Thursday, November 11, 2010
Guardian Journo Says Nice Things About IDS Shock
I must admit I never expected The Guardian to write anything at all positive about Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reforms, but the unexpected sometimes happens. Read THIS article by Martin Kettle, who says the left should stop hoping for the worst and give IDS's proposals a chance.
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Off topic - but in relation to your Liberal Conspiracy jibs (quite justified) - I fear your friend Guido is at it again being personally snide and nasty about Hague, and thus of course giving his followers perfect opportunity to vent their homophobic spleen.
He is upset that Hague was not on the trade delegation in China.
He was in China in July in fact and Moscow in October - paving the way for a PM visit.
A few days ago Hague was in Israel and Egypt.
On 9 Nov he was answering questions in parliament.
I have no idea where he went after and where he is now - but I know where Guido is heading; in to the gutter
I had a pop at Guido during that whole homophobic blast of his and tweeted something unapproving. Got a rude and surly response, something akin to 'Who the - are you?' so I have now blocked Guido on Twitter. Bit up his own backside.
The Labour line is that most of it was their ideas and that they were going to impliment it. It should have been done on their watch and they know it.
Kettle is comparing IDS's report with Beveridge and saying the comparison is not a good one - "while Beveridge was aiming to build a new Jerusalem, Duncan Smith is trying to fix Jerusalem's broken drainpipes." That said, he also rightly points out that Beveridge never anticipated permanent unemployment. The really important issue is why we have so many apparently terminally unemployed in Britain. I suspect at least 1/3 of these are long-term drug or alcohol addicts. I believe IDS has said something similar. So a determined (and costly!) effort to wean people off both would help. The second point is that jobs in retail and similar, which tend to continue, are relatively low paid and costly to undertake (because of the abnormally high cost of public transport in Britain and especially in big cities) and also require a decorum and personal grooming, etc, that the long-term unemployed struggle with. These jobs are taken by better-looking and harder working immigrants with less to lose.
US-style expensive campaigns to re-educate, re-groom and re-package the long-term unemployed would be best, coupled with rigorous anti-addiction programmes. Annexing benefits completely for the recalictrant will simply push them into prison and terrorise our streets, as many will switch to crime. This is happening in the US, where the surge in long-term unemployed and cutoff of benefits after 6 months has caused a sharp spike in violent crime recently.
"The really important issue is why we have so many apparently terminally unemployed in Britain."
Because Labour realised that if they couldn't win over the existing electorate, they'd better set about manufacturing a new electorate...
" The second point is that jobs in retail and similar, which tend to continue, are relatively low paid and costly to undertake (because of the abnormally high cost of public transport in Britain and especially in big cities) and also require a decorum and personal grooming, etc, that the long-term unemployed struggle with. These jobs are taken by better-looking and harder working immigrants with less to lose."
I don't know what sort of shops you patronise, nor what sort of immigrants you are used to rubbing shoulders with, but the image you paint - while being deliberatly provocative - is quite wrong. Clearly, you need to get out more...
Julia M - many ,any outlets have immigrant assistants. I hear a lot of east European accidents
Labour judge their success by how many people they put on benefits.
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