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Reasons why I will never be an active politician #3,457
"I would like to offer a full and unreserved apology. I was foolish to accept the premise of the question. To be clear, all disabled people should be paid at least the minimum wage, without exception, and I accept that it is offensive to suggest anything else.
I care passionately about disabled people. I am proud to have played a full part in a government that is fully committed to helping disabled people overcome the many barriers they face in finding employment. That is why through Universal Credit – which I referred to in my response – we have increased overall spending on disabled households by £250m, offered the most generous work allowance ever, and increased the disability addition to £360 per month.
I am profoundly sorry for any offence I have caused to any disabled people."
This is a story?
Negative, if he's being paid more than the minimum wage.
@SouthamObserver said:
» show previous quotes
So it would not actually be paid work as such.
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That's the whole point isn't it? It's effectively charity but it gives a person who is incapable of getting a job that pays the minimum wage, a sense of purpose, and makes them happy for a while
We are talking about mentally handicapped people who are basically children in a grown ups body doing menial tasks such as gardening to give their life a bit of variety, and someone giving them a token score or something for their effort
I seriously cannot believe that people are accusing Freud and Cameron of being unfeeling about this. Any grown up with common sense would know the deal here. Pretty disgusting to imply these people are being exploited as cheap labour
Welcome to the Tory economic "recovery".
And yet Tories will try and play it down and keep him in place.
One oddity in them was:
"The number of self-employed people dropped by 76,000 in the latest three-month period to 4.5 million, but the total is 279,000 higher than a year ago." (BBC)
Two things from this. First, the theory that the surge in employment is unemployed people with a hobby really does not stand up.
Second, the apparent slow down in the increase in employment in the last quarter has almost entirely been caused by this anomaly. Employment is still rising very rapidly.
Lets have a discussion about betting on politics. The Tories are in turmoil.
Some (most obviously the deaf) might even refute the term altogether. Others find things a little harder but can still get by quite well. And some find even simple things very difficult.
As an aside, Nelson, Tamerlane, Alexander, Hannibal and Caesar could all be considered disabled.
[Blind in one eye and missing an arm, crippled in two limbs, epileptic, blind in one eye, and epileptic (and possible Crohn's), for those wondering].
Edited extra bit: for ****'s sake. I forgot Antigonus Monopthalmus, whose nickname means 'one-eyed'.
I exile myself to ConHome.
Surely not a difficult, or trick, question?
quite. To their credit, some of the cleverer left orientated posters have attacked their own side's complete immaturity.
Have to admit it was well orchestrated though. Wait three weeks and release it on the day encouraging unemployment figures were released. As might be expected that story attracted minimal airtime compared to the time taken up on the "big story".
Clegg's in particular was a picture after he's learned that his Tory chums think disabled workers are worth less.
"argh urrgh aggh"
The reason this row has blown up is the verbal incompetence and political incaution of a guy who really should know better, and a (in my experience of party members generally) largely unjustified sterotype of Tories which this has played right into and will perpetuate. Not that the general British public have an aversion to supporting disabled people into work.
We are going to win a majority. That's enough.
Tories clearly think that doesn't apply if a worker is disabled.
Otherwise Freud would be lone gone.
Don't be swayed by the partisan nonsense you may have read on here.. the example quoted to Lord Freud was of a man so mentally damaged he couldn't do work that would make him employable at minimum wage rate, but it was good for his well being to do something, so they got him doing some gardening. That made him feel useful. They set him up as the director of the firm as a loophole that enabled him to do some work and get some pocket money without being subject to minimum wage.
It wasn't that they wanted a gardener and roped this poor bloke in to do it to save money! That's the misunderstanding, deliberate on the part of many, that's led to this nonsense
Surely not a difficult, or trick, question?
If you are incapable of answering, you are too thick to post on here.
A man saying something badly phrased or horrendous (take your pick) is not bigger than the ebola story (or the employment figures improving so dramatically).
No point arguing with Hugh for the next seven months. All he will be doing is hammering labour party lines.
Strictly 'four legs good, two legs bad' stuff
At the most fundamental level, many jobs these days are based on information flows - adminstering, reporting on or amending them. Many disabled people could do these, just not as rapidly as non-disabled people. If you split such tasks between (for example) two such disabled people, you could well get a similar level of output.
It's like refusing to condemn Robert Mugabe in case it's seen as racist.
But on this I'm not partisan. I think Freud's views are so vile he's got to go.
And I agree that options to include those who can't produce an output at more than the cost of minimum wage should be explored rather than that they should be left abandoned in the name of ideology.
Not everyone's output is worth paying them £6.50 per hour.
You are arguing that they should be paid it anyway. Which is vair enough, but you are muddling up two concepts.
If it does not need doing, then it is as isam says below and it is essentially charity. And if that is the case, that is what should have been made clear by Lord Freud: the minimum wage does not come into it in the first place.
It's all very confusing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-29559771
£100,000 for 9 years of slavery and rape is just over £11,000 a year. If the couple are millionaires, as reported, it should be tenfold that, if not more.
The legal minimum wage is the minimum a worker is worth. It's really that simple.
Should the bankers who wrecked the global economy be paid minus millions?
Even those bankers are "worth" the legal minimum wage, though in Tory Britain - where wages of £2 hr for disabled people are being "looked at" - they of course get a lot, lot more.
But the underlying issue is the same as we had over the minimum wage itself. It's always been true (for non-disabled people too) that some people who can't get a job at minimum wage rates could get it for, say, £1/hour, undercutting someone who does expect the minimum wage. It's also true that some jobs are only profitable at £1/hour and at minimum wage rates aren't done at all. Whether these jobs should be re-created at taxpayers' expense as Freud was suggesting is doubtful, and he seemed to be offering the idea off the cuff without really thinking it through. The argument for the minimum wage is that there should be a floor below which jobs are not offered, with the effort going into support and retraining rather than subsidising a non-job.
The problem is that once you start creating exceptions, the whole concept is undermined, since people start to feel they have to offer to work for less, in order to avoid being undercut. The Adam Smith Institute, I believe, disapproves of the minimum wage, on the grounds that it interferes with the free market, as indeed it does. However, that's not a mainstream position for any of the main parties (does UKIP have a view?), and the main reason that Cameron has distanced himself at once is that the Conservatives' conversion to the concept is seen as less than whole-hearted, which reinforces their problem of being seen as only about the rich. Whether or not there ought to be majority support for Adam Smith-style free markets, there simply isn't, and Cameron knows it.
Or less seeing as she was "disabled", and she had the dignity of work?
What is not, though, is that Lord Freud has apologised and made his thinking clear. Labour should now drop it. They won't, though. And neither would any other parry if the shoe was on the other foot. Going back to one of your original postings: this is one of the things that makes party politics in this country so unappealing
http://t.co/dbMYdv21hQ
Bug fucking difference but then you know that,
Impossible for some to see it but it lifts the quality of all our lives.
If you are ever fortunate enough to spend any time at the Christie cancer hospital in Manchester you'll see a spirit of camaraderie and cheerfulness among the staff patients and visitors that you wont see very often. It also employs more disabled people than I've seen in one place. At first it's disconcerting but it makes you think so much better of the hospital as carers and employers that I'm sure contributes to its unique upbeat atmosphere.
Pointed out that in 2000 Mencap were arguing that the minimum wage was costing severely disabled people their jobs..
Advice to Tory HQ: call Guido off on this one.
I regard it as charity work,I am sure many of them would wish to work,and would do so just to get out of the house.
Just try and phone up an internet provider on behalf of a deaf and dumb person,it is a nightmare,"I need to speak to the account holder",
You have to be seriously aggressive on the phone to get them to help,they usually insist on a signed letter of authorisation to act on their behalf,taking weeks to resolve,I have to go ballistic and tell them how bad a service they provide to the disabled,then I get "Elevated" and get a result.
Anyway,I conclude many disabled would be delighted just to feel useful regardless of the pay.
So yes, clearly not as bad as disease or war, but they aren't really set in a comparable context. A more apt comparison might be to say this is worse than a sex scandal, but less bad than another defection.
Was George paid properly for his non job of data entry? ;-)
My theory is that Lord Freud probably did not mean to get into a conversation about the minimum wage at all. I accept the explanation in his apology entirely - it makes total sense to me.
No.
The argument is about someone who isn't capable of being employed as a footballer, but wants to be a footballer.
Should clubs be allowed to take these people on at a reduced wage because its really what they want to do?
Or should they sit on the touchline forever, because its illegal to pay them less than NMW.
One has a substantial brain injury after a RTA, he appears fine and physically able - but he's lost most of his memory. So what he learned yesterday will be forgotten by today. It's like Groundhog Day.
He'd love to be useful again, but the idea of re-training him everyday obviously puts employers off. Paying him at a % of the day-rate to take his learning curve into account would be a great way to address the issue.
If you pay your kids a tenner to wash the car and it takes them two hours are you exploiting them? If you give your Grandad a score once a week to do a bit of work in the Garden for a day to stop him vegetating indoors is that exploitation? Thats the kind of thing we are talking about here
The original question to Lord Freud was about the possibility of getting the Govt to top up the wages to make it up to the minimum wage
http://disabilitynewsservice.com/2014/09/labour-party-conference-access-meltdown-sparks-call-for-action/
Hardly worth crowing about Freud's faux pas. But the guy advised Purnell, wrote papers on Welfare for Blair then joined The Tories. There is the reason for the 'outrage'.
OK. Let's say club come back and say, we cant employ this person as a footballer, he or she is not capable of being a footballer.
Here's the thing, though, we see the person really likes football and there's a job going as a sort of ball fetcher - if the person wants that he or she can have it.
Trouble is, the club is strapped for cash and we can only pay half the minimum wage for that job.
What should happen then..???
"There was no minimum wage when George did it "
And if you have your way, there won't be in the future. A minimum wage is exactly what it says on the tin, once you make exceptions, where do you stop?
It's just depressing to see people pose at being even handed whilst acting as if a policy they like has no downsides. There are plenty of upsides to the minimum wage, but to act like it has 0 impact in pricing some people out of the jobs market is just a childish evasion of the pros and cons which come with any policy.
On the one hand, David Cameron's Tories think disabled workers are worth less, and PB Tories are now arguing against the minimum wage per se.
On the other hand...
Notably the court costs, which they are also being told to pay, are three times the "reparations".
Indeed the explosion of self employment over recent years may disguise a lot of sub minimum wages (topped up by in work benefits).
I can imagine a specialist employer, with a good radar for and experience of disability issues, finding a way to fit him in. But then the "reduced day rate" or "subsidised pay" (take your pick) may only have a limited impact - it just makes it easier for such organisations to recruit (or perhaps for a social enterprise, to get off the ground in the first place). I'm not sure how many contexts there are where it would enable integration into more conventional workplaces. Even lots of supposedly menial roles actually require a certain amount of skill and training - COSHH for cleaners, for instance - that may put them beyond the reach of the severely learning disabled.
Was it supposed to be a "secret" conference then? ;-)
He was precisely the sort of person who's 'employed' as charity posing as business because that's a nice thing to do. Would he be paid the minimum wage or now sit on the sofa on benefits instead? I suspect the latter. Making it harder/more expensive to employ those who aren't as able as others only hurts them in my book.
maarsh Agreed
Left wing -hoovers up sentimentality -long term economic and social catastrophe. Right wing -decisions look selfish at the time -long term economic health and social cohesion.
"£100,000 for 9 years of slavery and rape is just over £11,000 a year. If the couple are millionaires, as reported, it should be tenfold that, if not more."
Odd story in many ways. I wonder how they managed to get her story when there doesn't seem to have been any way of communicating with her. Nonetheless as he's 85 it's unlikely he'll ever be in a position to spend it
Who fancies a spread bet on their YOUGOV score tonight?
I'll go 17.3-17.7
An excellent post.
The counter-argument which the parties have implicitly accepted is that instead of employing people to tidy up at 10p/hour (to take an extreme example), it's better to try to avoid creating a mess (or live with it if you don't care) and train the chap who would have done it to do something more useful. The argument that there is absolutely nothing useful he could do no matter how much help he got is a counsel of despair which isn't usually justified.
I don't think that everyone has accepted this argument, even though the parties are officially in favour, which is why this sort of row breaks out from time to time. It's not outrageous to have different views on this, but free-market people need to recognise that the parties have accepted the minimum wage, since otherwise a lot of British politics in this area just won't make sense to them.