Iain Duncan Smith intensifies welfare reforms

I was reading the comments left by readers of an article in the Guardian entitled "Welfare reform: will Iain Duncan Smith's benefits revolution happen?".  I was particularly impressed by a comment written by someone using the name Election2015UK.  So I asked Election2015UK if I could reproduce his comment on my blog.  He replied:

Yes, of course. Please feel free to do so.
In fact, anyone can use anything I write anywhere.
You could even put this licence on it to make it look snazzy.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

So here is the comment by Election2015UK for your delectation and education:

If you want to completely fuck something up beyond all hope of repair, put a congenital idiot in charge.

The purpose, the role, the mission of Iain Duncan Smith in this government is to destroy the social security system and he is doing a mighty fine job, which is why he remains in office.

This is a massive neoliberal achievement, on the same scale as privatising the NHS, so people should not imagine that the catastrophic wholesale destruction is a result of Iain Duncan Smith's stupidity and uselessness.

This is the masterplan.

Even inside government there are profound doubts. After £40m was written off on IT systems that are no longer fit for purpose, it recently emerged that the body responsible for grading its implementation, the Major Projects Authority, had "reset" UC as an entirely new project, meaning that it was classed as having been sent back to the drawing board. It had failed all its tests, so it was starting again.

Didn't a new category of disaster have to be invented especially for Iain Duncan Smith and Universal Credit?

Wasn't the old designation a simple red-amber-green traffic light system?

Then a blaring klaxon, flashing neon lights, tsunami of shit, planets falling from the heavens, global nuclear Winter universal meltdown had to be created to illustrate the Old Testament scale the IDS disaster.

...fraud is the "Achilles heel" of universal credit. "Organised crime is already sophisticated at using identity theft and ghost employees, and the risk of organised crime infiltrating the state benefit system is significant. Relying on remote central IT systems, removing local knowledge and human contact, will make it easier for fraudsters."

Remember how David Cameron strutted into Parliament shortly after limping into office and declared that the social security system was being plundered by fraudsters to the tune of £5.2 billion per annum?

At the time, the government's own figures put fraud at about £670 million.

The rest was down to clerical error.

There was also always about £12-16 billion sitting in the pot unclaimed, so inept and clumsy were the fraudsters who were supposed to be milking the system.

This is nothing about money and all about ideology.

This is all about handing the state to crony corporations and making the life choices of the poor to either work for next to nothing or die in a ditch.

This is a good article, but could we have some detailed figures on how much money Iain Duncan Smith has cost the country?

Not the piffling £40 million or so his IT disasters have so far cost or the £ hundreds of millions in write-offs or his claims for underpants and breakfasts.

The last figure on the bald head of this human catastrophe was in the order of £5 billion, but it would be nice to get an accurate, up-to-date figure.

That is all money that used to have your name on it, the hardworking, striving taxpayers of Broekn Britain.

All that money, squandered and pissed up the ideological wall of kicking the poor and disabled and sick and unemployed.

So, instead of paying effective loose change for a universal social security system on which you may also one day hope to rely, you will now pay a small fortune.

Has there ever been a promise of reductions in tax and Natioanl Insurance contributions once social security has been dismantled and the NHS has been privatised - or even when the banks have paid back all those billions filched from your pockets to save them from bankruptcy?

Because, if everything is to be handed to profiteers, they should not need to be propped up by the state, using your money, should they?

Sorry, that is also part of the plan.

Your tax money is their income stream, their offshore, tax-havened profits.

So, if you have been obediently kicking the poor on Iain Duncan Smith's barked commands, more fool you.

Because you are the poor, dumb schmuck paying for it all and you will continue to do so forever.

This is a scam, a heist and you have probably been cheerleading your own mugging.

Which would, unbelievably, make Iain Duncan Smith look like a genius in comparison.

Excellent!