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What might a revived contributory principle look like?

August 3, 2012 3:15 pm

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Kate Green

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Social security’s the cause of much soul searching on the left: despite the legacy of Labour’s progressive universalism in reducing poverty, and the post-crash rise in unemployment, public hostility to benefits recipients is driving the policy agenda.

Recently however there’s been a revived interest in the contributory principle that was at the heart of the Beveridge plan, as a way to forge a new narrative on ‘welfare’ policy, with publications from the IPPR, the TUC, and a series of speeches by Liam Byrne.

The idea that what you get out of the system is related to what you put in appears to score well on both affordability and fairness. But before we reach for neat solutions, it’s important to define the problem correctly. What’s needed now may be a modern version of Beveridge, but it must be a model that addresses modern risks and needs. And an insurance model can’t alone address all modern demands (nor did it in Beveridge’s welfare state). So it’s important that we spend time fleshing out exactly what a revived contributory principle might look like. Here are some first thoughts.

Modern risks

The risks that people need help with managing today reflect changing demographics, changing family structures and roles within the family, the nature of the modern labour market – highly flexible but with corresponding job instability and insecurity – and modern perceptions about social participation and contribution. A first go at defining what those risks look like, and the most appropriate mechanism for addressing them might result in the following list:

A social insurance system to cover the risk of worklessness, whether through unemployment or temporary illness/disability, or to enable periods out of the workplace for caring;
An intention to minimise this risk through policies to promote full employment, combined with measures to address labour market discrimination and disadvantage;
Shared social responsibility to help meet the costs of raising children (including the cost of childcare);
Shared social responsibility to meet the additional costs of living with disability;
A social savings mechanism to fund retirement;
A new model of funding for social care.

I haven’t attempted in this piece to look at the role of contributory models to fund retirement, or at the funding of long-term social care. But we need to keep these ideas in the same conversation: talking about the whole picture, including provision for care and in old age, is important for rebuilding public support . If we talk of lifecourse events in terms of employment and the risk of losing your job , needing time out to care for your children or elderly parents, needing to pay for childcare or social care, preparing for retirement, it helps to change the narrative – we’re not just talking about dealing with “worklessness”, but a series of contingencies and life experiences which could, and many of which will, happen to all of us.

Time out of the labour market

The risk of time out of the labour market, whether through unemployment or because of longer term sickness/disability, is already shared between employer and employee via national insurance contributions. The social insurance model works well here, and could be extended, for example by extending it to cover paid parental leave, or short breaks for caring or family emergencies. We could also look at increasing the generosity of benefits linked to how much individuals “pay in” – for example, by extending contributory ESA beyond one year for those with longer contributions records.

Giving a more central role to the contributory model however offers the opportunity for a larger ambition for benefits adequacy, as the corollary of full employment. Achieving full employment – or something close to it – serves to maximise contributions, a prerequisite for affording more generous benefits.

Moving towards more generous benefits, both contributory and means-tested (which it’s recognised would be lower than contributory benefits, though we should be careful not to drive them to poverty levels), and full employment to make this affordable, would need to be a gradual ambition, but would signal a direction of travel to guide policy. And it would reframe the debate about social security, re-linking labour market risk with adequate support when you’re out of work, a central argument that’s been made for the contributory principle.

Full employment

If we want to change the narrative and develop the policy agenda in this way we need to look for solutions beyond the social security system to tackle structural inequalities in the labour market, and achieve full employment.

This means recognising responsibilities on both employers and employees, not just on the state. For sure, the state has a role to play, for example in setting minimum standards, but it needn’t and shouldn’t deliver all of the solutions itself. Guarantees of access to education and training, addressing low pay and progression, tackling occupational segregation, ensuring employees have the choice to work flexibly, improving employee protection and workplace democracy, all have a central place in welfare policy. Indirectly they’re the means for making work pay – creating obligations on employers to provide “good employment” as an effective replacement for using social security (tax credits) to deliver wage subsidies, and thus minimising the spending burden on the state.

From an employee perspective, clearly there has to be an obligation to take suitable work, and there could be expectations on employees to maintain and develop skills and undertake training. In turn, we should develop ideas for a “job guarantee” and “better off in work”. And labour market programmes will need to be effective in getting people into work – employment activation measures that don’t actually increase employment should be abandoned.

Children

Meeting the cost of raising children is something all society should share in. We all have a stake in the future of children, but the cost of raising them and taking time out to care for them falls on their parents. Society has a role in helping to meet those costs.

This is quite a hard sell to the public in today’s toxic welfare narrative (“why do they have children if they can’t afford them?”) – so we need to work hard to re-win the argument for universal child benefit.

At the same time we need to make the case for universal childcare (in addition to the case for Universal Child Benefit, not instead of it). Whereas Child Benefit meets the immediate costs of children, childcare is an investment in long-term outcomes for children, and facilitates parental employment. Seeing childcare as a social investment helps us to argue for a shift from using the benefits system towards supply side funding (an argument that also holds for housing).

Disability

We need to draw a distinction between disability benefits that meet extra costs – disability living allowance (DLA), and those which replace income – employment and support allowance (ESA).

Benefits that meet extra costs are not and should not be subject to contribution records or means-testing. DLA essentially levels the playing field for disabled people. One early priority for Labour must be to think about how to repair the damage done by the 20 per cent cut in spending that will be implemented when the Government moves from DLA to the new Personal Independence Payment.

The arguments in relation to ESA are those made above in relation more broadly to out of work support. There is a need to tackle labour market discrimination (perhaps through a National Insurance incentive for employers), and provide support to meet the additional costs of labour market participation (by extending and improving Access to Work and developing Right to Control). Labour market programmes will need to meet the needs of disabled people, and there may be a role for intermediate labour market models – though these could exist outside of the state sector . We should also recognise that levels of compulsion and job guarantee may look different for disabled people.

ESA would be made more generous in line with improving adequacy of out of work benefits more generally as suggested above, and by increasing the period covered by the contributory benefit . Those whose disability has prevented them from making contributions and who are deemed not able to work in the future could be “credited in” for a period, and would, as now, be entitled to a more generous level of benefit. Re-crediting in young people who’ve never been able to work should be an early priority for Labour.

But can we afford it?

We need to seize this opportunity to create a virtuous circle of more, better, work, more contribution, and thus more generous support. But this will take time, and in the interim’s costly, especially at a time of significant financial pressures. While it’s right to set an ambitious vision, the next Labour government must be clear about priorities.

Prioritising children and supporting their parents has moral and economic force. A bold offer on childcare, funded through supply side measures, and contribution-based paid parental leave might therefore be the first candidates for extending social support and developing the contributory model, and would present a strong Labour story on welfare.

Kate Green is the Labour MP for Stretford and Urmston and is the shadow Minister of State for Equalities

externalities

Good stuff (except for how to pay for it), but I’d like to ask why any of this requires the existence of National Insurance. The income tax system already records how much people have earned. The contributory principle simply doesn’t require NICs. Having three separate income taxes simply serves to hide how flat the tax system is, and shield capital gains, dividend income etc. from the same rates that minimum wage workers pay. It’s hard to see why Labour should continue to support that.
- Quiet_Sceptic
  
  I’d agree that as it stands the NICs system doesn’t seem to have a clear purpose aside from being another tax, its original purpose and identity has been lost in 60 years of incremental changes.
  Historically though it had a real purpose – prior to the Welfare state many people had private insurance for unemployment and ill-health through mutuals, workers associations, benevolent societies. This was a nationalisation almost of the existing private insurance system, hence logical at the time to retain an insurance premium type payment system.
  
  Entitlement to some benefits was dependent on NICs contributions so again separating it from general taxation made sense and of course, a lot fewer people were paying income tax.
  
  The final thing, which comes through very strongly in the Beveridge report, is that the Welfare state is not free, it is not a free gift from government, it is something paid for by the people within the scheme. That link was made clear through the NICs system.
  
  If we’re going ‘back to Beveridge’ then rather than scrapping NICs we need to re-emphasise it and give it back its role and importance. Entitlement and contribution bound together.
  - externalities
    
    Thanks for that. Forgive me if this sounds a bit right wing, but perhaps what reinvigoration really needs is the option of instead getting private insurance inc. through workers associations etc. (and maybe even opting for no insurance). One has to admit that National Insurance rates have gone up and up while benefits have gone down and criteria have been tightened. Clearly if people had been free to choose alternatives, this “something for nothing” situation wouldn’t have developed, else no-one would choose this rip-off ‘National Insurance’ scheme.
  - PeterBarnard
    
    The bulk of NI contributions finance the pay-as-you-go state retirement pension, QS. For example, in 2009/10, the NI Fund received £73.8 billion in contributions and paid out £75.4 billion in benefits, of which £66.4 billion went on state retirement pensions.
    
    NI contributions are not “another tax” : the NI Fund is quite separate from the Consolidated Fund and NI payments are defined and limited by law, ie the odd billion or two can’t be siphoned out for current expenditures in Health, Education, and so on.
    
    Beveridge assumed “full employment” (which I think equalled just 3% unemployed) for his scheme to be viable. We haven’t had 3% unemployed since the mid-1970s and the bulk of social security benefits are (i) now financed by general taxation, and (ii) outside the scope of the NI Fund anyway.
    
    At least Kate Green has acknowledged the need for high employment and living wages, which is a start. I don’t know whether you saw the C4 and Panorama programmes on ATOS and the work assessment business on Monday, but the process both stinks and it is both degrading and humiliating for genuinely disabled people.
    
    Of course, the real fault lies with the politicians who set up the process.
    - Quiet_Sceptic
      
      Re ‘another tax’, I am aware that NICs are ring-fenced and that within government accounting there is still separation from general taxation. What I would argue is that most people are no longer aware of that distinction, that it has become so blurred that NICs may as well be merged with income tax given the system as it stands today.
      
      For the most powerful example of that you just need to speak to someone around when NICs were introduced; they ‘paid their stamp’ and they were clear what they were paying for.
      - PeterBarnard
        
        Possibly, the reason that the distinction between NI contributions and income tax has become “blurred” for many people is that the Conservative-supporting press frequently makes the statement that “NI contributions are just income tax by another name.”
      - Quiet_Sceptic
        
        I think it’s more complex than that and I think even people who are Left wing wouldn’t necessarily be clear on the distinction; I don’t think it’s just a Tory attack on the welfare state.
        
        NICs, as a record or measurement of contribution doesn’t matter anymore because entitlement is now largely decoupled from contribution.
    - externalities
      
      HMRC actually collected £96bn in NICs in 2009/10 so where did that £20+bn go? Oh, it was “siphoned out for current expenditures in Health”! The fact that NICs are roughly earmarked doesn’t change the fact it’s a tax. We could easily cut income tax by raising NICs again and increase the proportion of welfare or health funding that comes from NICs. Or we could make a third fund that covers part of education expenditure and replace part of income tax with an ‘Education Investment Contribution’. It might not be just “another tax” but it’s still a tax (and a tax on employment/wages at that).
      - PeterBarnard
        
        Refer to National Insurance Fund Account 2009-10 (Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 161(2) of the Social Security Administration Act 1992) :
        
        Receipts and Payments Account
        
        NI contributions £74,181,834,000
      - externalities
        
        Yes, that’s the amount that went into the National Insurance Fund but – and this rather proves my point – the amount of NI collected by HMRC is greater than that ( http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/tax_receipts/tax-nic-receipts-info-analysis.pdf ). The difference covers a portion of health spending.
      - PeterBarnard
        
        Thanks, externalities (NI contributions).
        
        This is not a good way of publishing data by HM government …
- ThePurpleBooker
  
  Hang on, the National Insurance is not a tax it is a system of social insurance. Wihtout it then we would be abandoning the contributory system and also proposing higher rates of income tax.
  - externalities
    
    As I said, the contributory system – what little is left – does not depend on National Insurance. For example, the NI system determines state pension eligibility but doesn’t actually require you to pay in any money. It just notes that you’ve earned above a certain amount. Why can’t that be done using the income tax system?
    
    Yes, a merger would clearly mean higher rates of income tax. But who cares whether (ignoring decreased wages due to employer NICs) they’re paying 20p IT + 12p NI or whether they’re paying 32p IT, especially if the contributory principle remains as described or is in fact strengthened?
    
    This would be in contrast to the way successive governments have cut income tax by raising NICs, despite at the same time diluting the contributory system.
    - Brumanuensis
      
      I don’t think the public sees NICs in the same way as income tax and given that general taxes are not very popular, we should be wary of doing something for the sake of simplicity, without considering the ramifications on popular opinion of the tax system.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
    
    Actually, it isn’t – it ends up in exactly the same pot of money. It isn’t social insurance which individuals can draw upon later
    - ThePurpleBooker
      
      It was founded as a social insurance system and it should be returned to a social insurance. In fact people don’t actually see it as a tax, until it became the National Insurance tax. It is social insurance.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
        
        No. Social insurance requires it to be a pot of money which is linked to the contributor and can be drawn upon by that contributor at a later stage. Germany operates a system similar to this as do some other European countries.
        
        However, the intention to introduce an element of social insurance within Beveridge’s proposals was never realised – despite the name of NI it has never actually been an insurance scheme. There is a simple reason for this – in post-war austerity, the contributions made were set at a very low level, largely because it was thought that full employment and better health care would make the call upon benefits a light one. This was not so, and the contributions, low as they were, were almost immediately paid out to current claimants leading to the rise of means tested non-contributory benefits.
        
        Now, NI is not insurance, but just another tax paid by working people. Setting up a new contributory system is a laudable aim but it has enormous challenges – and will be a definitive change from a system based on the money paid by current taxpayers being given out in benefits, with no social insurance element at all
      - Brendan Howell
        
        Definition of Social Insurance:Social Insurance is any government-sponsored program with the following four characteristics:the benefits, eligibility requirements and other aspects of the program are defined by statute;
        explicit provision is made to account for the income and expenses (often through a trust fund);
        it is funded by taxes or premiums paid by (or on behalf of) participants (although additional sources of funding may be provided as well); and
        the program serves a defined population, and participation is either compulsory or the program is heavily enough subsidized that most eligible individuals choose to participate.Social insurance has also been defined as a program where risks are transferred to and pooled by an organization, often governmental, that is legally required to provide certain benefits.I think it is fair to say that PB is right on this one and that Mike is wrong.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        Beveridge did want to wait about 20 years to allow contributions to accumulate though.
- JoeDM
  
  Very good point. We need to combine the NI and PAYE systems. It is too complex. And while we are about it, get rid of employers NI – it is nothing more than a tax on jobs.
  - PeterBarnard
    
    Tax on jobs – nonsense.
    
    The employer’s contribution is built in to the price of product and it is the customers who actually pay for the employer’s contribution. The employer is simply a conduit.
    
    You may as well say that any tax (including VAT) on production is a “tax on jobs.”
    
    Suppose the employer’s contribution was eliminated. What would the employer do? Reduce prices by the appropriate amount?
    - JoeDM
      
      A monthly payment to the Government is levied from an employer for each employee is a tax on employing that person in my book.
      
      If it looks like a duck, waddles and quacks etc……….
      - PeterBarnard
        
        And, where does the employer get the money from, Mr DM ….?
        
        All taxes fall on individuals. A business, amongst other functions, acts as a tax-gathering machine.
        
        “Business” does not actually bear the tax burden, whether it be Corporation Tax (a tax on shareholders), VAT (a tax on consumption by individuals) or NI contributions (built into the price of products and paid for by customers).
      - JoeDM
        
        A tax, or other cost, can only be passed on to consumers if the elsasticity of demand for the product produced will allow it.
      - PeterBarnard
        
        Since employer’s NI contributions have been around for over 60 years now, I don’t think “elasticity of demand” is particularly relevant.
        
        Employer’s NI contributions reduced from 13.7% in 1979 to 10.2 % in 1997. I didn’t see much in the “creation of jobs” – in aggregate - in those years as the “tax on jobs” was reduced.
      - Bill Lockhart
        
        If a UK employer is competing with imports or overseas outsourcing, then Employers’ NI directly affects price competitiveness and can therefore fairly be described as a “tax on jobs”.
- Brumanuensis
  
  The symbolic value of NICs shouldn’t be underestimated. If we want to tackle the excessively generous treatment of non-standard income – as the IFS have proposed – then do that first, rather than roping in NICs.
Ted

Why not simply destroy the welfare state altogether rather than let it wither on the vine supplanting it with a private insurance scheme for those who can afford it (in some form) coupled with skeletal support for previously low or non-contributing unemployed dross and similar? Same thing isn’t it? The most fortunate in society benefit most from society while the poor are excluded and expected to suffer the most in society because of their failings? We could probably realise James Purnell’s revisionist ideas more by privatising welfare altogether (or at the very least as much as possible) and still guarantee that the poor will suffer hardship and privation, which of course is an important condition as far as the fortunate contributing sections of society go.

What is Labour going to do about the ESA, ATOS and WCA scandal? Can’t the Party even admit that it was disastrously mistaken this unholy trinity and take responsibility for the many lives that have been ruined or prematurely ended because of horrendous errors in judgement?

I think Kate Green may be James Purnell in drag.
ThePurpleBooker

Good to kick of the debate. Here are some policy ideas which could help do that:

1)
Free
Universal Childcare – Child benefit is a good thing
which many families are happy that they have but it does not go far enough to address
many of the challenges for families and society at large. This proposal, will guarantee all families
universal childcare given at a high-quality free at the point of use at anytime
that they need with a cap linked to inflation on any remaining childcare costs
that parents might have to pay. This will also mean 15 hours of free nursery
care for all 2 years every week. This
will increase employment and social mobility as well as attacking child poverty
which will be a key task for the welfare state.

2)
A
Jobs Guarantee – Unemployment is a national
problem that is getting worse under this current government and needs to be
confronted. Under this idea, anyone who has been out of work for at least a
year will be offered a job paid at the living wage for at least six months. However, if that person refuses the job
offered to them then they will lose their benefits. It will be funded by a
mansion tax levied at one percent on homes worth over £2m. This will be
fiscally neutral and will end long-term unemployment but drive up
responsibility, making the welfare state tougher but also a lot fairer.

3)
National
Salary Insurance – The current system means that
someone who have worked hard and lose their job will get the same amount of
help as someone who has never worked in their life. This proposal will mean
that instead of Jobseeker’s Allowance, workers will have to put in
contributions into the system with higher salaries requiring higher
contributions and lower salaries requiring lower contributions. If they have made
a sufficient amount of contributions but they lose their job, then they will be
entitled to seventy percent of their former salary with weekly payments capped
at £200 a week while they find work, but it will be repaid via an
income-contingent loan with a zero-real rate of interest.

4)
Regional
benefit caps – The current benefit cap will not work as it
will penalise families who have been recently where the person in work has been
recently employed and in some parts of the country it will be catastrophic
however it cannot be right that people can earn more in benefits than they can
in work. However, this proposal will mean that there will be instead regional
benefit caps which will be set by an independent commission and will take in
account employment history of claimants as well as house prices and wages in different
regions. It will also exempt Disability Living Allowance and child benefit in
order to protect families as well as the disabled.

5)
Reforming
housing allocation rules – It is good that we have social
housing for all in this country and that should remain but reform needs to take
place in order for social housing to have a real stake in society. Under this proposal, tenants who are in work
(especially work locally), volunteer in the local community, a strong track
record as a good tenant, hold a strong ‘community connection’ but also have
British citizenship will also be prioritised on housing waiting lists as well
as those who are in need.

6)
Reform
of housing benefit – Housing benefit has been
spiralling out of control for years but the worst thing about it is that
housing benefit is being used to sponsor irresponsible capitalism in our
communities through slum landlords in high property prices. This proposal will
mean that housing benefit and house-building budgets will be merged into one
budget and will be devolved to local government to create a new Affordable
Housing Grant. It will also mean that the new element of housing benefit will
no longer be paid to tenants but to landlords. Landlords will have to be
licensed through a National Landlords Register which will require them to abide
by rent controls but also meet the Decent Homes Standard otherwise they will
lose their licence and not receive any money through the Affordable Housing
Grant.

7)
Locally-run
work schemes for the unemployed – One of the
evils of long-term unemployment is that it results in many people who cease in
becoming employable. This proposal will instead take £602 million from the £5bn
budget from the unsuccessful Work Programme. The £602 million fund will be
directly given to councils, with £233
for each unemployed person in their borough, which will fund 30 hours a week of
compulsory skills development, training or volunteering of their choice
accompanied with personal coaching with specialist support for parents and
young people. Parents will be required to go on the scheme in order to access
their child tax credits and others will have to join the scheme in order to
receive their benefits. Any underspend will go back to the Treasury and the
scheme will be temporary rather than long-term because of the anticipated fall
in long-term unemployment due to these proposals.

8)
Reform
of the Universal Credit – It is right that people receive
welfare payments in one form as a universal credit however under this
Government it is done by an expense and bureaucratic system which is also not
on time and not on budget. Our proposal will mean that the delivery of the
Universal Credit will be provided by local services delivered by face-to-face
encounters with claimants rather than a system which is provided by a
supercomputer in a Whitehall department.

9)
Regulating
pay day loan companies, betting shops and pawnbrokers – Betting
shops, pay day loan companies and pawnbrokers have targeted many of our poorest
communities, where many people are on benefits.
This is not only a burden on the taxpayer but also is bad for the
welfare state. This proposal will mean that pay day loan companies, betting
shops and pawnbrokers will be banned from providing services to benefit
recipients.

10)
Child
Endowment scheme – The Government was wrong to scrap
Child Trust Funds, as part of their failed austerity, something which did help
families and children prepare for the future however we do need an insurance-based
support for families. This proposal will
mean that families will have to invest extra contributions and when their child
turns eighteen, the money will be used to pay for an endowment which will be restricted
to pay for things such as a car, a mortgage, a new start-up or even to pay for
their higher education. The scheme will be provided through the Post Office and
credit union network, rather than the state.

11)
Reform
of pension tax relief – Pension tax relief is a good
thing that supports many workers in retirement offsetting their tax burden but
for too many people they feel that it is not progressive or contributory. This
reform will mean that these tax reliefs will be linked on income as well as
contributions, so that poorer people will get more support in the retirement
but also people who have contributed will get more. It will also mean that
higher-rate pension tax relief will be abolished to fund free universal
childcare instead.

12)
Reform
of Pension Credit – The last Labour government was
right to create Pension Credit, however like other means-tested benefits it
lost sight of the contributory principle behind the welfare state. This
proposal will scrap ‘Savings Credit’ and instead replace it with ‘Contributions
Credit’ which will be measured on how much National Insurance contributions a
pensioner so that those who have contributed to the system will get a bigger
pension.

13)
Pension
Reform – Many people who join certain pension schemes
find that they are worse off than they are planned due to some companies
ripping them off. This proposal will mean that there will be a fixed cap on the
level of pension fees that a company can charge but also that the
auto-enrolment will be protected but we will still continue with implementing
the recommendations of Lord Hutton of Furness’ report on public sector
pensions.

14)
Reform
of universal pensioner benefits – Universality
is very important in the welfare state but also the realities of fiscal
constraint as well as the need for enhanced fairness will mean that tough
decisions about spending will need to take place in order to finance other
priorities. This proposal will mean that
Winter Fuel Allowance will be abolished, instead energy companies will be
required to put pensioners on the lowest tariff. It will also mean that free TV
licence will be restricted to those on Pension Credit and free bus passes will
be devolved to local authorities but wealthy pensioners on high incomes or high
savings will be required to pay contributions on their free bus passes. Also
accessibility to these pensioner benefits will rise in line with the pension
age. The money saved will fund universal free healthy school meals in all
primary schools and reverse cuts to foundation years’ services.

15)
Inflationary
rises in the state pension and benefits – Due to
deficit reduction, more tough choices will have to be made on spending on
benefits and how much they can rise.
This proposal will mean that benefits and the state pension will not get
real-term increases but instead they will receive inflationary increases which
will be based on a year-long average in inflation rather than a monthly
average. The money saved will be used to reverse cuts to SureStart and early
years’ services and any underspend will go to deficit reduction.

16)
Child
Benefit reform – Child benefit is an important
benefit which represents the state’s commitment to the family and to
universalism but that has got to be met with fiscally neutral policies. This
proposal will reverse the child benefit changes through extra crackdowns on tax
avoidance as well as a limit on the amount of child tax credits and child
benefit that wealthier families can claim. It will also mean that for sixteen
and seventeen year-olds, child benefit will be at the same level of the rate of
Jobseeker’s Allowance for 16 and 17 year olds in work, which will be paid
directly to the child rather than to the parent.
- Brumanuensis
  
  But social housing already takes into account the things you suggest it ought to take into account. Ed Miliband was wrong to suggest it didn’t.
  - ThePurpleBooker
    
    That is not true. They are only based on need not work or how much you put in the system. There are councils that are piloting that for example up North and in Newham but not across the board. If so Ed Miliband, Frank Field, Caroline Flint and others would not be campaigning for such policy.
    - Brumanuensis
      
      Well, I submit Wolverhampton and Milton Keynes’s guidelines as evidence to the contrary.
      
      For Wolverhampton, note p. 13, s. 12 ( http://www.homesinthecity.org.uk/projector/pdfs/Allocations-Policy.pdf )
      
      For Milton Keynes, note p. 9, s. 1.2 ( http://www.miltonkeynes.gov.uk/housing-needs/documents/M72584_Housing_Options_policy_master_06_11_07.pdf )
      
      So there are criteria alongside need – which I’ll freely concede remains the main criterion – which the councils may take into account. Ultimately the very fragmented nature of the allocations system makes it hard to generalise.
      
      There are also problems with trying to tie allocations to contributions ( http://redbrickblog.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/who-should-get-priority-for-social-housing-people-in-work-or-people-in-need-of-work/ ) and ( http://redbrickblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/ed%e2%80%99s-error-%e2%80%93-opening-the-social-housing-allocations-can-of-worms/ ). I do sympathise with the argument and I agree social housing can’t just become a last resort for the most desperate and deprived – a sort of ‘means-testing’ by stealth. But the key problem is lack of new social housing, not the allocation procedures.
    - Brumanuensis
      
      Well, I think the allocations criteria for Milton Keynes, Wolverhampton and Nottingham illustrate it’s not that simple. It’s hard to generalise, because policy is fragmented. I’m not against recognising contributions, in principle, but there are difficulties and the fundamental problem is supply, i.e. a basic lack of council housing. I’ll also freely concede that need is the primary criterion, but not necessarily the only one taken into account.
      
      See p. 13 ( http://www.homesinthecity.org.uk/projector/pdfs/Allocations-Policy.pdf )
      
      See p. 6, s. 2.11 & p. 9, s. 1.2 ( http://www.miltonkeynes.gov.uk/housing-needs/documents/M72584_Housing_Options_policy_master_06_11_07.pdf )
      
      See pp. 8 – 10, start at ‘Local Connection’.( http://www.nottinghamcityhomes.org.uk/documents/find_a_home/Allocations_policy_full_v3_1009.pdf )
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        Look at the allocations criteria in Newham where it is very popular. It needs to be done across the country. You were wrong in your previous post (no surprises). We need to start being on the side of those ‘who do the right thing’.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        Did you even read the links I posted? I wasn’t disputing how popular it might be; I was suggesting that versions of it already exist in some local authorities.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
        
        I think it would inevitably be found wanting under the equalities legislation.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        You implied that it happens everywhere. It does not and it should do.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        Oh right. My apologies, I got that one wrong.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        So, you’re impersonating me now PurpleBooker?
        
        Well, I’m flattered I must say. But no, I never implied that and no, I don’t admit an error. Yet.
      - Stephen
        
        ‘who do the right thing’
        
        But what exactly is the “right thing”?
        
        Who decides?
        
        Does the amount of “rightness” clocked up by individuals fluctuate and have to be calculated by a formula based on factors like hours of service done, difficulties experienced, cumulative duration of service and inconveniences tolerated or what?
        
        For example is wanting to stay at home and look after your children “doing the right thing”? Or is it more “right” to put your children and babies into crèches and try to work part-time? Is doing voluntary work as “right” as doing paid work? And if you work full-time are you more “right” than someone who only works “part-time” out of choice? Are carers as good as workers in this new utopia? And is somebody who cleans their local church for a few hours a week less “right” than somebody who works all day in a soup kitchen every Saturday, or a scout master who give up a few evenings a week to mentor children?
        
        The whole thing sounds like a chapter from a Kafka novel and should be binned before disaster looms.
        
        It’s daft.
    - Solly
      
      “… Ed Milliband, Frank Field, Caroline Flint…”
      
      Well that trio inspires confidence don’t they?
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        And Jon Cruddas, Siobhan McDonagh, Hazel Blears also back such policy.
      - Alan Giles
        
        Perhaps Hazel is just “rocking the boat” again?
      - john p Reid
        
        Why would she do that, it’s not as if she wants to get back in the shadow cabinet or has tried to embaress Ed Milband, sh’es got no power or reason to do so,
      - Solly
        
        “… Jon Cruddas, Siobhan McDonagh, Hazel Blears…”
        
        Are you taking the p*ss?
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        And Ian Austin and Jonathan Reynolds and Jack Dromey and Hilary Benn.
  - Stephen
    
    Allocating social housing only to people who “do the right thing” whatever that might be at any point in history is bootless. Very little social housing is being built and what little there is only becomes available spasmodically and rarely. Most people who need social housing will never get it be they saints or sinners because demand for such housing spectacularly outstrips supply.
    
    It would be nice to hear assurances about a massive programmes of social house building being launched by Labour were it ever to be returned to office rather than plans to ration the infinitesimal number of new tenancies that become available each year differently – but there you go! Labour did do this prior to first Blair victory in 1997 and then broke its word to the British people without a qualm.
    
    Social housing should be allocated based on need in any case.
    - ThePurpleBooker
      
      Social housing is an example of a social contract. It seems like you have a material view of fairness not the real view of fairness. People who are an active part of the communities, contribute to the system and are a good neighbour should be prioritised alongside those that need homes. Most importantly it would encourage those who need housing to do the right thing.
      Building more homes is necessary but not part of welfare reform.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        Yes, but what priority should they get? Should they come before those who are homeless or in urgent need of rehousing on account of domestic violence?
        
        The shortage of council housing makes it impossible to achieve your objectives without potentially compromising the welfare of vulnerable individuals and households.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        What did I say, “people who are an active part of their communities, contribute to the system and are a good neighbour should be prioritised alongside those that need homes”.
        Shortage of council housing does not make it impossible to achieve it at all – that comment is just pure rubbish. In Newham it is successful. What it means is that people in need of homes will be more inclined to look for work, volunteer in their communities and that those who have not been good neighbours or people who genuinely chose not to work. You have this blanket view of the ‘vulnerable individuals and households’ but what about the single mum on the waiting list for ages with a five year old son who juggles between three job on the minimum wage and is a brilliant parent? Why are you attacking a policy which will help her and her son.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        Yes, but the system is already over-subscribed, so unless you increase supply you will have to make zero-sum adjustments between different groups of vulnerable people. Ideally we could accomodate your single mother and the people I was talking about, but that’s won’t come unless more social housing is built. Otherwise you’re shuffling around an undersized pack of cards.
        
        I really don’t understand what you mean by ‘blanket view’. I do think the examples I’ve given should get priority over the one you give, in a forced choice. As I said, we should aim at catering for both but that means – once again – additions to the housing stock.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        House building is not welfare policy. As I was saying Brumaneuensis whose side are you on when it comes to it. Do you back the single mum who has got a son but is working so very hard, possibly three jobs, to survive or someone who does not work, has no intention of working but wants a home for life? Your choice.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        You answer my question first: Do you think your single mother automatically deserves to get priority over someone in the Emergency Band or Band 1 of the prioritisation headings set out in the Wolverhampton Council guidelines, for example.
        
        See pp. 6 – 7
        
        http://www.homesinthecity.org.uk/projector/pdfs/Allocations-Policy.pdf
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        I have made my position very clear. Now do have failed to answer my question which I asked first, whose side are you on?
      - Brendan Howell
        
        You just have this Whitehall, statist view of politics governed by statistics. It’s mad. It is about values, and we should be celebrating this. If you think it is so disastrous why has it been successful in Newham and Wolverhampton? You should answer that question? And why are you opposing Labour Party policy, too?
      - Brumanuensis
        
        I’m as much about values as anyone else, but without a good statistical basis, policies are just so many words.
        
        I’m not aware of the success or failure of the Wolverhampton approach – and I don’t think it’s in the same vein as Newham’s – and I have no opposition in principle to creating mixed communities in social housing, as Nye Bevan wanted. I just want guarantees that other vulnerable groups won’t suffer as a consequence.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        It is in the same vein as Newham’s approach actually and both have been successful. Why are you attacking a Labour policy which will encourage people to get work, to look for work and become active parts of their communities?
      - Brumanuensis
        
        @a353f66d0e10aea1badbcc5b2e622190:disqus
        
        Why are you encouraging a policy that will penalise victims of domestic violence?
        
        Two can play at that game.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        It does not penalise people with domestic violence at all! That is a lie!
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        I agree. He says that this policy penalises against domestic violence victims which is just untrue and fiction. There is no proof lookign at the results in Wolverhampton and Newham. How can rewarding contribution as well as supporting those in need, penalise against victims? He’s being foolish.
      - john pReid
        
        I recall Tottnam in the 80′s set up co-ops to get people js and the people who got the jobs had previous convictions for rape and murder…
      - Alan Giles
        
        Should we then tell the person buying a £2million pound house that they have to do community voluntary work before they are allowed to buy it?
        
        Yet another example of the double standards of the right wing of the party, together with their cliche’ “the right thing” – as overworked as “hard-working families” and “making a difference”
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        Are you genuinely having a laugh? There is a difference between social housing and buying a house. The Government does not control the housing market. People have the choice to buy their own homes. However, social housing is under the provision of the State and it is not the same as buying your own home – there is a massive difference.
        How is that double standards? You are just plain thick.
      - Alan Giles
        
        Purple Booker: Your childish, offensive repartee (“thick”, questioning other posters mental competence and beliefs) might have some point or validity if you had the guts to put your real name to them.
        
        I can only assume that you have been drinking when you post your OTT and hysterical remarks. That or you are just an ignorant spineless pig.
        
        I am trying to point out to you that if council housing tenants are to be singled out for “good behaviour”, then what you are advocating is a two-tier system where those who can afford to buy willnot have to be “judged” by the same standards.
        
        The right wing of “Labour” of which you are one of the most extreme and nasty examples have so much in common with the coalition you really should go and join them.
- Stephen
  
  Ctrl-C Ctrl-V. Same old Cut and paste. Tiresome.
  - ThePurpleBooker
    
    It’s mine.
    - Stephen
      
      Golem used to say the same thing about his ring.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        It is.
      - Stephen
        
        Into Mount Doom with you, Sméagol. Begone!
    - Alan Giles
      
      But it is about the fourth time you have reprinted it on various threads.
      - Brumaneuensis
        
        I have flagged this comment because it is untrue. It is vandalism coming from trolls linked to the PCS.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
  
  Almost all of that is wrong and poorly thought through. No wonder the party needs to rebuild its credibility with these Tory infiltrators allowed to join
Brumanuensis

One thing that baffles me is why WFAs and the Guarantee Credit component of Pension Credit are administered separately from the main state pension. I know the IFS have published research suggesting that recipients tend to spend WFAs on their intended purpose, more so than if they were simply given an unlabelled lump sum. But I’m minded to merge the sum into the State Pension and spread it out over the calendar year. In my more hard-headed moments – and using 2011/12 as a baseline - I’d cut the allocated sum by 15% and allocate 5% of that total towards a youth employment programme. The rest can go on savings (estimated saving, about £215 million). I’d also scrap free TV-licences for the over-75s, but that’s by-the-by.

Pension Credit puzzles me. I understand the Savings Credit component, but the Guarantee Credit is a muddle. It costs £6.9 billion, plus a ball-park figure of £182 million to administer. I’d just amalgamate it into the State Pension (and do something similar to what I suggested for WFA-allocated sums).

I do think the IPPR’s Salary Insurance idea is a good one. If JSA could be set as an base-line for all, whilst additional benefits offered to those with better contribution records, or who have a better record of looking for work, then the contributory principle could come into its own. I’m not sure exactly how this would be done though.

Incidentally, it’s good to see a discussion of Beveridge that doesn’t try and pretend he only cared about the contributory principle. Beveridge always understood that public assistance would have to be conducted on need too, something Liam Byrne rather overlooked in his recent lectures.
…

All figures courtesy of the good people at Full Fact.
- Quiet_Sceptic
  
  From the perspective of those contributing, the IPPR Salary Insurance is a poor deal because it is not insurance, it is a low interest personal loan, any support received has to be re-paid despite the fact that those receiving the support will have already paid their ‘premiums’.
  
  Contrast that with JSA, a true insurance type benefit – no loans, no debts or future liability and yet it was available to all regardless of contribution.
  
  If we’re embracing the contributory principle then the arrangements should be reversed, those with a contributions history get JSA, which needs raising back to reasonable level, those with little or no contributions history get low interest loans through something like the Salary insurance scheme.
- Brumanuensis
  
  In reply to Quiet Sceptic’s post – which seems to have gone for some reason – I think the IPPR favoured NSI being a form of loan, so that it would be fiscally-neutral. I agree that’s a potential weakness in plan, but it might help ‘sell’ the idea to the public.
- ThePurpleBooker
  
  Liam Byrne has not overlooked these ideas, he has supported them. Interesting seen as you are now backing proposals by James Purnell. I welcome your conversion to our side of the party and apologise for mistaking you as a Militant (even though you back some of them in parliamentary selections).
  - Brumanuensis
    
    I’m still soft left, PurpleBooker. And I still can’t stand Purnell. I wouldn’t declare victory yet.
    - ThePurpleBooker
      
      Soft left is such a wimpish position to take. You cannot stand James Purnell but you back his ideas and his proposals drawn up by him. You also back his best friend, Jon Cruddas.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        So Clement Atlee, Harold Wilson and Neil Kinnock are wimps are they?
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        Neil Kinnock isn’t soft left.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        I’m sorry, Neil Kinnock is emphatically on the soft left. His partnership with Roy Hattersley was seen as a marriage of the traditional Labour right and the Party’s soft – i.e. not Bennite – left. Kinnock was a member of the Tribune group and close to Michael Foot, before becoming leader. He was also close to Tony Benn until Benn challenged Healey for the Deputy Leadership of the Party in 1981. Kinnock, in short, was always on the soft left.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        Also, The Campbell Diaries make it clear Kinnock disliked a lot of the changes undertaken by Blair in the mid-90s.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        He began those changes. He loved Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He brought in Peter Mandelson (who at the time was a notable Labour rightwinger) in his inner circle as right-hand man in charge of strategy. Kinnock briefed against all those on the soft left, like Michael Meacher (an ex-Bennite) and even John Presscott (now a Labour rightwinger). When Kinnock had his phase as a traditional socialist, those close to him like Peter Shore said “he never thought himself to actually believe these things.” When Kinnock grew up politically, he was a leading man of the right of the party.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        Rubbish. Kinnock is not soft left. He was close to Michael Foot, but as Peter Shore – who is sort of soft left said, “he never thought himself to believe these things”. Kinnock was elected as having been the ‘heir to Foot’ but when he thought his politics out for himself he moved well to the right of the party. He is a social democrat. He began the modernisation of the party resulting in New Labour, he appointed Peter Mandelson to his team and he dropped many of the policies which ruined our party’s electability. He went onto become a European Commissioner, which is not something he believed in during the 1980s. He is a Labour rightwinger. As for Campbell, Kinnock became a cheerleader for New Labour and never rebelled against the Government as a peer (however, he was been slightly critical of some our public service reforms). He also backed Harriet Harman for the deputy leadership in 2007. You are definately wrong on this one (no, surprise there).
      - Brumanuensis
        
        Peter Shore was not really soft left. He was frankly incapable of being placed within the Labour pantheon.
        
        Kinnock is, regardless of what you seem to think, a member of the soft left. I am a Kinnockite myself. His policies in the 1992 election were to the left of Ed Miliband’s now. Hattersley and John Smith were the great figures on the Labour right at that time. Meanwhile, Milburn, Primarolo, Byers, Mandelson and Hewitt had all only relatively recently got over their far-left phases and were developing another orthodoxy.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        I’m sorry but you are completely clueless. Peter Shore, was on the soft left of the party, I think you’ll find.
        You are not a Kinnockite. Kinnock began the modernisation of the Labour Party and moved the party further to the right than it had been. He is not a soft lefty. John Smith and Roy Hattersley were to the right of him in 1983 when he was elected on a leftwing platform. By 1992, those originally on the soft left said he was too rightwing. You clearly no very little about Kinnock, do you. He appointed Peter Mandelson, became pro-NATO, dropped our commitment to nationalise everything, dropped our commitment to very high taxes. He never rebelled against New Labour, he supported Harriet Harman for the deputy leadership and he began the modernisation of the party and you are seriously telling me the man is soft left. Let me give you some advice. Watch all the of The Wilderness Years on YouTube and then you will start getting your facts right (for once).
      - john p Reid
        
        Ed wants labour to return to supporting some union policies that thatcher got rid of, by 1992 Kinnock had fully endorsed Thatchers union policies, I’d say Ed is to the left of Kinnock in fact that state of where Ed is taking labour now reminds me of 1987, Come to think of it didn’t the tores win a majorityof 102 becuase of this,
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        I disagree. Ed does not want us to support some union policies in fact he has opposed union policies and is deeply frsutrated with them. Ed is to the right of Kinnock, in fact he has brought in Glasman as his ‘guru’.
      - john p Reid
        
        I wouldn’t say Attlee is soft left, He fully supported Gaitskell’s 1951 budget, backed strongly Gatiskell to take over in ’55, and was desperate to undermine Bevan in 1951 only not getting the chance to sack bevan becuase he quit before he knew it was going to happen, Kinnock of course went form far left to EU commisioner and then the lords, I heard form good sources there were 2 Kinnocks the one who backed the 87 Mnaifesto and turned a blind eye to those who wated to take it further to the left, and the kinnock of 87-92 who didn’t really believe in what he stood for
      - Alan Giles
        
        It is hard to believe at times, Mr Reid that you are an official for the Labour party.
        
        Hugh Gaitskell has been dead for 49 years and 8 months now. What do you really want for the future?. Please don’t say a continuation of New Labour Tory-Lite policy with reached our nadir back in 2009 with the Welfare Reform Bill.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        Exactly, he clearly does not know what he’s on about. Clement Atlee did some statist things but at the end of the day, he was more to the right of the party than people give he give him credit for. Wilson was a Bevanite who believed in the power of the state. Kinnock in comparison is on the hard right of the party, I do not know where Brumanuensis get’s his warped ideas from.
- ThePurpleBooker
  
  I think we should scrap Guarantee Credit and replace it National Insurance Credit based on your contributions. I think that we should restrict free TV licences to those on Pension Credit. Free bus passes should be universal but Winter Fuel Allowance should be abolished and instead energy companies would be required to put all pensioners on the lowest tariff. I happen to think all pensioner benefits should rise in line with the pension age. Another alternative could be to scrap all the pensioner benefits and should be used to increase the state pension. Then we could use that money to start-up universal social care. On National Salary Insurance, I would not call it ‘Jobseeker’s Allowance’ at all. We should get rid of the whole thing and then just have the system where it is just based on your personal contributions with higher incomes requring higher contributions and then you get 75% of your salary. The idea of meddling Jobseeker’s Allowance doesn’t appeal to people, in fact it is a very means-tested benefit. We need to have a real social insurance system exactly like what Barack Obama is doing to healthcare system in America. We had it but now National Insurance is being seen as a tax.
  - Brumanuensis
    
    I don’t like the idea of introducing more means-testing into the social security system. I think free TV licences are not a particularly useful form of benefit-in-kind – unlike free bus passes – so I don’t think public money ought to be allocated towards their use. Certainly a supply-side reform like putting pensioners on the lowest energy tariff would be a good start, but I don’t think the sum allocated to WFAs should be completely re-allocated.
    
    I’m also uncomfortable with the idea of linking the amount you get from salary insurance, to the amount you’ve contributed. Beveridge wanted contributions to generate a flat rate payment. Getting a percentage of your salary back would be regressive, even if you have higher contributions – which would make NI more like a tax, than an insurance contribution. Much rather that a longer contribution record in time terms, be rewarded with an escalating level of salary protection, which shouldn’t take the form of a loan, but instead be a normal benefit payment. Once a person has claimed their entitlement, their contributions record would be reset to avoid gaming of the system.
    
    JSA should be a basic flat rate ‘floor’ on out-of-work income, to protect people from poverty. Those with better records of looking for work or better contribution records, would get extra support on top of JSA, not have JSA taken off them.
    - ThePurpleBooker
      
      I’m sorry Brumanuensis, you cannot support National Salary Insurance saying it is a good idea and then attack it and call it regressive. The proposal is not flat-rate Jobseeker’s Allowance but higher salaries requiring higher contributions and in return for making your contributions you get 70% of your salary in unemployment for six months until you find work, and it is repaid ina zero-real-rate income contingent loan. Those who can’t have better contribution records, then the State will obviously pay for them. With the Jobs Guarantee, it also makes it more cost less too.
      I too am against means-testing but scaling back on some of these benefits in terms of cost, but it is not necessary to scrap entire benefits or not. If you have a supply-side reform on the energy companies, then you do not need Winter Fuel Allowance (which is why Ed Miliband has suggested it). If free TV licence becomes a part of Pension Credit, that is not necessarily means testing but just a cut or you could make those not on Pension Credit pay tax on their benefits, like on their pension. But more radical thngs need to be done like Free Childcare, like a regional benefits cap, like reforming the Universal Credit, like reforming housing allocations policy, like radical reform of housing benefit, like on child benefit and Child Trust Funds for eg.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        Dr Purple and Mr Howell,
        
        I am not attacking the idea of NSI, I am questioning your suggesting that those with HIGHER contributions should get LARGER payments. I support the idea of increasing scales of benefit for longer contribution records, but this should be a flat rate in the interests of equality and to minimise administrative complexity – say £750 for each year in employment.
        
        I’ll also add that even if you put pensioners on the lowest tariff, some may have problems paying bills, which is why I want to mostly re-purpose the money, not eliminate it.
        
        If you use pension credit to determine eligibility, then given pension credit is a means-tested benefit, you are means-testing. No ifs. No buts.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        I also abhor the idea of NSI as a loan. It is an accounting trick to turn a payment into an asset. The government still incurs a liability, even if in the long term it is ‘paid back’.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        It would be an income-contingent loan.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        That doesn’t affect anything I’ve just written. Income-contingent or not, it is still an incurred liability, as much as an asset.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        You are attacking NSI because you called it regressive. If you making some pensioner benefits a part of Pension Credit, is not exactl means-testing.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        If you incorporate one universal benefit into another means-tested benefit, then by definition it becomes means-tested.
        
        I was not attacking the concept of NSI. I was disagreeing with your proposed model of it. The basic principle is not a bad one.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        Not really, if you incorporate a means-tested benefit with another benefit that is not means-testing necessarily. It is a spending cut really.
        Model? I defined to you what National Salary Insurance is. You never attacked the idea in fact you clearly said: “I do think the IPPR’s Salary Insurance idea is a good one”. Then you attack Salary Insurance. I did not make up a proposed model, I defined what the Salary Insurance idea actually is. I think yet again, you are slightly a bit too confused.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        It is not means-testing because it will be a part of the Pension Credit. Anyway, if you force energy companies to help out their pensioners there will be little need for Winter Fuel Allowance. Also, make up your mind. Are you for National Salary Insurance or against it? Purnell and the IPPR have come out with the idea with the support of the party. You claim to be for it but then you attack it. Just because someone agrees with me on LL, does not mean that they are an alter-ego. Is John Dore an alter ego too! Fact is, you claim to support the IPPR’s ideas and NSI but you then attack it. I’m prepared to debate with you but stop the foolishness, be honest, stick with the facts and make up your mind!
      - Brumanuensis
        
        I am sure pensioners will benefit from being placed on the lowest tariff, but it is still likely, if energy prices remain high, that some will be in need of financial assistance with meeting bills. Which is why I want to re-purpose the funds into the state pension, saving administrative costs.
        
        I’m starting to think you’re George W Bush with all this ‘you’re either with me or against me’ business. I think NSI is a very interesting idea and has a lot of interesting features. I’m not sure about value of making the payment a loan, although I understand the logic of doing so. I would prefer that NSI were a scheme where in return for higher NI employee contributions, those who lost their jobs would receive a weekly sum, calculated on the basis of the length of their employment record (i.e. those in work for longer would receive more than those in work for shorter periods) and capped at the median weekly wage – a bit like the mechanism by which extra holiday entitlement within companies works: you earn extra days for each year of service, up to a certain point. This support would extend for a fixed period, probably six months. This scheme is a supplement to JSA, which would remain – as Graeme Cooke pointed out – a floor for the unemployed. Once the full value is claimed, the contribution record resets and the individual has to re-earn their NSI.
        
        John Dore has a very rhetorical style from you. I have no doubt you and he are not the same person.
        
        Your point about pension credit baffles me. It is a means-tested benefit. If you attach eligibility to TV licences to eligibility for a means-tested benefit, then you are means-testing something. Your proposal is one made by the IFS, except they are quite clear that it’s a form of means-testing.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        Firstly, on National Salary Insurance you are endorsing something which your National Salary Insurance but not National Salary Insurance. I support the capping at £200 that is part of the policy. The contributory element of JSA is a part of the NSI, but higher salaries will require higher contributions in order to recieve higher benefits.
        Now, I am proposing a range of things on TV licences and other pensioner benefits, a range of options: we could tax them for those not on to fund universal social care or other things, we could cut them back to mould it in the state pension, devolve free bus passes and scrap the Winter Fuel Allowance, or restrict it to Pension Credit. If I am completely honest, I have no one answer on this but I think that these benefits can be laughable and many rich pensioners admittedly don’t need them. If you have an effective supply-side reform which puts them on the very lowest tariff it is unlikely that they will need any extra support. I would be perfectly happy to abolish all universal pensioner benefits and use the money to reverse the granny tax and fund universal social care, to be completely honest with you – I’m not sure if that is electorally viable, in all honesty seen as they are quite attractive benefits.
    - Brendan Howell
      
      All of that was nonsense. A National Salary Insurance scheme would mean that NI would look less like a tax not more, it would be fiscally neutral, save money rather than spending massively on JSA, restore social insurance principles, good for the economy and it is fair. You haven’t got a clue.
Brumanuensis

I’d add that Paul Johnson, of the IFS, published a paper for the Resolution Foundation recently entitled ‘Fairer By Design’ (http://www.resolutionfoundation.org/media/media/downloads/Fairer_by_design_-_efficient_tax_reform_for_those_on_low_to_middle_incomes_1.pdf).

His suggestions for the Child Tax Credit - see page 15 – were very interesting and I think well worth considering. I do not agree with his proposals for VAT, but that’s a separate issue.
Stephen

Where is Labour now as far as the national scandal of ESA, ATOS and WCA goes? The BMA has demanded that WCA is stopped. The ATOS test seems to pass pretty much anybody as fit for work, designed as it is to strip the sick and disabled of higher rate benefits, has a massively high rate of successful appeals by failed candidates and is administered by ATOS, a French IT company, which earns more money by certifying the people it is testing as fit for work. Many have suffered under this regime and too many have died prematurely as a result.

Is Miliband still pretending that all is well as far as ESA, ATOS and WCA go?

If so how in the name of God can he be doing so?
- Mark
  
  The Labour Party is largely responsible for the ESA, ATOS and WCA disaster going right back to the days of James Purnell and Yvette Cooper. Last week both Channel 4 (Dispatches) and BBC1 (Panorama) featured investigations into the disgrace called ATOS with a qualified medical doctor going undercover in the former programme to show how awful the ATOS company actually is. Here’s a link to an article about the two shows:
  
  Tough love or tough luck: two programmes on assessing disability benefits
  
  Shame on Labour for creating this monster.
  
  And now a significant number amongst the Labour intelligentsia seem intent on giving life to something potentially even more devilish by filling the Party’s policy vacuum with Purnell and Byrne’s confused notions about a “contributions based” refurbishment of the welfare state. Acting precipitously in the past has already wrecked so much harm on the innocent and the helpless that Labour should not be in too much of a hurry to enthusiastically grasp similar naive and half-baked ideas like a drowning man grasping at straws as the Party has done so readily in the recent past. Mistakes in social policy by Labour have cost lives.
http://twitter.com/theyoungjane Jane Young

Disappointed that even Kate Green shirks the issue of ESA and the WCA, Labour creations that have done untold damage to disabled and sick people. I keep saying, like a stuck record – when Labour apologise for the WCA, we can all take them seriously again. Until then, disabled and sick people are effectively disenfranchised.

Kate – I really expected more on this from you. I like the article,I just wish it was a bit more honest about the state-sanctioned abuse of disabled and sick people that the media is only just waking up to. When it comes to priorities, ending the disaster of the WCA must come very high on the list.
- ThePurpleBooker
  
  My view on Work Capability Assessment is that we should end the contract with ATOS – seen as that private sector outsourcing has not been successful – and instead give responsibility of the Work Capability Assessment to healthcare charities and even the NHS if it could be done at a cheaper price. I think that would be more appropiate but I absolutely support the principle of Work Capability Assessment.
https://mikestallard.virtualgallery.com/ Mike Stallard

“But can we afford it?”

No.
- Lemuel Lo
  
  “But can we afford it?”Yes.
  
  Introduce the “Robin Hood” transaction tax (just like most other European countries are going to do and probably North America if Obama wins the Presidency) and you raise a fabulous £20 billion a year for the benefit of all.
  
  Ta-da.
  - John Dore
    
    I am in favour of the Robin Hood tax, but it must be done properley. If you don’t have all jurisdictions levying the same tax the bastards will just move at a corporate level. Imagine if Singapore and China say no tax, then just our manufacturing our financial sector will start to evaporate.
    
    Your move ace.
    - Lemuel Lo
      
      Threaten to introduce tariffs on goods and services imported into Europe and North America from foreign countries which don’t play ball. I doubt very much if rinky-dink island states like Singapore and Taiwan or rapidly developing countries like China, Russia, India and Brasil, which need access to dynamic western markets, would be able to resist such a move if mooted. At present foreign countries need us – that is to say the West – more than we need them and once introduced the transaction tax will never be rescinded.
      - John Dore
        
        I cannot agree with any of that. In fact its a very dangerous view. Neither Taiwan nor Singapore are rinky-dink states. Singapore is the 5th largest ForEx in the world, 14th largest exporter and the 15th largest importer in the world. Your statements are baseless and prove nothing. How many years ago was it that China was viewed as the poor cousin and where is it now in respect of manufacturing?
        Globalisation means that trade moves to the lowest cost producers and lowest tax areas. The Robin Hood tax in the format you suggest would in my belief be the defining moment in the destruction of the Western Finance dominance.Come on ace what else you got?
      - Lemuel Lo
        
        Where does China export most of its goods to?
        
        Trade moves to the lowest cost producers and lowest tax areas only if business chooses to move factory and manufacturing to the cheapest places of production and taxation in order to maximise profit. If you place tariffs on goods exported to European and American markets from unscrupulous countries that refuse to participate in collectively determined global reform of the financial and banking system those countries instantly become less competitive, losing any advantage they have as far as low tax, low labour and low social costs go and production moves to countries that agree to play ball, possibly even back to Blighty itself, which would be a good thing in my opinion.
        
        Capitalism and markets, like fire, make good servants but poor masters. Western countries should band together to collectively impose sensible regulation and taxation in order to discourage irresponsible behaviour. Those countries which refuse to abide by the new arrangements can be frozen out of vital markets by imposition of tax and tariffs to curtail any competitive advantage they might achieve by seeking to remain unfettered by the new system of oversight and governance demanded by the majority.
        
        Singapore, as far as I remember, buys much of its fresh water from China. Where China goes Singapore follows. I don’t see Singapore as a burgeoning power which can threaten either Europe or America.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        You are calling for something that is unrealistic and economically illiterate. You are calling for Britain to destroy our trade relations because of a tax. Come on. It has got to be done with an international agreement not by listening to a jumped up speech by the likes of bloody Caroline Lucas who get orgasmic feelings when they see Salma Yaqoob or a CND flag or some silliness.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
    
    And bring back all the money stashed in offshore tax havens.
    - ThePurpleBooker
      
      If that is all that LabourLeft’s economic policy goes to then, no wonder Graheme Morris has been sacked as PPS. Then again you are the same lot who think free universal childcare, Future Jobs Fund, rent controls, social insurance, Co-operatives, tougher bank regulation, mutualisation of banking services are rightwing and Tory! Not only that but you want Salma Yaqoob in the Labour Party and more people from RESPECT. And you say you are not Militant! LOL!
John Lewis

Excellent article, great ideas. But if contributory schemes are used to fund replacement of earnings, what of those who can’t work because of lifelong (from birth – childhood) disabilities. They will, presumably, get the lower rates of non-contributory benefits, topped up by DLA or it’s equivalent.

Those who have worked and become disabled will get the higher contributory rate plus DLA top ups.

Hardly “equality” for the disabled. Once again, Labour has no policiers it has thought through.

Might I ask, meanwhile, why NOBODY in Labour is fighting for the thousands of sick and disabled facing penury because of Tory dismantling the current welfare system and using STasi type capability assesments.

No policies, no idea. (ex-lifelong Labour party member)
- Stephen
  
  Labour invented Employment and Support Allowance and hired ATOS to administer the Work Capability Assessment. It seems unbelievable but is true. And it wasn’t long ago that I heard Ed Miliband bigging up ESA and WCA, praising the work James Purnell and Yvette Cooper and others had done as if these “reforms” were the best thing since sliced bread: the reason that Labour isn’t standing up and fighting for the sick and disabled is because Labour itself launched the pogrom with its Welfare Reform Act 2009.
  
  Shame on everybody involved.
  - Alan Giles
    
    Exactly. And despite the dissembling of Byrne, this cannot, and should not, be ever forgotten. Labour is as culpable as the coalition who continued Freud, but didn’t start it. Sadly there is at least one LL poster who supports the victimisation of the sick and disabled – sadly we don’t know his/her real identity, because they are too timid to give a name.
Losange

More New Labour (with 10% extra) twaddle from James Purnell, Kitty Ussher, John Hutton, Liam Byrne and Yvette Cooper et al. All of those lovely people who gave us ESA, ATOS and WCA. Yea. Like we ought to be giving credence to their opinions after they did such a good job in the past. Honestly. You couldn’t make it up. Tragic.
- ThePurpleBooker
  
  The WCA needs to be improved but not stopped. Benefit fraud needs to be tackled and you cannot deny that some people claim some disability and incapacity benefits when they can clearly work. I think it should be assessed by medical staff and the NHS (or private healthcare if it is costs the NHS too much money) so that it is 100% right but this anti-WCA thing get’s on my nerves.
  - Alan Giles
    
    I am sure it “gets on the nerves” – and worse -, of people who have a terminal illness who have been passed fit for work by ATOS, anxious to collect their thirty pieces of silver. But of course it was your lovely friend James Purnell who started this disgusting policy off, so it just has to be “the right thing” in your myopic little world.
    - ThePurpleBooker
      
      Ask me this Alan, on principle do you accept that there are people in this world who claim incapacity benefit when they are completely fit to work? Therefore, do you accept that there needs to be some sort of testing in order for that to happen?
      - Losange
        
        Not by ATOS. A French IT company who are “paid by results” to find people fit for work who pick staff who are willing to do their dirty work. Testing should be done by independent doctors NOT personnel employed by the testing company itself.
        
        How can you defend the current system.
        
        It is utterly indefensible.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        I have said the current system needs to be improved but on principle I am absolutely supportive of Work Capability Assessment but it is wrong that vulnerable people are being caught out. I think it should be carried out by private health company or the NHS (preferrably the NHS). On top of that, there should be stricter penalties on benefit fraud and more clampdowns on benefit fraud, limiting unemployment benefit to one year would be a good way of doing that.
      - Losange
        
        “…limiting unemployment benefit to one year…”
        
        Are you actually stating that every single person who becomes unemployed, whatever their circumstances, who is unemployed for more than a year is a benefit fraud? And that everybody, whatever their circumstances, could get a job within twelve months after redundancy or whatever if they wanted to?
        
        If that is what you’re saying you are insane.
        
        Baying howling barking mad.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        Yes, I am saying that Jobseeker’s Allowance should be limited to one year. That means you create a Jobs Guarantee, which Labour did for young people when we were in government, which meant that you were offered a job after a year of being unemployed and you get paid the living wage. However, if you refuse that job then you will lose your JA. That would end long-term unemployment, crackdown on benefit fraud because people who are claiming JA whilst being in work would be caught out because they can’t exactly have two jobs at the same time. Obviously, if you are out of work for childcare reasons or your incapacity benefit then that is a completely different (then again Free Universal Childcare will help solve that problem).
      - Leeden
        
        The Purple Booker M8, can I ask you a question. Are you unemployed yourself because you always seem to be on this site day and night. I only get to look during my meal breaks but you seem to be around all the time. And you seem very bitter about something ‘cos you are so rude to everybody.
        
        I think you should be a bit more polite to ppl especially as we are all supposed to be in the same party
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        My little brother cannot find work. I feel passionately about these issues and I will not stand fools gladly irrespective of party politics. And I am not your mate
      - Alan Giles
        
        If your “little brother” is as arrogant and condescending as you, I am not surprised he can’t find work.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        You rude sick old man. Shut up!
      - Alan Giles
        
        You can talk!
      - treborc
        
        P
        r
        i
        c
        k.
      - John Dore
        
        Its Amazing how on a daily basis you accuse others of your own behavioural traits. That comment was disgusting, as are you.
        You are perfectlyqualifiedto be on the left of the party.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        You rude, disgusting and hypocritical idiotic man. How dare you say that you wicked human being.
      - Losange
        
        So are you saying that after one year of unemployment every person will be given a full-time minimum-wage job paid for by the state that lasts until the person concerned gets a “real” job? Until retirement if need be? Even people in their fifties and sixties? And doing what?
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        All those of working will get a living wage job if they cannot find one of their own back. It could be provided by the State or voluntary sector or even the private sector. If you are still of working age you will get a job. If yuou are retired then you are not unemployed. We were doing that in Government for young people in government, That abolishes long-term unemployment, and abolishes Jobseeker’s Allowance in the long-term. They do that in Scandinavia and it is very successful. And they will be working? I don’t know why you object to work. People like Leeden and my little brother, Benjy, want to get work!
      - Losange
        
        In Scandinavia they pay MUCH higher rates of tax to run their social programmes and they have many fewer unemployed as a proportion of the population.
        
        We are not like any of the Scan countries socially or economically. The Scan peoples prize their countrymen and are willing to have very high rates of tax in order to help them. We aren’t. There is no similar sense of obligation and responsibility to help the less fortunate in this country.
        
        What you are suggesting is impossible.
        
        You should also stop trying to prevent me from disagreeing with you by flagging my comments.
        
        This is low and cowardly behaviour and before you deny it you should know that when you flag a comment your identity is logged at the same time. The webmasters know precisely who is flagging what and when.
      - Sid
        
        There is no such thing as “unemployment benefit” and hasn’t been since 1996. You seem to have a poor knowledge of British welfare ThePurpleBooker and perhaps should stop making comments about it until you do.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        There is such thing as unemployment benefit, it is called Jobseeker’s Allowance. I think you are just a jumped up old baby in nappies which no knowledge about anything.
      - Sid
        
        Limp.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
        
        I think the people who know the patient best should be able to comment on their state of health. Not ATOS but their GP.
        
        WCA’s are a joke: and very clearly set up with the aim of failing people. On top of this – there aren’t the jobs to go round, which makes the tests even more pointless
      - Alan Giles
        
        As you have been civil for once, I will answer you: Yes I accept that there are benefit cheats, just as there were many MPs of all parties, who cheated on their expenses (and both groups did so using public money). Obviously those claiming dishonestly should be dealt with by the courts (just as the dishonest ministers and MPs should have been, but only 4 were – indeed many benefit cheats do get custodial sentences). I also accept, despite CCTV and store detectives there are shoplifters. But you do not deal with the few by penalising the genuine, and by frisking every customer who goes into every store.
        
        It is quite obvious, as ATOS are paid by results, they will be encouraged to sign off as many people as possible – the fact that they did in fact, “sign off” people who were dead of a terminal illness within a few months, proves their decisions were motivated by self-interest and serving first the Labour government and now the coalition.
        
        Let’s be frank about it – whatever measures you impose there will always be a minority who will exploit and abuse the system. Like the shoplifter, despite all the in store deterrents there will never be a total end to shoplifiting or benefit fraud. Or MPs making dodgy expense claims.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        Okay, Alan. It seems like judging by your answer is that you are excusing benefit fraud. It costs the Exchequer £800m. That could reintroduce EMA, allow boys to have HV inocculation, it could cover most of the cost of free universal healthy school meals in our primary schools. But you are defending the benefit fraud. If you are not then can you give me a proposal if not ATOS and WCA, which will clampdown on benefit fraud. Just one proposal.
      - Alan Giles
        
        I am not going to be as personally offensive to you as you are to everybody else who you don’t agree with, but have you not read what I wrote previously?
        
        I DO NOT “excuse” fraud (of every and ANY sort including expenses) BUT you cannot defend a system where somebody who is either dying of a painful illness or undergoing debilitating chemotherapy can be “signed off” as fit for work.
        
        Let’s not pretend that we don’t know the reason for this: people ascribed “fit for work” are put on to JSA, a much lower rate of benefit, and that was the main motivation of Purnell/Brown, and is now merely copied by the Coalition.
        
        I am sure if you had a family member or friend who was in dire straights and given additional worry by ATOS you would not feel so kindly disposed towards ATOS.
        
        It should be a matter for medical professionals – doctors, specialists etc to determine if somebody is capable for work – not a company being paid so much per head for all those they can sign off – the financial ulterior motive is too strong.
        
        In the case of long term, but non life-threatening illness or disability, I think it is fair for the DWP to seek the advice of the particular patients medical advisors, and if they feel the person concerned is fit for, say part-time work, then it should be taken onboard. But remember, many companies are loathe to take on people who have been unable to work for a long period of time, so you cannot in all fairness penalise say a man of woman of 50 who has (hopefully) recovered from cancer, but finds employers reluctant to take them on.
        
        If Labour are going to say there is no alternative to ATOS or the current WCA, then where is the party going?
      - John Dore
        
        But you are offensive Alan, because you aim to shut down any debate that you dont like and are very liberal with the truth. For example when you say “Let’s not pretend that we don’t know the reason for this: people ascribed “fit for work” are put on to JSA, a much lower rate of benefit, and that was the main motivation of Purnell/Brown, and is now merely copied by the Coalition.” I read that as a blatant lie. I agree that any disabled person being signed off for work when they cant is a crime, but I also can say that disability beneft is one of the most abused systems we have and that is why a LABOUR government tried to do something about it. Good on them for rising to the challenge of the bigots who see any change as an attack.
        
        If Atos is not working properly, then the party must say how they are going to fix it.
      - Alan Giles
        
        Mr Dore: Unlike “the Purple Booker” who so shyly ladles out his insults from behind the safety on an indeterminate screen name, I use my real name, and I do not go round suggesting every other poster is “thick” , “mad”, “a Marxist” a “Respect supporter”. If I may say so, both you and PB seem to think you are totally right and everyone else totally wrong.
        
        It is not offensive when you respond to a post with a one word response (your favourite word -”cr*p”), but it is offensive if I suggest that Purnell and Brown must have known that David Freud, a multimillionaire investment banker was NOT a welfare “expert”, any more than the brief they gave ATOS was an inducement to get as many people off benefit as possible – and if they happened to be dying or seriously ill, well that was just too bad?.
        
        It ill behoves some “labour” supporters to now suggest all the mess that has happened had nothing to do with us (or perhaps I should say them, since I really do feel more like disassociating myself from the party more every day). That is plain misleading and dishonest. WE created the monster that was Freud and ATOS. The Coalition just carried on the bad work
      - John Dore
        
        Crap
      - Alan Giles
        
        Thanks – yet again we plumb the depths of your intellect.
        
        You & your pal PB are a terrible advertisement for Labour.
      - John Dore
        
        Ah, the sort of crap that one might see dropping from a Pear tree. A tree that perhaps Partridges frequent.
      - Alan Giles
        
        PATHETIC
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
        
        They’re not Labour, Alan. They are New Labour.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        The fact that you have had anything to do with my great party, is a bad advsertisement for Old Labour. You wished unemployment on a young person. How dare you! Apologise now!
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        The party is going to Government, at the moment. To say Work Capability Assessment kills people, and to imply that good men such as Brown and Purnell are murderers, which you and others have said is a disgraceful allegation. You are being liberal with the truth because you know that it is against the law to sign off someobody who cannot work and they have the legal right to appeal and have their GP as a fall-back.
      - Alan Giles
        
        PB: Big, serious words, what a pity you haven’t got the courage to sign it with a real name.
        
        You really do like to draw attention to yourself: where have I accused Brown or Purnell of being “murderers”?
        
        What I was saying was that to men (such “good men” as you describe them – hero worship, bless!) with the intellect of Purnell and Brown they should have realised that Freud was not an “expert” on anything other than his profession of banking (investment division) and that by employing ATOS on a payment by results basis, they must have had the nous to realise that the company was going to find as many people as fit for work as possible. The fact so many people won appeals against ATOS shows just how otiose ATOS is.
        
        But cut out the melodrama.
    - ThePurpleBooker
      
      Thirty pieces of silver? We’re not as ancient as you, Alan. You do know that when WCA done by ATOS fails, people appeal and claimants can use their GP to verify they are in need of their benefits? Clearly you do not know how the system works, well you don’t know how anything works because you are thick.
      - Losange
        
        Are a majority of GPs benefit frauds, or accomplices to benefit fraud, now then, bozo? The British Medical Association recently demanded that WCA be withdrawn. Is the BMA now a discredited and disreputable body which is trying to encourage benefit fraud amongst the population?
        
        You write like a religious zealot convinced that everything he believes in, despite massive evidence to the contrary, is true because you feel that it is true.
        
        You are such a fool it is difficult to be angry with you.
      - treborc1
        
        Totally agree, I always said we need more ex liberals in Labour.
  - Losange
    
    The DWP says benefit fraud is less that 2%, pretty much the same amount of error attributable in other countries to mistakes and clerical error. I’m sorry that people moaning about WCA gets on your nerves but I’m infinitely more sorry for the innocent majority of people who have been abused, broken and in too many cases killed by the absolutely disastrous welfare reforms introduced under Gordon Brown.
    
    And now here we go again when the same incompetent and vainglorious people, rejected by the electorate, not even Members of Parliament any more, are pulling the strings of the Labour leadership and steering the Party towards further cruelty and catastrophe.
    
    You need to grow up.
    - ThePurpleBooker
      
      I am no great fan of Gordon Brown but to accuse him of being a killer is just plain sick. There were faults in the system, of course there were and yes it is not right that vulnerable people can get caught out in the system. The last Labour government should have tightened it up and improved WCA. Our welfare reforms in government helped keep unemployment low during the recession. Now you say benefit fraud accounts for 2%? I think it is astonishing that you can come on here and excuse benefit fraud. These people have the same mentality as those who evade their taxes and avoid their taxes. Though I do not usually approve of the word ‘scrounger’, I sympathise with those who use it to people who genuinely and knowingly abuse the system. Why should hard-working families, some have to use the tax credits system, have to put up with fraudsters taking away from them? This costs £800m. That money could fund the reintroduction of EMA. Now whose side are you on a child trying to aim high to university from a poor background in South London or a weak person who cannot be bothered to work but thinks he is entitled to the fruits of everyone else’s labour. I know which side I’m on.
      - Alan Giles
        
        I don’t think “Losange” is defending fraud any more than I do. The point is, in real terms, benefit fraud is a fraction of the figure that is lost through evasion of taxes.
        
        My problem with your stance is that you seem to apply double standards: you heartily approve of MPs and ex ministers who are confirmed expenses swindlers, and you never say anything against them. Are not highly paid ministers who claim full “food allowance” which they don’t need, or for paltry amounts for bars of chocolate and bath plugs “scroungers”?
        
        As for Brown, in allowing the callow Purnell to introduce Freud intact, and by allowing any company to improve their income on a “cash by results” manner (ATOS) he must have realised, even if Purnell didn’t, that such a system would be an open invitation to the company (ATOS in this case) trying to declare as many people “fit for work” as possible, there would be terrible breaches. The number of claimants who win their cases on appeal is proof positive that ATOS methods are not correct.
      - Losange
        
        ThePurpleBooker distorts things that people write attempting to discredit the points they are making.
        
        For example when I said benefit fraud was less than 2% the point I was making was that such a relatively small amount of benefit fraud does not justify the creation of a climate of near hysteria whipped up about “benefit scroungers” and “benefit dependency” and so on and so forth which is then used justify truly appalling benefit reforms which end up hurting far more of the innocent than they punish the guilty not that benefit fraud was excusable.
        
        The truth of the matter is that it is impossible to eliminate all fraud from any open system and keep it usable, hence internet and credit card fraud, and personally I would rather see a laxer system with more benefit fraud than witness so many harmless and vulnerable people persecuted and having their lives turned upside down by harassment from the DWP, ATOS and WCA which as I have mentioned previously have been roundly condemned by the BMA.
        
        But what do the BMA know, eh? After all it only takes around 10 years to train as a GP (including medical school) and 14 years to train as a surgeon. Why listen to spectacularly well qualified medical professionals with years of clinical, scientific and diagnostic experience when 3 year non-scientifically trained all but innumerate PPE graduates, like James Purnell and David Freud, are available?
        
        I am not medically trained myself but speaking as a layman I would advise ThePurpleBooker to take a hearty dose of opening medicine as soon as possible because he (or she) is jam-packed full of sh*t.
      - Alan Giles
        
        I totally agree. In the days when we had capital punishment the “occassional” man (and woman, up to 1955 ) was hanged and later discovered to be innocent and many of us who deplored capital punishment anyway felt it was better that the occassional criminal “got away with it” so to speak, rather than cause . the death of one innocent person.
        
        Of course hanging did not put an end to murder,any more than stringent CCTV precautions and store detectives can stop a determined shoplifter, and in spending enormous sums of money and worse, causing distress, worry and humiliation to the vast majority of honest benefit claimants will not stop the minority who defraud (any more than sending Eliot Morley to prison for a few weeks would stop an MP determined to exploit the expenses system). However in his bizarre little world Booker thinks that because I am a realist and know these things happen, ipso facto I therefore condone or excuse it.
        
        Labour encouraged the press demonisation of benefit claimants with convenient anecdotes like that of Hazel Blears, that monument to probity, about how she just happened to be canvassing on a weekday afternoon and at lunchtime found a whole family still in their nightwear watching daytime TV. No doubt ITV just to make them sound even more scabrous!
        
        To hit the weakest is the trademark of the coward, and people like Blears knew such stories played well in the tabloids, similarily a few years earlier when asylum seekers were the villans of the week and Blunkett obliged with his “immigrant children swamping our schools” interview on BBC Radio 4s Today programme.
        
        I am sorry that in their eagerness to attack the coalition they refuse to accept and face simple truths – Labour started all this.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        I am sorry but Blunkett is very pro-immigration. What you have said is slander.
      - Alan Giles
        
        Yes, yes, of course he is, if you say so.
        
        That must explain why he told the Radio 4 audience on “Today” one morning that “immigrant children are swamping our schools”
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        Not only are you taking what Blunkett said completely out of context and misusing it to make him sound like a rightwing racist, you are denying fact. Read this:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/30/foreigners-slavery-labour-xenophobia
        It is an article I do not wholly agree with but sympathise with.
      - Alan Giles
        
        Blunkett, like far too many politicians of all parties these days, tailors his remarks to suit the audience – the “swamping” one for example was made to a Radio 4 audience at 0630 hrs one weekday morning.
        
        If you notice all politicians at the moment are jumping on the “sport” bandwaggon, though they have never mentioned it before.
        
        I sometimes wonder if some politicians (and their admirers) really “believe” in anything. Their views are adaptable to fit the perceived mood of the nation at any point in time.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        Then why did you imply Blunkett was a racist. Read his article. It is you who is jumping on the bandwagon!
      - john dore
        
        They have addressed sport before, have you heard of Tessa Jowell? There is a whole government department dedicated to it.
      - Alan Giles
        
        Jowell, yes she has, but all the others?
      - Losange
        
        Ridiculous.
        
        A layman that takes issue with the opinion of the British Medical Association in respect to medical assessment.
        
        You need your bumps feeling.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray

We have missed the boat in terms of creating a Bismarckian welfare structure based on contribution, as the amount needed to start it off and create a level playing field would be simply too huge

There is also a question of whether it has long term viability in any case
- ThePurpleBooker
  
  We have not. We had a national, insurance-based, contributory system created by the Atlee government which provided universal benefits and pensions in return for National Insurance. Beveridge did not like the term welfare, he called it social insurance. Now National Insurance seems to look like a hypothecated tax for the NHS and benefits. We must return to the social insurance principles of the welfare state which is based on reciprocity, responsibility and contribution. The problem is that there are fools like you who say that that is rightwing and Tory therefore we should not reform welfare. Your answer is reverse all the welfare cuts, just reverse all of them, have no reform, get rid of any contribution (if you like contribution then you are some rightwing Tory) and then let’s have lots of means-tested and universal benefits, encourage people to stay on these benefits for as long as they want without being tested and we should pump up these benefits with massive hikes in taxes. All I can say to that is: ‘LOL’.
  - Losange
    
    All a contributory system will do is to slew the welfare system so that people who earn the most while in work receive MUCH more help from the system than people who earn little, or possibly nothing at all, if they fall on hard times. The field will be deliberately tilted so that the “haves” gain and the “have nots” lose through no fault of their own. Favouring the better off has nothing to do with rewarding “responsibility” or “choice” or “doing the right thing” because the people at the bottom of the heap have and can exercise no “choice” about their lot – they cannot and may never be able to become “responsible” enough to earn average wages, or “choose” to secure a job with prospects, or reduce their “benefit dependency” because of the hand that life has stochastically dealt them and because full employment may now have become a pipe dream.
    
    The next thing I suppose is for some kind of opt out to be mooted where the “responsible” rich can indemnify themselves welfare-wise by taking out private cover encouraged to do so via tax breaks and such like.
    
    Who would have imagined Labour would become so destructive and inimical towards social security and the people who depend on it?
    - ThePurpleBooker
      
      I am sorry but that it nonsense on so many levels. Firstly, what is the pension system – it is based on contribution essentially. Secondly, Beveridge never called welfare, “welfare”. He called it ‘social insurance’ and he advocated a system of National Insurance CONTRIBUTIONS. It is a great shame that you are attacking some of the good that Atlee did alongside comprehensive education and the National Health Service. What your tenet of your completely misguided post is that the poor are irresponsible and don’t do the right thing they just need money. I think that is a disgusting characterisation which fuels prejudice propped by the Daily Mail. People want a welfare state based on real fairness which is not just based on need but the idea that what they put in the system, they will get out. They want a welfare state that is centred around what they care about such as on childcare, social care, unemployment, housing etc. This proposal that we just have loads of hikes in taxes and then just sponsor unconditional altruism to the poor forever is not what welfare is at all about. What you are proposing would destroy the welfare state.
      - Losange
        
        You are clueless.
        
        The welfare state Beveridge envisaged was applicable ONLY in a system which achieved full employment (or as near to full employment as was possible) hence the title of his second report in 1944: Full Employment in a Free Society. Full employment is a dream probably never realisable in our country any more when currently an average of 23 people are chasing every new job. A fully contributions based system cannot possibly be fair in any sense of the word when millions of men, women and families are denied the opportunity to contribute to the system because of circumstances completely beyond their control; this is very likely to be the status quo for our nation the foreseeable future – forever probably. Under these circumstances the picture I outlined previously in a comment above will come to pass unless central government creates a full-time minimum wage job for everybody who needs it in absence of “normal” work in the private or public sectors. That is the only way full employment is achievable in the modern world and the only way a contributions based welfare system could ever be considered fair.
        
        I find it rich that Liam “No Money Left” Byrne, after 13 years of Labour government which could have done anything and yet built less social housing per year than Margaret Thatcher (as she was selling off council housing at a 50% discount to its tenants) and refused to bring in proper rent controls for private landlords, holds up his hands in horror at a £20bn Housing Benefit bill as everything can be blamed on benefit claimants not being “responsible” and similar. The mess we are in now – the housing crises we now face – is the Labour Party’s fault 100%!
        
        I am utterly ashamed of the modern Labour Party.
        
        In the recent past and, sadly, progressively more so now.
      - Sid
        
        As far as I can remember Beveridge recommended a flat rate pay out of benefit, i.e., everybody in need received the same financial help from the welfare state. I don’t remember him saying that the more you pay in the more you get out.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
        
        The PB simply doesn’t understand how the system works. Does he not appreciate that current pensions are being pad for by current taxation – not any sort of social insurance pot?
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        He did say that Sid, look on what he said about National Insurance. People like Mike Homfray and Losange don’t understand the welfare state. It has only been in recent years we’ve actually began to get into the mentality of thinking National Insurance is a tax. It was not created like that but as a system of social insurance. Beveridge called it ‘social insurance’ not the welfare state. And the Tories were against the Beveridge Report.
      - Sid
        
        But the revenue raised from National Insurance has never been enough to fund the welfare state has it? Hasn’t social security pretty much always been funded out of taxation levied against incomes? One generation paying for the pensions of previous generations? Also isn’t the New Labour rewrite of “contributions based” welfare saying that the more you pay in the more you get out, right? I’ve heard Purnell suggest 70% of your wages or salary for six months, or something, when unemployed as in the Netherlands. I’m not sure what you’re saying to be honest.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        I support exactly what Purnell said about National Salary Insurance, Jobs Guarantee and if you actually took the time to look at my posts, instead of trying to target me then you’ll know that. We have got a system with loads of means-tested benefits and also the increasing housing benefit bill and the increasing tax credit bill (as a cause of the detachment of the welfare system from its contributionary social insurance system). I think the country you are thinking of is Denmark.
      - Sid
        
        I know what I mean.
        
        http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-netherlands-holland-social-security
        
        But I’m not sure you do.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        No, Sid you do not know what you mean. You clearly have very limited knowledge about the welfare state.
      - Alan Giles
        
        Whereas you of course know it all.
        
        Of course you do.
        
        Elsewhere you tell somebody you “don’t suffer fools gladly”.
        
        How then do you suffer yourself?
        
        Not only are some of your replies childish and foolish they are also pig ignorant.
        
        Now get this comment deleted, creep.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        You have called me a pig, a creep and fool. Rank hypocrisy. You need to calm down. I am glad that a Labour government will create a National Care Service because you will certainly need it – a lot of care. Now run along.
      - Alan Giles
        
        Your need is greater than mine
    - ThePurpleBooker
      
      Also remember the Welfare State was built to fight the Five Giants. Look them up.
      - Losange
        
        And how exactly will skewing the welfare state so that it preferentially advantages the fortunate and deliberately disadvantages the unfortunate going to reduce want or squalor amongst those at the bottom of the heap?
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
    
    Sorry, but you don’t know your facts. I’d suggest an OU course in social policy
    
    I have posted about what happened earlier, but Labour actually didn’t set up a social insurance scheme – the Tories were keen to do so following Beveridge, but Bevan favoured a taxation-based system.
    
    There was an element of contribution but as I have explained above, the amounts being contributed were simply too low to allow the system to develop along German lines
    
    NI goes into the general taxation pot. It isn’t hypothecated and never has been.
    
    As for my own views, you caricature them because you clearly don’t know anything about social policy other than what you cut and paste from your Progress mates. What I do think is that a lot of guff has been talked about ‘welfare reform’. The real issue is what we do about employment, particularly long-term unemployment across generations, and the inability of the private sector to do anything to alleviate this ongoing problem
    - PeterBarnard
      
      Sorry, Mike H, but NI contributions go (i) into the NI Fund and (ii) towards NHS expenditure (as ‘externalities’ pointed out to me a long way below). The proportions are (roughly) 80% of contributions into the NI Fund and 20% towards NHS expenditure.
      
      About 90% of the payments made from the NI Fund are on state retirement pensions. the NI Fund also makes payments for unemployment (via JSA), Incapacity Benefits, Bereavement Benefits and Statutory Maternity Pay – or, at least, it did in 2009/10.
      
      Essentially, you are correct – we don’t have a social insurance fund worthy of the name.
      
      You are even more correct in highlighting employment/unemployment as the real issue – to which I would add “living wage” so that low-paid employees don’t have to rely on top-ups from government (other tax-payers, in other words).
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZPXYLRVP4XOIGGDJWAL6HUO7U4 David

“Giving a more central role to the contributory model however offers the opportunity for a larger ambition for benefits adequacy, as the corollary of full employment.”

I think this rather bald statement requires some significant evidential reinforcement, as I am not aware of any proven link between increasing benefits (if indeed that is the correct translation of the management/politic speak above) and greater employment. Indeed it rather flies in the face of the Daily Mail viewpoint of “encouraging fecklessness” (for which evidence appears to be equally thin, albeit it represents a simpler and more easily “digestible” message, which may be what gives it such traction with the public).
- Brumanuensis
  
  I don’t think Kate Green was suggesting there’s a causal link between the two, but that one should be accompanied by the other.
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZPXYLRVP4XOIGGDJWAL6HUO7U4 David
    
    Then perhaps the word “corollary” has been incorrectly applied.
ThePurpleBooker

I think people should be encourage not to work. We should be cutting jobs and investing the money in creating much higher levels of benefits. I want people to be on the dole and rotting. Purnell, Ussher, Cooper, Byrne and Brown are a bunch of evil, disgusting murders who have killed disabld people without any remorse because they want no reform to welfare. It should be an option to work. If you are sad enough to be employed then good but if not then fine. PurpleBooker is an evil, murder-supporting rightwing fascist who should be burnt at stake like Purnell, Ussher, Cooper, Byrne, Brown, Freud, IDS and Cameron! All murderers!
- jaime taurosangastre candelas
  
  “… Purnell, Ussher, Cooper, Byrne and Brown are a bunch of evil, disgusting murders who have killed disabld people without any remorse because they want no reform to welfare.
  
  …PurpleBooker is an evil, murder-supporting rightwing fascist who should be burnt at stake like Purnell, Ussher, Cooper, Byrne, Brown, Freud, IDS and Cameron! All murderers!
  
  I am going to flag your comment for two reasons, but I copy some elements above merely to indicate the sort of prose that you have put out.
  
  1. It is demonstrably offensive.
  
  2. You post publicly as “ThePurpleBooker”, which seems very close to the identity theft that is occasionally rife on LL.
  
  Clicking on your profile the little box that comes up declares you to be “Labour Right Toughie”.
  - PeterBarnard
    
    Don’t do it, Jaime (“flag”). Comments – unless there is a risk of an action in law for defamation* against Mark – should be left for all time so that people can see what sort of people there are around.
    
    *Even then, how can someone operating under an alias, (ie who is that person?) be defamed?
    
    As mere contributors to these august pages, none of us has the right to act as prosecutor, judge and jury. Only Mark (or his appointees) has the right to remove comments.
    
    The internet … it’s a bitch …
    - jaime taurosangastre candelas
      
      Peter, on reflection you are right, but of course I did click the little flag icon considerably before you made your wise comment above. However, Labour Right Toughie’s comment is still there! Perhaps I do not have “flagging” rights? It is a bit of a first for me.
      
      I’m really not sure whether this ThePurpleBooker is the same as the ThePurpleBooker who regularly causes Alan to run in danger of a myocardial infarction, or a fake ThePurpleBooker.
      
      I do know that it is far too easy for anyone to “hijack” another regular user’s identity and to post whatever nonsense they wish, at no cost to themselves. A few times it has happened to me (I looked in one evening to find that apparently I had been inviting Bill Lockhart to a rectal exam, and that his impersonator had accepted, plus offered a romantic dinner for two afterwards). I imagine the perpetrator was some slightly sad and mostly mad individual jumping between two windows on his computer.
      - PeterBarnard
        
        The hijacking of identities is certainly annoying, Jaime.
        
        In the list of experts on computers I am somewhere close to propping up everyone else and so I have no idea whether the system/architecture that LL uses is capable of detecting false identities.
      - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZPXYLRVP4XOIGGDJWAL6HUO7U4 David
        
        I believe LL needs to sort this issue quickly. The name hijacking has been rampant recently and denigrates both the value of the site and offers an unacceptable level of disrespect for the contributions of everyone who both writes and posts on the site.
      - PeterBarnard
        
        You are of course correct, David : as I say, I know diddly-squat about computers.
        
        Is it actually possible to require a password having to be typed in before a comment is submitted? Cumbersome, I know but, as in other spheres of life, the “law-abiding” majority have to endure inconvenience because of a troublesome minority.
        
        And, is a password protection foolproof?
  - Alan Giles
    
    Jaime, he can’t resist trying to “shock” people, either by calling them “mad” or “stupid” or one of the other threadbare insults he ladels out from behind the safety of both his pseudonyms. I imagine on this occasion he is making a puerile and unsuccessful attempt to sound “ironic”, since he hero-worships Purnell usually.
    
    Yesterday, in one of his sillier and more overwraught diatribes he accused me of saying that I regarded Purnell and Brown as “murderers”, which of course I have never said. What I did say was that both men should have known the consequences of employing ATOS (or anybody else) on a payment by results basis.
    
    I have been variously “mad” “a Bennite” “a Communist Marxist” (sic) “thick”, has suggested I had never worked which was why I supported those out of work (in reality I worked for 50 years doing quite hard physical work in the main) but others have fared worse – he described one poster as “an old baby in a nappy” yesterday, and has suggested other posters take drugs.
    
    Why Mark Ferguson does not put him into pre-moderation, I can’t imagine: he shouldn’t be allowed crayons, let alone a computer. To any casual reader of LL he is hardly a good advertisement for Labour.
    
    He will probably have this comment deleted!
    
    He is a cowardly little man – I have invited him several times to post his absurd allegations under a real name, but of course, he doesn’t have the guts
    - ThePurpleBooker
      
      The fact is you are. Alan, many on Twitter I have come across have been complaining about your rude and aggressive wicked comments towards those on the right on the party. You are a troll who is not even a member of the party which is why it is surprising that you are telling Mark Ferguson what to do. I do not hero-worship James Purnell, I happen to believe that he and Jon Cruddas are one of the greatest intellectual forces that the party have seen and I lament the fact he is not returning to politics anytime soon. You have accussed James Purnell and Gordon Brown of murder, you have lied and you have promoted benefit fraud. You have made racist comments, sexist comments, you have backed anti-Semitic comments and ageist comments towards young people. You have accused me of being a liar when I have backed all my comments with proof because you are completely out of sync with the direction, values and vision of the Labour Party. You have made made lies about Alan Milburn, you accused Blunkett, Reid and Straw of being extremists and you attack expenses fraudsters unless they are on the left of the party. You even made the comment that Labour would lose Stalybridge and Hyde which means that you are idiot. I think you should be quiet and not comment on this page at all and I hope Mark Ferguson takes this in account and talks to others who have experienced your nonsense.
      - Alan Giles
        
        ”The Purple Booker” writes of me “I do not hero-worship James Purnell, I happen to believe are one of the greatest intellectual forces that the party have
        seen and I lament the fact he is not returning to politics anytime
        soon. You have accussed James Purnell and Gordon Brown of murder, you
        have lied and you have promoted benefit fraud. You have made racist
        comments, sexist comments, you have backed anti-Semitic comments and
        ageist comment”
        
        Where to begion with our timid, shy friend?
        
        Where have I accused Purnell and Brown of “murder”
        
        I “promote” benefit fraud?.
        
        Prove it. Should be easy for you as you know everything and everybody
        
        Anti-Semitic comments? Where?.
        
        “Ageist” comments?. Pretty rich coming from a “man” (I use the term loosley) who under the shelter of his screen name has called me several times “an old idiot”, questioned my sanity and who called another poster the other day “a silly old man in a nappy”)
        
        You are just an attention seeker, who seems to alter his character on a whim (you have made several claims about yourself which sound contradictory, but then of course we don’t know who you are, so thats easy)
        
        Like I’ve said before, if you want to go around making wild and stupid allegations, do it under your real name. You are currently the equivalent of people who write hysterical letters to local newspapers, making bizarre allegations, hiding behind “name and address supplied”. In short, you are all mouth and no trousers.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        You never said that about ‘Brumaneusis’ or ‘treborc’ for not using their real names. The reason why is so that fruitloops like yourself don’t have access to my name. Why are you fascinated with my name? You are clearly disturbed.
        You have liked comments and supported comments which label Brown, Purnell, Ussher, Cooper and others as killers because of their welfare reforms. Do you apologise for that and distance yourself from those disgraceful remarks? Your comments excused benefit fraud quite clearly, no doubt about it. You supported comments from treborc which took the mick out of Jews dying in concentration camps and when a Jewish party member flagged the comment, you attacked him. You attacked a BAME A-List and Dawn Butler due to her ethnicity. You made rather sexist comments trying to indicate that I was a ‘little girl’ and being rather pejorative about women. As a male feminist, I cannot stand that. You have made ageist comments about young people and then you wished unemployment on my little brother! How dare you! You are also a liar as well as an idiot. You lied about what I said referring to James Purnell about him being an intellectual force in the party. You lied about my position on being rightwing. You lied about my insults. You are a sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, lying, hypocritical, insane and medacious idiot and I am glad that you are not in my party. You are a bully and I think the best thing for this site is for you to run along. You are an extremist and you are a pedophile. Some of the remarks you have made about ‘little girls’ are very concerning and I think you should not be on the Internet, especially at this time. I have a good mind to report you to the police. People like you should not be in our free society yet alone allowed on the Internet. You genuinely make me sick and ashamed that Labour ever allowed you near its CLP meetings.
      - Alan Giles
        
        Can I ask everybody to please NOT flag this comment made by “Purple Booker/Labour Right Toughie”, offensive and libellous as it is.
        
        I think the remarks about my being a “pedophile” (sic). As this anonymous poster has claimed in the past to be a journalist, I am surprised he doesn’t know how to spell it!, suggests he is a rather troubled individual who probably deserves pity more than censure, but certainly whatever his problems he should not be allowed to turn a serious site into a comedy.
        
        He says I am “insane”, he also suggests the fact that I pointed out Dawn Butler was heavily involved in the expenses scandal “proves” I am a racist – he seems to forget I have often pointed out similar shortcomings in McNulty, Purnell, Grayling etc etc etc. Need I go on?.
        
        Perhaps I owe his “little brother” (if he exists) an apology for what I said about his employment prospects: his brother may be nothing like him, but as somebody who has employed others, what I said was “If” his brother displayed the same attitudes as he himself does, I would not employ him: he pretends great knowledge, he seems to think himself the intellectual superior of virtually every LL poster. He is a troublemaker, and appears to inhabit a fantasy world. Would you employ him?.
        
        I suspect “The Purple Booker” is referring to himself when he mentions his “little brother” since he appears to be free to post at all hours of the day or night.
        
        But let this post remain intact, and people can see the scabrousness of his mind.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        I have a BlackBerry mate.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        Well your taste in phones cannot be faulted, at least.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        Whereas your arguments regarding Neil Kinnock and IPPR can be faulted.
      - derek
        
        Not as nice as a raspberry though.
  - ThePurpleBooker
    
    Thank you for doing that, I think that was Alan Giles stealing my identity.
  - ThePurpleBooker
    
    Thank you very much Jaime. I believe Alan Giles and others maybe behind the hijacking of my account. They have done it before and it is sickening.
    - Alan Giles
      
      I have never hijacked anybodies account: Don’t judge everybody down to your own low standards.
      
      I wouldn’t touch anything connected to you with a bargepole.
      
      I am still awaiting your apology for the disgusting libel you made against me on Friday. You are a very sick individual
jaime taurosangastre candelas

Re Identity hacking.

I’m going to try this survey. I’ve never done an online survey before, so I hope it works. Click on the link and it should take you to a very simple 2-question survey about identity hacking on LL.

If it generates any significant response, I will email the results to Mark for his consideration.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NXXTW2K
- jaime taurosangastre candelas
  
  Well, so far 22 responses, and 100% in favour of needing to address the issue (that was Question 1, a Yes / No response sought).
  
  I made a bit of an error though in Question 2, which I left as a free text field for gathering suggestions. I have 22 suggestions, and I now realise that I do not have the technical IT skills to begin to analyse the suggestions submitted. Of the suggestions received:
  
  A slight majority (12/22) in favour of a more active moderation policy – one phrase was “pre-moderation”, which I assume to mean that a user is “on probation” until he or she has established a pattern of reasonable posting.
  
  A minority, but significant (6 of 22) in favour of some form of password or other “check” before a post is submitted.
  
  One response demanding only registration with Disqus, instead of the several current ways to post (I do not know why that would be better – is Disqus a better or more secure comment system than any other?)
  
  One response demanding real names, which I think is probably unlikely to work, as the rest of the internet is so used to people adopting an alias.
  
  One response asking for a full time moderator, and for “flag as inappropriate” to be an automatic alert to the duty moderator. I do not know if LL has the funds for a 24/7 moderating team.
  
  One response stating that the commenter has no knowledge of IT systems. Having myself now read the responses, I think I should also include myself in that category!
  
  (These are all aggregations by me of the free text responses – some were quite detailed and included several suggestions, but having realised my error in leaving it so open, I have only counted the “major” response)
  
  This survey business is more specialised than I first thought. But my fault. Ask an open question and leave a free text field, and the results are that there is very clearly support (100%!) of a small sample of 22 people for LL “doing something” about the identity hacking, but no consensus about how it should do something about it. Greater moderation does however seem to be favoured.
  
  (I should also add that no personal data, username, etc was gathered by me in this little exercise, so anyone who did respond is completely anonymous to me.)
  - Alan Giles
    
    Good work Jaime, and thanks for taking the trouble.
  - Brumanuensis
    
    Yes, many thanks Jaime. It was I who suggested mandatory registration, which would at least give us a firm profile if we wanted to refer someone to a moderator, as opposed to a ‘guest’ profile, which is much easier to impersonate. I have no particularly preference for Disqus, but as it’s the current comment programme for this website, I thought it was the natural place to start.
  - PeterBarnard
    
    “One response stating that the commenter has no knowledge of IT systems.”
    
    That was me, Jaime. I’m not a proud sort of bloke …
    
    Good work and thank you for making the effort.
  - jaime taurosangastre candelas
    
    I have just posted a small update on the survey, and….it was instantly flagged for review….
    
    Clearly I am swimming in very dangerous waters, or appear unnaturally threatening to LL.
    - PeterBarnard
      
      I can’t imagine that Mark would regard you as “threatening,” Jaime, with your survey.
      
      I’m not sure how “instant flagging” occurs, but if it did, it was someone with a very small mind doing the flagging.
      
      As for “swimming in very dangerous waters,” not at all. Danger is what the men and women in Afghanistan face. What you are doing may be an inconvenience to the ID thieves (indeed, they see your activity as a “threat,” so miniscule are their minds) but someone blowing soap bubbles has more firepower than these sorry sons-of-bitches.
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        I think it may be that there is an “auto-review” function, perhaps every 1,000 comments or something. I clicked “Post as jaime taurosangastre candelas” and it instantly reported my comment was flagged for review. The comment itself has disappeared.
        
        This is software, I think (and also ironic, given what we are discussing), but if my suspicion that it is an auto-function is correct, well, life is like that sometimes. With this sort of luck, maybe I should buy a lottery ticket this weekend?
        
        (Actually on the lottery front, there is no beating of the odds, but I read a fascinating article that to my satisfaction proved that any positive choice of 6 numbers in comparison to a truly random “lucky dip” was distinctly sub-optimal. You can make your odds better than average by about 17%, but it requires 21 separate selections in the same draw, so £21 of cost. The odd way you need to look at it is that your odds of winning £10 remain exactly the same, but doubling up on incremental differences in choosing combinations of only 12 numbers (x 21 times) means that if any 3 among of those 12 numbers come up, you start to improve the chances of getting 4, 5, 5 plus bonus or 6 numbers. My first reaction? Total rubbish, but I scratched out some calculations over a lunchtime sandwich, and it does mathematically make sense. I then wrote a little spreadsheet and ran a small automated iteration of 10 million draws. 17% improvement over base also came out. So I will probably give it a try, but only once!)
      - PeterBarnard
        
        Your first reaction (“total rubbish”) was correct, Jaime. With an infinite number of draws, one day the numbers 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 will be displayed ; as will 2,4,6,8,10 and 12.
        
        I remember a bloke (used to be a BMW sales rep) coming round to see me one day with one of these schemes that “improved the Lottery odds.” The scheme also cost money.
        
        Now, ask yourself this question : if you knew for 100%certain a sure-fire winner (eg in the novice hurdle at Fakenham) , would you share it (or sell it to) with anyone else? Hell, no, because the actual sharing decreases the available odds.
        
        I did not avail myself of what was offered.
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        Of course, Peter, you speak great sense. I’m not a lottery player – a mix between understanding the odds, and not wishing to pay what my wife calls the “poor tax” (an observation that those queuing on a Saturday night to buy the tickets are very strongly correlated to those in our society who least understand the game, but have most hope of being picked as a winner), and a personal distaste for games of pure chance. I’m quite prepared to “gamble” on future outcomes – such as the price of land in Canada, or the cost of 1/1000ths of fishing licences in the South Atlantic, but only when I have done my research and feel that I have some inside information.
        
        I will however “invest” the £21,because actually to me it would be more valuable to go through the mathematical process, to empirically prove a contention. I am fortunate in that £21 is to me not important. In short, I’m happy to lose £21 to prove myself wrong, and to learn something from identifying my error.
        
        But – if it worked out… Well, I’d buy out the CMS’ stake in the Mission in Santiago, give my blessed and now elderly parents the full run of the Canadian lakeside property so they can have permanent summer in Chile and Canada in their declining years, and, well I don’t know what else. I’m sure my wife would like another horse, but they can be very expensive.
        
        My little boy heard me talking about an Aston Martin over the fence to my neighbour (who likes and buys fast cars – I like Aston Martins to look at but have a 16 year old Volvo). He told me that “when I’m grown up and rich, I’m going to buy you an Aston Martin”. He’s only 6, but by the Lord, I loved him at that moment. He doesn’t realise that his father would love an Aston Martin, but would never write a cheque for one because it is just a real waste of money, and money never comes easily.
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        Actually on reflection there may be a good reason for the instant “Flag as Inappropriate”. All I tried to do was to update the results. I shall try again.
        
        Now 26 responses (was 22). 25 of 26 support LL “doing something” about identity hijacking. One comment – presumably from the 1 in 26 who does not support this view – invited me to “P*** off d*go” (a anglicised corruption of the name “Diego”, itself a contraction of Santiago, our Spanish for Saint James, who was himself known for suffering insults in his life). It may be that my repetition of the word “d*go” invoked some software block.
        
        I am not bothered about being called the D word by someone who is anonymous to me – some people do those sorts of things.
      - Casio
        
        The Jackpot – 6 Numbers (Typical prize: £2 million)
        
        6 numbers are drawn at random from the set of integers between 1 and 49, which means there are
        
        49C6 = 49!/6!(49-6)!
        
        combinations of numbers (the draw order doesn’t matter). The means that the jackpot chance is 1 in 13,983,816 or approximately 1 in 14 million.
        
        5 Numbers + Bonus Number (Typical prize: £100,000)
        
        You are still matching 6 numbers from the 1 to 49 set as above, but you can now do it in 6 different ways (by dropping each of the main numbers in turn), therefore the chance is 1 in 13,983,816/6, which works out as 1 in 2,330,636.
        
        5 Numbers (Typical prize: £1,500)
        
        This is 42 times more likely than getting 5 numbers + the bonus number because, after the first six balls are drawn, there are 43 balls left and you can match 42 of these 43 balls without matching the bonus number. Therefore the chance is 1 in 2,330,636/42, which evaluates to 1 in 55,491.33333.
        
        4 Numbers (Typical prize: £65)
        
        Firstly, let’s take the case of the first 4 of your numbers matching and the last 2 not matching. In this single case (where each set of chances relies on the previous event occurring):
        
        Chance that your 1st number matches a winning number is 1 in 49/6.
        
        Chance that your 2nd number matches a winning number is 1 in 48/5.
        
        Chance that your 3rd number matches a winning number is 1 in 47/4.
        
        Chance that your 4th number matches a winning number is 1 in 46/3.
        
        Chance that your 5th number doesn’t match a winning number is 1 in 45/(45-2) (because there are still 2 unmatched winning numbers).
        
        Chance that your 6th number doesn’t match a winning number is 1 in 44/(44-2) (yes, still 2 unmatched winning numbers).
        
        Now you need to accumulate all those chances by multiplying them together:
        
        1 in (49/6)*(48/5)*(47/4)*(46/3)*(45/43)*(44/42) which is 1 in 15486.953. This is the chance for that single case occurring, but there are 15 combinations of matching 4 from 6 [6!/(4!(6-4)!)], so you divide the answer by 15 to get 1 in 15486.953/15 or about 1 in 1032.4.
        
        3 Numbers (Constant prize: £10)
        
        Follow exactly the same scheme as the 4 match above to get these figures:
        
        1 in (49/6)*(48/5)*(47/4)*(46/43)*(45/42)*(44/41) (which is 1 in 1133.119) for a single case. There are 20 combinations of 3 from 6 (6!/(3!(6-3)!), so the chance of a 3 match is 1 in 1133.119/20 or 1 in 56.7.
        
        The chance of you winning any of the above prizes is approximately 54 to 1 – it is reckoned an average of one million people per draw will win a prize.
        
        Now it turns out that the number of prizes which could be won if all combinations of the 13,983,816 tickets were bought are:
        
        Jackpot 1 1 in 13,983,816
        5+bonus 6 1 in 2,330,636
        5-match 252 1 in 55,491.33
        4-match 13,545 1 in 1,032.40
        3-match 246,820 1 in 56.66
        
        Total 260,624 1 in 53.66
    - Alan Giles
      
      I will probably get flagged for saying this, but I sometimes wonder if Mark F is losing interest in his job.
      
      I like Mark, his writings prove his heart is in the right place. I wasn’t so keen on the opinions, ambitions and writing of the previous editor Alex Smith, but he would certainly not have allowed some of the scabrous rubbish posted by one poster in particular, to have continued. He would have put them in pre-moderation, and if that failed would have stopped them posting.
      
      By the same token I don’t think he would have removed postings like yours, giving an update.
      
      As it is, LL is getting as forlorn as some of those Yahoo Groups, which are never moderated or even looked at by their founders – the last “on topic” post having been made 5 years ago, but regular daily postings advertising Viagra and smutty dating sites. The other day another poster (not a regular) managed to sneak in a link to an advertising site for electronic products. There was no message, just the URL, and it had nothing even vaguely to do with the thread in question. It might still be there.
      
      I wonder, does Mark ever even LOOK at the posts, and if so, why does he not at least comment on some of the more over the top postings (in addition to my well known “insanity” and being a “pedophile” (sic), I have also accused Brown and Purnell of “being murderers” – well, that is, if you believe all you read. The anonymous writer of this bile even said he was going to the police about “my interest in young girls” (news to me at my time of life!).
      
      I know some will say that this is freedom of speech, but as Blair and his pals forever reminded us we have rights and responsibilities: it is to my mind, akin to sending anonymous letters (a criminal offence) to write under an indeterminate screen name accusing people of very serious criminal activities (a couple of people have been accused of being “on drugs”).
      
      I think I will have to start calling myself “The Green Pamphlet” and make hideous accusations against others . But why would I want to?. I would be quite willing to make the remarks I do make against certain hypocritical politicians of all parties to their face, because I believe them to be true. I have always been disgusted by dishonesty in public life. The fact I mentioned Dawn Butler as a woman who claimed for a second home allowance even though she lived and worked within 30 minutes of Westminster (at BOTH addresses) was used by the vexacious poster as “proof” of my racism. He conveniently forgot that I lambasted Tony McNulty (another London MP) for similar shabby behaviour. It was also proof of my “sexism”, though the last time I looked McNulty was male.
      
      A Conservative MP, Andrew Rossindell also did, and still does, “a McNulty”. Frequent mention of this is made in the local newspaper. He has, perhaps, taken Cameron’s advice about “returning to the childhood room” too literally.
      
      I think the expenses scandal proved that politicians were unreliable and greedy regardless of party. If every cloud has a silver lining the one in this case is that hopefully the public will look at the character of their honourable member more carefully in future. Perhaps they already are, which explains the hung parliament scenario, which I suspect will continue.
      
      But yesterday we appear to have lost two posters. We have already lost Jo (Hazico) and other names seem to have vanished who offered interesting life experiences to back up their posts. I very seriously thought of going myself a few weeks ago, and did for about 10 days (an extreme boredom with ‘Partridge’ “jokes” and being reminded by the colourful publication that I was “an old man”. I need no reminders – my arthritis does that every day. Now, it seems, I am a dirty old man. I don’t intend giving our anonymous letter-writer the satisfaction of driving me away. I regard these filthy posts as funny (in a sick way), but I am astonished that Mark would rather lose posters, who have a rich and varied life experience, rather than bring to book somebody who appears to live in a fantasy world and seems to have little practical experience, and an absolute disregard for the laws of libel or even basic good manners.
      
      Don’t be disheartened, Jaime. We might not agree on political matters, but I think your survey is an excellent idea and shows real iniative and a desire to make the board serious. Mark needs to appreciate that if LL is to be a window on the Labour world, sometimes that window needs cleaning.
      - derek
        
        Good post @Alan and great to know your still around and your quite correct about Jaime, he really does add value to all the discussions. World piep band championships today, Glasgow green, the boys are on at 15:19 March, Strathsprey and Reel, this year, although grade ones do both, over 240 bands all competing from all over the globe, the boys just returned from Quimper, France a week ago and the Britons have a few bands out today.The march past is a glorious sight and sound to behold, thousands of pipers and drummers given it big licks on Hi’land Lady really raises the hair on the back of your neck.P.S. trumpet going well and A level passes in Higher music achieved.
      - derek
        
        Excuse me! should be “Hi’land Laddie”
      - Alan Giles
        
        All the best to the lads for this afternoon, Derek, and I am glad the trumpet is going well. Another recommendation is Kenny Wheeler, a Canadian who has been resident in Britain since 1952 and is still playing today at the age of 86!!!. Had I known that was possible, I would have looked after myself better.
        
        I have just heard a magnificent CD he made last year (2nd Sept 2011) called “The Long Waiting”. It can be found on Cam Jazz CAMJ 7848-2, and is inspirational. Your son will want to be a writer and arranger as well if he hears this beautiful music. But I must be careful – if I show too much interest, the Sordid Booker will conclude I have an unhealthy interest in lads as well as young girls
Losange

Can I ask Kate Green, authoress of this article, what she thinks of ThePurpleBooker’s many bizarre and insulting comments below? Personally I’m sick of all of this nonsense and won’t be bothering to comment on LabourList again. Whether my opinions are right or wrong, good or bad, they are sincere and as long as they are not incendiary should be available on a public forum like this for people to take for what they are: my personal views. On this and several other threads comments I have made have been flagged I believe for the most part by the character called ThePurpleBooker, since such flagging only seems to happen on threads in which I have disagreed with him/her on something, usually Labour’s past, present and future attitude to welfare and poverty. I am not prepared to have my right to free speech censored or curtailed by a person so obviously disturbed and so I won’t be commenting on this site again. While I don’t mind playing hard-ball with people or suffering knockabout in my opinion ThePurpleBooker has single-handedly turned this site into a virtual asylum and I draw the line at arguing with or suffering abuse from individuals exhibiting obvious psychological problems. I am not a psychiatrist but genuinely believe that ThePurpleBooker, whether he/she is an internet troll or a person with serious issues, definitely needs some kind of counselling or similar professional help or therapy beyond my ability to arrange.

So, goodbye all.

I’ve had enough of this insanity.

I won’t be darkening your door again.

* No doubt this comment will end up erased in short order like so many of my others. *
- PeterBarnard
  
  That’s a shame, Losange. I, for one, have appreciated your comments.
  - Alan Giles
    
    I’ll miss you too Losange. I gave up for a week or two because I am sick of this stand-up comic as well, but I will not give somebody so clearly irrational to beat me – amongst other things he has accused me of being a “paedophile” this morning. The fact that he cowers behind an indeterminate screen name (or names) while he spills out his contemptuous bile says all you need to know about him.
    
    But come back.
- Leeden
  
  I’m out of here to for the same reason. I have only made a few posts, but this guy is always dissin you and you get afraid of saying anything in case he takes it the wrong way.
  
  What he has been putting down is out of order. Does he work for Labourlist, because some of what he accuses ppl of would be taken down from a lot of sites and he would be on a warning. If he kept doing it he wd get banned. How come he gets away with it?
  - Alan Giles
    
    Don’t let him win, by walking away. That is what he wants. As an “insane pedophile” (being a journlaist he of course doesn’t know it is spelt “paedophile”, a man who “promotes benefit fraud” – according to the anonymous one, I know only too well how annoying he is, but he is just a sick joke.
    
    I always think of him as the William Joyce of LL, who as he hit the sauce harder, got more and more beligerant, insulting…….and well, grotesque.
    
    Apropos your second paragraph, you might say that, I couldn’t possibly comment (because he would probably have my commented edited out)
- Brumanuensis
  
  I know, as an inveterate arguer with PurpleBooker, that this will seem very rich, indeed hypocritical, but if he upsets you then I suggest ignoring him. I reply because I enjoy arguments, even ill-tempered ones.
  - Alan Giles
    
    With all due respect Brumanuensis, you know how he virtually attacks everybody (I am apparently a “pedophile” (sic) ).
    
    I think “Leeden” has a valid point. Why doesn’t Mark do something to stop his abuse. It is one thing calling somebody (not me) “a silly old man in nappies”, but to suggest you are engaged in serious criminal activities, is another.
    
    He might have a sick depraved mind, but LL is not here as therapy for him. It looks as if two posters today have walked away thanks to his antics
    - Brumanuensis
      
      I understand what you’re saying Alan and I think the abuse he’s levelled at you is appalling. He’s also attempted to impersonate me – albeit then deleting the post in question – and has variously called me an ‘idiot’, ‘liar’ and an acolyte of Militant.
      
      In short, I have no love for the man. However I’m not sure what Mark can do under the circumstances, as you know PurpleBooker has changed his name in the past and he may come back under another guise. I have suspicions that ‘Brendan Howell’ is an alter-ego of his. So for the moment, ignoring him is the best defence and if he goes over-board, flag his posts so they don’t clutter up the thread.
      - Alan Giles
        
        Thanks Brumanuensis. I’d just deal with one point that PB made while he was reading the charges out, and that was I didn’t object to others using a pseudonym, he mentioned yourself and “treborc” in particular.
        
        Well, I can fully understand for professional reasons some people wish to preserve some anonimity, however, you and others do not use this as an excuse to write incredible allegations. “Treborc” is forthright in his views (and has good reason to be in my view) but many of us know his name is Robert, so he is not so anonymous in that regard.
        
        I rather suspect PB uses names other than that and “Labour Right Toughie”.
        
        I must admit I was quite shocked when I read that particular message this morning, but I felt it important it stayed on the site, since I feel it gives a good insight into his mind.
        
        All I know is that some years ago the Today programme on Radio 4 had it’s own messageboard, and there was a PB figure on there named “Nicky Wilson”. It was at the time of the Iraq war, and anybody, regardless of political persuasion, who didn’t share NWs very pro-war views, was accused of being a “Sadam lover” and (funnily enough) “a communist”. Even right wing Tories with reservations about the war got tarred with the same brush. After several oubursts he or she was pre-moderated and messages only appeared if and when they did not make wild allegations. Finally, because s/he couldn’t “go live” so to speak they just went away.
        
        I once asked PB if in fact he was “Nicky Wilson” because the tone was so similar, the automatic assumption that anybody anti-war had to be mentally ill or a dangerous extremist.
        
        Rather like PB, N Wilson sometimes changed various details of his life to suit his stance (during the anti-war marches for example NW made several references to living in a flat in Westminster, overlooking the demonstration, a few weeks later s/he claimed to have lived for many years in an entirely different area of London). I always remember my old grandad saying that “liars need to have good memories”, and suffice it to say, I have noticed one or two discrepancies in PBs biography. I am sure I am not the only one.
      - PeterBarnard
        
        Indeed, AG, “liars do need to have good memories.”
      - Brumanuensis
        
        PurpleBooker briefly included his real name in his profile, but I have forgotten it now. I believe he is a young man who lives in south London and he may even have had a role in young Labour politics at one time. I make no firm commitments, because I can’t exactly recall the facts.
        
        I do not use my own name on this website, because I want to remain discreet, as I don’t regularly talk about politics with most of my friends and I would prefer that employers did not have ready access to my political opinions. I understand a condition of this anonymity is not making scurrilous allegations about others, as you say. I have accused PurpleBooker of certain behaviours and have called him ‘an idiot’, but always in response to offences of his own and actions of his own. I’m not a saint, but I don’t believe it’s right to go round saying the sort of things he says.
        
        I’ve never been shocked by PurpleBooker’s comments towards me, but then again he’s never said anything as unpleasant towards me as he has towards you. That said, I dislike routinely being called a ‘liar’.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        Most of the people in Young Labour are lefties, mate. Interestingly I live in Eltham, Brumanuensis.
        If you are being dishonest about my position regarding a candidate and calling me thick then I think that is just plain hypocrisy.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        Eltham then. I stand partially corrected.
        
        Could you, with appropriate quotations, set out where I have been ‘dishonest’ about your position regarding a candidate?
      - derek
        
        LoL! my learned friend!
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        You claimed that my position as to Jess Asato was purely to do with the fact I had friends in the party who know and then you sort to goad me on that point whereas you knew full well there are other reasons why I supported her and tried to make it out as if I did. You were hypocritical by raging at me for insulting others when you did exactly the same. All I did was really point out flaws in your argument, in trying to see why you really support the candidates that you did. Judging by your ‘soft left’ tendency (in other words ‘party populist’) I fear it is purely because of affiliation with certain trade unions. You also attacked for me ahving information regarding certain union bosses who aren’t party members.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        No. I said I was basing my preference for Jo Rust on her CV – or what we knew of it. You scoffed at this obviously absurd idea, which was why I suggested Asato’s Progress membetship was decisive. The rest of your post is just paranoia, as I am not a member of a politically-affiliated trade union. Nor was I goading you. Your definition of soft left is so odd that I now see why you think Kinnock was a right-winger.
      - ThePurpleBooker
        
        You don’t kno what soft left means, clearly by your post. You goaded me for support of Asato, I scoffed at the idea you can only base it on her CV. You implied I was relying on my ‘friends’. So you were dishonest and your denial of it is shocking. I happen to be a member of Unite and Community Union, and to be quite honest I am disgusted at what McCluskey has been doing behind the scenes.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        Given that you seem to see anyone to the left of Alan Milburn as a Trot – ironic in a way given Milburn was a Trot at one time – I’m not going to accept your view of what soft left means, on trust. Define it. I note you never quote me when you make allegations. Evidence or retract, please.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        I will not be commenting on your posts on this thread henceforth. This ‘discussion’ has dragged on long enough.
  - John Dore
    
    Good point well made.
    - ThePurpleBooker
      
      What is shocking is the abuse and the hypocrisy that all those on the left have shown. All of them, in particular Alan Giles, have indulged in rudeness and rank hypocrisy. I am glad that Labour List will no longer have their comments.
      - Alan Giles
        
        A pity that your filthy outpourings still appear. Your mind is like a cesspit. What makes it worse is that you make libellous comments and are too scared to put your name to them.
        
        I called you a pig. I was wrong. You are a worm
      - John Dore
        
        Nice.
      - Alan Giles
        
        Whereas, if some anonymous creep had crawled out of the gutter and accused you of paedophillia, or some other criminal offence of a disgusting nature, you would have said nothing at all?
        
        “The Purple Booker” is in a very similar situation to the low-life who send anonymous letters through the post. If they make a specific and unfounded allegation of a very serious criminal offence, the recipient would be entitled to go to the police, and the writer, if and when discovered, would lay themselves open to criminal charges. It would be for the magistrates to decide what punishment or treatment was necessary.
        
        It is clear that PB has personality problems, but that particular post was beneath contempt, and if he had any sense of shame or decency he would apologise for it.
  - Simon
    
    I’m sorry Losange has pulled the plug but I think I understand his point. I don’t think the gentleman was complaining about personal rudeness or impoliteness shown towards him but more about having his posts flagged so that they disappear, never to be seen again, at the whim of ThePurpleBooker. What point is there having a public forum when biased censorship goes on in such a way, wholesale? It is impossible to have any kind of debate or argument, whether it be cordial or hostile, if your voice gets stifled and no one gets the chance to hear what you you have to say.
    
    What ThePurpleBooker has been doing on this thread amounts to bullying.
    - Brumanuensis
      
      I agree it’s unacceptable, but we must be careful when making accusations that we are absolutely sure of our facts. I’m confident PurpleBooker has being doing what you say he’s done, because he’s done it to me at times. If you wish to complain to Mark, I’ll happily act as a witness on your behalf, but we mustn’t rush to over-hasty action that could make things worse.
      
      I feel sorry for PurpleBooker. He’s not a ‘troll’. He’s sincere, but he expresses himself intemperately and incontinently. If he could learn not to think that people disagreeing with him were fools and knaves, he might be an interesting contributor. For the moment, I advise ignoring him as the best defence.
    - ThePurpleBooker
      
      This is extremely rich Simon. You do not have any facts but you use abuse.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        *Ring* *Ring*
        
        ‘Hello, Kettle speaking’
        
        ‘Hello, this is Pot’
        
        ‘Oh, hello Pot. How are you?’
        
        ‘Yes, fine thanks. I was just ringing to call you black’
        
        ‘But, hold on, you’re also…’
      - Simon
        
        Do you deny that you have been flagging innocent comments which express points of view that are different from or critical of yours so that people are denied the opportunity to acquaint themselves with all sides of the argument? Before you answer I am willing to bet that Mark Ferguson can retrieve the identity of people who have flagged comments from his database. With that in mind let’s see you deny what you’ve been up to and get proven a liar. Go on. I dare you.
Brumanuensis

PurpleBooker – ‘It does not penalise people with domestic violence at all! That is a lie!’

You still haven’t explained where in your scheme those classified in the Emergency and Band 1 categories of – as an example – the Wolverhampton Council guidelines, would fit in with your contribution based system. Where are they in relation to the example of your working single mother? If you can explain that to me, I’ll withdraw the suggestion. At the moment you are offering heat, but not light.

Additionally, given that you weren’t aware of the Wolverhampton guidelines until I brought them to your attention as example of cases where councils were using factors other than pure ‘need’ in making their decisions, I find your embrace of them a bit bizarre. You’ve gone from claiming that they didn’t exist, to asserting that this is proof of their success. The Wolverhampton guidelines operate on lower tiers of eligibility and are largely linked with local residence, not a broad definition of ‘contribution’. I also have doubts as to the suitability of comparing them with Newham’s guidelines, given that Newham operates a rather different set of criteria, from what I gather.

In short, explain where those currently in the emergency and band 1 eligibility criteria – which I have already linked to – would fit in your scheme, in relation to other eligible persons. Please.
- ThePurpleBooker
  
  Seen as the working mother works she will be prioritised. You would not prioritise her. Fact is the principle of rewarding those who work hard and do the right thing in social housing allocations has been adopted by Newham and Wolverhampton, both have been very successful. You have been clutching at straws. I said that it did not exist countrywide and you accepted that. I think you’ve crash landed there, mate.
  This will reward hard-working people, valued members of our communities and those who put into the system. There are people who are needy for example from domestic violence, have a disability but those who can work and refuse to work but get a council home will be incentivised to work or give back to the community. Even Diane Abbott supports the policy, which is party policy.
  Not only are you making comments which are ridiculous but you are all stats and no values. It is very simple and has worked successfully and you need to stop making up untrue comments.
  - Alan Giles
    
    Talking of “making up untrue comments”, do you intend to apologise to me for your disgusting assertion yesterday I was a “pedophile” (you mean “paedophile” of course but didn’t know how to spell it)
    
    Interestingly when you click on the “Purple Booker” avatar now it says that page can’t be found, so I wonder what mischief you are going to get up to now?
  - Simon
    
    How many hours a week do you have to work in order to be considered “hard working”? If you do, say, 38 hours of paid work a week I suppose that would be “hard working”? But what about 30 hours a week? Or 20 hours a week? Is that “hard working”? I mean the DWP now considers anything over 16 hours a week to be a “full time job”? Would somebody working 20 hours a week have to do another 18 hours voluntary unpaid work in order to be considered “hard working”? And what about the people who don’t qualify for the “hard working” tag? What are they? Despicable slacker families that can be thrown to the dogs? You remind me of a dog chasing its own tail. A pitiful thing to witness to be sure.
    
    If I were you I’d stick to deleting other people’s comments and spare us yours.
    
    Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
    - jaime taurosangastre candelas
      
      “Hard Working” – is that a measure of productivity per hour or quantity of hours nominally working? The latter is a nonsense measurement.
      
      I’ve never been much impressed with inputs as a metric, it should be results or outputs that are thought important.
      - Simon
        
        I kind of got that.
        
        But what we’re talking about here is not a tradesman undertaking a finite costed job of work for a fee but measurement of a human being’s worth as far as the allocation of affordable housing goes: which is different because the people under consideration probably will not have full or any control over their personal circumstances when scrutinized.
        
        What I’m really curious about is that if you can get “points”, say, towards qualifying for a council tenancy by being “hard working” (whatever that is) how “hard working” do you have to be in order to garner such a reward? A few simple thought experiments demonstrate the problem. For example if two men are both working x hours per week doing the same job for the same wage and one has an artificial leg is the one-legged worker more “hard working” than the able-bodied worker because of the mobility difficulties he has to overcome on a daily basis? From another perspective would the same one-legged worker be more or less “hard working” than an able-bodied worker doing the same job for the same wages who slaves for 40 hours a week and works as much overtime as he can get? And so on ad infinitum. The combinations
        and permutations are endless and ridiculous in a majority of cases when it comes to determining worthiness. I envisage all sorts of difficulties for any government stupid enough to press ahead with such a nebulous and silly idea because whenever anybody tries to quantify something as complex and qualitative as human worth you end up arbitrarily categorising people, creating cut off points and similar, and having to make ridiculous trade-offs when comparing one person’s circumstances with another’s.
        
        Would such a policy be a one-way affair where the tenancy, once one, lasts forever without reassessment? Suppose that some idealised “hard working” family is awarded a council tenancy and somehow or other “goes to the bad”. What happens then? For example if a “hard working” family all end up somehow or other out of work and living on benefits long-term, should they possibly be evicted from their council house onto the street and the house reallocated to someone considered more “hard working” at any point in time?
        
        The whole thing really is too silly to bother with further.
        
        It amused me to see the Clown Princess Diane Abbot’s name mentioned. Not somebody I would want endorsing anything that I was involved with given her past form.
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        Simon,
        
        you signpost toward a huge can that will probably be full of the worms. You are right, in principle, as I believe I am, in principle, but the practice may have results that un-nerve both of us.
        
        I got myself into a lot of “trouble”, or more accurately “opprobrium” on LL about a year ago with an observation that a mixed private / public ex-Council Estate close to where I live showed examples of families who drew enormous advantage from the “system” (they do very well, and pay only a very low rent, whereas other families were crammed into much poorer private rented accommodation). I thought it was a reasonable point to make, but so many others completely hated the thought of asking / requiring those families to leave in order to vacate space for mere deserving cases. Perhaps my mistake was in assuming that council housing was an emergency stop-gap, and not as most others appeared to view it, a way of life (and indeed, for life, irrespective of any changed circumstances since initial occupation).
      - Brumanuensis
        
        If problems exist with the private rental sector – and they do – then they should be dealt with on their own, not by penalising users of social housing who happen to have done well. That’s not aspirational. After all, Nye Bevan wanted mixed communities in social housing, not to make it exclusively a refuge for the poor and desperate.
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        Well, I can certainly agree with your first clause about sorting out any problems in the private rental sector.
        
        But, on the matter of provision of social housing, where does it end? For any family above the average income, what is the case to keep subsidising their housing over an exactly equivalent family in the next street***, potentially for many decades?
        
        In addition to being a home, the council house is also an asset owned by the council and should be used to help meet the council’s duty to house people in their time of need.
        
        *** I suppose that in theory, you could have two exactly equivalent families living next door to each other in a mirror image semi-detached house, one is a council house, the other an ex-council house and now privately owned. Stretching there possibility even further – I stress this is theoretical – the privately owned house could be rented out to a family whose rent is paid by the council!
      - Brumanuensis
        
        I think it’s best to treat social housing as a public asset – and one that pays for itself – rather than just another ordinary form of welfare. The real problem is lack of supply, which forces prioritisation decisions that make it harder to build popular support for more investment for housing. Apologies for the brevity. I would say more, but I’m posting from my phone, so I have to leave it there.
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        I don’t think council housing at all pays for itself when you have councils paying private sector rents at inflated prices, and quite well off families occupying council houses for decades at vastly subsidised rents.
        
        Why on earth do you think so? It is a huge money pit if you let well off families stay in council houses and pay private rents for the poor.
        
        There is no rule on God’s earth that says that anyone has a right to council housing, especially if they are well off. No, get your own house, either rented or bought, like most other people.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        If you factor in councils paying private rental costs, then no. In itself, social housing will over a longer period pay back its costs, on average.
      - Daniel Speight
        
        I do not think the Attlee government saw council housing as housing for the destitute. I’m pretty sure you will find that they saw it as an alternative to private landlords, in particular to inner city slum landlords. In a way it was a reward to those who had gone off to fight in the WW2.
        
        The idea that everyone should own their home is a far more recent, and a rather middle-class, aspiration more suitable for ‘doctors and lawyers and such’. (Paraphrasing a Waylong and Willie song.)
      - Simon
        
        This is true of all political parties up until Thatcher. In the Conservative Prime Minister Macmillan built more council housing than any other leader.
        
        Selling council housing off half-price to its tenants (who often then moved out as soon as possible and resold their home full price to someone else) while at the same time not building more similarly affordable homes and encouraging a housing bubble when cheap money was available to all has got our country into its current dire state as far as housing goes.
        
        The days of cheap money are gone and we’re on our way back to the bad old days thanks to New Labour and the modern Tory parties.
        
        Council housing was supposed to be good quality permanent affordable rented housing for people on low to average wages which offered secure tenancies to its occupants with the houses managed by local authorities and kept in good sates of repair by these public institutions.
        
        The idea was to give as many people as possible, hard working or not, a home that they could afford and not evicted from at the whim of their landlord freeing them from worries about abuses by private landlords as far as their security went.
        
        It is a shame the modern Labour party is more interested in gimmicks than good works, e.g., rationing social housing differently rather than building enough new social housing in order to reduce the need for such rationing.
        
        I didn’t expect much from Ed Miliband and he hasn’t disappointed me.
  - Brumanuensis
    
    So victims of domestic violence – i.e people often at risk of being killed by their partners – less important than people in a difficult but non-lethal position. Ok. I may be ‘all stats and no values’, but if those are your values, I hope you are never placed in a position of power. The rest of your post is just repetition.
Daniel Speight

Just looking at the morality of the welfare state, isn’t it down to those of us who claim to be social democrats to siphon profits from the capitalist system to those most in need? This has nothing to do with contributory or non-contributory. It’s hard to see that those that cannot accept this have any place in a social democratic party.

What seems to have happened is that some in the party by trying to be ‘all things to all men’ have lost sight of a few basic ideas of what makes a social democratic party. The widening gap between the rich and the poor or income equality was something that should never have occurred under a Labour government with significant majorities. That we have some at the very top level of the party joining in the media attack on benefit recipients is unwelcome to say the least.

Those sponsored by the Sainsbury money look more like carpetbaggers from the post US civil war period every day. A very few times each decade Kinnock has something insightful to say, and his ‘getting the party back’ was one of them.
- Sid
  
  But didn’t you know that all poor people who “choose” to live handsomely on meagre benefits are the authors of their own misery by not being “responsible” enough to get themselves full-time work paying average earnings (£26,000 per annum upwards). Poor people are no longer “victims” of economic or social circumstances but “irresponsible” these days don’t you know?
Casio

After the abject failure of the Flexible New Deal and monstrous and catastrophic train crash called Employment Support Allowance and Work Capability Assessment I am amazed that the same rogues – James Purnell and Kitty Ussher to name but two – are being courted and listened to in regard to further welfare reforms considering the universal failure of their policy initiatives and ideas in the past. One good thing about the private sector is that villains and the incompetent are often excluded from behaving villainously and incompetently if they have much of a history of villainy and incompetence. If this were only true in politics nobody would give a second’s credence to anything people like Purnell and Ussher would have to say given their previous form.

Can I ask: What is the Labour Party’s attitude to ESA and WCA now?

And: What would a Labour government do about these pernicious disasters in the future if given the chance to form some kind of rag, tag and bobtail government at some point in the future?

Latest

News Seats and Selections
Falkirk selection process suspended by the party

The Labour Party have this afternoon suspended the selection process for Falkirk, after concerns were raised about “membership recruitment”. We understand that Ed Miliband was “keen to act swiftly” as the selection process was due to formally begin on Sunday. An officer of the party – yet to be confirmed – will investigate. A Labour spokesperson told us this afternoon: “We have suspended the start of the selection process of the Falkirk parliamentary seat. Concerns have been raised about membership [...]
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Comment Seats and Selections Unions
Working Class MPs – the end of a era?

By Paul Wheeler

It is interesting to see that the Labour Party is returning to the vexed issue of its parliamentary selection process. The changes may be well and good. But maybe we should be asking a bigger question – are we witnessing the end of working class representation in Parliament? When the Labour Party was first founded it was more simple. Then the explicit aim was to secure working class representation, and specifically organised labour, in Parliament. Inevitably it became more complicated [...]
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Local Government News
An absolutely classic Lib Dem bar chart

Earlier this week we brought you a decidedly dodgy bar chart from the Tories, but it seems that they’re not the only party in Camden adopting dubious use of bar charts. Step forward Camden Lib Dems, with this classic of the dodgy Lib Dem bar chart genre (courtesy of Theo Blackwell). Even by the pretty shoddy standards of the yellows, this is a corker: Update: Haringey Lib Dems might want to work on their bar charts maths too (via [...]
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Featured
Modern life is rubbish – We need to put Work and Home at the heart of everything we do

By Mark Ferguson

“Work and home is what One Nation is about – family life, how people live everyday life.” That’s what Jon Cruddas – the man who will in all likelihood write Labour’s next manifesto – told the Guardian the party’s policy review is focused on. And it sounds so simple – doesn’t it? Critics will say it’s too simplistic a definition (and they’d be right – I’m cherry picking here), but it’s also a brilliant example of the distance between most [...]
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News
Labour’s policy process explained

By Mark Ferguson

There’s an interesting interview in the Guardian with Labour’s policy chief Jon Cruddas this morning (of which more later), but the Guardian have also sketched out their take on the shape of the party policy review, noting – as I’ve done before – that it will report back in a series of stages. You can see a more sophisticated look at this in the piece Jon Cruddas and Angela Eagle wrote for us earlier this week. Here’s the Guardian’s take: [...]
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Falkirk selection process suspended by the party

Working Class MPs – the end of a era?

An absolutely classic Lib Dem bar chart

Modern life is rubbish – We need to put Work and Home at the heart of everything we do

Labour’s policy process explained

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