A passenger waits for a delayed flight at Heathrow airport's terminal four in London August 12, 2006. Credit: Reuters/Toby Melville/Files
LONDON
(Reuters) – More than 80,000 Britons claim payments for long-term sick leave because of obesity or drug or alcohol addiction, contributing to a 7 billion pound annual bill for Incapacity Benefit, the government said on Thursday.
Out of these, more than 21,200 alcoholics and drug addicts have been receiving the payments for over 10 years, according to the Department for Work and Pensions.
“Far from being the safety net it should be, the benefits system has trapped thousands of people in a cycle of addiction and welfare dependency with no prospect of getting back to work,” Employment Minister Chris Grayling said in a statement.
As part of its welfare reforms, the government has started reassessing the circumstances of 1.9 million people off work on Incapacity Benefit to see if they are fit enough to return to employment.
Ministers promise more help to those out of work but threaten sanctions against those who avoid getting a job.
The changes are politically risky and could provoke a public backlash, coming at a time of rising unemployment, state spending cuts and an economy weakened after a deep recession.
A senior economist accused David Cameron of being vindictive yesterday after the Prime Minister suggested he would block Gordon Brown from getting a top international job.
David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, described the PM’s stance as “small minded”.
It follows speculation that Mr Brown might be put forward to head the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Crucial for any nomination would be the endorsement of the individual’s home country.
However, Mr Cameron indicated he would block a potential bid by his predecessor as Prime Minister. He said Mr Brown “might not be the most appropriate person” for the job, because of his record in office.
In a deliberate jibe at the former Labour leader, he added that he thought the job should go to “someone who understands the danger of excessive debt”.
The Tories and the LibDems have been highly critical of Labour’s economic record since entering Coalition last year, blaming the party for leaving them with a record deficit.
Labour have defended their time in office, and claim the problems we caused by the global banking crisis.
Mr Brown gave a speech on economics to students at Edinburgh University last night, based on his book, Beyond The Crash. He was defended by current Labour leader Ed Miliband, who said he was “eminently qualified” for the job.
Mr Miliband also attacked Mr Cameron’s comments saying: “To rule someone out even before the vacancy has arisen seems to be going some, even for him.”
Asked about the PM’s remarks, Mr Blanchflower said: “This is the most vindictive thing I’ve heard from a Prime Minister in 50 years. It looks to me to be extremely small-minded.”
The role of managing director of the IMF carried a salary of around £270,000, as well as a crucial position in world finance. Countries currently in receipt of IMF aid include Greece and the Republic of Ireland.
It is expected the job could become free if current head Dominique Strauss-Kahn stands down this summer to mount a bid for the French presidency. There has also been speculation his replacement would come from countries with emerging world markets.
It is not the first time Mr Brown’s name has been linked with the job. In 2004, when he was chancellor, Downing Street was forced to shrug off rumours about him joining the IMF.
In recent months the IMF has repeatedly backed the Coalition austerity drive, including cuts of £81m in public spending.
Ironically, the Tories have also been vocally critical of Mr Brown’s workload in recent weeks.
The former PM did not speak in the Budget debate last month and has voted only a handful of times in the House of Commons since leaving Downing Street.
His office says he has concentrated on constituency work as well as writing his book.
I’ve been reading Norman Stone’s excellent Turkey: A Short History. It’s worth looking at because in all the debate about Turkey, Europe and its potential membership of the EU, there’s an underling historical hostility, and Stone provides an alternative narrative. So while Turkish atrocities down the years are well known, they were often the victims, too, and in many parts of south-east Europe Muslims were victims of a borderline genocide.
Stone argues that the Turks have been much maligned in Europe, largely because of a casual anti-Turkishness started by well-placed Greeks in 19th-century London. These Greeks “were good at playing London, certainly much better than the Turks; they had a – the – Indo-European language, had shipping money, Masonic connections and, with marriages often enough in surprisingly high places, the right invitations. They were especially good at cultivating the Liberal Party.”
A century and a half of Greco-Turkish violence began in 1770 when Catherine the Great sent Russian officers to Morea, as the Peloponnese was known at the time, under the banner of Orthodox Christianity. In 1828 a clergyman proclaimed another rising, and organised a gruesome massacre of Muslims, killing the entire Muslim population of Corinth, including women and children, and even though they had agreed to leave with safe-passage organised by the British.
The Turks in retribution hanged the Patriarch and 20 other prominent Greeks, and then massacred the inhabitants of the wrong island, Chios rather than Samos. But despite this the Turks were bound to lose the PR battle: Europe, especially Germany, was in awe to Ancient Greece, and it was easy to take sides even when the story was more complicated. The Greeks were egged on by western romantics, such as George Gordon, Lord Byron, then living in the Adriatic in his mid-30s and “running out of inspiration and money”. Byron, according to Stone, was a bit of a prat, but was nevertheless a dashing figure and started a long process “by which western writers turn up in odd places to stand on barricades and say no pasaran”.
Being anti-Turkish became fashionable in the West, even though “when it came to atrocities, the Greeks gave as good as they got. Somehow, then and later, the Muslim victims were forgotten, and the Greeks were practised hands at image-management, whereas the Turks were not.”
Turkey made great progress in the mid 19th century, but it all unravelled after the panic of 1873, which sent the world economy into depression. There was an uprising in Herzegovina against a crackdown on tobacco-smuggling (still a major industry today – read the brilliant McMafia), followed by trouble in Bulgaria. Bulgaria was filled with refugees from Russian wars, Tatars and Circassians, as well as the native Muslims, called Pomaks, who had lived there for centuries and had good relations with their neighbours. Relations between Circassians and Bulgarian Christians, on the other hand, were tense, and resulted in a massacre of the latter.
This became a cause in the West, and Liberal leader William Gladstone went up and down Britain whipping up outrage, and writing a bestseller,Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. Yet the Bulgarians were no innocents, and the British ambassador in Constantinople, Austen Henry Layard, told the foreign secretary that Gladstone was lying. As Stone says: “A curious collection of would-be high-minded clergymen, professors of English history who did not know anything substantial about the area, seem to have acquired a caricature vision of the Turks, lolling around in harems, smoking hashish and ravishing virgins.”
The worst violence was yet to come. In 1897 there was an uprising in Crete, still part of the empire, which eventually the Greeks won, but history ignores the unfortunate fact that Crete was one third Muslim. “Within a decade, Crete was in effect free, and what the world now knows as ‘ethnic cleansing’ went ahead – the Muslims cruelly pushed out, with a great deal of killing. If, two generations later, the Turks resisted very strongly over Cyprus, where there was a comparable situation, this needs to be put in context.”
Most controversially, Stone argues that if the mass murder of Armenians in World War One was genocide, then “it could legitimately be extended to cover the fates of the millions of Muslims driven from the Balkans or the Caucasus as the Ottoman Empire receded”.
The abiding hatred between Greeks and Turks culminated with the burning down of Smyrna, the transfer of a million and a half people in 1922 and, finally in 1955, the final pogrom that ended two and a half millennia of Greek life there.
Greek culture, that is, for the Turks themselves are largely descended from Greeks, and Stone goes as far as to say they are the real heirs to Byzantium. “Byzantium had really been destroyed by the Italians, not the Turks who, if anything, had saved it. Ancient Greece had been destroyed by Celts, after Alexander, and then she had been destroyed all over again by Slavs in the eight century. She had been re-hellenized by the Byzantines, and Greek nationalists could never agree as to whether they were Hellenes or – clerically – Byzantines.”
But, Stone says, the tragedy of Greco-Turkish hatred should not overshadow the achievements of the Turkish Republic, and especially its founder, Mustafa Kemal. The Turkish worship of Atatürk is strange to foreigners, but he was certainly one of the great men of the 20th century, and the achievements of secular Turkey in contrast to the failings of the rest of the Middle East are starting. And despite Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey remains “the only country between Athens and Singapore where, judging by the refugees, people actually wanted to live”.
Turkey’s success is illustrated by this one fact. Although there are five times as many Arab as Turkish speakers, some 11,000 books are translated into Turkish every year; just 300 into Arabic.
Ed West is a journalist and social commentator who specialises in politics, religion and low culture. He is @edwestonline on Twitter.
Squeezed: relative spending power is down to the lowest levels since 1921
Families are facing the biggest peace-time squeeze in their spending power since 1921 as wages fail to keep up with soaring inflation, according to a new report.
The rising cost of essential items such as oil, utility bills, food and clothes are set to leave the average household with £910 a year less to spend in 2011 than two years ago, said the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR).
Disposable incomes are due to fall by 2% in 2011, following a 0.8% drop in 2010, as cash-strapped consumers suffer the biggest hit to their finances apart from during World War Two and the recession following the First World War, it added.
It forecasts that inflation will average 3.9% in 2011 – its highest since 1992 – as January’s hike in VAT to 20% from 17.5% and the rising cost of oil and other commodities continue to drive up prices.
Pay packets, on the other hand, will rise just 1.9% as unemployment remains high and the public sector makes cut-backs.
But the Government’s austerity drive is “only a minor element in the squeeze on household incomes”, with the soaring cost of commodities being the major factor, claimed the report.
Commodity prices are being driven higher by surging demand from emerging economies such as China and supply shocks including the conflict in Libya, which is impacting the price of oil.
The lack of consumer spending power means the economy will only grow by 1% in 2011 and will be “subdued” for the next two or three years, said the consultancy. Its forecast is significantly below the 1.7% predicted by Government’s Office for Budget Responsibility.
The CEBR’s report echoes the views of Bank of England governor Mervyn King who earlier this year said consumers’ finances were facing their biggest squeeze since the 1920s.
A spate of retailers have reported tough conditions on the high street in 2011 as consumers remain cautious, with HMV and Dixons Retail which owns Currys and PC World reporting disappointing profits.
Thousands of people have been marching through London in protest at the death of reggae artist Smiley Culture.
The Brixton riots happened 30 years ago
The protestors walked from Wandsworth Road to Scotland Yard via Parliament Square demanding “justice” for the 48-year-old, who died last month while police were searching his home.
The 80s star, real name David Emmanuel, died after four Metropolitan Police officers arrived at his house with a search warrant.
An inquest into his death was told he had stabbed himself in the heart when he went to make a cup of tea.
However, this is something his family disputes.
Smiley’s nephew, Merlin Emmanuel, said: “What we found hard to believe was that he was allowed to go into the kitchen to make a cup of tea and be around utensils and whatever else that might be in the kitchen which could be a danger to himself or to others. It just doesn’t really make sense.
“All we want to do is get to the bottom of what really happened, the truth. We’re not speculating, we just find it very hard to believe the police’s account so far of what’s happened.”
Smiley Culture grew up south of Brixton from where the march in honour of him and 400 other people who have died in police custody started.
A few weeks ago a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority had to be adjourned because of heckling from friends and family of Smiley’s who were sitting in the public gallery. Many walked out in protest.
It is three decades since the Brixton riots, but many believe they have caused lasting damage to the relatonship between police and the community.
Author Alex Wheatle, whose debut novel was entitled Brixton Rock, says Smiley’s death may have serious repercussions in the black community.
“Slowly, things were getting better, even though I think it was happening too slowly… the police is an institution which is slow to change.
“But if the truth doesn’t come out about the Smiley Culture incident it might set back police relations a generation.”
In a statement, the chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, Kit Malthouse, said he would be “speaking with the IPCC to ensure that all efforts are being made to liaise directly with the family and friends of David Emmanuel and to re-assure the community of their commitment to the investigation”.
He will also ask the IPCC that the conclusions of the investigation be published.
Smiley, who had success in the 1980s with the singles Police Officer and Cockney Translation, was on bail for conspiracy to supply cocaine at the time of his death.
His family say they have commissioned an independent post-mortem examination to help determine the circumstances which led to his stabbing.
David Cameron talked of wanting ‘good immigration’ not ‘mass immigration’ in his speech this week. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA
David Cameron’s speech on Thursday was a perfect example of everything that is wrong with the debate on immigration. He starts off by identifying “concerns on the doorstep”, “myths have crept in”, pays a bit of lip service to “benefits of immigration” and then launches into “controls”, “cuts” and “abuses”. He, of course, leans into lazy Brits on welfare who do not want to do dirty jobs and his speech is full of anecdotes about immigrants abusing the system.
These are all very familiar arguments about the phenomenon of migration. But one thing that most politicians miss is that migration is neither good nor bad. It just is. Adding value judgments becomes problematic because when we talk about immigration, we are in fact talking about immigrants. When the prime minister, or others in power, talk about immigration as bad, abusive, criminal and threatening, they pass judgment on every person that migrated to this country. They are undercutting the work of every migrant that has made this country great. Is it a surprise that people are so afraid of the other?
So if you have a foreign-sounding name (like me), look and sound a bit different (like me), the message is: you will never belong here no matter how hard you try to integrate, because you should not have been here in the first place. While you were cheating your way into our country, our universities, our marriages and taking away our benefits, you were also too hard working, and willing to do our dirty jobs, and making our poor British-born welfare claimants lazy.
The truth is, like everything that has to do with human beings, migration is complicated. Migration is an experience, and most people once they reach their destination just want to get on with their lives, work, study and raise their families.
This government has fallen into the same trap as the previous one – it is making policies based on negative perceptions and fears rather than addressing immigration as a neutral social phenomenon that can be as beneficial or as damaging as we make it. Sadly our government has a fantasy that if it can prevent people from coming and staying here, it will solve all our social problems.
Constantly talking about immigrants as the problem detracts from the real reasons behind the shortage of social housing, unemployment and cuts in public services. As long as we think that immigrants can somehow be stopped before they reach our shores, we will be stuck in this circular debate of numbers, controls and blame.
The citizens of Britain, including migrants, are caught in a crossfire of mixed messages that does not increase understanding about the issues most important to them. Migrants are left to deal with the backlash that has serious consequences for our treatment and rights and we are left with no voice, regardless of how well we speak English.
A true debate will be possible when we all accept that immigration is an inescapable global phenomenon. For this to happen, we need visionary leadership to distil and address other serious issues that fuel emotions behind the smokescreen of the tough immigration debate.
via Immigration is neither good nor bad | Zrinka Bralo | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
