Hmm - unfortunate juxtaposition of the day, or not ....

Fun Online Polls: Working age welfare and New Year's Honours

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Working age and child benefits amount to what percentage of UK's GDP?

1% - 14 votes
2% - 16 votes
5% - 13 votes
10% - 16 votes
20% - 21 votes

The correct answer is of course 5%, which any sane person can guesstimate by assuming that a tenth of the population are on working-age welfare and that their income is half that of working households (certainly in pre-tax terms and probably in post-tax terms as well).

You could make all sorts of up- or downward adjustments, and at a pinch, you might just about be able to arrive at 2% or 10%, but how is it even possible to have a sensible debate about welfare spending when half of people don't even have a clue how much it is?

If you want the actual numbers (in £ millions):
Employment and support allowance - £6,554 (the new 'Incapacity Benefit')
Jobseeker's allowance - £5,455
Income support - £5,121
Incapacity Benefit - £2,847
SSP, SMP and Maternity Allowance - £2,770
Carer's Allowance - £1,859
Working Tax Credits - £6,999
Child Tax Credits - £22,915
Child Benefit - £12,221
Total - £66,741

GDP is said to be around £1,575,000 million. So that looks like about five per cent to me, or about ten per cent of total UK government spending.
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And lo to the last Fun Online Poll of the year 2012!

Further to The Stigler's recent post about the New Year's Honours IT mixup, I wonder which of the people on the list accompanying this BBC article would have been on your New Year's Honours list?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar. Pollcode counts the number of voters, so if you just vote for one or two, that automatically shows up as a negative vote for everybody else on the list.

New Years Honours in IT mixup

The Honours Committee have today had to reluctantly admit that many recipients of new years honours were the results of a test data mixup.

"The team always uses some names in their test data that are never going to get honours, you know, Mao Tse Tung, Genghis Khan, Jedward. This year, they had those and also added Hector Sants, Cherie Blair, Alan Budd and Margaret Beckett."

"It's designed so that if the test data run accidentally gets printed, at least the postman will stop them. Unfortunately, the postman couldn't quite put his finger on who they were, but thought they sounded plausible and let them go. Of course, having been sent, we didn't exactly want to own up to it and thought no-one would notice amongst the Olympic honours. We thought it was easier to let them slide".

Cherie Blair

This story has got EVERYTHING

From yesterday's Evening Standard:

The employment tribunal of Cherie Blair's stepmother opens today — the outcome of which could determine her chances of becoming an MP. Stephenie Booth (1) - the fourth wife of Mrs Blair's TV actor father Tony Booth (2) - is fighting the marginal seat of Calder Valley, Yorkshire, for Labour. Her reputation and chances of success could rest on the outcome of the case, in which she claims she was sacked as a whistleblower from her job helping difficult teenagers... (3)

Mrs Booth, 55, worked for Cool UK, a private company which helps 14 to 16-year-olds, many of which have been excluded from school. (4) She started in April 2008 in a teaching role and was then asked to join the senior management team. But she was horrified by what she saw as scandalous conditions and attitudes - ranging from health and safety issues (5) to the alleged behaviour of staff...

Mrs Booth told the tribunal she had suffered “detriment and victimisation”. “As a whistleblower (6) I complained about a number of matters but I was effectively ignored,” she said. She was attacked by a female student which left her feeling “upset, frightened and intimidated” (7) but when she reported the assault to Mr Binding he told her not to go to the police (8), the tribunal heard. She went on (9): “A group of employees were buying porn on a regular basis each week from a man who would come to the unit. As far as I was aware this was adult pornography (10) and the transactions took place with students on the premises.” (11)

... Mrs Booth, who has been married four times and has four sons (12), was selected as Labour candidate in last April - despite allegations of voting irregularities (13) - and has paid tribute to Tony and Cherie Blair for supporting her political ambitions. (14)

1) Stupidly spelled name? Check.

2) There's a nice symmetry here - she is Mr Booth's fourth wife and he is her fourth husband.

3) "helping difficult teenagers..." FakePrivateCompany alert!

4) Yup. According to its website, its partners are ... er ... make that singular ... CSV: The UK's leading volunteering and training charity. Yawn. According to page 13 of CSV's accounts, CSV's income came from Learning and Skills Council £8,819,000; Cabinet Office and other Government departments £6,427,000; Fees, services and other income £5,881,000; Local and health authorities £4,663,000; Grants general £2,117,000; European funding £463,000 etc etc.

5) What Elfin Safety issues? It appears to be a school rather than, let's say, a building site or a farm or something dangerous.

6) Doesn't "whistleblower" imply that you report stuff internally first, and if nothing is done about it, you go to the press or something (and then promptly get the sack)? Nothing in the article suggests that she every went public on anything.

7) Diddums. That's what happens when you are "helping difficult teenagers", I guess. It goes with the job.

8) And how was Mr Binding going to stop her, exactly? But she didn't go to the police anyway, despite being told not to, which might just about have qualified her as a "whistleblower" (see 6).

9) And on and on and on.

10) Would she have preferred them to buy child pornography? What's her point?

11) You call 'em "students", I call 'em "difficult teenagers who'd think nothing of attacking their teacher". I don't think that a couple of porn mag's on the premises are going to corrupt them, not at this stage.

12) I'm sure there's a funny angle, but I can't quite pin it down.

13) "Voting irregularities". Nice.

14) She thought she'd just mention for the zillionth time that her step-daughter's husband used to be Prime Minister, you know, just in case the Tribunal judges, or indeed her local Labour Party were having second thoughts. Interestingly, Mrs Booth is 55 and Tony Blair is 56.

Swine 'flu is funny again: official

Blair Witch

From today's CityAM:

Cherie Blair, speaking at the City Women’s Network 30th anniversary gala dinner at Stationers’ Hall ... “So much has changed in the past three decades, it seems hard to remember that [30 years ago] there was still a widespread view that women could not get to the top no matter how talented they were or how hard they worked,” Cherie told an audience of rapt City ladies.

As opposed to today, where an ugly witch with neither useful skills nor a shred of decency can make it straight to the top by virtue of who her husband is, eh?

Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a dove

Ozzy Osbourne; Cherie Blair

I can't find the original dove shot for the life of me, but you know what I mean. It looked a bit like this...

Photo from today's LondonPaper.