Self-help support vs ravages of 'welfare reform'. Never attend anywhere official alone!
This blog currently focuses on national policy matters that impact upon KUWG members.
Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group as a group focuses primarily on combating benefits injustices locally through advocacy in individuals' benefit claims, and demonstrations that emphasise that there is hope when we come together. We are more angry than frightened.
Theresa May has appointed John Godfrey as a director of policy in her special adviser team at Number 10. Godfrey joins the policy unit from Legal & General, where he ...
The Green Party is ... very concerned about the strong role of one or two private companies in advising the government about the development of welfare to work proposals, particularly in relation to the restructuring of incapacity-related benefits (see Jonathan Rutherford, https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/soundings/36/new-labour-market-state-and-end-of-welfare ) It seems extraordinary that so much attention has been given to the views of a company which is on record as saying that it sees the UK benefits system as one of its major markets for the future; one would expect advice to have been taken from a wider and more balanced range of sources. As Rutherford's paper shows, the credibility of Unum — formerly Unum Provident — has been badly damaged by having been prosecuted for fraudulent businesss in the USA
Anyhow, since then daytime and night time tv in the UK have been largely colonised by 'life insurance' ads proclaiming that the only real way to protect one's grandchildren is via a life insurance policy, or at worst, a funeral protection plan for oneself so as not to leave one's loved ones enormous bills from one's parting. Of course, much of the daytime tv audience for such ads is made up of older people. The funeral protection plans especially carry the tag, "as long as you keep up the payments" — but what use is such a plan to those "of working age" when it comes to transferring us onto Universal Credit?
I find reading bullshit from 'think tank' Reform in tandem with global accountancy corporation Accenture not good for my health but better than rolling over into an inertia of doing nothing to challenge injustice.
The Bullshit
The opening paragraph of the Reform/Accenture report 'The future of public services: digital jobcentres' reads:
Up to the job?
The financial crisis precipitated the deepest peacetime recession the UK had experienced
since the Great Depression. As the banking sector went into meltdown and lending to
businesses dried up, the economy contracted by 6 per cent in a year.1
Many lost their
jobs, but unemployment during the downturn was less acute than in other periods of
economic decline... While 10 per cent of the workforce were claiming
unemployment benefit during periods of the 1980s, the financial crisis saw this measure
of worklessness peak at 4.7 per cent. The labour market has also proved resilient in
recent years. Unemployment returned to pre-crisis levels shortly after last year’s general
election, leading the then Prime Minister David Cameron to herald a ‘jobs miracle’.(1)
Time for a response in British Sign Language:
And also in American Sign Language:
The reality, or as American English would have it, 'actuality'
In reality, benefit sanctions masked the reality of the true number of 'non-working poor'. The 'claimant count' is based on the numbers of people judged to be legitimately claiming benefits, and mass sanctions serve as a mass grave for the truth. If the DWP admitted that there were targets for the numbers of sanctions to apply as 'norms', that would undermine the perceived legitimacy of the figures cited above by Reform/Accenture. Look to what Dr David Webster has written regarding sanctions data and how sanctions are 'administered' and you will not see such a rosy picture.
Benefit sanctions: Britain's secret penal system
Benefits claimants are subjected to an 'amateurish, secret penal system which is more severe than the mainstream judicial system', writes Dr David Webster of the University of Glasgow....(2)
Years ago, companies such as Unum and Accenture under the respective guises of Unum Provident and Arthur Andersen Consulting were found guilty of fraud. Now they talk of [heavily distorted] 'data' as the solution to benefit fraud and a think tank that has 'charitable status' goes along with them!
Mass sanctions disguise reality
And on the false premises of what an investment banker turned 'welfare reform guru' — Baron Freud the Welfare Reform Minister — has said of benefit fraud levels, the State and fraudster corporations have blood on their hands on account of sanctions deaths.(3)
Mass sanctions create mass graves.
Sanctions deaths are not so numerous as the impact of fear of sanctions, as for example Kate Belgrave | Talking with people dealing with public sector cuts attests.(4) Whether benefit claimants are sanctioned or not, they are still treated by the DWP as subhuman. Kate's latest blog post is No-one believes anybody now. Not even on [Domestic Violence] issues. More stories from the jobcentre(5) Thus the DWP is in effect administering violence in a public facility on a routine and systematic basis. Two comments on that blog post affirm that the domestic violence survivor Kate accompanied and who got the authorisation she attended for would not have faired so well had Kate not accompanied her. A problem benefit claimants face regarding accompanying people to jobcentre interviews is the fear of being vicimised by the DWP, yet the motto of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group is, "Never attend anywhere official alone." So, please, if you have the comparative liberty to accompany people to jobcentre interviews, make the attempt. You might learn from first-hand experience witnessing how Jobcentre Plus [sic] and its associate institutions actually operate!
Incidentally, this instance is not the first time that a disability-benefits-eligibility assessor has been outed for hateful views by way of their Facebook content.
I am also pleased to report that my finding a May 2016 press release on Sunday by way of a Google search for the American 'health insurance' company Unum helped source another new Disability News story:
So perhaps after global high stakes companies are found guilty of fraud, it seems, given the existence of dodgy American insurance company Unum — formerly Unum Provident — as advisers to successive UK governments on 'welfare reform' since 1994 despite an intervening record of fraud, there is still the potential to carry on uninterrupted as advisers to UK government on how to more fully screw up the lives of disadvantaged people?(5)(6)
Britain's MEPs and poor folk face threats imposed by Brexit, including dodgy trade deals
'TTIP — the hidden threat' poster should include reference to the threats to social security and poor people
With the Brexit vote, if Britain does leave the EU it seems to this blogger that both Britain's Members of the European Parliament and poor people are more likely to be screwed. With Britain out of the European Union Parliament, there would by definition be no more seats for British Members of the European Parliament in the European Parliament; and global corporate lawyers would seize the opportunity of a Conservative & Unionist Government ever more desperate to enter dodgy trade deals and dismantle the welfare state. Regarding dodgy trade deals, there would be a more exclusively UK trade deal with global corporations from the USA. On her website that is still up and running at present, Molly Scott Cato MEP (South West England, Green Party of England & Wales) looks at the perils and pitfalls for the UK as Germany looks like it is pulling out of the 'Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership' (TTIP).(1)
'Privatisation of public service delivery' equals dismantling of the welfare state
Kwuggies (Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group members) have been against TTIP for about two years now, and of course deeply concerned about what corporate lawyers would want to do to not only the NHS, but also the welfare state as a whole. One of the worst 'players with people's lives' in the American health insurance industry — Unum — has been 'advising' successive UK governments on 'welfare reform' since the early 1990s.(2)(3)
The Disability News Service has reported that in 2005, whilst at Unum, Professor O'Donnell [now Chief Medical Officert at Maximus, the company that replaced Atos' administration of Work Capability Assessments for the Department for Work & Pensions] wrote: "We know that our views and understanding are not yet in the mainstream of doctors' thinking, but Government Policy is moving in the same direction, to a large extent being driven by our thinking and that of our close associates, both in the UK and overseas."(4)
In Secrets and Lies: Maximus the leader of the inhumans we [Disabled People Against Cuts] ask why Disability Rights UK have agreed to a) be part of the Maximus testing process on the WCA [Work Capability Assessment] and b) why they've teamed up with Unum and other insurance companies to develop a TV programme showing how much better off disabled people will be if they take out private insurance. With user-led disability organisations like these we don't need enemies.(7)
Workfare — 'work for your benefits' exploitation — originated largely in the USA under the Clinton Presidency, ridiculing Clinton's purported aspirations of being kinder to poor people than his Republican opponents. One of the major — and fraudulent — players with vulnerable people's lives that emerged from America's introduction of workfare was Maximus Incorporated.(8)(9) Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty has drawn attention to the lack of human rights orientation in American-based accountancy firm Grant Thornton's accountancy framework:
I had specifically drawn Grant Thornton's attention on the 3rd May 2015 to the work of the Government Office for Science and the Royal College of Psychiatrists showing that debt is linked to mental health problems. Grant Thornton replied on the 5th May 2015,
"We have no remit over related public sector bodies nor to opine on the impact of this policy on the well-being of those required to pay council tax."(10)
That is the kind of mentality that we face. Corporate lawyers' and accountants' orientation to the rights of 'shareholders', 'investors' and 'stakeholders' with financial/legal clout seem to reign supreme; and TTIP-type deals are driven by 'Investor to State Dispute Settlement' (ISDS) corporate law enforcement that overrides democracy and the rights of poor people. The UK Government's systematic abuse of disabled people's rights continues while an investigation of its actions is still pending. Disability News Service reports:
Delayed UN examination of UK government 'will take place next year'Disabled people's organisations and grassroots groups are set to call on disabled people across England to provide the evidence they need to prepare a "hard hitting" report on the government's failure to implement the UN disability convention.The Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA) has announced that it will put together a "shadow report" to submit to the UN's Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). It emerged this week that the Committee is set to hold its delayed public examination of the UK Government's progress on implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) next year; the first time the UK has been examined since the Labour government ratified the Convention in 2009....(11)
Do the devisers of ISDS-driven trade deals have any consideration regarding the rights of disabled and disadvantaged people re UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities? Any possibility of 'government by corporate law firms' must be suspended until that investigation has been carried out, I would argue Britain's Members of the European Parliament may no longer have seats in the European Parliament, but they and Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group members can still engage in extra-parliamentary activity — activity outside parliaments. Our extra-parliamentary activities still include the Internet.
Referring to the 'fake quotes' on Department for Work & Pensions sanctions promotion literature, Work & Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has said that those quotes were meant to be anonymised from genuine cases and that the staff involved in the misquoting will be disciplined.(1)
But if this alleged improper interpretation of Government orders is true, and it be any more heinous a crime than the DWP's negligence that has arguably led to a great many claimant deaths?(3) Maybe a real issue here is that when those most responsible for the policies and practices that prove publicly unacceptable when revealed are found out, they shift the blame to those who follow their orders on the grounds that those orders were [allegedly] not carried out properly?
And what of the architects of many of the nasty changes that have really screwed disability benefit claimants? I am referring most specifically here to
investment banker turned Tony Blair's 'welfare reform guru' turned Tory Welfare Reform Minister David Freud and
dodgy American health insurance company Unum that has been 'advising' successive UK governments on 'welfare reform'/privatisation of the welfare state since at least the mid-1990's.
Members
of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group were saddened to read of the
fuel-impoverishment driven eviction of Geoffrey and Carol Tracey from
their Camden Council home in Swiss Cottage (CNJ, Thursday 20 August,p11).(1) Yet we would argue that a major part of the problem has been
the “better off on housing benefit than work” rationale parroted
by Carol. That rationale has been heavily promoted by those most
responsible for the increasing divide between the wealthy and poorer
members of society, and operates to weaken cooperative links between
and within economically vulnerable sectors of society.
People
on state benefits generally don't live lives of luxury and idleness,
however much government ministers and right wing tabloid newspapers
would have others believe. Amid a high-profile taxpayer-funded
'targeting benefit cheats' media campaign, a 2006 report by Joseph
Rowntree Foundation pointed out that an understanding of why people
feel the need to cheat the system must inform future tax and benefit
reform.(2) Meanwhile, the 'allowable earnings limit' for single
people aged 24+ on unemployment benefit/JSA had not increased from £5
per week since 1988. (It still has not!) That out-of-work benefit
levels have not kept up with earnings and/or the greed and tardiness
of utility companies and landlords cannot be laid at the feet of just
one government — it has been going on since 1988!
Meanwhile,
an upsurge of early morning queues outside CAB offices on high
streets demonstrated the reality of masses of people in economic
crisis. Yet now, with cuts in central government grants to local
authorities, CAB offices have been moved off high roads where estate
agent offices now festoon 'up-market' areas and legal loan shark offices
and bettings offices litter less glamorous ones. And as 'talking with
people dealing with public sector cuts' blogger and Honorary Member
of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group Member Kate Belgrave reports, 'It
can be really hard to get welfare advice'.(3)
But
there is 'good advice' and 'bad advice' both for citizens and
governments and opposition parties wanting to 'reform the welfare
state'. American health insurance company company Unum (formerly Unum
Provident) has been 'advising' successive UK governments on 'welfare
reform' since at least the mid-1990's,(4) and Labour Party Deputy
Leadership contender Caroline Flint MP declares in her 'interests'
that she has staff and office space sponsored by lobbyist firm
Sovereign Strategy. Sovereign Strategy clients include Maximus, a
corporation that profits from the 'welfare to work' industry.(5)
While
we might anticipate Camden Council taking Geoffrey and Carol's
eviction as their cue to sell a vacant property, we would commend
anyone concerned about the level of their fuel bills to consult Fuel
Poverty Action: Tel: 07751 748 026/07586 482 157; Email:
fuelpovertyaction@gmail.com;
Website: http://www.fuelpovertyaction.org.uk/ (6)
Labour leader Ed Miliband has pledged his party to 'fiscal responsibility', 'accounting for every penny' with the launch of Labour's Manifesto for the UK General Election 2015.(1) I accuse his party's penny-pinching of complicity in
during its 1997 to 2010 time in office when I was a disabled jobseeker. That includes the times when I was in full-time study (on Mandatory Award that was even less than unemployment benefit/JSA levels [1994-1997], and JSA dependent part-time work at £7.81/hr as a social care worker with minimal in-service training [2005-2006]. (Zero growth budget increases under Labour central and local government for charities such as the one I worked for in 2005-2006 stemmed, I was told, from under-investment by central government in local authority budgets.) More in-service training might have permitted me to extend the range of my 'service delivery' to the array of 'adults with learning difficulties' that that charity was contracted to support; but my eventual experience was of walking six miles to to and from service users' houses for work each day contracted session even while I was getting less than Jsa levels. Through that I developed cystitis in my legs through a low-budget, high stress life-style realised that as an adult with a learning difficulty myself, constantly cost-cutting government policies ensured that I would never be considered 'hard working' enough to get the support I required.
DWP staffing cuts also screwed up the delivery of the JSA top-up to my part-time earnings of £7.81/hr.(4)
The author 'declares an interest' in that he is a member of another political party. He is critical of that party's own practice of having everything for its own General Election manifestos costed while there has been no proper audit of the economics of poverty line living. Eg, unpaid family carers save the NHS more than the total NHS budget, and yet the conventional UK government response to that fact can be summarised by denial — through the introduction of Unum-inspired 'disability denial factory' techniques — of the disability or health condition of the person cared for.(10) (11)
As with specific reference to "inadequate funds" for the fullest inclusion/equality of American blacks/'negroes' in Revd Dr Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, disabled people who are poor have been cheated out of equal rights.(12)
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club — aka 'Spurs' — has gained some infamy in recent years for links between its stadium expansion plans and the gentrification of Tottenham, as well as providing case study exemplification in how a multi-million pound corporation can screw money out of Council Tax payers. (Council homes in Love Lane were demolished so that Spurs' corporate customers would not have to walk through a council estate!) Yet a story broadcast on the London regional news output of BBC TV and ITV on Monday 16 February gives another prime example regarding social inequality in modern Britain and much more.
ITV reports Spurs found liable for player's brain damage [sic], while the BBC website reports Tottenham Hotspur liable for player brain damage [sic]. (Very much in line with capitalist thinking, the term 'brain damage' suggests, perhaps, that the brain is a piece of merchandise. I would much prefer use of the term 'brain injury', and people with brain injury are all too frequently labelled 'brain damaged' as a derogatory term.) This compensation arises from the apparent negligence of Spurs as an employer to one of their former playing staff members Radwan Hamed who had a heart attack while he was playing in a match for them. (Spurs were held 70% liable and the the Football Association's Regional Cardiologist for South-East England 30% liable.)
Of course, in awarding the compensation which could reach £7m for the injury incurred in a 2006 youth game, loss of potential earnings would be a major factor. Such are footballers' wages and potential wage losses. Sadly however, not all disabled people have such a good starting point in life. The Independent Living Fund has previously provided some finanancial buffering for the most severely disabled people. But the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition has determined to eliminate that while shedding reponsibility for ILF's aftermath onto the councils that the same Government has determined should forever cut expenditure and have fewer resources.
That is the same Government that has maintained that the deaths of disabled people via the Atos inquisition has nothing to do with the actions of this Government. But of course, they have the right wing press and the BBC largely on their side as well as highly paid lawyers paid out of the public purse, and family-based carers are not so fortunate.
Preface by Dude Swheatie of Kwug to KUWG' recording of 'He's Taking from the Poor to Pay the Rich'
As princicpal blog uploader for this blog, I have previously resisted requests that I upload this video to the blog. As a volunteer, I have the right to refuse whereas I would not so readily have that right to do so if I was on one of the Government's forced labour schemes known as 'Community Work Placement' or whatever name they dress up such modern day slavery with.
That objection on my part to personally uploading it was put accompanied by my proposal that others have the log-in details to do the uploading so as to make the blog more of a group operated resource. Now that the title of the video has been altered to emphasise the actions of the Prime Minister rather than state his alleged character, I have decided to upload it as part of an attempt to fuel debate.
The Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group is non-party political and non-religious while I am a Quaker and Quakers are not keen on labelling people's character. Quakers believe that labelling people's character sets up barriers to their capacity to change.
And as a disabled person with a real surname starting with the letter W I have painful memories of being labelled 'wanker' by abusive schoolday taunters and former scapegoating co-workers. The stigma of a lack of success on my part in attempting to find waged work before I eventually claimed Employment & Support Allowance after winning a tribunal also ties in with what the word 'wanker' is associated with.
As I have pointed out before on this blog, David Cameron and his Government and those who massage claimant statistic have been the ones who have really 'swung the lead'. (Maybe we could substitute the word 'penis'?) Does forcing JSA claimants onto a regime of daily signing on at different times get them closer to getting a job, or to being sanctioned for the human capacity to crack under excessive pressure? What Government, Labour or Conservative/Lib Dem coalition has made it any easier for disabled people to get waged employment? In my experience, their compliance with disability legislation has been a mockery of social justice while they have used smear stories to bring in even greater discrimination against disabled people.
While typing this, I am hearing Work & Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith telling Andrew Marr that people previously on Incapacity Benefit have been "left languishing" for years before the 'reform' that brought in ESA. Well, I never claimed Incapacity Benefit and from the time I first became unwaged in November 1977 till I claimed ESA in 2009, my sum total of waged employment amounted to a sum total of 19 months!
What are the alternatives?
Alongside my reservations against labelling character of the current Prime Minister, I also note that focusing excessively on the sins of David Cameron lays us open to the danger of voting for politicians who will do nothing to further equality in society. Eg, I remember that in its first term of office Labour colluded with American insurance company Unum toward the further demonisation of benefit seekers and the privatisation of the welfare state.
The Blair Government halved the length of training periods for JobCentre-funded training courses. In the year 2000 I turned down a place on a Web Design training course that I had passed the entry course for. It had taken me two years of self-directed learning with a computer paid for by my mum and training manuals I bought out of my dole money at the sacrifice of any socialising time and money that the pittance that JSA was even then, to acquire the underpinning knowledge to pass that entrance test. The course provider agreed with me that the 6 week foundation duration of the course was inadequate for the amount of course content. They told me that the course period had been double that length until the Blair Government halved the length of the training period so as to get double the throughput from the dole queue.
Now, before the 2015 General Election manfiestos of the political parties have been published, councils are publishing 'consultations' about how they will implement public spending cuts already dictated by the current Government for 2017.
So, why should you vote for any party that offers you more of the same 'austerity'? Ask all the political parties standing in your constituency what they have to offer, and don't let them bullshit you. Get them to denounce smear stories against claimants as the quasi-Nazi trick that they are.
(Dude Swheatie of the KUWG looks forward to the video of sell-off of our welfare state to global corporations. That particular privatisation has been happening for years now. Perhaps as long as it has been since disgraced US Health insurer Unum Provident/Unum became an 'adviser' on welfare reform to successive UK governments in 1994. See Mo Stewart's 4-page pdf document research paper: The Hidden Agenda: A research summary. Final, March 2013.)
NHS sell-off: Watch this film and spread the word!
This powerful new film is a blockbuster which shows how our public NHS is
being eviscerated and parcelled up for sale to US corporations in front of
our eyes. It's too radical for the moribund mainstream news media to touch,
but is already on YouTube. Make time to watch it, and spread the word to
everyone you know. It needs to be seen - most people still have no idea
what is happening. This film will open their eyes.
The founding director was James Cornford.[1] The current director is Nick Pearce,[2] a former Head of the No. 10 Policy Unit and special advisor to David Blunkett MP. Former members of staff include the current pensions minister Liberal Democrat MP
Steve Webb and former Labour cabinet ministers Patricia Hewitt and David Miliband.
The Institute edits a quarterly journal called Juncture (formerly PPR and New Economy), published by Wiley-Blackwell, which features articles from academics and politicians.
IPPR is based in London and IPPR North has branches in Newcastle and Manchester. The organisation is an independent registered charity. Funding comes from the following:[3]
trust and foundation grants
European and international funds
central and local government funding
corporate, public sector and voluntary sector support
This short briefing shines a spotlight on
welfare-to-work pathways that are 'far from satisfactory' for people
with mental health and behavioural problems.
It is estimated that 1.9 million people are receiving ESA,
rising to 2.4 million in 2015. However, people with mental health
problems, who make up 40 percent of those going through the work
capability assessment (WCA) process, are being let down by a system that
appears to be neither effective nor accurate in determining the
appropriate level of financial or employment support for claimants with
mental health problems. Equally, the system fails to provide the kind of
support for claimants that is adequate or appropriate for people with
mental health problems.
This paper makes recommendations focusing on:
collecting additional information and evidence about people who
might be disadvantaged by the level of self-reporting that the WCA
requires
additional training for assessors and decision-makers before they
are allowed to handle applicants with mental and behavioural health
problems
continuous monitoring of how the WCA is conducted to mitigate
negative effects on the wellbeing of participants with mental health
problems.
Beyond these specific areas of improvement, we propose two principles for wider reform of employment assessment and support.
The WCA should be about assessing support needed for a person to work, not policing a gateway to benefits: despite the rhetoric, the WCA is still a test of what people can’t do, focused on benefits rather than employment.
Work support services should be about pursuing ‘supported employment’ strategies, not just supported job search:
the current regime is too focused on labour market attachment, but
other approaches are available, like the ‘place, train and retain’
approach used in Norway and Sweden.
Yet I point out that the dodgy provenance of the Work Capability Assessment system is rooted in the outlook of American-based 'disability denial factory' — and 'disability insurer' Unum who have been 'advising' successive UK governments on 'welfare reform' since 1994, and Unum's 'bio-psychosocial model' of disability. Of that, Mo Stewart — a disabled war veteran turned researcher into how her own military disability pension from the UK's Ministry of Defence came to be adjudicated and downgraded by Atos Healthcare — wrote in a March 2013 research summary entitled 'The Hidden Agenda':
Of course, [the] destruction of the welfare state could never have been so readily achived without the unelected former Labour adviser, David Freud. He was ennobled to permit appointment initially to the Shadow Cabinet but, following the 2010 General Election, he was appointed as the Minister for Welfrare Reform for the Coalition where he has excelled. Indeed, one of Lord Freud's most recent claims was that: "Poor peope should be prepared to take more risks because they have the least to lose..." Clearly, this man is yet another millionaire Minister who demonstrates no concern, an no comprehension, of human need.
The ongoing DWP medical tyranny, masquerading as welfare reform, has permitted Atos Healthcare to conduct the WCA by employing the totally discredited Bio-Psychosocial (BPS) model of disability assessment that remains free from all public accountability according to the General Medical Council and the Care Quality Commission. The BPS is the assessment model as used by Unum Insurance when assessing healthcare insurance claims, and it is also the Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research at Cardiff University, initially sponsored by Unum Insurance from its inception in 2003 to 2009. However, prior to his move to the Centre, the Professor was the DWP's Chief Medical Officer who, in 1992, was in post when Unum Insurance was invited to become corporate 'advisers' to the UK government....
[With] the national press still refusing to expose the identified influence of Unum Insurance with the DWP welfare reforms, the British public remain in ignorance as the government covertly convert the UK welfare state into the American healthcare system, ultimately to be funded by private insurance. Meanwhile, Unum Insurance is happy to continue to offer new careers to former government 'advisers'.
So, this IPPR report that has been supported by input from mental health charity Mind is useful information that needs promoting to help counter public ignorance, but we must realise that the 'welfare reform' agenda is generally directed by those who are short on scruples and understanding, and blinkered by greed.
