Showing posts with label welfare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label welfare. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 07, 2015
David Cameron on Saudi Arabia, Isis and Welfare
Monday, March 26, 2012
Abu Qatada has been upgraded to a larger taxpayer-funded home since his release from jail last month, the Mail can reveal.
The terror suspect has told relatives in his native Jordan that he is the ‘happiest man in England’ after he was rehoused to the more expensive property.
His wife and five children are also said to be ‘delighted’ with the move, because their new home has more bedrooms, a bigger garden and more modern fittings.
Qatada, who was once described by a judge as ‘Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe’, asked to switch houses a week after being freed from Long Lartin jail in February.
The hate preacher had initially moved into a £400,000 home in Wembley, North London – organised by the local authority – where his family were said to be paying £1,900 a month rent which they funded through benefits.
But the 51-year-old requested a move after complaints from the property’s owner, who was furious to discover he had unwittingly allowed the cleric to become his tenant.
Qatada’s brother, Ibrahim Othman, said: ‘He told us they have now given him a very nice new place, bigger than the first house he went to after the British let him go.
‘He is really enjoying his new home and so are his family. The inside is very modern and has been done up more nicely, it has more bedrooms and a larger garden.
‘It is better for the family. They are all very happy in the larger house.
‘My brother cannot work so the British government fund his family to live there. The new house is costing more but he does not have to pay it because there is no way he can earn money.’ Read on and comment » | Tom Kelly | Sunday, March 25, 2012
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Bitter laughter is my main response to the events of the past week. You are surprised by what has happened? Why? I have been saying for years that it was coming, and why it was coming, and what could be done to stop it.
I have said it in books, in articles, over lunch and dinner tables with politicians whose lips curled with lofty contempt.
So yes, I am deeply sorry for the innocent and gentle people who have lost lives, homes, businesses and security. Heaven knows I have argued for years for the measures that might have saved them.
But I am not really very sorry for the elite liberal Londoners who have suddenly discovered what millions of others have lived with for decades.
The mass criminality in the big cities is merely a speeded-up and concentrated version of life on most large estates – fear, intimidation, cruelty, injustice, savagery towards the vulnerable and the different, a cold sneer turned towards any plea for pity, the awful realisation that when you call for help from the authorities, none will come.
Just look and see how many shops are protected with steel shutters, how many homes have bars on their windows. This is not new.
As the polluted flood (it is not a tide; it will not go back down again) of spite, greed and violence washes on to their very doorsteps, well-off and influential Left-wingers at last meet the filthy thing they have created, and which they ignored when it did not affect them personally. » | Peter Hitchens | Sunday, August 14, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
THE GUARDIAN: Cross-party commitment to welfare means France is a good place to be old, young, sick, jobless or female
The future of social care, President Nicolas Sarkozy declared, "is a matter of such importance and gravity that ideology has no place". His opponents scoff, among them Martine Aubry, one of the frontrunners to be the Socialist party's candidate against him in the presidential elections due in 2012.
Viewed from the British side of the Channel, Sarkozy has made a striking promise to create a "new branch of the welfare state" to provide care for old people and those with disabilities. France has 1.1 million dependent old people, their numbers expected to grow by 1%-2% to the middle of the century, when the over‑85s could number 5 million.
Alarmist voices have sounded, but France has heard little of the partisan hysteria audible in Britain, where spending on care for old people has been proportionately higher than in France. Sarkozy promises to lay out a plan by this summer, in good time to give him a populist theme for the presidential campaign. (By then we ought to have sight of proposals to come from Andrew Dilnot, the Oxford economist commissioned by the Cameron government to rethink social care; they will make for a fascinating comparison.)
It's true that Sarkozy, after grandstanding on social care when he was elected in 2007, has vacillated. His latest line is that social care won't be a formal "fifth branch" of the French welfare state. Its four pillars are family benefits, health, coverage for accidents at work, and pensions. They offer relatively generous statutory entitlements, funded by insurance schemes paid for by statutory employer and employee contributions, topped up by general taxation. Instead, Sarkozy's extension of social care is to come from private insurance, some tax funding or even (this came from Laurent Hénart, the president of the national agency for personal services and a pro-Sarkozy MP) the proceeds of French workers giving up a day's leave each year. But the state will organise and underpin it.
How unlike Britain: in France, cross-party commitment to welfare runs deep, as does belief in the necessity and benignity of "l'état". Politicians on the right and the left use the word solidarité with sincerity (the National Front is statist, too, though its definitions exclude "immigrants" from the national compact). Perhaps solidarity is the modern expression of the 1789 cry for "fraternity". The Sarkozy government has a minister for solidarity and maintains the solidarity tax, only one of several payments by general taxpayers and employers levied in the name of strengthening social cohesion. On the annual journée de solidarité employees' pay is earmarked for old people's charities. Continue reading and comment » | Polly Toynbee | Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
MAIL ONLINE: Stanley Clifton, 31, has never had a job and receives hundred of pounds a month in benefits / Judge brands him 'embodiment of welfare-dependent culture'A jobless layabout who receives incapacity benefit for alcoholism was branded 'the embodiment of the welfare dependency culture' when he appeared in court for failing to carry out his community service.
Judge John Walford expressed disbelief after hearing that Stanley Clifton, 31, has never had a job and receives hundreds of pounds a month in incapacity benefit because he is unfit to work due to his addiction.
The stunned judge vented his anger, calling the defendant a 'sponger' and branding the situation 'extraordinary'. Judge's fury at 'sponging' alcoholic who claims incapacity benefit because 'addiction makes him unable to work' >>> Daily Mail Reporter | Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Greedy MPs and rapacious bankers are just as dishonest as welfare fraudsters and freeloaders, says Jenny McCartney.
David Cameron, at the launch of the Welfare Reform Bill last week, made a rousing plea for the restoration of our ethics. In his speech, he bemoaned the end of “a collective culture of responsibility”, of an age when people’s self-image was measured by “whether they did the decent thing”. In such an era, he said, “fiddling the system would have brought not just public outcry but private shame”.
Mr Cameron was speaking with specific regard to our welfare system, and much of what he said is true. We are all familiar with those lurid tales of enterprising gentlemen who have claimed disability allowance while giving disco-dancing lessons on the side, or ladies whose complicated housing scams trawl in the annual GDP of a small Baltic country.
As well as such criminal fraudsters, however, there are the opportunistic freeloaders who trigger public ire without actually breaking the law. The latter are open in their intention to have large families that will be wholly supported by a groaning state. It was reported last week that the anti-social antics of the family of Tom O’Leary and Tanya Walsh (two adults, 12 children) had caused distress to the neighbours of their £1.2 million council-funded abode in Muswell Hill. Miss Walsh wrote on her Bebo site recently that her hobbies were “eating chocolate and having children”: the only people cheering her on were the makers of confectionery and Pampers. Read on and comment >>> Jenny McCartney | Saturday, February 19, 2011
My comment:
At last, a refreshing bit of common sense! Thank you for this extremely sensible article, Jenny McCartney. It is very tiresome to listen to the fraudsters at the top always going on about the people at the bottom milking the system. Who milks the system more than the greedy bankers and fraudulent MPs? And I write as a disinterested observer. Cameron had better start looking sideways before he looks down. He should get his chums to lead by example. – © Mark
This comment also appears here
Monday, January 03, 2011
THE GUARDIAN: Slowdown in economic growth makes reducing deficit harder, says Office for Budget Responsibility
Rising unemployment will cost the government £1.5bn more than expected in welfare benefits, according to official forecasts that reveal the hidden cost of the coalition's austerity drive.
As big increases in VAT are due to bite from Tuesday, analysis from the Office for Budget Responsibility shows slowing economic growth will make it harder to reduce the deficit by forcing more people to seek state support.
The Treasury watchdog calculates the government will have to pay out £700m more in unemployment benefit than previously forecast. Similarly, a higher number claiming jobseeker's allowance as well as falling into lower wage brackets will see the government needing to pay out another £700m more in housing assistance over the next four years.
Though the OBR data, released last month, confirms the government is still making substantial savings from its changes to both benefits, the shadow work and pensions secretary, Douglas Alexander, said the OBR's fresh assessment suggested it was government strategy that was leaving these higher numbers exposed.
He said: "The growing cost of the risk the government is running with the economic recovery is now emerging. The result of policies which undermine growth and jobs is a longer dole queue and a higher welfare bill." >>> Allegra Stratton and Julia Kollewe | Sunday, January 02, 2011
Thursday, September 16, 2010
MAIL ONLINE: Nick Clegg has waded into the row over welfare reform by warning that benefits should not be there 'to compensate the poor for their predicament'.On the eve of the Liberal Democrat conference, the Deputy Prime Minister backed the Coalition's programme of welfare cuts and dramatically shifted his party's policy on the subject.
He said the billions spent on welfare should be used as an 'engine of mobility', instead of just leaving people 'stuck on benefits, year in, year out'.
His comments are likely to infuriate his party's left-wingers, who have publicly accused the Coalition of targeting the vulnerable and Mr Clegg of breaking promises to ensure all cuts were 'fair'.
The issue is likely to prove a flashpoint with the LibDem Left when activists gather in Liverpool from Saturday for the first time since joining the Tories in government.
But Mr Clegg made clear he considered welfare reforms to be essential. In a newspaper article, he said: 'A fair society is not one in which money is simply transferred by the central State from one group to another.
'Welfare needs to become an engine of mobility, changing people's lives for the better, rather than a giant cheque written by the State to compensate the poor for their predicament.
'Instead of turning the system from a 'safety net' into a 'trampoline', as Labour promised, people have been stuck on benefits, year in, year out.' Read on and comment >>> Jason Groves | Thursday, September 16, 2010
Thursday, September 09, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Benefits claimants will have their payments cut as ministers seek a further £4 billion in welfare cuts.George Osborne, the Chancellor, said that the Government will go further than previously announced in trying to bring down the cost of Britain’s social security system.
The promise of new welfare cuts has caused strain in the Coalition, with some Liberal Democrat MPs protesting against the move.
Mr Osborne said the welfare system had grown out of control and allowed some people to make the “lifestyle choice” of claiming benefits for their entire life instead of working.
Reforms being drawn up by the Coalition will give welfare claimants “a strong incentive” to get a job.
Welfare now costs £192 billion a year, almost a third of all government spending. An estimated 5 million people of working age are now economically inactive and receiving benefits.
In the Budget in June, Mr Osborne announced that benefits cuts will save £11 billion a year by the end of the Parliament.
In a BBC interview, he signalled that ministers will now seek deeper cuts, reducing welfare spending by another £4 billion. >>> James Kirkup and Andrew Porter | Thursday, September 09, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Private agencies are to be paid by the Government to reduce benefit fraud by £1billion, David Cameron is to announce.
Finance experts will identify welfare cheats by trawling through their records, household bills and credit card applications.
The agencies will get a “bounty” payment for each fraudster they identify under government plans to cut the £5.2billion annual fraud bill.
By having access to the Government’s database of incapacity and housing benefit claimants, the companies believe they can shave at least £1billion from the welfare bill, earning as much as £50million.
The Prime Minister will say today that the level of fraud is “absolutely outrageous” and an “uncompromising” strategy is needed.
Mr Cameron will also call on members of the public to report suspected cheats and promise tougher punishments for offenders. >>> Holly Watt, Rosa Prince and Robert Winnett | Tuesday, August 10, 2010
This is so 'old Tory'. Whilst I am not in favour of people cheating the system for benefits, I feel that Cameron should have the balls to target the fat cat bankers who are stealing far more from the system with their multi-million pound bonuses than the paltry sums of money that Jo Average is getting in the form of welfare. Why doesn't Cameron come up with something new and original like jailing bankers who milk the system, and thereby endanger capitalism's very existence? – © Mark | Comment also posted here
Sunday, November 29, 2009
THE NEW YORK TIMES: MARTINSVILLE, Ohio — With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.
It has grown so rapidly in places so diverse that it is becoming nearly as ordinary as the groceries it buys. More than 36 million people use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs.
Virtually all have incomes near or below the federal poverty line, but their eclectic ranks testify to the range of people struggling with basic needs. They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare. >>> Jason DeParle and Robert Gebeloff | Saturday, November 28, 2009
THE NEW YORK TIMES PHOTOGALLERY: Once Scorned, a Federal Program Grows to Feed the Struggling >>>
THE INDEPENDENT: Britain faces return to Victorian levels of poverty >>> Andrew Grice, Political Editor | Monday, November 30, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
MAIL Online: He cut a smart figure in his grey suit and crisply ironed shirt. The 6ft tall Somalian bowed to the judge, calling him 'Sir', before begging for his wife, Fatima, and their teenage son to be allowed to stay in Britain.
Fatima, with a black khimar veil covering her hair and shoulders, sat quietly next to her husband.
In her late 30s and wearing open sandals, she lowered her dark eyes as the details of the unconventional life she and her husband, Abdi, led in the West London suburb of Shepherd's Bush unfolded at a busy immigration court.
The judge listened in silence. Perhaps he knew from past experience what was coming next. Abdi went on to reveal that Fatima was not his only wife.
Indeed, he was a self-confessed bigamist who had a second, much younger wife and a 13-year-old daughter by her. They both lived nearby.
'I visit them regularly,' said Abdi, 51, who arrived in Britain in the 1990s and works in an old people's home. 'I have done nothing wrong. In Somalia, it is normal to have two wives - even three or four. Fatima is still my wife and she should not be deported.'
He was unable to produce wedding certificates or valid official documents to prove where, or when, he had married both women, therefore raising questions over the validity of the unions, under either Somali or British law.
Yet his story, unravelling at an ordinary weekday hearing at Taylor House, an asylum appeals' centre in North London, is just one example of the growing phenomenon of multiple marriage in Britain.
Officially, such unions are punishable by up to seven years in prison. They were first declared illegal in England and Wales in 1604, when the Parliament of James I took action to restrain 'evil persons' marrying more than one wife. Parliament ruled that anyone found guilty of the crime would be sentenced to death.
In the four centuries since, bigamy (having two wives) and polygamy (more than two) has been frowned on by the state, the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.
Yet it is clear that officialdom is turning a blind eye to such marriages.
A recent review by four Government departments - the Treasury, the Work and Pensions Department, the Inland Revenue and the Home Office - has concluded that 1,000 men in the United Kingdom are now polygamists, although some say the figure is higher.
What is more, the review found, a Muslim man can claim state support of more than £10,000 a year to keep his wives, if the wedding took place in one of those countries where polygamy is commonplace, such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia and across huge tracts of Africa.
For example, a man can receive &£92.80 a week in income support for wife number one, and a further £33.65p for each of his subsequent spouses.
Therefore, if he has four wives - the maximum permitted under Islamic teachings - he can claim nearly £800 a month from the British taxpayer.
Controversially, a polygamist is also entitled to more generous housing benefits and bigger council houses to reflect the large size of his family. He is also able to claim £1,000 a year in child benefit for each of his growing brood.
The Government insists that polygamy has declined in Britain since the 1988 Immigration Act, which made it harder for men to bring second, third or fourth wives to the UK.
However, it's little wonder that critics claim our generosity simply encourages more Muslim men to keep several spouses.
Supporters of polygamy claim the Koran states unequivocally that a Muslim man can marry up to four women so long as he treats them equally.
But the Taxpayers' Alliance, a lobby group, has complained: 'Polygamy is not officially condoned here, so why should British taxpayers have to pay for extra benefits for men to have two, three or four wives?' >>> Sue Reid | Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Hat tip: Jihad Watch >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>
Sunday, February 15, 2009
THE SUNDAY TIMES: The new administration's economic stimulus plan may undo reforms that cut the dole queues, critics say
RONALD REAGAN started it, Bill Clinton finished it and last week Barack Obama was accused of engineering its destruction. One of the few undisputed triumphs of American government of the past 20 years – the sweeping welfare reform programme that sent millions of dole claimants back to work – has been plunged into jeopardy by billions of dollars in state handouts included in the president’s controversial economic stimulus package.
As Obama celebrated Valentine’s Day yesterday with a return to his Chicago home for a private weekend with family and friends, his success in piloting a $785 billion (£546 billion) stimulus package through Congress was being overshadowed by warnings that an unprecedented increase in welfare spending would undermine two decades of bipartisan attempts to reduce dependency on government handouts.
Robert Rector, a prominent welfare researcher who was one of the architects of Clinton's 1996 reform bill, warned last week that Obama’s stimulus plan was a “welfare spendathon” that would amount to the largest one-year increase in government handouts in American history. >>> The Sunday Times | Sunday, February 15, 2009
THE SUNDAY TIMES: No Excuses if Obama Can't Fix 'His' Recession
If, like John Maynard Keynes, you believe that spending, any spending, will revive a flagging economy, the freshly minted, 1,000-page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, calling for $504 billion in deficit-financed spending, is for you. Well, not quite. It seems that most of the money will not be spent very soon. About 30% won't hit the economy until 2011, and the balance is likely to be tied up in the procurement processes of the federal and state governments until well into 2010, and beyond. Besides, much of the spending will end up boosting other economies — subsidies for wind machines will benefit workers in the other countries in which such machines are manufactured, not our very own horny-handed toilers. And much of the spending will not create jobs for the unemployed: laid-off car workers do not have the skills to design the software to manage the "smart grid" that is the apple of the greens' eye.
If you have not jumped onto the new Keynesian spending bandwagon, but believe with Christina Romer, chairman of Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, that tax cuts are more certain than spending to turn the economy round, you should love this bill, with its $286 billion in tax cuts and credits. Well, not quite. True, individuals earning less than $75,000 a year and families earning less than $150,000 will receive credits of $400 and $800, the earned income-tax credit for working families with three or more children is increased, and there is something for pensioners, disabled veterans, families of college students and a host of others.
Reflection suggests, however, the tax-cut contingent is doomed to disappointment. Much of the money will be saved or used to pay down credit-card balances, not bad things, but not very stimulative. Much will be spent in Wal-Mart, earning Congress the applause of Chinese trainer and t-shirt manufacturers. And much will never be claimed: the specific subsidies for college education are simply too small to have much effect on college enrolments. If you are a supply-side enthusiast… >>> Irwin Stelzer*
*Irwin Stelzer is a business adviser and director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – USA)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardcover – USA)
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