbc reported these comments were made two weeks ago..labour are experts at burying the opposition’s good news, or their bad news, when it suits their warped agenda. It’s embarrassing how easily they are found out though.
milipede will cling on to anything to improve his Mr. Bean like image, even trying to look tough by slating his opponent on the disabled despite the fact that Cameron has had plenty of experience of disability in his family. A horrible, nasty, hypocritical and worthless party. He certainly can’t agree with the English votes idea, it will be the end of the backstabber.
Perhaps Mr Miliband simply “forgot” to mention it, as he claimed to have done with the topics of immigration and the budget deficit in his recent conference speech.
What a fuss. It’s clear to any impartial observer what Lord Freud meant and the ‘outrage’ is contrived, synthetic and opportunist. How unlike the PM to hang him out to dry. Real serious debate about disability is not allowed. Instead Lord Freud makes a meaningless apology. The BBC though reckoned this story should lead the news.
The BBC though reckoned this story should lead the news.
… and now the story has moved on to Labours lies and misinformation and how the BBC facilitated it the story has vanished to the bottom of the politics page.
Knowing that so many charity leaders have links with Labour, I presume that this onslaught between Labour, the Charities and the BBC was well coordinated. Soon after I heard Milipede’s performance on the 6pm News I looked on the Daily Mail website. The number of comments and the number of red/green arrows in a short space of time attacking mainly the Conservatives suggests to me that this had been well circulated to interested parties.
This may have backfired on Labour. A lot of commentators have been suggesting that Lord Freud has a point, and that he should be able to speak about it.
It has also backfired on a few gloriously impartial media, who seem to have at best synergised with ‘LabourSez’ with undue haste and little consideration.
Some very strange Political shenanigans going on here.
It’s hardly surprising that the Labour party were suggesting that the disabled could be paid less than the minimum wage as the person suggesting it was none other than Lord Freud was brought into the New Liebour fold in 2006 to advise them.
He then became the Welfare Reform Minister for the coalition in 2010 – unsurprisingly sticking to his original ideas.
No wonder people are exasperated with politicians saying that they’re all the same when the people making policy for the Liebour party simply change their colours and make policy for the Tories when they come to power!
The problem is not with the political party here, but the man, and I say this because it’s not the first time his clumsy statements have caused problems. In March this year he said “it is very hard to know why people go to food banks. Possibly because they have no food and they’re hungry, because your welfare reforms aren’t working in the way you thought they would?
As for the BBC taking a biased line over this then I expect that the Daily Mail will now be seen as a far left newspaper, because it’s making similar allegations in not one but two articles!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2793896/miliband-calls-welfare-minister-lord-freud-sacked-saying-disabled-people-not-worth-minimum-wage.html
What is the point of the Minimum wage? If those that introduced it then ignore its consequences… Imagine we are all on the ‘minimum wage’ at Barclays Bank, Rolls Royce and the BBC. i.e. Barclays would be like the Co-op or BoS (busted flush), Rolls Royce could not attract the brightest engineers and only the BBC would claim they ‘encourage productivity’. To prove that opposite they are willing to pay former BBC Director Mark Byford– a cool million pounds ‘to keep him focused’ (as the BBC minimum wage is obviously not enough persuasion). Labour charity Quangos all aspire to have this same million pound minimum wage (irrespective of what they do). In a word not much. The minimum wage is clearly designed to keep wages ‘down’ and make all jobs just the lowest common denominator. MacJobs and Amazon love the minimum wage. As it was invented by Ed Balls/ Gordon Brown as a soundbite ‘wheeze’ it does have implications for the taxpayer who ends up subsiding bad employers and it all ends in being partially subsidised in state benefits to make it a ‘living wage’ which it is not.
http://www.cityam.com/article/1391650667/why-wage-subsidies-are-not-best-way-help-poorest-paid-britain
Huffington Post continues the theme in its poll of the day:
“Welfare minister Lord Freud says disabled people are ‘not worth’ the minimum wage – should he resign?”
a) No – it’s what a Tory would say
b) Yes – I’m disgusted
c) Don’t know
d) Who’s Lord Freud?
I wonder if he has stopped beating his wife?
Oh dear, seems ‘disgusted’ is not the sole preserve of Labour activists any more.
http://order-order.com/2014/10/17/eagle-crash-landed-watch-question-time-audience-turn-on-labour-over-freud/
I’ve noticed them (Labour & its PR agency) losing Graun Ciffers for a while… QT is another level.
Oh to be in on the secret post-mortem on how that happened, and how to avoid a repeat.
Short of recruiting from the SWP mailing list and holding all future shoes in Tower Hamlets they may soon struggle.