Spinning a revolution

At 7.10am this morning, there was a prime example of why Brown may get away with posing as the champion of welfare reform. Kim Catcheside, the BBC’s social affairs correspondent, was explaining Alistair Darling’s new plans to test everyone on incapacity benefit to see what work they could do (ie, the Tory plan). Catcheside said disabled groups are worried because “at least 50,000 over three years could fail this new test.” Um, that works out at 16,700 a year, or 0.7% of the 2.6m on incapacity benefit roll, ie, an utterly meaningless reduction and ergo an equally meaningless policy. But the funding, she said, was “potentially the most fascinating thing about this”. She then said:-

“What they’re going to allow the DWP essentially to spend money on welfare to work programmes on the basis that they’re going to save it later on. Apparently it’s something called Amy Toby. Or something.