Thursday, February 18, 2010

Shameless and clueless

The class warriors over at Conservative Home have got a new website called mylabourposter, which has pictures of people such as immigrants, burglars, foreigners, the BBC etc. and the caption 'I've not voted Labour before, but' and then reasons why these people like Labour. One of the posters is Frank Gallagher from Shameless, saying "I've never voted Labour before, but I can see the benefits".

One nice thing about these posters is that some of them have an explanation beneath them to explain the joke to anyone who finds the humour a bit too subtle. For the benefits one, their "fact" is "Labour's over-complex welfare system means there has been more benefit fraud and less incentive to work".

Really?

When Labour came to power, £1.7bn/year was lost in benefit fraud. In 2008, less than half that amount was lost in fraud, 0.6% of expenditure.

When Labour came to power, more than 700,000 workers paid 70% or more marginal tax rates, meaning there was little incentive to work. Indeed, some workers actually had marginal tax rates of more than 100%. After the 2008 budget, 200,000 workers pay 70% or more marginal tax rates.

It's bad enough that conservatives think their readers are too dim to get their jokes unless they explain them. It's even worse that their explanation is actually wrong.

2 Comments:

At 9:02 pm , Anonymous Anonymous said...

New Labour came to power in 1997.
The increase in benefit "fraud" between 1997 and 2000 is partially a result of the increased complexity of the benefit system in those years, partially the media message that the "poor" were victims and not to be blamed, and partially the major rise in benefits that could be claimed that did not include an automatic check.
A lot of your blogs are sensible but quoting 2000 as 1997 is not.

 
At 6:59 pm , Anonymous Anonymous said...

A little forther down the article you'll notice that the 2000 report was based on an adit for the financial year 1997-98. You'll also notice the Govermnet's announced target of a 305 reduction by 2007, which has been considerably bettered according to the 2006-7 audit.

 

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