People had to take more active steps to get back into the labour market. And for those who won’t do so, then there should be consequences, including less benefit or no benefit at all.
No it’s not an old quote from Norman Tebbit but part of what John Hutton, the Work and Pensions Secretary, will say in a speech to the IPPR this week.
This is a new direction for New Labour. In the past the Government has adopted an enabling policy (the New Deal) towards the unemployed, giving them benefits, training and skills to help them into the job market. But there has always been a “hardcore” of people who have gone through this system and still not got a job. The Government’s even tried more expensive and elaborate schemes, but to no avail (see the StepUp scheme pilot which cost £40m).
So the Government’s gone for what many taxpayers would argue they should have done in the first place - cut their benefits. That’ll stop them sponging off the state.
In his speech, John Hutton’s also going to compare the attitude of the lazy British to that of the dynamic and hardworking Central and Eastern Europeans who have come to the UK. I suppose that this fits nicely with the Government’s policy on Romania and Bulgaria, which has placed limits when they join in January. The Government message is that there’s lots of jobs, we’re not allowed to fill those with Romanian and Bulgarians, (because the Daily Mail said it’s bad) so you lazy British will have to scrub the floors and serve burgers instead.
At work we would often have a bet on what newspapers would have on their front covers. Nine times out of ten you could tell what was going to be on the Daily Express’ front cover - a story on Princess Diana. For nearly 10 years the Daily Express has relentlessly pushed the Diana story. It is now time this stopped.
If the Daily Express was a person, we’d probably say they have more than an unhealthy obsession with Diana. More likely we’d get them professional help for their obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Now that there has been an official inquiry, I would like to believe that they would finally accept the outcome. But like all obsessive-compulsives, it will never be enough. It is time to move on.
Forget biometric passports. Forget spy satellites or secret CIA operatives. The weapon the US State Department has been using to find Iranians linked to nuclear weapon production is Google. According to the Washington Post, they’ve just been typing in “iran + nuclear”, finding out which names come up and then seeking a ban on their travel and business dealings. Not bad for a $10 billion dollar budget. I’d better be careful. If you Google me - I’m linked to a possible nuclear testing site.
You’re sick of reading about it and I’m sick of writing about it but copyright extension just won’t go away. After the Gower’s review recommended no extension to the copyright term for sound recordings I really thought we’d seen the back of this. Apparently not. This morning I read that 4500 musicians including Sir Cliff Richard and Katie Melua (now there’s a soporific duet) have signed an advert in the Financial Times calling again for an extension of copyright on sound recordings to 95 years. Is it just me or is this all getting a bit demeaning? My advice to the signatories of this advert: stop this pathetic grubbing around to wring out every last penny from your faded glories. If you want to make more money record some new songs, go on a tour, work as a musician. If that doesn’t work then do what the rest of us do and get a normal job.
In related news, independent music labels have apparently claimed that fair use copying rights (also called for in the Gowers review) could “open the floodgates” to a tidal wave of private copying and (shock, horror!) sharing. For the nth time: it’s unfair to make people pay for the same thing twice if they want to use it another way. It wouldn’t fly in any other industry and entertainment shouldn’t be treated any differently.
According to the Indie, ExxonMobil has been funding EU orientated think tanks who agree (or will agree for lots of money) with their environmentally sceptical “I don’t care about destruction of the world” view. This raises an important point about think tanks that many people do not realise. They all have a specific political agenda and are usually funded by rich and powerful business individuals and companies who want some “bang for their bucks”. Take for example the IPPR - employees have commented that they feel like they spend more time helping to keep Labour in power than rehashing other people’s work doing research. Over the summer there were also several “cash for access” stories.
Worryingly the MSM and public policy makers often rely on think tanks for information and stories; quoting them as if they are representative of civil society. The only thing they represent are specific politically partisan views and big business. Think tanks are just another form of political lobbying that dilutes proper political debate and allows unelected elites to wield political power.
A YouGov poll commissioned by The Telegraph has revealed that a significant proportion of the population would refuse to accept an ID card even when faced with a fine or prison term. The government have claimed in the past that there was widespread support for the scheme (although it’s not hard to imagine a survey that would generate a favourable result: Q - “Would you accept an ID card if it would stop terrorism and prevent identity fraud”; A - “Yes”. That both those claims are widely discredited won’t cause an unscrupulous and well funded statistician to lose much sleep).
39% of respondents to the YouGov poll said that they were opposed to ID cards, of those opposed 21% would be prepared to face a fine. Given the UKs current population of approximately 60 million that means that the government could be forced to take action against 4.8 million people. Of course it’s very easy to be bullish when filling out a questionnaire so the reality will no doubt be a rather smaller revolt but even a million people refusing to take a card could be enough to turn this into Labour’s Poll Tax. No politician wants to be associated with a policy that leads to rioting but so far Mr Brown seems to be as keen on ID cards as his soon to be predecessor.
Chirac has been trying to develop a French CNN to combat the Anglo-Saxon dominance of news coverage for the last 25 years. That dream is now a reality, albeit with a tiny budget. And to combat this Anglo-Saxon dominance its also broadcast in English.
According to the snazzy promotional video France24 “Questions, Confronts, Testifies and Analyzes”. All sounds exciting to me.
Blair has given into criticism and decided to reduce the Trident warheads by 20%. Now we can only destroy the world 5 times over.
According to the new white paper, the replacement for Trident is only going to cost £25bn - the Government’s going to save us £2bn by only having 3 subs instead of 4.
Great. We can all sleep sound at night knowing that we have a deterrent against all those Communist states. Urmm I mean terroristsFrance rogue states.
Only 212 days to go until our pubs become empty and our streets are littered with fag butts.
In Scotland the bars may now be smoke free, but they’re also usually free of people as everyone loiters outside. In fact you almost need to smoke to talk to your friends.
At work we would often have a bet on what newspapers would have on their front covers. Nine times out of ten you could tell what was going to be on the Daily Express’ front cover - a story on Princess Diana. For nearly 10 years the Daily Express has relentlessly pushed the Diana story. It is now time this stopped.
more than an unhealthy obsession with Diana. More likely we’d get them professional help for their obsessive-compulsive disorder.
According to the 