ohsocynical wrote:Another idle thought. We know the figures are fiddled. We know productivity is way down. We know there isn't enough work to go around.
What would the unemployment figures have been if IDS hadn't got his evil schemes off the ground?
Perhaps that's why Dave gave him the job and the social cleansing is an added bonus.
IDS has had 13 long years in opposition to cook up his schemes - he had his Paul-esque conversion the first time he went to Easterhouse way back in 2002 and was escorted around the estate by Bob Holman.
By 2012, just 2 years as DWP henchman-in-chief, he was vilified by Holman as having changed his views on why people like the Easterhouse residents are poor in a U-turn of epic proportions.
We will never know whether he actually truly cared on his first visit or if he has a previously unrecognised talent for acting - but his time in opposition was spent putting together his vicious programme.
Unemployment was 2.5 Million when Labour left office, with fallout from the crash still going on. There is no reason to assume it wouldn't have recovered anyway as things improved.
There are still about 800,000 on the JSA claimant count; there are 700,000 more people who have gone self-employed; there are 120,000 people on workfare or other programmes at any given time (many of whom are on "training allowances" ie. JSA by another name) so the number is pretty much the same.
It must be - the IB/ESA caseload is exactly the same as it was give or take a few hundred thousand. The only real change has been in the number of lone parents claiming Income Support, but they have been shuffled onto JSA earlier than they would have been under Labour.
Add to all that the excessive sanctions, with long-term sanctioned claimants coming off the register, there is not much change - IDS inherited 5 million on the main out-of-work benefits, and he still has that many. They've just been moved around.
I don't think the figures would have been much different - the truth is in there if you look past the headlines.