I know it adds nothing to the debate but I just want to say

SCUM



And that's how Cameron is - do not criticize him or his friends or their ideas. They are richer than you and therefore your betters.

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MY COMMENTS ARE FROM THE HORSES MOUTH AND ARE ALL FACTS

I've said this before, but I'll say it again.

These Tories are returning to an 18th century mindset. Before the 1832 Reform Act the guiding principle for suffrage was that only those who owned property or rented property above a certain value, i.e. had a stake in the wealth of the country, should have the vote. That ensured a basically conservative succession, the poor were excluded and the majority simply had to accept decisions made on their behalf. Then in the early 1800s the paradigm began to shift, so that the right to participate in decision making was based in some concept of citizenship in which the person of the citizen was the key feature. Over time this developed, and suffrage was achieved by women and by people over 18. Multiple voting was abolished.

Now we have a system whereby those who are transient will not be able to register to vote, where multiple voting (a business-owners' vote) has been mooted and where very definitely those not 'producing wealth' in some form are seen, not as citizens, but as drogues.

We already have an analogue of the Speenhamland outdoor relief system, whereby employers pay inadequate wages and the shortfall between pay and starvation is made up by the taxpayer. Very good for the employer, but disastrous in the long term for the employee and the taxpayer. Speenhamland had to be abandoned because of the costs - but beware, it was replaced with Indoor Relief - the workhouse.

Not a peep of this story on the Mail website. How peculiar...

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

This is a weird one for me. After being a young unemployed person (under the last Tory government in fact), in the late 90’s I got a place on New Deal, which was Labours original Welfare to Work thingy. And I loved it. It varied from this in huge ways though. My advisor took the time to get to know me, helped me figure out what I wanted to do in life and found me a place at a charity which was suitable. I was there for nearly a year (after the 6 months New Deal I got 6 months from the European Social Fund), during which time I got to study for a qualification, was helped to find a permanent job (which I’m still in today!) and was generally helped, supported and treated like a member of the human race for the first time in a very long time. And the extra £10 a week didn’t really come into how I felt about it. So from one point of view, I am a really big fan of Workfare. It changed my life.

But it was about me. There was a long-term goal, which was to get me into a full time job that I wanted to do and giving me the tools to do that. It wasn’t about making me “earn” my “handouts”, which seems to me what this current caper is all about. Nor was it about helping some shareholder get bigger profits by cutting down on the number of staff who require actual wages. That’s why I hate this incarnation of Workfare so very much. It doesn’t seem to be about helping people at all.

And the charity that were so brilliant to me? Still operating today, but didn’t get any of the 40 or so contracts for the work programme. Why give a contract to a charity, when you can give it to a fine upstanding organisation like A4E…

(Sorry about the long 1st post, but I’m REALLY cross about this.)

Luigi, I was in a pretty similar position to you, and have similar fond memories of New Deal. It was very good to me too.

Agree with you - ND was about the person, not about filling a gap.

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Ten seconds... the pain begins.

Fifteen seconds... you can't breathe.

Twenty seconds... you give up and turn off the Jeremy Vine show.

Interestingly, IDS' 'anarchists' comments have been removed from the BBC article. Perhaps the Tories are frantically trying to get their left-wing bogeyman image straight.

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Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.

Welcome aboard, Luigi.

Good stuff. Just wanted to add prisoners to the list of people deemed to be non-citizens. As Luigi's testimony makes clear, this government is all sticks and no carrots.

Prisoners have, by dint of abrogating the rights of others, been deprived of their own rights during the period of their punishment. That's a different argument.

It's not a great argument. The only ones denied are sentenced prisoners in jail at the moment of the election. Someone can have done a much worse crime but be out on licence, and they're considered OK to vote.

If they're out on licence they have their punishment suspended or considered spent, so their normal civil rights apply. I don't see how that makes the argument (it's JS Mills' , not mine) dodgy.

But the licence is part of the sentence. It's just served outside jail rather than inside it. It can have very strict conditions, very commonly that you can't leave your home at night. The difference between them and prisoners in open prisons who go out and work in the day is basically just that one stays in prison at night, one stays at home at night. It's not a huge difference, is it?

Doesn't JS Mills open the bowling for New Zealand?

IDS has just been on the news saying they brought in the Work Experience scheme because 'the kids asked them to introduce it'. Presumably by kids the patronising git means young adults. I'm sure that most unemployed young adults would rather have proper apprenticeships where they get proper training and learn skills that will help them get well paid jobs in the future.

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www.newshuddlines.blogspot.com

Channel 4 News? I see they didn't risk Grayling again.

I'd love to see who conducted the research? what the sample was and so on. Workfare was brought in on the basis that they wanted to make those "of risk to long term unemployment" back to work and those who would deliver it were the fly by night employment companies that had little knowledge of the area and employed people who didn't know a jot about the employment market.

Whilst all the time they would scale back staff in Job Centre Plus by letting those trained up and taken on fixed terms under Labour go and also by treating the remaining staff woefully so many went. They also had an employment freeze until very recently. JCP has been terribly mismanaged and that has shown. IDS will probably be the next minster to fall.