Radical change in the air??

Submitted by nickyc on Fri, 07/08/2009 - 3:11pm

Did anyone see this?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/04/conservatives-localgovern...

I thought the conservatives wanted the holy grail of a simplified benefit system, not a more complicated one!

‹ Benefit Busters - 2nd episode Work for Your Benefits Pilots ›
Submitted by Daniel on Fri, 07/08/2009 - 3:17pm.

Blimey. That sounds like a radical set of proposals if they come to fruition. There's a direct conflict between promising localisation and arguing against postcode lotteries, which the Conservatives have also been doing.

Submitted by nickyc on Fri, 07/08/2009 - 3:36pm.

I also wonder if anyone has costed this properly. Cameron keeps talking about ridding the world of quangos & centralised systems without any thought to the alternatives. In this case it would mean funding a legacy benefit system and a system in each of the 150 or so local authorities.

Submitted by bring on phase 2 (not verified) on Mon, 10/08/2009 - 1:56pm.

Yet another English model to help English unemployed.
The Welsh, Irish and the Scots are not mentioned at all, what of our parliament or assemblies?
So far we've missed out on Golden Handshakes, Sector Routeways, Response to Redundancy and anything else joinly built with the very-ENGLISH LSC in mind.
Looks like there's already a very blunt post-code lottery?

Submitted by Daniel on Mon, 10/08/2009 - 2:06pm.

I really should put something together on Welsh / Scottish / Northern Irish responses. It's an area I haven't looked into enough. In general, the UK government simply can't impose these kinds of responses on devolved governments, and the Q&A on the various programmes almost always seems to say that the government has given a proportionate amount of budget. This leaves the setup of local delivery to the Welsh, Scottish and Irish executives.