I've long held the opinion that IDS regards the Victorian era described in A Christmas Carol and other Dicken's work as a blueprint for how he would like society to be.
The DWP is the ideal vehicle for him to achieve this dream

That's it, 2 years then it stops.

Got that data from the London Evening Standard you said you had?

Strange. I seem to recall being taught about "the poverty trap" in economics in the 1980's. The trap being that working can mean you are worse off, as you pay tax and NI etc on earnings, so people chose to stay on benefits. We'd had 5 years of Thatcher then, and I doubt it was a new concept anyway.

Its just disappointing that the masses swallow this claptrap from politicians without questioning it, or thinking for themselves.

So what do claimants live on?

Oh Christ, he doesn't have to care, he's part of a team running the country. They set out an agenda, and people either vote for it or not. At the last election the 3 main parties promised massive spending cuts, NHS privatisation and benefit reform among other things. Millions of people voted for these policies. If you weren't one of those, my commiserations but you took a stand. The problem is, with Rachel Reeves promising to be even tougher than the Tories the Conservatives are who you have to vote for otherwise these sanctions will be even more commonplace as Labour will surely get elected, then you'll be praying for the return of the "disgrace" that is IDS.

Frozen pizza, it seems to be the national dish judging by the chest freezers in supermarkets.

If you give me the link to your Twitter feed I should be able to find the figures you quoted if you're too busy, we wouldn't want people thinking you're just making stuff up.

Absolutely its always been an issue and the theory of working tax credit is a good one in handing back taxation to low paid to encourage them to work rather than just drawing benefits. In practice it can be abused by employee and employer alike, it can subsidise low pay for employers, it can encourage employers to advertise two 20 hour posts rather than one 40 hour full time post because its cheaper for them, its also commonplace in (for instance) the hotel industry (where my wife works) to have employees state that they must have more than 16 hours a week but definitely no more than "xxx" being the figure at which their tax credits drop - still doesn't make the theory of WTC a bad one though and as we've seen recently provides some good PR when the employment figures are released.

What is claptrap is statements based on the total benefits numbers which include in-work benefits (but they don't tell you that) and which are designed to outrage the party supporters into believing that there is a whole generation (or three generations, another Tory Party lie) consisting of "millions" (IDS's figure) of benefits claimants that have yet to be dealt with and thus justifying more and more stringent headline grabbing measures so that we are supposed to approve and applaud the fact that the terminally ill are being recommended for sanctions and return to work, sadly those sort of headlines work.

And sadly those headlines work because no-one ever questions them and sadly this must be pinned on the door of the Labour Party for every time IDS and his department of lies issue another statement like the one he has offered exclusively to the Daily Mail (I wonder why) today then the Labour Party should be demanding a breakdown or justification for the numbers that he uses and exposing those lies time and again until he learns to stop.

They aren't doing it though, but they will have to start soon.

SO they steal the frozen pizzas because they haven't got the money to buy them, how and where do they cook them because they will presumably have been evicted for non-payment or rent.

If we adopted the Norwegian model (considering that their unemplyment rate is 3.3%), would you also be happy paying Norwegian rates of tax and NI?

But nobody voted outright for him did they? I saw what Labour were doing to the old Incapacity Benefit through Atos. It was fair and asked non leading or yes/no questions. This joke of a government got hold of it and turned it into a farce. It wasn't Labour that came out and said they wanted to slash DLA by 20% (as Maria Miller admitted).

Believe me, I will never, ever pray for the return of the absolutely disgraceful Iain Disregards Statistics as long as I have a hole in me bum.

I've no idea how they obtain them, perhaps the first thing you should look up, sorry, second thing after the LES unemployment article you posted on what I can only imagine is the worlds longest Twitter feed, is how many people stay unemployed for longer than the 2 years.
Oh God no, I've lived there. 36% starting rate of income tax, 2 rates of VAT that make ours seem generous, which means it's cheaper to get on a ferry to Sweden to buy meat, not booze or fags, meat. It's the side people don't hear about when they demand our country be more like those wonderful Scandinavians because they read how great it is in the Observer Travel Guide or whatever it's called.

Now, back to those employment figures you [delmade up[/del are having trouble locating.

His constituents did.

Yes, unscrupulously fair, just as this nurse, who quit in 2009 says. Oh, sorry, wrong article, still it makes good reading.

Labour voter by perchance!

Just read the comments from the article that JC posted this morning from the DM. It seems that some staunch Tories are even sickened by this man and what he is doing. When you have commentators from the Mail bemoaning IDS and his ideology, tells me everything I need to know.