A Stroll Across The Astroturf – 16

An apology: no blogposts yesterday, and only the one on Friday. There’s a reason for this, and it lies with our old friends at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (representing less than one tenth of one per cent of all taxpayers, and still no full up to date accounts or list of donors).

Last week, the TPA released another supposedly major piece of “research”, this latest on their suggestions for reforming the benefits system. The “report” stretches to a whopping 53 pages, although much of the bulk is caused by padding – there’s an awful lot of repetition in there – and unnecessary micro-specification of how a new kind of benefit would be delivered.

Put directly, the TPA have called for the poverty line to be lowered, so that those on benefits would cost the economy less. This is a course of action much in favour among those with a comfortable living standard and regular income – those that would remain unaffected by such action.

The excuse given by the TPA for this action is that this enables those out of work to become incentivised to get back into work. However, as I’ll be showing in a series of posts on this report, there is more than mere incentives in the TPA strategy, and thanks to the candour of one of the report’s authors, the missing pieces of the puzzle can be slotted into place.

The TPA “research” has already been given an initial filleting by Don Paskini on Liberal Conspiracy: anyone following the link and checking out the comments will see that the TPA deployed Matthew “C5” Sinclair, one of their Clever People Who Talk Loudly In Restaurants, to attempt rebuttal.

Zelo Street will be delving further than the LC post. More tomorrow.