Observer: Purnell's welfare reforms now in total disarray!

[panpete]

It's like nulabour are just not hearing the very valid concerns of those representing the disabled and vulnerable.

As for workfare, does that just mean JSA claimants, and not those incapacitated, themselves.

 

[tangentlama]

Just found some very interesting stuff on A4E, the now global 'welfare to work' training company which is going to become even more powerful under Purnell's reforms. I knew it was dodgy, offerred very poor quality training(in most cases) but these links show it in an even worse light.

http://www.freewebs.com/watchinga4e/index.htm

http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=160577

the question must be though, why isn't the media more interested, the sums involved are collossal as is the waste of peoples lives.

When Emma Harrison's father left her to run his small training business, he had no idea he was launching one of the UK's most formidable women entrepreneurs. Her big break came when her father asked her to join his small industrial training business "you come on board and I'll teach you everything you need to know about running a business in 18 months." Emma only got two weeks of the promised 18 months training. "You seem to have got the hang of it," he said, and moved to Germany. Emma was just 23 at the time and had only just graduated from university but she realised the importance of marketing and began banging on the doors of local companies. One day's work won her a £150,000 contract with the Manpower Services Commission.

Emma worked hard for success and by the end of her first year company turnover hit £1 million. 1991 saw Emma founding A4e Ltd to deliver social change on behalf of the government. Managing £300m of government contracts, A4e now employs 1,500 staff in offices nationwide and Emma anticipates that A4e will more than double in size over the next two years. There are many other strings to Emma's bow too. She is a renowned mentor and supports many small businesses. She is also the chairman of Andromeda, an events company; non-executive chair of SPG Ltd (manufacturing), chairman of Improving People's Health Plc and food group Novantia (that develops and owns the new Brian Turner Food Brands).

She has won a whole host of awards for her achievements:

-2004 Management Today Top 100 Entrepreneurs
-2004 Judge Entrepreneur of the Year
-2003 Inner-City UK Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Presented by Gordon Brown -2003 Ernst and Young National Finalist Entrepreneur of the Year
-2002 Richard Branson's Fast Track 100 Motivation Award

ACTION FOR EMPLOYMENT

Action for Employment (A4e) was founded by top female entrepreneur, Emma Harrison, in 1991. It is a privately owned organisation offering employment, welfare, education, training and business support services to the public and private sectors.

A4e pioneers the development of training and employment services for long term unemployed people as part of the government's public/private partnership. Some of the many services it delivers include New Deal and Business Links. Programmes are designed to help long term unemployed people to overcome the social, economic and educational problems standing in the way of them realising a secure career future. Every ten minutes A4e finds someone who has been long term unemployed a lasting and fulfilling job.

With an impressive £70 million turnover, A4e employs 1,500 staff in offices nationwide. Based in Sheffield, it has 100 regional offices and is fast expanding. 65,000 businesses across the UK have used A4e's services so far. Emma Harrison has ambitious growth targets for A4e and anticipates that the company will more than double in size over the next year.

All this and she is happily married with 4 young children! She lives in Thornbridge Hall, Derbyshire and owns additional properties in Knightsbridge and Lincolnshire. Emma is now starring in Channel 4's Make me A Million.
http://www.womenspeakers.co.uk/speakerdetail.asp?speakerid=137

So basically A4E is making money out of welfare.

A4e's staff, certainly at the lower levels, are paid poorly in comparison to public sector workers. Many are temporary staff or on short term contracts, are minimally qualified. This is inevitable but goes some way to explaining the poor service which many clients experience.
http://www.freewebs.com/watchinga4e/index.htm

What of the Job Centres - are they going to be axed?

 

[treelover]

One day's work won her a £150,000 contract with the Manpower Services Commission.

I happen to know that her step mother was a senior exec at the MSC at the time, I once rang asking for her husband at Action For Employment and was put through to her instead at the MSC, a very close relationship indeed.

It is these 'training' multi-millionaires who have benefited enourmously from NL contracts, and with the minimum of scrutiny, etc.

 

[tangentlama]

I happen to know that her step mother was a senior exec at the MSC at the time, I once rang asking for her husband at Action For Employment and was put through to her instead at the MSC, a very close relationship indeed.

Bit like Gordon Brown's brother working for EDF

Nuclear lobbyist younger brother

Brown's support for new nuclear build sits uncomfortably with the fact that, since September 13, 2004, his younger brother Andrew has been head of media relations at nuclear company EDF Energy. Previously, he worked for the lobbying company Weber Shandwick.

As of April 2007, Brown was still at the company: he sat in on an interview with EDF boss Vincent de Rivaz. An Independent article in May 2007 claimed that "...Brown senior keeps his younger brother at arm's length", but did not provide details of how he achieves this.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=edf+nuclear+bid

 

[treelover]

Tony McNulty, the employment minister, dismissed criticism of the bill, saying its critics would leave the unemployed to "wallow" on the dole by removing provisions aimed at helping people back into work.

Tony Mcnulty said this in the 'debate' God, wallow on 60 pound JSA, there really are some scum in NL

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

he's a complete cunt, ignorant bully boy tbh.

 

[tangentlama]

Workfare has been a disaster in Israel and USA.

In the USA, there is evidence that single-parent families forced into work has contributed to increase in dysfunctional families.

From The Israeli Plan to Reduce Income-Support Payments
Barbara Swirski, October 2000

Governments tend to present workfare programs as a success story, primarily because they achieved their immediate goal -- reducing the budget for welfare payments. In the United States, for example, the number of recipients was cut in half within a few years (Besharov and Germanis, 2000).

On the other hand, the ability of workfare programs to put individuals (back) into the labor force is much less impressive: According to estimates by the OECD, only 5-10% of the participants in various welfare programs are employed as a direct result of those programs; the others, it is estimated, would have found jobs even without the
programs (OECD, OECD Employment Outlook 2000: 8). In the United States, where the welfare rolls were halved within four years, no one can state definitively how much of this decline was due to workfare programs and how much to the booming economy.

Critics of workfare note that a significant portion of the success of the programs can be attributed to the economic growth in countries where they were implemented. Where growth was low and unemployment high, on the other hand,
workfare participants have had a hard time finding stable employment.

But even in countries enjoying significant economic growth, most jobs open to welfare recipients do not allow them to "break out of the cycle of poverty." In the United States, where there is full employment, the jobs found by most former welfare recipients were for unskilled labor -- positions with no job security and paying only a minimum wage. This is primarily because most welfare recipients have little education and lack the skills needed for finding a better job.

Thus, despite the promise, workfare programs are not taking their participants out of poverty. A survey of programs carried out in Wisconsin between 1989 and 1997 reveals that while the number of welfare recipients decreased by two-thirds, the number of poor dropped by no more than about 12%.

What's more, the survey showed a rise in the number of persons mired in deep poverty (having incomes totaling less
than 50% of the poverty line): the proportion of food stamp recipients rose from 10% in 1989 to 32% in 1997 (Moore and Selkowe, 1999).

Another shortcoming of the workfare program is that welfare recipients absorbed into the job market often take jobs away from unskilled workers who are already there. The entry of new workers into low skilled jobs pushes out those who previously held these jobs, or lowers the wage and worsens the job conditions for all (Solow, 1998).

More specific criticism relates to women heading single-parent families. The need to work outside the home can detrimentally affect children who remain behind without proper supervision or child care. At least one study found that single mothers who participated in workfare suffered from both severe economic distress and a high incidence of depression (Selkowe and Neale, 1999).

Read Barbara Swirski's whole report: http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cach...Israeli%20Plan.pdf+workfare+israel+criticisms

(oh yes, and anyone who wants to boycott Israeli academics can get stuffed).

 

[treelover]

John Mc told me he knew his old mum, a really nice london lass, what goes wrong with these people, don't they realise that history will not look kindly on them, they are the McDonald and co of the 21st Century.

 

[treelover]

Blimey, do you know A4E have major contracts in Israel.

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

workfare is nonsense. their own research demonstrates why its a costly pointless exercise. it was very disappointing to see terry rooney defending this on tuesday, cheerleading the government on forcing people to work for £1.70 an hour. they can't even make their minds up about whether its a work incentive or a punishment. farcical idiotic poltical posturing imo.

 

[laptop]

It's like nulabour are just not hearing the very valid concerns of those representing the disabled and vulnerable.

The changes aren't even likely to save money to pay to their banker friends, once their privatised-jobcentre friends have the cost-plus contracts in place.




So the entire point is to say to Hate Mail readers "we're cunts just like you".

 

[tangentlama]

Blimey, do you know A4E have major contracts in Israel.

No, I didn't. But I do now.

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

The changes aren't even likely to save money to pay to their banker friends, once their privatised-jobcentre friends have the cost-plus contracts in place.




So the entire point is to say to Hate Mail readers "we're cunts just like you".

it's an investment banker who has driven thru many of these reforms, that's what is so fucking farcical.

 

[tangentlama]

workfare is nonsense. their own research demonstrates why its a costly pointless exercise. it was very disappointing to see terry rooney defending this on tuesday, cheerleading the government on forcing people to work for £1.70 an hour. they can't even make their minds up about whether its a work incentive or a punishment. farcical idiotic poltical posturing imo.

It costs more to force single mums into work and pay for their childcare than it does to pay them their paltry benefits. No savings are made, but the figures are massaged and people are forced into low-paid work.

The resulting increase in dysfunctional children of single-parents forced into workfare is also another worrying factor, both socially and personally in the form of later depression, etc. It really does look awful no matter which way you look at it.

Add the governments failure upon failure to implement working maintenance payment scheme and you have a dysfunctional government actively working to increase dysfunctional citizens.

 

[tangentlama]

This government is dysfunctional.

It's priorities are all wrong. It doesn't serve the people (society) - it serves the needs of business (capital).

 

[tangentlama]

workfare is nonsense. their own research demonstrates why its a costly pointless exercise. it was very disappointing to see terry rooney defending this on tuesday, cheerleading the government on forcing people to work for £1.70 an hour. they can't even make their minds up about whether its a work incentive or a punishment. farcical idiotic poltical posturing imo.

The country is run by overpaid, clever idiots who care nothing for the people they supposedly serve.

They create the very thing they tell us to fear - a poverty stricken society plagued by ill-health, crime, overburdened with draconian rules, no time to spend with their families due to long working hours.

These idiots increase prohibition and criminalisation when it has been proven that decriminalisation (of drugs) leads to a drop in abuse/use.

They have squandered and syphoned wealth from the citizens into the pockets of their friends and families and given nothing back apart from manufacturing fear and alienation.

This is happening not only here in UK, but also elsewhere - Israel is the prime example of a cowed, controlled, fearful society - do you want to live in that atmosphere of fear and uncertainty? It is being manufactured here before our very eyes.

 

[Urbanblues]

The country is run by overpaid, clever idiots who care nothing for the people they supposedly serve.

They create the very thing they tell us to fear - a poverty stricken society plagued by ill-health, crime, overburdened with draconian rules, no time to spend with their families due to long working hours. They have squandered and syphoned wealth from the citizens into the pockets of their friends and families and given nothing back apart from manufacturing fear and alienation. Not just here in UK, but also elsewhere - Israel is the prime example of a cowed, controlled, fearful society - do you want to live in that atmosphere of fear and uncertainty - it is being manufactured here before our very eyes.

"The country is run by overpaid, out-of-touch idiots who care nothing for the people they supposedly serve."

'I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth'

 

[Urbanblues]

"The country is run by overpaid, out-of-touch idiots who care nothing for the people they supposedly serve."

'I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth'

And, it goes on....

 

[ViolentPanda]

It costs more to force single mums into work and pay for their childcare than it does to pay them their paltry benefits. No savings are made, but the figures are massaged and people are forced into low-paid work.

And that is what this is about, more than anything else: Being able to present a false picture implying government toughness to the media, an aim even more important now that unemployment is climbing and quite possibly the numbers claiming various disability benefits will climb for the first time in a decade.

 

[treelover]

Just 30 Labour MP's voted against workfare.


Alexander, Danny
Baker, Norman
Barrett, John
Beith, rh Sir Alan
Brooke, Annette
Burgon, Colin LAB
Burt, Lorely
Campbell, rh Sir Menzies
Campbell, Mr. Ronnie LAB
Carmichael, Mr. Alistair
Caton, Mr. Martin LAB
Clark, Ms Katy LAB
Clegg, rh Mr. Nick
Cook, Frank LAB
Corbyn, Jeremy LAB
Cousins, Jim LAB
Davey, Mr. Edward
Davies, Mr. Dai
Dobson, rh Frank LAB
Drew, Mr. David LAB
Farron, Tim
Flynn, Paul LAB
Foster, Mr. Don
George, Andrew
Gibson, Dr. Ian LAB
Gidley, Sandra
Godsiff, Mr. Roger LAB
Goldsworthy, Julia
Grogan, Mr. John LAB
Harris, Dr. Evan
Harvey, Nick
Havard, Mr. Dai LAB
Heath, Mr. David
Hemming, John
Hoey, Kate LAB
Holmes, Paul
Horwood, Martin
Howarth, David
Huhne, Chris
Hunter, Mark
Iddon, Dr. Brian LAB
Jones, Lynne LAB
Kennedy, rh Mr. Charles
Kilfoyle, Mr. Peter LAB
Kramer, Susan
Lamb, Norman
Laws, Mr. David
Leech, Mr. John
Llwyd, Mr. Elfyn
Martlew, Mr. Eric LAB
Mason, John
McDonnell, John LAB

McFall, rh John LAB
Mitchell, Mr. Austin LAB
Moore, Mr. Michael
Mulholland, Greg
Oaten, Mr. Mark
Prentice, Mr. Gordon LAB
Price, Adam
Reid, Mr. Alan
Rennie, Willie
Riordan, Mrs. Linda LAB
Rogerson, Dan
Rowen, Paul
Russell, Bob
Sanders, Mr. Adrian
Simpson, Alan LAB
Skinner, Mr. Dennis LAB
Smith, Sir Robert
Stunell, Andrew
Taylor, David LAB
Taylor, Dr. Richard
Teather, Sarah
Truswell, Mr. Paul
Wareing, Mr. Robert N.
Webb, Steve
Weir, Mr. Mike
Williams, Hywel
Williams, Mark
Williams, Mr. Roger
Williams, Stephen
Willott, Jenny
Wishart, Pete
Wood, Mike LAB
Younger-Ross, Richard
Tellers for the Ayes:

Mr. Neil Gerrard LAB and
Kelvin Hopkins LAB

 

[treelover]

 

[SpookyFrank]

Just 30 Labour MP's voted against workfare.

I see good old Alan Simpson is in there as usual

Still, where the fuck are the rest of the Labour backbenchers eh? How dare they even fucking pretend to be in favour of social mobility and equality when they're voting to force people to work for a pittance so that companies can get cheap (or indeed free) labour and undermine the crippled labour market even further in the process?

 

[treelover]

How can Jon Cruddas vote for Workfare when he is trying to push 'new socialism', its the same with Charles Clarke, saying he is determined to reclam the centre left then votes for this abomination.

 

[Cressi]

This Emma Harrison super business women ? Who looks after her children?

Has Blunkett got connections with her?

A4e ....+ how many colours in the logo? Gov boys lurve the pretty logos for sale...'oh that looks super'...they think a nice letterhead means a good company.

I feel as if we have been sold down the river.

 

[tangentlama]

Just 30 Labour MP's voted against workfare.


Alexander, Danny
Baker, Norman
Barrett, John
Beith, rh Sir Alan
Brooke, Annette
Burgon, Colin LAB
Burt, Lorely
Campbell, rh Sir Menzies
Campbell, Mr. Ronnie LAB
Carmichael, Mr. Alistair
Caton, Mr. Martin LAB
Clark, Ms Katy LAB
Clegg, rh Mr. Nick
Cook, Frank LAB
Corbyn, Jeremy LAB
Cousins, Jim LAB
Davey, Mr. Edward
Davies, Mr. Dai
Dobson, rh Frank LAB
Drew, Mr. David LAB
Farron, Tim
Flynn, Paul LAB
Foster, Mr. Don
George, Andrew
Gibson, Dr. Ian LAB
Gidley, Sandra
Godsiff, Mr. Roger LAB
Goldsworthy, Julia
Grogan, Mr. John LAB
Harris, Dr. Evan
Harvey, Nick
Havard, Mr. Dai LAB
Heath, Mr. David
Hemming, John
Hoey, Kate LAB
Holmes, Paul
Horwood, Martin
Howarth, David
Huhne, Chris
Hunter, Mark
Iddon, Dr. Brian LAB
Jones, Lynne LAB
Kennedy, rh Mr. Charles
Kilfoyle, Mr. Peter LAB
Kramer, Susan
Lamb, Norman
Laws, Mr. David
Leech, Mr. John
Llwyd, Mr. Elfyn
Martlew, Mr. Eric LAB
Mason, John
McDonnell, John LAB

McFall, rh John LAB
Mitchell, Mr. Austin LAB
Moore, Mr. Michael
Mulholland, Greg
Oaten, Mr. Mark
Prentice, Mr. Gordon LAB
Price, Adam
Reid, Mr. Alan
Rennie, Willie
Riordan, Mrs. Linda LAB
Rogerson, Dan
Rowen, Paul
Russell, Bob
Sanders, Mr. Adrian
Simpson, Alan LAB
Skinner, Mr. Dennis LAB
Smith, Sir Robert
Stunell, Andrew
Taylor, David LAB
Taylor, Dr. Richard
Teather, Sarah
Truswell, Mr. Paul
Wareing, Mr. Robert N.
Webb, Steve
Weir, Mr. Mike
Williams, Hywel
Williams, Mark
Williams, Mr. Roger
Williams, Stephen
Willott, Jenny
Wishart, Pete
Wood, Mike LAB
Younger-Ross, Richard
Tellers for the Ayes:

Mr. Neil Gerrard LAB and
Kelvin Hopkins LAB

Perhaps it would be prudent to email the above plus the remaining MPs that voted for workfare/welfare amendments the quote I made above, and an attached PDF copy of The Israeli Plan to Reduce Income-Support Payments by Barbara Swirski, October 2000

Also maybe send some research evidence of increased emotional and social dysfunctionality in single-parent families as a result of workfare-mums.

 

[_angel_]

What actually happens to the kids of mums/ parents forced onto workfare -- are they just expected to stay home alone?

 

[brasicritique]

How can Jon Cruddas vote for Workfare when he is trying to push 'new socialism', its the same with Charles Clarke, saying he is determined to reclam the centre left then votes for this abomination.

I always said crudas was a lying piece of shit with his eye on a seat at in the next newshamebore shadow cabinet. From now on he should be treated with the contempt he deservres

 

[ViolentPanda]

How can Jon Cruddas vote for Workfare when he is trying to push 'new socialism', its the same with Charles Clarke, saying he is determined to reclam the centre left then votes for this abomination.

Because his "socialism" isn't a socialism of the people for the people, it's a "socialism" of the state, a bit of window-dressing on what amounts to "compassionate authoritarianism".

 

[ViolentPanda]

I always said crudas was a lying piece of shit with his eye on a seat at in the next newshamebore shadow cabinet. From now on he should be treated with the contempt he deservres

Not harsh enough, and a totally fair assessment (if a bit too polite) of the man.

 

[Cressi]

the silent reaction of many.....

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...-news/selfharm-a-british-disease-1651314.html

mental distress.