Debunking unemployment stats crap

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Thanks to retired London south Bank Uni social policy researcher Anne Gray for pointer to Wednesday's Guardian print edition story Jobcentre 'hit squads' set up claimants to fail, says former official: Bosses accused of setting targets for sanctions, while unscrupulous staff targeted weak and vulnerable customers. That story went out online on Tuesday 20 January.

It seems that 'only following orders' civil dis-servants kowtowing to unscrupulous elected and unelected liars who always say that they are protecting the vulnerable and deny the existence of taregets for benefit sanctions set in motion the benefit sanctions that have previously been reported on on this blog and on Kate Belgrave's blog. Well, would you believe it?
;-)

And lo and behold, it seems that Thursday's print edition of the Guardian will have a story (uploaded online today) about a slump in companies hiring for new jobs in the UK — UK unemployment falls but hiring spree stalls to 15-month low: Number of unemployed fell by 58,600 to 5.8% but rate of decline is slowest since July.

So if any parliamentary candidates try to convince you that 'austerity' is really instituting national economic recovery, perhaps you might like to leave them wishing they had been better informed?

And you might ask them to consider that those who are most insistent upon representing benefit claimants as having a lifestyle of 'swinging the lead' and 'a drain on the public purse' might in fact be ruthlessly 'swinging the lead' themselves while financially abusing economically vulnerable folk without compunction?

Related items

•  Kilburn Unemployed blog items about benefit sanctions
• Kate Belgrave blog items about benefit sanctions

JobCentre performance targets and benefit sanctions

With the aid of jobcentre whistleblowers, BBC Radio 4 programme 'File on 4' will be addressing the matter of benefit sanctions and how Government is 'swinging the lead' in cutting the numbers of people unemployed and claiming benefits.

20/01/2015. Tuesday 20:00. 38 minutes. Repeated Sunday 25/01/2015 at 17:00

File on 4

Benefit sanctions are supposed to be part of a system helping people back to work. But critics say they penalise the vulnerable and are among the reasons for the growing use of food banks. So how fair is the Government's system of withholding state payments for those who don't comply with welfare rules? Allan Urry hears from whistleblowers who allege some JobCentrePlus staff are setting claimants up to fail in order to meet internal performance targets. Why did a recovering amputee lose his benefits because he didn't answer the phone?

Reporter: Allan Urry Producer: Nicola Dowling.

The programme will be available shortly after broadcast.

A hint for emailing named BBC staff: The email addresses follow the pattern of
Fistname.Lastname AT bbc.co.uk