Hectic
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What?68 million pounds a year for 1000 workers is 70 grand a year for each disabled person.
What?68 million pounds a year for 1000 workers is 70 grand a year for each disabled person.
Na, mate. The average subsidy for each factory job is £25,000 a year, as confirmed by Maria Millar herself. That's the top end cost as confirmed by the government. However, these factories actually make money as well. It will be much lower.Thats actually unbelievable, but there isnt enough information. How many people were employed in total? 68 million pounds a year for 1000 workers is 70 grand a year for each disabled person. That seems high.
I am not doing so, but then neither am i defending a status quo nor Labour's record whilst in office.35 of 1000 is very damning though. Cant see how Nick can defend that.
Yes. But, looking after and supporting the disabled costs more money than the average able bodied person. It's an undeniable fact. Something the Tories struggle with is looking at things from a human perspective, how the policies actually affect the individual; all they see is cost and savings.It all boils down the the ambition one has for the many thousands of disabled people in this country who could be more active.
You know there's a massive world that exists outside your London bubble right? That's an unbelievable commentYou know for a face that London's disable will lose their freedom pass? Their blue badges?
Has not the DLA risen during the coalition's tenure?
Of course there is a world outside of London although it is i imagine the largest demand of transport subsidies for the disabled [free buses, tubes, overground, river travel e.t.c.].You know there's a world exists outside your London bubble right? That's an unbelievable comment
And no, DLA will be replaced by PIP with the aim of saving around 20%. That means no matter how many people are actually deserving of a benefit, which could raise, the actual money rationed to them will be set to an arbitary bar. Do some research.
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/Briefing PIP RCPsych 17 Feb 2012.pdf
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/pa...efit-cuts-will-damage-motability-car-undustry
And why do you think this is? By any chance is it because the capital city has the best travel infrastructure in the country, with boundless investment, compared to say the northern cities?Of course there is a world outside of London although it is i imagine the largest demand of transport subsidies for the disabled [free buses, tubes, overground, river travel e.t.c.].
What?
Na, mate. The average subsidy for each factory job is £25,000 a year, as confirmed by Maria Millar herself. That's the top end cost as confirmed by the government. However, these factories actually make money as well. It will be much lower.
“Despite significant investment in those businesses, the cost of each employment place remains some £25,000 per year [at Remploy], compared with an average Access to Work award of just under £3,000.”
Maria Miller MP, House of Commons, 7 March 2012
The government argued it could no longer bear the £68m annual losses racked up by the factories and instead would use the money saved to fund schemes to help disabled people into work.
So I just used, incorrectly obviously, 68m/1000.However, following a series of parliamentary questions, Labour said 31 factories had closed with the loss of 1,021 jobs, and 35 disabled workers had found new work.
This is the problem with your argument in this thread. The govt does nothing to achieve your point in bold.So instead of creating a genuinely inclusive labour market, one where the disabled [and the able bodied for that matter] would receive the most benefit of all through employment in a mainstream environment, we hide from the problems and construct an unrealistic bubble?
What of the thousands of others abandoned by the system and seen as okay just because they have benefits? Do we judge them by the minority helped by Remploy or bad too?
I'm sorry but this mindset that Labour matches deeds to rhetoric when it comes to the needy, is to be kind, flawed.
Do they offer a safety net to bounce back from, or a clinging web out of sight and out of mind.
So as not to get sidetracked from the topic at hand, the relevance of this to cuts in transport subsidies is...? Ami i to take from your answer here that an obvious target for cuts in the transport subsidy is being left untouched?And why do you think this is? By any chance is it because the capital city has the best travel infrastructure in the country, with boundless investment, compared to say the northern cities?
Clearly the set aim of the workplace being more flexible and those detached from it having the confidence to enter into it, is a piss take opportunity.We could save money by scrapping the coastguard services too, it'll create a "sense of ambition" for those who can't swim very well.
Which if i was coming at this from a position of defending Tory policies might be fair enough, however with my intent being to question the adherence to Labour's status quo and their return to power as the answer, i am not so sure that it is.This is the problem with your argument in this thread. The govt does nothing to achieve your point in bold.
In fact every time you hear Tories talking about flexible working and empowering employers, decreasing employment rights or making it easier to dismiss people with no reason given or right to independent adjudication. What that means in the usual Tory code is that the labour market gets less inclusive because there is no accountability for employers.
Will this policy eventually benefit some disabled people by forcing them off benefits and into work, probably yes?
It has also throw doubt into the futures of hundreds of thousands of disabled people and will financially punish some of our most disadvantaged. My guess is it will fail to produce any meaningful change in benefit culture.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who's middle class for a change.Most people who vote left probably do so because they believe it is more fair/equitable. What's wrong with that?
what was your question, MrMojo?
Billy Bragg, Andy Burnham, female journalist with blonde hair whose name I can't remember, Jane something. The other panelist I can't remember.And who was on the panel if you can remember?
Probably, it was a pretty subdued panel, a bit too friendly.it's a good and interesting question that probably would have got the same boring bullshit non-answers.
Speaking from experience, I don't know whether it's killing people, but it's an enormous waste of taxpayers money. They're fecking useless, aren't cost effective and are typical of the privatisation of public services. They don't provide the service the old system used to. Clueless.Nah, I'm not sure how well it works as a policy, but it's ludicrous to say it is killing 50 people a week or whatever the Caf is claiming.
To be fair it did need changed. There were many people on DLA who shouldn't have been, and who those making decisions couldn't remove the benefit from, even when it was clear they shouldn't have been on it, but giving a private company a feckload of money in the hope that it sorts it all out doesn't seem to be a sensible way to do it.And their workers have been given arbitrary targets for approvals/disqualifications. Hardly inspires confidence that they're seeking to help those who need it.
Redcafe quote of the year. Let the campaign begin....Put yourself in the shoes of someone who's middle class for a change.
People consistently fail to realise that a lot of the things government do are actually quite difficult compared to some of the simple things done in private industry like flogging stuff, making widgets etc.Speaking from experience, I don't know whether it's killing people, but it's an enormous waste of taxpayers money. They're fecking useless, aren't cost effective and are typical of the privatisation of public services. They don't provide the service the old system used to. Clueless.
As I say, I've seen it first-hand. The system has more flaws now than ever, isn't as time effective or as accurate. And probably costs as much, if not more than the public sector workers who used to do the work did anyway. I don't see the point.People consistently fail to realise that a lot of the things government do are actually quite difficult compared to some of the simple things done in private industry like flogging stuff, making widgets etc.
http://www.newstatesman.com/broadcast/2012/11/there-bias-bbc-question-timeIs there bias on BBC Question Time?
Phil Burton-Cartledge has crunched the numbers on the political persuasions of the guests on the BBC's flagship politics programme.
Is the BBC in thrall to the liberal establishment? Do right-wingers take to the telly in disproportionate numbers? Does it really deserve its Tory epithet, "Buggers Broadcasting Communism"? Or is the BBC getting it about right in striking an impartial balance? Whichever way you look at it, these are not a set of questions likely to be settled by a single blog post.
But one place you might want to look for evidence of BBC bias is its flagship politics programme, Question Time. More specifically, if there is a leaning to the left or the right, this could be clarified by the political affiliations and loyalties of its guests.
Below are the top ten recurring guests by category since 4th December, 2008 - the date from which consistent and complete evidence of panelists are easily available. This gives us just shy of four years worth of data. Please note I have excluded Question Time's annual forays to Northern Ireland from the figures.
As of 22 November, 362 individuals have occupied 704 panel slots. For those interested in gender and political participation, only 98 guests have been women. These between them have occupied 235 slots.
The most frequently-featured guests by party are:
Conservatives
Ken Clarke (10)
Theresa May (8)
Sayeeda Warsi (7)
Iain Duncan Smith (6)
Liam Fox (6)
Labour
Caroline Flint (10)
Peter Hain (8)
Diane Abbott (7)
Andy Burnham (7)
Alan Johnson (7)
Liberal Democrats
Vince Cable (12)
Chris Huhne (7)
Shirley Williams (7)
Paddy Ashdown (6) Menzies Campbell (6) Charles Kennedy (6) Simon Hughes (6) Jo Swinson (6) Sarah Teather (6)
Others
Nigel Farage (11)
Caroline Lucas (8)
Nicola Sturgeon (7)
Elfyn Llwyd (5)
George Galloway (4) Alex Salmond (4) Leanne Wood (4)
The overall top five looks like this:
Vince Cable (12)
Nigel Farage (11)
Ken Clarke (10)
Caroline Flint (10)
Peter Hain (8) Caroline Lucas (8) Theresa May (8)
In total, there have been 47 Conservative politicians occupying 137 slots (of whom 16 were women taking 41 slots), 51 Labour with 148 slots (17 women taking 51 slots), 31 LibDems with 109 slots (9 women and 33 slots), and 18 Other taking 57 slots (7 women and 25 slots).
A slight advantage for Labour perhaps, but hardly indicative of a systematic political bias - and even less so if you strip out the Question Time dedicated to the Labour leadership election in 2010.
Matters are skewed when you introduce other categories of guests. We have trade unionists (7 occupying 9 slots), business people (23 and 32 slots), celebrities (31 and 46 slots), campaigners and wonks (4 taking 11 slots), 'other' (authors, scientists, clergy, retired military, etc. - 23 taking 29 slots), and by far the largest category, journalists (61 occupying 127 slots (21 women and 42 slots)).
Would you like to see who the five most frequently-featured journalists are?
Kelvin MacKenzie (8)
Melanie Phillips (6)
Janet Street Porter (6)
Mehdi Hasan (5)
Peter Hitchens (5)
Douglas Murray (5)
Balance-wise the right outweigh the left here, but that could be a freak of the figures, right? No. Of the 61 journalists, 40 could be described as explicitly political writers. 27 are of the right, and 13 are liberal/left. Rightwing journalists took 64 slots, and the liberal/left 31. For whatever reason, not only are hacks overrepresented on the Question Time panel, but Tory-leaning journalists outnumber their liberal and Labour-leaning contributors by over two to one.
The balance is not addressed by the other category of guests. Of the 31 celebs, 18 have definite views that align one way or the other. Six are on the right, and 12 of the liberal/left. The former had 13 slots, and the latter 16.
There are other questions that need to be asked. The predominance of business people over trade union voices came as no surprise at all. But come on, leading trade unionists combined have been on less than Nigel Farage! In case anyone needs reminding, trade unions are the largest voluntary organisations in civil society with a combined membership of some six million. Farage is the leader of a party whose supporters can fit into my living room. And if that wasn't bad enough, his odious minion Paul Nuttall has been on twice too. So why are UKIP way overrepresented on the panel and a mass movement of millions virtually ignored?
Question Time is the most-watched political programme in these islands. An appearance on the panel sacralises you as a commentator or as a politician/political party of serious standing. You become part of the BBC's construction of "official Britain", of the country's image it contrives to reflect. So in this media-saturated age, questions of gender and political underrepresentation are important.
Being the sad geek that I am, I shall revisit this in a year's time (provided the blog's still going) to see if there's been any evidence of a shift.
In the mean time, feel free to join me in the traditional Thursday night tweet-a-long.
This piece first appeared on Phil Burton-Cartledge's blog, A Very Public Sociologist. He tweets as @philbc3.
Regarding some of those right wing journos. The BBC and QT are not chasing ratings, i think it would be fair to say that there are more shock jocks or commentators of that ilk with populist or some right leaning views.
I realised Blair was going to win his first election because of Question Time. The audience had stopped being angry and shouting at Tory speakers, instead they were sat back and laughing at them.Regarding some of those right wing journos. The BBC and QT are not chasing ratings, i think it would be fair to say that there are more shock jocks or commentators of that ilk with populist or some right leaning views.
As a counter-balance to this the audiences are more often that not Labour leaning than is proportionate.