What people read

I have two blogs.

On Really Useful Knowledge I blog about educational things – pedagogy, philosophy of teaching and learning, stuff like that. On this blog one post is the runaway winner in terms of all time views. It could be about why we learn the humanities, the politics of education, the connections between history and geography, the place of elearning, the difference between deep and surface learning, media power, different tutorial techniques and their effects. It could be about any of these things, but it is not. It's about sodding word count.

On A Comfortable Place I blog about politics, disability, religion, civil liberties, driving, film, the NHS, Tottenham Hotspur and a whole variety of other things. I've done several posts lately on how Iain Duncan Smith's poisonous policies are hurting the most vulnerable people in our society. I am liberal, politically committed, religious, thoughtful, and I like to think my blog reflects this. So which is the most read post of all time on this blog? Well, for a while, it was “Spartacus – what next?” about how to handle the afore mentioned hypocrite and his policies. I was quite pleased about that – not about the policies, which I am very sad that my party supports, but about having made some sort of meaningful contribution to the debate. But it has been overtaken by the slow steady march of a consumerist rant about cavity wall insulation, my experiences when a certain company came to do mine, and my exhortation to my readers not to use that company. O tempora.

Benefits and taxes

Fairness and effectiveness are often at odds in the distribution of benefits. There is always a tension between giving away too much and too little. If benefits are means tested, there will always be some people who desperately need them but don't claim them for a variety of reasons including the complexity of the process and the stigma. If you make a benefit universal, there is a lot less stigma attached, and it tends to be less complex, and so take up rises. Child benefit, for instance, in its various guises, has had near 100% take up, thereby insuring that it goes to everyone who really needs it, because of universal availability. The problem with that is that a good deal of our taxes then goes to supporting people who don't need the support.

You can deal with the problem to a certain extent by making benefits taxable. If you do that, you may need to increase the benefit to take into account the effect on lower earning tax paying households. It can be done, but the politics of turning a non-taxed benefit into a taxed one are fraught.

I wonder if another way of turning the circle into something like a square might be to apply a variable upper rate of tax. As it stands, in 2012-13 taxable income between £34371 and £150,000 is taxed at 40% and above £150,000 at 50%. Increasing those taxes across the board to recognise the benefits paid to high earners is generally seen as unpalatable, because it disincentivises earning and over-incentivises tax avoidance behaviour. Whether you agree with these or not (I don't agree with the first, I do agree with the second to an extent), they are so widely accepted on both the conservative and what passes for the progressive wing of the political elite that they are all but unchallengeable.

A variable upper rate would apply a higher rate of tax to small bands within the upper bands. Thus, for income between, say, £80,000 and £90,000 the rate could be 45% which would net an extra £500. People in that bracket, who probably think of their earnings as “modestly high” could be confident that when their earnings passed £90,000, the extra would revert to the 40% tax rate. There might be another band, say, between £120,000 and £130,000, netting another £500. And more at appropriate intervals further up the scale.

The idea is not to arrive at individual fairness in the sense that those who benefit pay it back. It is a sense of collective fairness in that those who earn large sums of money can be seen to redress the balance as a group for benefits received. The extra cost of a universal benefit is seen to be recouped, or at least partially recouped, by the variable tax. It seems such a simple idea that I am sure other people must have thought of it before and rapidly come up with reasons why it would not work, so if anyone can enlighten me, I would be grateful.

IDS's crocodile tears

I am following up yesterday's post about International Day for Disabled People – all over the world except in the UK. Yesterday was a day that every Liberal Democrat in the country should take notice of, because the government – in this case Iain Duncan Smith and the Department for Work and Pensions – is doing dreadful things in our name and with our support.

For all the rhetoric Iain Duncan Smith and his department have one objective, which is to reduce the benefits bill. They have no care for how they do so, or for the dreadful impact that has on the lives of the people they deprive of income. In the last few weeks he has made great play of the number of people he has got off benefits, despite the government's actual figures demonstrating really poor performance. But even where the Work Programme has got people into work, it has not reduced the benefit bill one penny. With two and a half million people chasing a few hundred thousand vacancies, not one new job has been created. Under normal circumstances, when a vacancy arises, an unemployed person applies for it, and gets it. When A4E get involved, they pick which unemployed person goes into the vacancy, leaving another unemployed person unemployed and claiming benefits. To do this they get paid, so the Work Programme creates no jobs but works as a mechanism for transferring money out of the pockets of taxpayers and into the hands of very profitable private companies. The work A4E is now charging us through the nose for was being done very capably by charities and NGOs before Iain Duncan Smith decided the private sector needed a boost.

In fact far from creating jobs, the Work Programme destroys jobs. Companies like Poundland now know that they can fill 10%, 15%, 20% of their labour needs through the Work Programme. So they no longer need to advertise those posts and pay people to fill them. So the taxpayer gets shafted twice. We are directly contributing to the profits of companies like Poundland by paying the wages for them, while also paying A4E for choosing which unemployed person will go there. There is more detail here.

Meanwhile Lord Freud thinks that poor people should take more risks. It is tempting to speculate about which planet he was on when he said that, certainly not this one. I would like to think that the rich might be inclined to take more risks, but there is no sign of them doing so. The Director General of the BBC is just the latest case in a long line where people are given contracts that fireproof them against failure of any kind. The DG's contract was such that the BBC were required to give him a year's pay if they sacked him. Why? If he is not capable of putting something away for a rainy day on a salary of £450,000, what on earth is he doing in a job of such responsibility? The same goes for every single bonus and every single feather bed contract given to directors and CEOs since the crash of 2008. No high level contract should ever carry more than the legal minimum benefits: they are well enough rewarded by the rate of pay. The bankers and the directors have gone on doing business as before, except for the occasional shareholder revolt, and the government has done nothing to ensure that when people play with other people's money, they take responsibility for what they do. If they did that, they would make better decisions, and companies would be more profitable. Subject to the government's laissez faire attitude towards taxing multi nationals, the tax take would be higher, and the government would lose their excuse to screw poor people even harder. Which is of course why they're not doing it.

So all in all, government policy towards the rich and the poor is not just not helping with the recession, it is actually making it worse. We've known for a long time that the Conservative part of the government has no intention of actually making rich people take the consequences of their actions. It becomes clearer every day that their intention is actually to make the poor pay for the actions of the rich, by hounding and harassing them off benefits.

These are not isolated cases - every day up and down the country, disabled and sick people are being told they are fit for work, and being made to - pardon the pun - jump through hoops to re-establish their need for benefit. Try this one for size: "A blind, deaf, tube-fed, non verbal, disabled man from Scotland has been deemed fit for work" - this is not an aberration, it is normal procedure for ATOS, aided and abetted by Iain Duncan Smith's DWP.

Brian McArdle died when his disability benefits were stopped. His son wrote to Iain Duncan Smith, and got back a clunkingly self justificatory letter written without a hint of compassion.

Karen Sherlock died in the middle of an entirely unnecessary battle with the DWP over the income she needed.

I say again, these are not aberrations. Between January and July last year 1,100 claimants died after they were put in the “work-related activity group”. Yesterday, on the International Day for Persons with Disabilities, by an exquisite irony, the DWP brought into effect a provision that people on ESA, and in the WRAG - deemed by the DWP's own system to be unfit for work - can be mandated to go for work, without any time limit.  Jobseeker's Allowance claimants who are mandated to go to Work Programme placements have a time limit of three months on those placements. But if they have decided you are unfit for work, you can be made to work to the end of your days, or lose benefit. There is certainly no compassion, but neither is there any logic or any competence in these provisions. In fact quite the opposite - these measures hinder economic recovery for one purpose only - to hound the poor and the sick, with all the perverted moral zeal that Iain Duncan Smith can bring to the task.

Yesterday I wrote as a human being. Today I write as a Liberal Democrat. Liberal Democrats must withdraw all and any support for Iain Duncan Smith's poisonous schemes, and work to put some compassion and rationality back into the benefit system.

The UK government and International Day of Persons with Disabilities

Today is International Day of Persons with Disabilities – all over the world except in the UK. In the UK Iain Duncan Smith is marking the day by continuing and intensifying his campaign against unemployed people in general and disabled people in particular.

Every disabled claimant now has to undergo a Work Capability Assessment (started by Labour – who have yet to apologise for it). The WCA is in fact a BDS – a Benefit Denial System. Its purpose is to get people off benefits by any means possible. The claimant's own description of their condition is not credited, medical evidence is not accepted. If a claimant gets to the assessment room, that proves they can walk. If they sit in the chair throughout the process, that proves they can sit at a desk. Then they are deemed capable of work. Iain Duncan Smith's department is doing this quite deliberately, to reduce the benefit bill, regardless of the cost to disabled people. Terminally ill people are being found fit for work. People with the most horrible conditions are being found fit for work. Yes, some terminally ill people work till the day they die. But only a small proportion of them. At the moment, the DWP's own figures show that 70 people a week are dying within a short time of having their WCA. You read that right. 70 a week – 3500 a year.

“Work” now means you can lift a pencil. It does not mean that you are employable. That is Iain Duncan Smith's great trick, completely divorcing the idea of “work” from the idea of being profitably employable for a company. If you have not worked in this sphere it is difficult to imagine, but please bear with me. Think back to the worst flu you have ever had. If you've never had flu, think back to the worst hangover. At some point you hauled yourself out of bed, tottered downstairs and made yourself a Lemsip. According to IDS that means you were capable of walking, and of operating machinery. You were fit for work. But you didn't go in to work, did you? Now imagine feeling like that all the time – every day, 24 hours a day, no let up, ever. Sorry, but you're fit for work.

Scene 1

Applicant: “I've come for the job.”

Employer: “Sure, we have vacancies.”

Applicant: “I'm terminally ill with cancer, by the way.”

Employer: “What?”

Applicant: “It's OK, I'm fit for work, The DWP says so.”

Employer: “Er...”

Applicant: “I need to take ten minutes out every couple of hours to vomit, but I'll make up the time.”

Employer: “Um....”

Applicant: “And I'll be dead in about three months, but it's being off benefit that's important. I'd much rather be here stacking shelves and coughing all over the customers than spending my last few weeks with my family.”

Scene 2

Applicant: “I'd like a job.”

Employer: “Sure, we have vacancies..... What's that smell?”

Applicant: “Oh, sorry. I just shat myself again. I'll clean up, then I'll be ready. It's OK, I'm fit for work, the DWP says so”.

Scene 3

Employer: “We start at 9”.

Applicant: “I should be able to get in for that some days.”

Employer: “We start at 9. That's when the phones start ringing”.

Applicant: “I have ME. I never know from one day to the next when I'll be able to get myself out of bed. I can manage 11 most days. It's OK, the DWP says I'm fit for work, so can I have the job please”.

It's all happening because the benefit bill is unaffordable, right? We can afford to spend billions and billions and billions fattening bank balance sheets. We can afford to spend billions on the Olympics. We can afford to see billions and billions disappear in unpaid corporate taxes. We can afford to see companies still run inefficiently, and billions in bonuses paid to people who cannot demonstrate that they have earned them. We can even afford £5 million a year to subsidise the alcohol in the House of Commons bar where Iain Duncan Smith toasts himself with a glass at the taxpayers' expense on disappearing yet more people from the benefit rolls. But we can't afford to treat our disabled people with a minimum amount of decency.

Guardians of what exactly?

If the world is a consistent place, I am about to bring myself to the attention of the police. So be it. A disabled activist in Wales posted on the web some stuff that was critical of ATOS, the company carrying out Work Capability Assessments on disabled people on behalf of the Department of Work and Pensions. Let's leave aside for the moment that it's difficult to say anything truthful about ATOS without it being critical.

To her astonishment and distress, she received a visit from the police. Not just any old visit. By her account she lives on her own and had two police officers knock on her door at midnight. They told her that they had received a complaint about criminal activity on Facebook. They asked her to show ID. She refused (which she had a right to do). They said her refusal amounted to obstructing the police in their duties. They refused to say who had made the complaint about her activity on Facebook. Despite her repeatedly asking them to leave they stayed for some time and continued to question her about her activities. The full details are here.

So let us tell the truth about ATOS, the DWP, and the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). The aim of the WCA is to remove people from the benefit system. (The stated aim is to get people back to work. Iain Duncan Smith has yet to comment on how disabled people are supposed to get back to work with half a dozen able bodied people chasing every vacancy.) The test is administered according to a computer, and extraordinary judgements are made about people's ability to work according to whether they are able to get to the interview, sit in a chair, pick up a pencil, and so on. Medical evidence is not taken into account. Medical evidence is in fact actively refused. They also make the whole process immensely obstructive for the claimant. Many, many people are inaccurately put into the Work Related Activity Group of ESA (Employment Support Allowance), or not allowed ESA at all, and told they must apply for Job Seekers Allowance. This is done in the knowledge that some will accept their lot even though they are incapable of work, some will fall out of the system altogether, and become destitute, and only the persistent and the well advised will go to appeal. The level of successful appeals indicates how badly the system is working. Or perhaps I should say how well it is working, because it is clear in my view that the ATOS assessment system is perfectly fit for purpose – the purpose being to remove people from benefit, whatever the cost to them and whatever the accuracy or otherwise of the assessment.

There is growing evidence that the way the WCA is being carried out is detrimental to people's health, and indeed to their lives. There is a steadily increasing body of accounts of people dying shortly after being told they are fit for work. There are numbers of examples of people with terminal illnesses being told they are fit for work. Now it is quite possible, logically, that any one person is fit and capable up to the day that they die. But how many would you expect to do that, especially among those who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness? The latest figures suggest that over 70 people a week are dying shortly after being told by ATOS that they are fit for work. It will be difficult for people working for ATOS to hear this, but that means that seventy times every week an ATOS assessor drives a person through a series of questions which are designed to give a false picture of the claimant's health, and shortly after that the claimant dies.

It would be bad enough if this were simply a persistent series of assessments so inaccurate that dozens of people close to death were being treated every week as if fit for work. But there is more to it than that. Again, a growing number of incidents suggest that ATOS is actually driving people to their deaths. Here is the latest from Scotland's Daily Record. “Kieran McArdle told the Daily Record in a harrowing letter how his father Brian, 57, collapsed and died the day after his disability benefits were stopped. He had been assessed by Atos and deemed “fit for work”.” It is of course difficult to prove how much the stress of the process contributed to Mr McArdle's untimely death. But how many coincidences do there have to be before ATOS and the DWP will accept that their process which was merely vicious and vindictive before has now become murderous? Yes, the evidence points very strongly towards the fact that ATOS do kill people.

OK, so now I've told the truth. If you want to send the police round, ATOS, please tell me first what I've said above that is inaccurate.

End of an ordeal

Just this once, and probably not for very long, Theresa May, I love you. Conservative Home Secretary displeases America, and stands up forhuman rights and disabled people all in one go. Put that in your pipe, right wingers, and smoke it.

While I'm very glad to see that the UK Home Secretary's eyes have been opened to the idiocy of both the extradition treaty,and this particular exercising of it, I am very afraid that the Americans are still walking around with their eyes shut. I have said all along that, if I were in charge over there when the extent of McKinnon's hacking was revealed, I would have taken the first available plane from over there to over here in order to shake McKinnon by the hand and thank him for exposing the dangerous incompetence of the numpties in charge of the nation's security. (That would be the first plane after I had called all those responsible for leaving computers open without firewalls, passwords etc, into my office for a chewing out session that would have left the carpets ankle deep in blood.)

Instead of that, they're still saying the hacking was "intentional and calculated to influence and affect the US government by intimidation and coercion" – remember, he was after details of UFO sightings. It is deeply worrying that the country which still aspires to lead the world can behave in such a narrow minded and short sighted way, fuelled by vindictiveness rather than a rational assessment of their own interests, as well as everybody else's.

My church: Chichester found wanting

I have lived in the diocese of Chichester for thirty years. This is my church, my diocese, my patch. I have been uncomfortable here since Chichester became one of the havens for priests who think that the universe will crumble if someone receives communion from a woman. But it is my home, just as the Church of England is my spiritual home. So today's news, "Archbishop of Canterbury condemns child abuse failings", is a cause of sorrow and grief that strikes far too close to home. I feel hurt, I feel bruised, I feel angry. Not nearly as angry as those who suffered the abuse in the first place. But angry that this has been covered up by people acting in my name.

I have known for some time, as we all have, that there was much amiss in the way the diocese handled disciplinary issues with its priests. Much like the Catholic church on a larger scale, the diocese seemed to think that a) buggering boys wasn't that big a deal and b) the reputation of the church was much more important than the lives and souls of the many children abused by priests for whom the diocese was responsible.

Lives have been ruined by priests who pretend to be godly. Those priests have been knowingly, deliberately and persistently protected by others who pretend to be godly. We have even seen an abuser of children ordained as a priest, despite four bishops and an archbishop knowing the truth about him. That was thankfully a long time in the past, but the most horrifying thing is that we cannot be certain even now that such a thing could not happen again. Wallace Benn, the current bishop of Lewes, was recently criticised for sitting on a CRB check that revealed data he did not want to have to act on. The complaint had to come from his own diocesan safeguarding group. The most horrifying section of the BBC report, to my mind, is this: “The inquiry by the Archbishop of Canterbury's office said "fresh and disturbing" aspects of the way abuse claims were handled keep surfacing.” They keep surfacing – this suggests that, not just bishop Wallace, but people all over the diocesan hierarchy still have not told the truth about what they know, and are still not prepared to act to prevent further abuse.

Where is the Christianity in this? Where is the principle, the godliness?  In my view – nowhere. The most charitable explanation involves the idea that it was a slippery slope, that one minor action led to another minor action, and that it all escalated to a point that nobody ever meant it to. It probably involves ideas about naïve forgiveness, thinking that someone may have been bad in the past, but that he'll be better now, won't he. It's also probably tied up with the fact that Chichester has been designated as a refuge for those in the church who just can't deal with women, and it has therefore collected more than a few. What we have in the diocese now is a toxic pile of people who are unable to deal with sexuality and power in any way other than patriarchal misogyny. What that often hides, and does in this case, is a persistence of sinfulness that the ungodly can only dream about.

Sin is very often not major, not transcendent. It is in the minor actions, the scores of cheap decisions we make that gradually weave a web around us. But that is precisely why every decision matters, every single small step takes us either towards evil or towards good. And the people who hold office and are trained and practised (allegedly) in the ways of Jesus – our bishops, priests,  synod members, and so on -  ought to know better than to allow things to slip, because, slip by slip, sin becomes monstrous. Everybody who has been involved in the continuing and deliberate protection of the abusers is part of a nest of vipers that needs to be cleansed. That means everyone who ever made any kind of positive decision to keep things quiet for the good of the church, and thus denied truth and justice to all the abused. If that includes any of the current incumbents, so be it. I hope that this clear and pointed report will be followed by equally pointed action. I know that as a Christian I am supposed to forgive. But forgiveness has to be sought, and it seems clear that those involved still do not seek forgiveness. And in any case, forgiveness does not involve leaving people in a position to commit the same follies again.

My final thought is this. Many, many people have criticised Rowan Williams for being too wishy washy, not showing enough leadership as archbishop. I have not agreed with that, and this scandal is a very good example of why. I cannot think of any archbishop in my lifetime who would have been willing to issue such an uncompromising report. I will be sorry to see him go when he steps down as archbishop. I will be much less sorry to see the back of every single so called Christian in this diocese who has had anything to do with this monumental scandal.