Oh come on now - do play fair!

Guardian Headline: Jobseekers challenge benefits block

Guardian sub-heading: Lawyers say Iain Duncan Smith undermined jobseekers' rights with legislation allowing DWP to ignore court judgments

Iain Duncan Smith and parliament have conspired to undermine the basic rights of hundreds of thousands of jobseekers by enacting retrospective emergency legislation, according to the contents of a legal filing sent to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Lawyers acting on behalf of three jobseekers including Cait Reilly – the unemployed graduate forced to work unpaid in Poundland – are hoping to overturn a controversial law introduced by the DWP in March which allowed the department to ignore court judgments awarding more than £100m in benefits rebates to a quarter of a million jobseekers.

DWP eh?  Iain Duncan Smith eh?   Say no more!   Er, hang on a minute though...

With support from Labour, the jobseekers (back to work schemes) bill was rushed through parliament in just three days in order to strike down a ruling from three appeal court judges who found that half a dozen of the government's employment schemes, which made jobseekers work unpaid under threat of having benefits stripped, were operating outside of the law.

With support from Labour? Surely not!

"If you oppose the government, you oppose free markets"

Bob E's reads between the lines of the latest DWP-speak as reported in The Guardian:

A DWP spokeswoman said: "We are delighted, although not surprised, that the judge agrees our schemes are not forced labour. Comparing our initiatives to slave labour is not only ridiculous but insulting to people around the world facing real oppression.

Of course, had the claimants any other avenue to pursue then they wouldn't have been going down the article 4 route, but that doesn't stop IDS and Chris Grayling's DWP taking the opportunity to label the claimants ridiculous and suggest they were being insulting to etc etc.

But the best bit swiftly follows ....

"Thousands of young people across the country are taking part in our schemes and gaining the vital skills and experience needed to help them enter the world of work – it is making a real difference to people's lives. Those who oppose this process are actually opposed to hard work and they are harming the life chances of unemployed young people who are trying to get on."

In summary:

If you disagree with workfare and mandatory work activity, any aspect of it for any reason whatsoever, it means you are opposed to hard work and seek to harm the life chances of young people. That is official.

You mustn't even think that what is operating is in reality a taxpayer-provided free-labour-for-large-industry scheme wherein the taxpayer not only funds the labour but also the gang-masters who organise it and also promises to reward the gang-masters who have been given an official licence to bully and cajole people by threatening to have their benefits removed via gang-master decreed sanctions if they are not totally compliant.

No, you mustn't even dare to think it.