It's fucking awful, isn't it? Labour should make a big stand on this issue - it would win them votes. But since Ed Miliband is such a useless toad I half expect him to stay silent, or just make a peturbed face but fail to promise to overturn it if elected...

Labour should remove Miliband.

I completely agree. A balloon with a face drawn on it would make a more credible leader.

What is the justification for this?

For what, the DWP making benefit claimants wait 5 weeks? Or do you mean what is the justification for criticising Miliband?

I mean, why do they claim this is good legislation, because I can't think of how it helps anything.

This has not been announced as a policy decision - it's hidden in the small print of new benefit processing regulations - the Trades Union Congress was just smart enough to spot it. So the Government has so far given no explanation.

I'll tell you why they're doing it:

1. Making people wait 5 weeks (it takes 1-2 weeks normally at the moment) will probably yield a small financial saving because during those 5 weeks, at least a few of the claimants will find a new job and cancel their claim - or this is presumably what the DWP will hope.

2. There will be an additional saving in terms of the increase in suicide and hunger-related deaths this will cause. Dead people can't claim any Jobseeker's Allowance at all.

This is literally the outsourcing of welfare... to loan sharks.

"2. There will be an additional saving in terms of the increase in suicide and hunger-related deaths this will cause. Dead people can't claim any Jobseeker's Allowance at all."

That seems harsh and brutal. Is that your specific assessment of the UK government in this case or a general assessment? I know very little about the UK government, so I'm curious.

It is my specific assessment of the UK government. They literally do not give a shit whether poor people suffer or not. They have proved this on many occasions since coming to power in 2010.

It is also documented that the stress of waiting for benefits, in a system *designed* to belittle and frustrate the claimant, where the claimants are often in dire financial difficulty, leads directly to suicide for some people. This latest measure will directly cause deaths.

I would suggest that this does not bother Mr. Duncan Smith or his Tory colleagues because most of them literally do not care if poor people live or die. It is their ideology that if someone loses their job, that's their fault, and if they end up destitute and starve to death, that's their fault too.

Any significant delay in payables will give a massive injection of cash flow. It's not a 'savings' since the liability is still outstanding, but cash-wise it will help.

For a government I don't know how this would even matter. Unless their the national credit rating is a problem. I believe UK is AAA rating -- so I don't understand.

It would have to be a political and not a financial decision.

It is a political decision. They don't give a shit about the poor, the struggling, the downtrodden, and some of their supporters actively want to see poor people punished.

Five weeks is absolutely ridiculous for a class of people that are forced to live day-by-day, and even when they get a job and get off of social welfare plans, live paycheck-to-paycheck. If Detroit shutting off water for a few days got the UN's attention, this couldn't be all that far behind.

"Detroit shutting off water"

Whut? UK, US.. How long until we're all fleeing to China or something?

No no no. You are mis understanding the policy. It is all about incentivising people to work, and getting away from a benefits culture. The wait time is for those travelling to the UK, to stop benefits tourism.

China is fine if you are in the communist party, but is a very inefficient system, where the press is heavily monitored, and there is no free speech. Corruption saps wealth and that will be a big break on China and keep its GDP per capita way below the Western world.

"Benefits tourism"...

...Seems legit. /s

UK is becoming an American-style social darwinist island with massive youth unemployment, with the foreign policy street cred of Liechtenstein.

No, that is just not true. UK is one of the best places in the world to live. It is great, huge opportunity, free press, competitive relatively non corrupt government, fair courts. Putin where are you from?
If you are from Russia, you must take into account the media you read is written by the government, and you should try and look at outside media (if it is not blocked).

Your media has no credibility, neither does mine. I live in America. The entire media is corporate propaganda and regurgitates press releases from the State Department. There isn't a legitimate voice of dissent on any issue that matters either side of the Atlantic.

Our "free press" lied us into Iraq, and the people who lied us into are the Pulitzer Prize winners. ABC news showed footage of Gaza being destroyed and repeatedly lied and said it was Israel, with no public retraction. The new tendency is for news outlets to engage in native advertising, dressing up advertisements to look like news articles. There is a huge conflict of interest between the business and news sides of the corporate media. The corporate media never reports bad stories about their employers.

I have to disagree. It is true that (particularly in the US) everyone has an agenda, but by taking in various media, you can get a good balance of views, and are free to express your own views.
You should not undervalue this.
The UK, despite the headlines, has relatively low unemployment (including youth) and a good safety net for the more vulnerable in society.
The US is obviously a huge place, but from the parts i have seen has got a lot going for it. I was pleased to see things like Obamacare, as healthcare for everyone seems a nice basic right to have.

I agree that the recent Gaza incursions were very messy, and I think Israel is led by a very extreme government. Hamas is also very extreme, and so the war goes on.
Our media gave a relatively balanced view - we were aware of the killings in UN schools etc.
If Israel was a Russian or Chinese ally, then their media would not have even covered the conflict (but as it was, certainly the Russian media was all over it, to put the US in a bad light)

Also I do not think the US media lied to you over Iraq. The Bush Administration (and Tony Blair) lied to you over Iraq, and the media reported what they were told.
Bush/Blair had bad judgement, and an artificial simple view of the world.

The media had the most direct access to the information at hand via the Bush Administration and Tony Blair and the others involved. That they helped encourage them to continue the scheme is more than enough to warrant serious criticism. Blair and Bush don't have an artificial, simple view of the world, they have a dangerously capitalistic and corrupt view of it. They deserve to be tried and convicted for what they did and the media that helped perpetrate it should be held accountable.

There is no balance of views. The entirety of the media repeats the same nonsense about US conduct abroad. When we go to war they all use embedded reporters and openly cheerlead for war. There wasn't a single major news outlet that reported dissenting views on the Iraq war, and there isn't a single one now to dissents from the bs narrative being put forward on Ukraine, Syria, Libya, and everything else.

On economic issues, the business press POV is pushed to the exclusion of everything else. We have lengthy segments about how stocks are doing but virtually nothing about the bad conduct of business or how labor is doing. The business press (CNBC) openly mocked people who had their houses foreclosed on. 24/7 they attack the poor, the working class, the unemployed. The MSM lambasted the occupy wall street protests while fawning over even the smallest astroturfed tea party protest. That's part for the course.

"Also I do not think the US media lied to you over Iraq."

Judith Miller of the NYT published known con-artist Ahmed Chalabi's claims about WMDs in Iraq as fact.

The UK media was quite different from this. I know our laws around TV news reporting are quite strict on ensuring all views are given, and to reduce bias.
There were dissenting UK views on Iraq - the Daily Mirror for example, but the political parties over here were fairly united on the issue.
We get lots of analysis on foreign policy, and it is often critical.

That said we live in a difficult and dangerous world. It is easy to criticise, and I agree many mistakes have been made. However, religious extremism is in my view very wrong, and there are times we need to stand up for the free world.
I am much less cynical than you chaps. I have seen a fair bit of the World, and I would certainly not want to be an average citizen anywhere other than Europe, US, Canada, Japan, Australia, S Korea, or Japan (i.e. a free economy with democracy and free speech.... my list is probably not exhaustive, but you get the idea)

Putin, you quote one correspondent from one newspaper. Hardly fair to write off a nations media on that :)

" has relatively low unemployment (including youth) "

Your latest youth unemployment figure is 820,000 (over 17%). It's very telling that defenders of free markets think this is acceptable. People with good degrees can't find work. Your overall unemployment number was over 2 million. That's "low" for a free market economy, I guess.

"other than Europe, US, Canada, Japan, Australia, S Korea, or Japan"

Someone really loves Japan.

Well that does not necessarily mean all those 2 million want to find a job. You of course would not get a true number from the managed economies of China or Russia. And I certainly would not want to be unemployed outside of the West.... at least you can still eat 3 meals a day and have a place to live; in many places you would starve.
Putin, i think you need to take a fresh look at the world, and re consider some of the positives of the system we have.
Systems can and should be improved, and certainly the US has many problems; but imperfect as it is, it is still amongst the best systems operating in the world today.
Although I think the UK is better of course :)

Steephie, i was referring to the major democracies... which also happen to be the richest in terms of gdp per capita (ie how wealthy the average person is). It is not coincidence.

"I have seen a fair bit of the World, and I would certainly not want to be an average citizen anywhere other than Europe, US, Canada, Japan, "

Part of the reason is that those countries you just mentioned keep the rest of the world under their boot and spend a lot of time destroying it.

oh, i said it twice :) doh

"Well that does not necessarily mean all those 2 million want to find a job. "

In order to be considered unemployed you have to be actively looking for work. So yes, it does mean those 2 million want to find a job. The number of people not working is considerably higher than this number you consider low.

It's easy to insist on praising rich countries when you're doing your best to minimize the social problems they face.

putin, no no no. That is not true. It is not the West, that steal all the oil wealth from Russian citizens. Or like Iran, remove womens rights and stamp on any protests. Or like Saudi Arabia, dont even let women go outside on their own. Or like ISIS kill anyone that does not believe in their extreme version of a religion.

The media in the US will never be held accountable for anything. Legally, they can't even be. Check out Fox News vs Jane Akre.

It's the West that armed ISIS to begin with to destroy Syria. It's the West that destroyed Iraq allowing the ISIS to take over huge swaths of that country. Iraq used to be one of the leading lights of the Middle East. Wonderful human development indicators. A leader in women's education. Produced more doctors than anywhere else in the region. The West annihilated that country. Now it's being overrun by barbarous murderers. That blood is directly on the West's hands. No amount of spin can change that. Ditto Syria, ditto Libya, another country we destroyed. The UK led the charge on that one. Now the entirety of West Africa is a disaster. Mali used to be a model democracy in Africa. Now it's a military government infested with Islamists. Boko Haram is now a big problem rampaging throughout Nigeria and Cameroon. Weapons from the Libyan rebels we helped arm are everywhere now. What a disaster.

Our economic stangulation and arming of rebels in Sudan has led to a festering civil war and now that country we helped give birth to is in having a mini-genocide. Another victory for the wonderful rich countries.

And that's not even getting into our continued financial and military support for actual *neo-Nazis* in Ukraine who are massacring people in eastern Ukraine because they didn't go along with the violent coup that overthrew the *democratically elected government*.

Everything these rich countries touch turns to shit. It's beyond aggravating that people from rich countries brag about wonderful they are to live in while destroying the planet.

And my final point of the debate. It is not that I am not seeing problems with the Western World. It is that it is so much better than any other system mankind has ever run, and certainly much better than the dictator-led type governments, or bureacracy-led governments of much of the rest of the world.

The "free press" in the UK hacks into the phones of the families of dead girls and makes their parents think they're alive. The "free press" tabloids in the UK does nothing but harass people in order to post lewd pictures and salacious stories about them. The "free press" owned by the Murdoch empire had a media blackout on any story that criticized Murdoch for his disgraceful conduct.

and Putin, do you work for Russia Today? Your spin on all these things is very familiar.
Ok bye for now, have a nice evening.

No I'm just not a brainwashed slavish devotee of NATO. I defend countries that dare to stand up for themselves.

Enjoy your night.

Yes, the poor are being forced to use loan companies charging usurious interest rates. Where's the benefit for the government. Well, take a look at the list of donors to the Conservatives' election war chests. How many of those loan companies and their directors do you find there?
If it were taking place in Italy or Afghanistan, they would call it corruption.

KJII, if you think the US doesn't stamp out protests that question the values of our system of crony capitalism, you're not paying attention.

@ thomas dullan: Quite so.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-law-requires-welfare-recipients-to-submit-swea,36626/