Daily Mail is at it again

Quarter of those claiming sickness benefits have a criminal record in 'truly alarming discovery'

I left this comment (they tend to disappear from to time to time I've noticed)

This is what is known in propaganda school as a 'smear campaign' - it's very revealing how the DWP manages to release these little snippets of information at very crucial times. Maybe it's because the Government was getting a little scared that the strikes over the closure of the Remploy factories was garnering a little bit too much sympathy from the general public. (since it undoes all that previous propaganda tainting the disabled as workshy when they're oh er... fighting to stay in work) - or it's because they're about to announce yet another round of cuts on disability benefits... but obviously something now suits the government for the public to think of the disabled as criminals. Shame on the Daily Mail for spreading this disinformation.  For a change how's about trying doing some proper research and actual journalism rather than rewriting press-releases from the DWP?

A SUMMER OF DISCONTENT

THE NORTHAMPTON INDEPENDENT: A SUMMER OF DISCONTENT:

So just what have we got as a nation to feel proud about at present? OK the Jubilee and the Olympics for those so minded offer a maybe welcome diversion from the stark realities of our everyday lives, but they are little more than hollow escape from our real troubles, and these are stacking up by the bucket load.

...

Bankers plot response to bonus threat

Oh noes! Boo-hoo. The bankers if they get their bonuses limited - they'll move somewhere else. Really?
Where to? Let them. They can go and wreck someone else's economies.

A new poverty pimp firm is on the block

Things haven't been going too well for E4e lately but what of fellow poverty pimping company Maximus. Oh look - their parent American company been fined for various acts of fraud and fiddling the books even before they've started here.


http://unemploymentmovement.com/forum/welfare-to-work/3613-private-eye-turns-its-attention-to-maximus

and their dodgy dealings go back decades: Low-rated firm fights to keep rich county work (30th October 2008) just shows how much lobbying and money they paid out trying to keep lucrative contracts - donations to political parties. (Sound familiar?)


You'd think the UK unemployed folk deserved better than this. Nah. I have no idea why our Government insists on copying American ideas 5 or so years late and after they've seen to fail. There must be a parliamentary time warp where they live 5 years behind the rest of us... or something.

welfare p-r-o-p-a-g-a-n-d-a

Why Tiffany, 24, knows how to get UK off benefits... Thanks to the Wisconsin workfare scheme David Cameron would love to emulate in Britain.

This is the comment I left:
Baffling.
The Mail has to go all the way to America to find one success story on how welfare-to-work is supposed to work. How much did it cost to send the journalist on that little trip? (Or was it just copied out of a press release?) So can we hope for a similar article set closer to home interviewing a few of the people of the 97% that the likes of A4e totally failed to help? I doubt it somehow.

As for the article itself - urgh. Propaganda covered in syrupy nonsense.

In just the first paragraph - "she now works as a bank teller"... mmmmm that'll work fine here then, oh no hang on... banks have been shedding staff here like crazy. And there's even more lay offs in the pipelines. Strike one.

'A miraculous change of fortune' - well, yes of course miracles happen every day... oh wait, no they don't. That's why they're called miracles. Definition of miraculous: Occurring through divine or supernatural intervention) So strike two. The Wisconsin programme isn't working then - is it. It's up to God and fairies.

Then it's blah-blah-blah, Cameron is a god amongst men, and single American mom's on welfare are a drain the US economy... sort of waffle.

then we get: "Britain currently has a voluntary Government-backed work experience scheme, which Mr Cameron’s proposals hope to build on."

That's voluntary as in 'you do this -or we stop all your 'benefits' including your rent - so you'll be homeless, begging in the street' -that sort of voluntary.

As the Wiscon Programme - well, funding has been cut on it already... (March 20, 2011) and oh, lookee here - it's being threatened with closure altogether in one place.

and I found this academic study:
'Wisconsin works'?: race, gender and accountability in the workfare era. which shows that there's a lot more to the programme than this fluffy-wuffy Daily Mail article.