I hate lies and liars. I love numbers and facts – To evaluate Welfare Reform look at the facts – SPeye Joe
I was speaking with a friend today who said “You had some fun taking the p*ss mercilessly out of Lord Freud yesterday.” He’s right I did but it is not a laughing matter as once you get over the shock of his appalling comments on people with disabilities that anger and calls for his sacking I argued late last night should be as much for his incompetence and performance as Welfare Minister.
Here is where the lies and deliberate lies come in and despite it being typical that MPs (and Lords) lie I still hate being lied to by those in government and regardless of political party. My anger over being lied to is heightened when those lies are easily disproved with a 2 minute google search on actual facts.
For example this coalition is fond of telling us – the lowly plebs, Joe Public, the electorate – that they (a) inherited an unsustainable mess from the last lot; and (b) they are sorting out the ‘burgeoning’ welfare state with their policies; and (c) especially the case with Housing Benefit for which I could source dozens of times when Freud, IDS, Steve Webb and McVey have said the Housing Benefit bill doubled under the last lot.
That is simply untrue and must be a known lie of itself as below are the facts taken from the DWP’s own figures AND it is also a blatant lie as it is an error of commission as this coalition fails to tell us what their performance was with Housing Benefit which as you can see is far worse than the ‘last lot.’
The last lot -v- She who must be obeyed
As the above shows in stark terms the Thatcher years saw Housing Benefit rise by more than SIX FOLD and is a much greater increase in the HB bill than the ‘last lot’ – in fact Thatcher’s HB record is over EIGHT TIMES AS BAD as the Blair/Brown record.
You can also deduce from the above that the Major administration until 1997 saw the HB bill rise from £5.095 billion per year to the £11.38 billion per year inherited by the first Blair government. Or in stark terms Major more than doubled the HB bill in 6 years and the ‘last lot’ did not double the bill in 13 years.
How about the claim that this coalition make they are cutting the ‘burgeoning’ welfare spend?
Again I could cite Freud, IDS et all saying as much on so many occasions. Yet let’s look at the facts, yes those pesky official numbers which THIS government released a month ago.
As you can clearly see all parts of the overall ‘welfare spend’ of welfare benefits and tax credits have risen 13% since the election of May 2010. This Tory-led coalition have not reduced the welfare spend at all either in overall terms or in real terms allowing for inflation. The welfare spend has increase in real terms and, if you will, ‘burgeoned’ even more.
Why us (Joe Public et al) believe IDS, Freud and the rest when they constantly say they have brought the ‘excesses of the last lot’ down and under control beggars belief. As I say above all MPs lie or at least are economical with the truth yet this coalition blatantly and knowingly lies and the public just sit back and believe it to be true!
Its that old adage of tell a lie often enough and people believe it to be fact or as Thomas Paine put it in the aptly named Common Sense:
“…a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
Read the rest of the article on SPeye Joe‘s blog.
Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
bringing you the action as it happens!
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
Here’s a story with a few more stats, albeit inconvenient ones for some
“EXCLUSIVE: Tories hit worst as 77 councillors defect to Ukip”
http://www.lgcplus.com/5075787.article?WT.tsrc=email&WT.mc_id=Newsletter33
I am not expecting that to get much exposure anywhere
The evil genius of the Tories was to spend far more of taxpayers’ money on welfare, while ensuring far less of it actually ended up in the hands of those who actually need it, instead siphoning it off to private companies who’d inevitably shift those profits out of the country untaxed. Then convince the country that it’s all the fault of the unemployed, sick, vulnerable and disabled.
The liars in the government rely on the gullibility of much of the electorate that either do not believe such “high-ranking! MPs would ever tell a fib or those who are too lazy to check the comments. Education is very necessary!