Who Benefits?

Cui Bono used to be a latin tag used by lawyers when they were wanting to find out who was behind a certain set of nefarious circumstances. If they were unable to find out who was at the bottom of it, they were encouraged to look at who would benefit most. They were usually the guilty party.

The government, in the form of James Purnell, the man who did for photoshop what Ken Dodd did for tickling sticks, has been all over the media today, blethering on about how they are going to make people work for their benefits in future. I loved the quotation where he said, in effect that there was no room for freeloaders who "worked the system". There are 600-odd of them at Westminster - let's put them on workfare, thescrounging bastards!

Benefits are only the symptoms. Dewsbury Moor is the disease.I mean, fine, if people really do want to get a job and they can be helped to do so, and they will be better off, but personally I don't know where all the jobs are going to come from, even for able bodied people, when unemployment tops three million, as it will, mark my words - perhaps James Purnell could photoshop us a few

And I would feel much happier about it if I thought it was a genuine effort by government to right social wrongs, even though they ARE still treating the symptoms, not the disease, but I suspect it's more of a dog-whistle policy aimed at Middle England over the heads of Labour Backbenchers.

I often wonder what planet the government is on. They are inventing imaginary jobs in the same way as Hitler, cowering in his bunker, invented imaginary divisions coming to save him from the Russians. They can't really be that stupid, on a day when Woolies has gone tits up and people like Sony are announcing 8000 job losses worldwide, can they? Can they?

Who benefits? Certainly not those people already struggling who will now have the added stress of government agencies trying to harrass them to take on jobs that might make them £1.50 a week better off, just to tick a box and massage the unemployment stats.