Benefits

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Tough on dangerous dogs, blind to the causes of dangerous dogs

It’s ‘dangerous dogs’ season again – but is there more to the story? The Today programme gave this its main 8.10am slot. The BBC sought to interview some chavs to sneer at – the listener being invited to conclude that the law must be brought to bear on them. But Brendan O’Neill was quite right in this week’s magazine, where he describes how government seeks to use this scare for yet another power grab over the citizens. The aim, he says “is not only to bring dog-owners into that very big tent of People Continually Spied On By The Authorities, but to weed out the ‘devil dogs that terrorise socially

Wednesday

Lawrence Kay

Turning welfare into work

Contrary to what you might think, it is actually quite hard to find someone on benefits who doesn’t want to work. When you ask a claimant whether they would like to, they will invariably say “Yes, I want a job.” At first, this seems like a strange answer: why do we have nearly 6 million people on benefits when so many of them want to work? The answer is simple when you ask a few more questions: they don’t want just any job. They envisage doing what they used to do or would like to try – but aren’t willing to look for anything else. Getting them to try any