Political Scrapbook | Left-wing news and gossip

Workfare firm A4e sent jobseeker to work in lapdancing club

9:04am Wed May 23rd

A government contractor sent a jobseeker to work in a lapdancing club, it has been revealed. Controversial workfare firm A4e, who trouser £200m of taxpayers’ money from workfare schemes, sent an unemployed man to work at X in the City in Liverpool.

Given their inclination for scandal — the firm has been hit with yet more allegations of fraud – Scrapbook is surprised to hear that staff spurned the opportunity to visit the club. Internal documents stated:

“It was not possible to conduct a visit to ‘X In The City’ to verify the documents for [name redacted]. This employer is a lap-dance bar and was not open during the hours of the audit.”

No doubt the firm wish more of their placements are at unauditable lapdancing clubs — given that one quarter of them are either fraudulent or could not be verified.

The club hit the headlines after Manchester City striker Mario Balotelli was pictured leaving the venue at 2:45am on the day of a Premier League fixture.

This certainly an original way to inventiveness completion of a placement.

Francis “don’t panic” Maude lands government PR recruitment role

4:23pm Tue May 22nd

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Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude has landed the role of recruiting PR and advertising consultants for the coalition government – just months after his helpful advice led to a woman suffering 40% burns.

Addressing a PR conference in London yesterday, Maude announced:

‘Suppliers should know that this Government is on the hunt for the best talent and the most innovative ideas, albeit keenly priced. I challenged my civil servants to come up with innovations that will make it easier for industry to do business with us; now we’ll be looking to industry to come forward with innovative ideas for us.’

Let’s hope he starts listening to some of their advice before he goes on air next time…

Whitehall ethics chief intervenes on taxpayer-funded Tory propaganda

2:19pm Tue May 22nd

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The government’s director of propriety and ethics has “tightened internal processes” after David Cameron’s taxpayer-funded Number 10 email newsletter was used to claim that Labour were “on the side of Britain’s something for nothing culture.”

While the email is billed as a “news roundup or a personal message” from David Cameron, party political lines are prohibited in the email, the production of which is supposedly overseen by civil servants.

It looks like this line was slipped in by a Number 10 special advisor:

“While we’ve been putting in place a sensible, modern welfare system that protects the vulnerable, our opponents have shown they are on the side of Britain’s something for nothing culture.”

Sue Gray, who has previously headed up ethics investigations on Liam Fox and Hazel Blears, ruled that the email was in breach of civil service rules.

Hilariously, Cameron’s message railed against the “abuse” of taxpayers’ money.

Leveson Inquiry QC asks questions about Political Scrapbook

12:14pm Tue May 22nd

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This morning saw Political Scrapbook raised at the Leveson Inquiry, with Tom Watson forced to deny he was part of the “management” of this website — a ridiculous notion to anyone with knowledge of the UK blogosphere.

The questions asked by Robert Jay QC were put to the inquiry by a core participant — an individual accorded special rights to view witness statements and suggest lines of questioning.

The bizarre exchange left the Scrapbook office wondering which core participant we have offended such that they would put these questions to the inquiry.

We’ve obviously been ruffling some feathers somewhere.

More: Full list of core participants »

Chris Grayling overruled stats chief to spin immigrants as fraudsters

7:24pm Mon May 21st

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Employment minister Chris Grayling overruled his senior officials to generate anti-immigrant headlines about “benefit tourism” — despite the majority of claimants in a DWP study being British citizens.

With emphasis on “failed asylum seekers” and those arriving “in the back of lorries”, research looking at the original nationality of benefits claimants was spun into scaremongering headlines implying criminality amongst what were now British citizens claiming benefits perfectly legally.

A freedom of information request from freelance journalist Solomon Hughes has exposed the clash between Grayling and the two top statistics officials in his department. Rather than follow best practice and release data to all media outlets at the same time, Grayling demanded that his opinion piece for the Telegraph be released first — shaping coverage as anti-immigrant before anyone had seen the actual statistics.

“The proposed course of action – releasing the text of the Daily Telegraph article under embargo until midnight and then publishing the statistics on the ad hoc website at 7am … may attract criticism from some elements of the media and/or from the UK Statistics Authority. Both have been critical of the Home Office in its release of certain statistical information.”

As deputy head of statistics Tim Knight observed, this is not the first time Grayling and his boss Iain Duncan Smith have been caught massaging the figures (see Left Foot Forward for complete list):

The robost email exchanges reveal more than a little embarassment from DWP civil servants when it comes to their ministers.

TaxPayers’ Alliance: opponents of tax cuts suffer from “sexual jealousy”

1:08pm Mon May 21st

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A new report from the TaxPayers’ Alliance and Institute of Directors claims that those disagree with them are suffering from “sexual jealousy”. The publication makes the case for an extension of austerity to the year 2020, followed by tax cuts for the rich.

But the report 417-page tome, edited by City AM editor Allister Heath (pictured above with sexy ladies), drifts off into bonkers evolutionary psychology by page 91:

“It was still the same in early agricultural societies: the man with the most corn or cattle had the most wives or concubines. And it is still true today … the man with the most money still gets more sexual opportunities than the man with the least money”

Apparently, the liberal intelligentisa object to large tax cuts because they can no longer “flirt with the best women”. We are not making this up.

“So no wonder we dislike inequality. No wonder we want tax to take that money off a Vanderbilt before he grabs all the best women.”

Pursuing the likes of TPA director Matthew Elliott evidently doesn’t leave much time to do any work: just one of their 19 commissioners is female.

David Cameron called Steve Hilton a “little Hungarian fascist”

10:06am Mon May 21st

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Doubtless revelations in ConservativeHome won’t help to heal the growing rift between David Cameron and his aide Steve Hilton, who is currently in self-imposed exile in California.

With Hilton’s parents coming to Britain as asylum seekers during the Hungarian revolution of 1956, a hatchet job column on the policy guru claims:

“David Cameron would refer to Steve as the little Hungarian fascist”

Though Bruce Anderson claims that the term was “meant affectionately”, its inclusion in an article which describes Hilton as a “whining, egomaniacal perpetual adolescent” has already raised eyebrows.

Barely two years into the government and poisonous “blue on blue” briefings are already flying.

Scrapbook’s top five: our most popular posts this week

7:00am Sat May 19th

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Our Top Five most clicked stories of the last seven days were:

Thanks to the 129,159 visitors to Scrapbook in the last month.