If I told you that I want to break the link between incapacity benefit and poverty by reducing incapacity benefit, would you think that I was a nutter?
On Planet Blair this makes perfect sense. From the liar's website
Clear link between benefit dependency and deprivation"New figures released today show a clear link between high numbers of people claiming incapacity benefit and deprivation.And John Hutton, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has today written to 100 MPs across the country who represent the areas with the highest numbers of incapacity benefit claimants.
The letter has been sent ahead of planned reforms aimed at getting people off incapacity benefit and back to work. In his letter, John Hutton tells MPs that we should not accept a system that "perpetuates hardship and denies people the opportunity to better their lives by accessing the world of work."
...
The link between benefit dependency and deprivation is striking; research shows that nearly half of the most deprived areas in England, Wales and Scotland are in the hundred constituencies that have the largest numbers of incapacity benefit claimants. People who live in these constituencies are five times more likely to live in pockets of deprivation than those in the rest of the country."
Wow, does that paragraph above mean anything at all? Lets see
nearly half of the most deprived areas - are in the hundred constituencies - that have the largest number of incapacity claimants. People who live in these constituencies are five times more likely to live in pockets of deprivation than those in the rest of the country.
Does this have anything to do with disabled people? I'm not sure that it does. Isn't it talking about people that live in deprived areas? There's no logic there is there? Isn't it designed to obsecure the fact that there is no support in this statement for attacking the Incapacity Benefits system?Are they blaming disabled people for causing deprived areas? It looks like they are. Then again they could be saying that people who live in nearly half of the most deprived areas ... are five times more likely to live in pockets of deprivation than those in the rest of the country. Shouldn't Bliar address those pockets of deprivation instead of attacking the ill and disabled?
It's all very confusing bullshit on the Downing Street website, written by experienced bullshitters.
The Mirror's Political Editor Paul Routledge responds well
"A newly-promoted Cabinet minister, anxious to please Tony Blair, says: "People know the welfare system has failed... There is no dignity being on benefits. None at all."
That's the gospel according to Hutton. I beg to disagree. We have paid taxes to fund these benefits. There is nothing undignified about accepting what is your due, unless you are among the small minority of malingerers.
Later this month, the Work and Pensions supremo will unveil his master plan to slash the £12 billion annual cost of IB, which looks after 2.6 million men and women in this country.
...
Hutton says two million IB claimants should go back to work - or face "consequences" such as reduced payments. And in the long run, no payment at all, I suspect.
He does not say where these two million jobs will come from. Not even in Gordon Brown's Brave New Labour World is job creation so successful. And in any event, the numbers claiming IB have slowed dramatically. In 1985, the tally was one million. In the latter years of Thatcherism, this shot up to 2.4 million in 1995.
Now it's 2.6million - up only 200,000 in the 10 years since Blair became leader.
This is not a system in crisis, as Hutton likes to suggest."
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