And so it came to pass that the great Iain Duncan Cough was
given a platform by the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, and to no surprise
at all, blamed
everything that was wrong with the world on the hated BBC. He “has launched the strongest government attack
on the BBC since the last election, accusing the corporation of being a ‘bigger
opponent’ of welfare reform than even the Labour Party”.
“The Work and Pensions
Secretary reacted with fury yesterday after the BBC led its bulletins with more
criticism of the Government’s changes to the bloated benefits system ... Mr
Duncan Smith claimed the corporation had run five negative stories this week
alone about sickness and disability benefits, and ‘ignored’ a major
announcement on an extension of his flagship new universal credit”.
When this kind of copy appears, there is usually a good
reason for it, and it does not take long to find out why Duncan Cough might
want to divert attention elsewhere. “This
morning, the Public Accounts Committee, which scrutinises public spending, has
deemed that the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is a ‘fiasco’ and the
incompetence of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is ‘shocking’”. It
is?
According to a post on
the Economist site, it is: “Meanwhile, a similar story is emerging about
Universal Credit (UC), which is meant to simplify Britain's messy web of
overlapping benefits ... As of March 2014, 6550 people have claimed the new
benefit, up from 4,350 in December. At the current rate of enrolment, UC will
cover all 5.3m of Britain’s working-age welfare recipients in around 600 years”.
“Welfare reform was
intended to be one of the big achievements of the coalition government. But
almost all of the radical ideas promised are turning out to be duds. Universal
Credit in particular is proving to be one of the great Whitehall disasters of
recent times ... For the moment, it is clear enough that spectacular ambition
has combined with equally spectacular incompetence”. Ouch!
The Economist post
is comparatively mild in its analysis compared to the forthright dissent of Sue
Marsh, who
has noted that Duncan Cough can’t be shifted from the DWP, that he won’t
engage in the most basic of debate on welfare reform, the right-leaning press
won’t challenge him, and all the while he’s sprayed £18 billion more up the wall over the last four
years than he’s saved.
But it’s all the BBC’s fault. How can he get away with this?
Because, as Sue points out, Duncan Cough has politicised his department’s press
office, which has
recently installed former Sun
managing editor Richard Caseby as its head. Thus the open channel to
compliant hacks and obliging editors, while the reality is that the whole thing
is so fouled up that the supposed “reforms”
are grinding to a halt.
Iain Duncan Cough is a whingeing fraud. He is not fit to hold public office.
2 comments:
This would be the BBC that offers him a seat on Question Time. Also the BBC that has no report on the massive People's Assembly march against austerity which took place today in London. Not even a mention on the news website for the London area.
Couple this with their shameless promotion of UKIP in the recent elections, I detect a right rather than left leaning bias
I don't think it's that. IDS has fiddled the employment figures by having people leave JSA and the WP to go to supposed self-employment where they can collect TTC without an hassle. Both Cameron and Osborne are using those boosted employment figures at least in part to reinforce their claims of an economic recovery. They have to protect IDS now, they don't want him examined closely or else the truth about the supposed recovery might come out too, revealing them all as the shabby little conmen they are. He's very precious to them now, is IDS :-)
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