Juddering
Thomas Jones · IDS
There's an oddly fawning interview with the work and pensions secretary in today's Guardian. Iain Duncan Smith is apparently a 'politician with no personal ambition' whose only aim is 'to help the worst off'. He's got all sorts of schemes to get people off benefits and into work, improve their quality of life in the process, and, in the long term, save the government a great deal of money. What a miracle worker. There's some indication even in the Guardian, however, that the Tory noises about making everyone better off and Britain a fairer place are too good to be true. Talking vaguely about plans to change the way that child poverty is measured, Duncan Smith complains that under the present system,
You get this constant juddering adjustment with poverty figures going up when, for instance, upper incomes rise.
Yet more evidence, in case it was needed, that all the Tories' talk of 'fairness' has nothing whatever to do with equality.
Comments
"A leading neuroscientist has accused the Tory social policy tsar Iain Duncan Smith of distorting his research into childhood neglect and the effect it has on the size and development of children's brains.
Dr Bruce Perry reacted following comments made by the former Tory leader in which he has suggested children brought up in abusive or neglectful households could develop smaller brains.
In one recent speech, Duncan Smith was recorded on a mobile phone appearing to draw a link between brain development in young children and people committing crime in later life.
Dr Perry, who runs the respected Child Trauma Academy in Texas, said Duncan Smith had "greatly misrepresented" and "distorted" his work.
His research assessed the brain development of children who suffered extreme forms of neglect – such as those locked in a basement without human contact – and he said it was wrong to apply the findings to children who have undergone far less severe neglect, such as those from broken homes."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/09/iain-duncan-smith-childrens-brains
I'm always puzzled when i hear it - what are they going to say in 5 years time when it is pointed out that the gap has grown even wider, hide behind the fig leaf that Labour did no better? They can't believe that their free market approach will make the poor even richer than it makes the rich; and even my spectacles are not so rose coloured that i could even hope that they intend to close the gap by redistributing income. It's a mystery.