I'm glad it's not just me me who sees Robinson as the "embedded" spinmeister.
Even when it's blatant (i.e. usually) that HMG has either feckdup or is lying, he always manages to make a final irrelevant comment on the opposition to take the heat off a little, along the lines of " ... [iso you can bet that Labour will be frantically checking their cupboards for skeletons too. ... Nick Robinson, BBC, The Palace of Westminster[/i", not actually accusing but just casting that bit of murk.

That's not really a fair comparison though, as many working people get benefits too. For example, a person with say 2 or 3 children who is working will not need to earn anywhere near £36,000 gross to have a net income more than the cap once you factor in other things like Child Benefit, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit etc

I agree with your general point BTW, just think that the figures are a bit misleading.

The benefit cap applies across the board not just to non-working families. Another point IDS rarely mentions.

An interesting move releated to the benefits cap is to do with how housing benefit is paid. Currently except in a few trial areas it goes direct to the landlord.

The government wants it to go to the tenant. The reason being they then get to take responsibility for their finances apparently. So far it has led to greater rent arrears in all the trial areas but I think the main point is that it is much harder to cap a benefit the government or council pays on your behalf than it is one the individual must pay themselves from one lump sum of benefit.

It's much easier to give less money to an individual than it is to break a tenancy agreement on behalf of the tenant!



I knew about it as my youngest son is Autistic and gets free travel to his school which is one hour away.

FFS. Maybe i'm chronically naive, but it never ceases to amaze me just how dreadful they are.

That is true and its a truth that the propaganda machine don't want you to realise as the target for the public ire is supposed to be the shirkers, those idle, lazy good-for-nothing, haven't worked in three generations (another lie for which they were reprimanded), benefits claimants who are earning the equivalent of £36k EASILY without actually having to get out of bed all day.

The claim was that in the test area 8000 people have moved from unemployment into work as a result of having their benefits capped at £500, the obvious implication being that when you strangle the benefits to these horrible shirking people then this and this alone is what gets them off their idle s to find a job that will pay them more than £500 a week net.

And then when the head of one of the councils in the test area mentions actual stats that show nothing of the sorts we are told that they are lies perpetrated by someone with an agenda against the coalition cuts and in any case if IDS thinks that it is so then it must be, no arguments.

And didn't Boy George recently state that you now have to wait a week before being able to sign back on?
So Vic Meldrew offers 2 weeks work to the recently signed off applicant.
He then has to support himself for a week with no dosh.
Then when signed on how many more weeks before he actually gets his first payment again?
Not worth a w@nk really is it?

They also never counted weekend work (civil servants were all Monday to Friday wallahs), so a semi-pro RL player could sign on Monday to Friday, play the weekend and pocket the match (hopefully winning) pay without penalty

rlhttps://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/chris-godfrey/benefits-welfare-statistics_b_3603923.htmlrl

OK so its a blog post on an internet news media site, its a personal opinion, but it raises some good points which most would recognise, mainly that the British public are led, with a ring through their noses, willingly by news reportage that is far from neutral, increasingly does not even report the truth or at the least will manipulate the truth to point the story in a different direction, and that the likes of the Daily Mail news reporting web site is at best hypocritical in its approach to females, (condescending doesn't actually describe their attitude enough).

rl1852 letters from disabled people worried about the bedroom tax delivered to Downing Streetrl

No doubt IDS will simply "beleive they are untrue" and magically, they will be

The poll was a stupid poll asking people to guess numbers about things which they will know next to nothing about.

The fact that the numbers were spectacularly wrong is all the fault of The Sun, The Mail and the Tories, obviously.

I'm just glad The Sin Bin is free from media sensationalism and bias.

These type of articles are just desperate. A narrow band of left wingers know that they are in a minority on issues such as welfare reform so they point to things like this and say 'the public are too dumb to understand', implying that they are right and the whole rest of the population is wrong. It really is see through.

You stole that quote from Ian Duncan Smith - he used those exact words on Monday when describing statistics that showed that his "Squeezing welfare gets people off their s and back to work" numbers were a figment of his imagination (he certainly didn't reference any official stats whereas the contradictory stats were referenced).

Keep swallowing the hype, The Sun is counting on you in 2015.

Unless they change their support again.

40 x 10 = £400 - his deductions, that we all pay tax and NI.

It's not half his wages at all, read what you are writing before posting.

Fair enough I'd miss read it and didn't realise it was an estimate.