Wednesday 9 January 2013

Spot the deliberate mistake


This is not literally true. Well, even Labour wouldn't contemplate adding more than the typical wage to the income of everyone on state benefits. The statement would be more accurate if the words "will increase in percentage terms" were added after "wages", but of course Central Office is more interested in feeding the prejudice against "scroungers". 

It is not as if benefits are overly generous anyway. I must say that I agree with Charles Kennedy, Adrian Sanders, Andrew George, David Ward, Julian Huppert, John Leech and Sarah Teather. who refused to support the government measure which imposes a 1% cap on benefit increases until 2016. It should be remembered that there is already a squeeze on housing benefit in the pipeline. 

On the positive side, things would have been even worse if LibDem ministers had not resisted the Treasury proposal for a zero increase. 

Acknowledgements to Guido for the image, by the way. 

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