Welfare reform

I was struggling a bit to come up with one angle on welfare reform. I could have gone with any number of links to The Telegraph, The Guardian or the pointless and diverting campaign to get Iain Duncan Smith to live on £53 a week.
And then the Daily Mail did a typically vitriolic and obfuscatory job on their front page yesterday and my point became easy.

Sometimes, individual, extreme cases are used to make political points in the wider context of social policy by people who require 'evidence'.

But I would argue that Mick Philpott is no more typical of parents who claim child benefit than Abu Hamza is of Muslims.

Or Boris Johnston, David Cameron, Sir George Young, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Oliver Letwin and Zac Goldsmith are of men who went to Eton.

Major new report on household income published

Any long term readers of this blog will know I'm a big fan of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, an organisation focussing on poverty in the UK and publishing many high quality reports on related topics.

Well they've produced another very interesting piece of work, examining wages and how it relates to standards of living. What the new report does is look at how much money a family of four requires to maintain a Minimum  Income Standard (MIS) and predicts how forthcoming changes to tax credits will put more families under financial strain.

The research method involved talking to 21 focus groups and reveals some very interesting data concerning what are considered 'essentials' to modern life. To take a look at the full-text just click here and follow the links. There was also a debate on the Today Programme this morning and you can listen to the discussion from here.

It's well worth a look and listen.

The Welfare Reform Bill, pt 761...

I've been resisting the urge to mention the Welfare Reform Bill for a while. Partly because it's a long way from concluding but mostly because I'm having trouble understanding it all.
As I write this it has been defeated six times in the House of Lords, but this doesn't seem to be fazing MP's who have already said all the amendments will be overturned when it reaches the House of Commons. So the next parliamentary debate will be tomorrow and I promise to watch Newsnight in an attempt to understand it better.

In the meantime, here is Maria Miller, Work and Pensions minister, being interviewed about proposed changes to the CSA which was one of the proposals which the Lords has delayed.

Oh, one more thing. I watched the 1st episode of the series following the newly qualified Social Worker last night and thought it was captivating. If you watched I'd be curious to know what you thought of it.

Researching the Welfare State question.

Occasionally when you're given assignments and projects to write it happens to coincide with the issue in question being particularly in the public eye. The welfare state is just such a topic at the moment. Whether you're currently studying the welfare state or not, I would like to recommend a couple of things which may help with getting to grips with what can be a tricky concept.

The first is a programme about the future of the welfare state being broadcast on BBC2 this Thursday (27th October) at 9pm. It's presented by John Humphreys, one of our more combative political journalists so it should be interesting TV. You can find a preview of the show on the BBC website.

Whilst you could reference a TV programme in an assignment if you wished, I would recommend reading a few books as well! We have a good selection of e-books that cover different aspects of the welfare state, but one in particular is well suited to an assignment asking you to compare welfare systems of different countries. 'Welfare States and the Future (2005) by Kurian and Vivekanandan is a good starting point for such an undertaking, although do bear in mind that it was written before the coalition government came to power. Click here to access the e-book login screen.

Let me know if you'd like more information on anything to do with getting the best from the e-books or referencing everything from a TV programme to a telephone conversation - I recently had to find out how to reference a Facebook update so now I know for certain that anything is possible!

The Observer prints leaked letter on welfare reforms.

I blogged on Wednesday about the Shelter report warning of a projected rise in homelessness as a result of proposed changes in housing benefit. Well things have now got very interesting thanks to a leak from within the office of Eric Pickles, communities secretary. The letter is printed, in full, in today's Observer. The most worrying statistic is a projected 40,000 families losing their homes as a result of changes to welfare.

This whole story is building up into the most enormous row. I do wonder if this is going to be the policy that'll pull the coalition apart. What's worrying for the government is that major document leaks have usually been a very bad sign of disunity within departments.

Can't help but think this story is shaping up to be one of those turning points and I'd be amazed if this is the last time I mention it here.