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Tag Archives: Department for Education

Former Tory’s full-page rebuke ad fails to hit the mark

08 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by Mike Sivier in Benefits, Business, Conservative Party, Disability, Economy, Education, Health, Labour Party, People, Politics, Tax, UK, unemployment

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

'light touch', advert, bank, benefit, benefits, civil service, Coalition, Conservative, consultant, crisis, David Cameron, debt, deficit, Department for Education, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, Disability Living Allowance, disabled, DLA, DWP, economy, Ed Balls, Ed Miliband, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, George Osborne, Gordon Brown, government, health and safety, Incapacity Benefit, Labour, Liam Byrne, Martin, Michael Gove, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Pensions, people, PIP, politics, regulation, shadow, sick, slavery, social security, tax, The Times, Tories, Tory, unemployment, union, Vox Political, welfare, work


Not worried: This comedy double-act won't be worried about 'Martin' and his full-page advert attacking them in The Times - his criticisms are so wide of the mark that they make his look more stupid than they do.

Not worried: This comedy double-act won’t be worried about ‘Martin’ and his full-page advert attacking them in The Times – his criticism is so wide of the mark that it makes him look more stupid than them!

We need to have a few words about Martin.

It probably did us all a lot of good to learn that a disillusioned Conservative voter calling himself by that name has coughed up around £16,000 to publicise his opinion about David Cameron and George Osborne’s leadership of the UK.

He made his points in a full-page advert in The Times newspaper yesterday, taking the form of a letter to the comedy Tory double-act. It’s just a shame that most of it is an unrelenting flow of bilge.

But then, he is a Tory.

Most of his bile is reserved for the web of regulations which he seems to believe is stifling the economy, and the civil servants who run it. Health and Safety regulations, in particular, come in for a battering.

Martin wants the Coalition to eliminate “whole departments of government whose sole function seems to be to ensure that our children never learn that fires burn you and who, never having climbed a ladder for a living themselves, instruct everyone else on how to both place a ladder, operate a hand tool and wear a harness when cleaning windows. They do all this at great cost to the economy and for no real benefit.”

It’s very easy to mock Health and Safety regulations when it comes to the small stuff, but the simple fact is that ‘light touch’ enforcement of these rules has inflated the numbers of people on sickness, incapacity and disability benefits. Does Martin want his money to pay for his silly one-page ad campaign, or to pay for more of these people to sit at home, doing nothing, when they could be at work, helping to restore the economy?

His comments are so naive, one has to wonder if he has any experience in this field at all. I do – as has been chronicled many times in the past. Mrs Mike – my partner – used to work at a factory where Health and Safety monitoring was so lax as to be nonexistent – in fact, supervisors actively bullied workers into cutting corners. This regime was supported by Gordon Brown’s ‘light touch’ enforcement of regulations which meant the firm was always given prior notice of ‘surprise’ inspections, allowing time to put safety equipment in place before inspectors arrived.

Eventually – we believe – the repetitive nature of the work, in poor conditions that forced her to adopt an unhealthy posture, damaged my partner’s body. At first she tried to soldier through, but ended up taking so much time off work (in agony, I must add) that the company decided to sack her. She tried to get help from her union, but the shop steward seemed to be in cahoots with company bosses and failed to represent her in a reasonable way.

Now, thanks to the policies of the Coalition government for which Martin presumably voted, she is facing the possibility of having her Employment and Support Allowance cut off by officials who seem to think that her progressively-worsening condition is going to be cured by August, despite there being no evidence whatsoever to support the assumption.

Is this what Martin wants? The relaxation of what little Health and Safety regulation there is, creating a legion of people who are unable to work due to injury, and who are forced into poverty because government policy is determined to say that the damage is all in their mind, rather than admit the facts?

But then, he is a Tory.

Moving on, it becomes clear that Martin would fit in very well as part of Michael Gove’s Education Department, because what he really wants to do is destroy the Civil Service – the professional organisation that actually ensures government runs smoothly and prevents politicians from making fools of themselves on a daily basis. For every briefcase full of secrets that is left in a taxi, there are dozens of other cock-ups that are prevented by a paid officer’s quick thinking, I assure you!

He wants to “get rid of at least one in four of all the senior civil servants who earn more than two-to-three times the national average wage. The remainder can work harder for their lavish salaries and index-linked pensions or go also. And yes, by Civil Servants I mean everyone paid more than 50 per cent of their compensation – directly or indirectly – from the public purse.”

What a disaster that would be for the United Kingdom. Martin is calling for the elimination of the vast majority of the expertise that has been learned over years of service to the national interest (note that I say ‘national’ interest, rather than the interest of any particular political organisation). In one stroke, he would knock one of the most professional and experienced administrative systems in the world back to amateur status – much as Mr Gove is attempting in his own department, to the great despair of most of those working in it.

But then, he is a Tory.

His parting shot, at Cameron and Osborne’s counterparts in the Labour Party, is also wide of the mark. While his opinion that the two Eds could not do a better job is his own, his assertion that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown “got us into this mess by exploding government spending for little positive benefit” is utterly incorrect. For the vast majority of Labour’s 13 years, government spending was less, per year, than during the previous 17 years of Conservative rule. It was only after the banking crisis that government spending increased – due to necessity – and we’ve already discussed whether Martin would have been able to take out his expensive advert if he didn’t have a bank account. Conservatives have been trying to sneak falsehoods like this under our Radar for more than three years, now, and it is up to all of us to be vigilant against it and remind everyone of the facts.

But then, Martin is a Tory.

Some of his comments are right on the money, though. He starts: “I realise… you really cannot afford the time to actually think about us mere taxpayers and citizens.” Absolutely correct – they’re too busy thinking about important people like the bosses of the big firms they are helping to avoid paying UK tax.

On cutting the civil service, he writes, “that DOES NOT MEAN reclassify them as consultants at greater cost – it means TOTALLY eliminating their costs, direct or indirect, from the public purse”. It is true that – for the most part – employing consultants is a huge waste of time and money.

He wants the banking system sorted out (don’t we all?); he wants money spent on capital projects that benefit British firms, rather than “bolting together foreign-bought trains in a new UK factory”; and he rightly says, “let’s cut out this soundbite about the one million new jobs you have created. It is offensive to those desperately looking for employment. Unemployment is appalling, youth unemployment is worse, and your policies encouraging unpaid work experience smack of a clever form of slavery”.

Liam Byrne, please take note of the last comment, remember that it comes from a Conservative, clear your desk and quit as Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary.

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Do you want your children to starve?

16 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by Mike Sivier in Benefits, Conservative Party, Disability, Education, Health, Liberal Democrats, People, Politics, UK

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

benefit, benefits, Breadline Britain, breakfast club, children, Coalition, Conservative, county council, Coventry, crime, debt, Department for Education, Department for Work and Pensions, DfE, disability, Disability Living Allowance, disabled, DLA, DWP, economy, Employment and Support Allowance, Eric Pickles, ESA, Essex. Surrey, food bank, food banks, government, health, hunger, hungry, Jobseeker's Allowance, JSA, Labour, Lib Dem, Liberal, Liberal Democrat, malnourishment, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, misbehaviour, MP, Oliver Twist, Parliament, people, PIP, politics, pupil premium, sanction, sanctions, Sharon Hodgson, The Guardian, Tories, Tory, Tory-led, Trussell Trust, unemployment, Vox Political, vulnerable, work capability assessment


The current joke has Oliver Twist saying, “Please, sir, can I have some more?” To which Eric Pickles replies: “Clear off! This is MY trough!”

Well? Do you want your kids to starve?

The Guardian has reported that budget cuts are forcing the closure of breakfast clubs in primary schools across the country – despite increased demand. The research, by Labour MP Sharon Hodgson, shows 40 per cent of councils are cutting back.

This means vulnerable children will be going to school hungry and will therefore be unable to concentrate in lessons.

Think about the consequences of this. If they can’t concentrate because of hunger, they’re likely to misbehave – and this could set a precedent for the rest of their lives. Malnourishment leads to misbehaviour, leading to what? Crime, perhaps?

At the very least, the inability to concentrate means their grades will drop and their academic careers will fail – in some cases, before they have had a chance to get going.

Who knows how many will develop health problems associated with malnutrition?

This will happen, not because they are “bad kids” or because they are “academically sub-normal”, but because they come from poor families. The rich, meanwhile, will streak ahead in the race for The Good Life.

The Guardian reports that Essex County Council said it had 219 breakfast clubs in schools last year, but 169 this year. In Surrey, 2,870 children were being given breakfast last year but only 1,200 in 2012. That’s creating 1,670 potential problem children.

All this is happening in the country with the seventh largest economy in the world.

A Department for Education spokesman acknowledged the importance of the service, but said it was up to schools how they spent the funds they were given. The “pupil premium”, aimed at the most disadvantaged children, would be doubled, the DFE said, but not until 2014-15 – in time to buy your votes at the 2015 election, perhaps?

Until then, do you really want your kids to starve?

The benefits system is failing thousands of people every week, forcing more and more of them to seek help from Britain’s growing number of food banks. “Breadline Britain”, under the Tory-led Coalition, is now a literal expression. Previously it was just metaphorical.

The Trussell Trust, which runs the UK’s biggest food bank, in Coventry, is opening new food banks at the rate of three per week.

Almost half the people who go to food banks are there because of benefit changes. the Department for Work and Pensions does not work fast enough to arrange benefits for when claimants need them, leaving poor people in crisis for weeks, or months, at a time. Then the debts start racking up.

Sanctions, imposed as temporary punishments by the new benefits regime, are also adding to the queue at the food banks. Since 2010, the number of people getting their Jobseeker’s Allowance suspended has spiked, and we all know that the disability tests introduced for Employment and Support Allowance (and soon to come in for Disability Living Allowance) are causing hardship and – in fact – death for Britain’s most vulnerable people.

Sanction or disallowance of benefits happened to 167,000 people in the three months up to February 2012.

What do people do for money when the State fails them and they can’t get work? They fall into the debt trap.

High-interest, doorstep lending to poor people is Britain’s latest – perhaps only – boom industry. In other words, the government’s sick benefits regime is forcing the poor into debt to organisations that will take away everything they have left, in order to make up payments on a loan whose interest rate they probably made up on the spot.

And when they’ve taken everything, what do you do then?

Do you really want your kids to starve?

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Yachting his copy book

16 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by Mike Sivier in Comedy, People, Politics

≈ Comments Off on Yachting his copy book

Tags

Adam Werrity, Coalition, comedy, Conservative, Daily Mirror, David Cameron, Department for Education, Department of Education, Diamond Jubilee, government, HM The Queen, humour, Liam Fox, Michael Gove, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, people, politics, Queen, Robert Maxwell, Tories, Tory, yacht


“There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile,
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together until he fell off his yacht.”

It would be wrong to suggest that Michael Gove is crooked; indeed it would be stretching a point to suggest he was even bent in any way – although I do think that the Conservative Party is long overdue for another legover crisis and that Gove should be at the centre of it when it happens, if only to prove which way he swings (so to speak).

The only whisper of any kind of interpersonal wrongdoing that we’ve had in this government so far is the relationship between former Defence Secretary Liam Fox and a gentleman called Adam Werrity who seemed to be such a fan that he had to follow Dr Fox wherever he went, claiming to be a member of his entourage who could get the then-cabinet minister to make certain arrangements in return for a bung. But that was more The Financial Arrangement That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

However, the rhyme at the top of this piece was the last time a yacht entered the news in any meaningful way, when the former Daily Mirror owner (and crook) Robert Maxwell disappeared from his, back in 1991(ish). I quote it to mark Gove’s latest lunatic idea – that we, the public, should buy the Queen a new yacht to mark her Diamond Jubilee.

This boat would cost £60 million, apparently – a million for every year she’s been on the throne. It would be a pointless present because, at Her Majesty’s age, she’s hardly going to be able to steer it.

The suggestion prompts me to wonder whether this is something that Tories do habitually. I mean, would he spend his own money on such lavishments?

Perhaps he’s trying to tell us that his Department for Education and Science is bucking the national trend by making money hand over fist. This would be strange behaviour for an organisation that is supposed to spend money in the most cost-effective way possible to give the nation’s young the best education possible, but I accept that in the light of my previous observations, the thought of Gove doing things ‘hand over fist’ would explain a lot.

In fact, it seems to me, the only part of the UK that has been expanding recently is the Coalition front bench. David Cameron in particular seems to be swelling up like a balloon and it occurs to me that, should matters progress as far as a ceremony to hand this proposed yacht over to Her Majesty, there’s a very real possibility that he’ll end up sliding off it.

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