report

Radio news is now saying the decision has been announced and the government (amazingly given virtually every lawyer has at every stage told them they would) lost. So that's a massive legal bill plus something in the range of £100m of compensation IDS has cost the taxpayer for a scheme even an idiot could see was going to be troublesome. And yet he's still in a job.

Also as a graduate her voluntary work was in a similar field to her degree so would have been very relevant. The system was flawed but they would not listen.

Unfortunately her degree is in a niche market where there is only a very small amount of jobs. Her voluntary work may have given her valuable experience but is still unlikely to get her a job in the field. Her comments about the situation smack more of her own idea of her superiority and what work is beneath her. Plus the unwelcome notoriety this case has given her will probably work against her in future applications.

So this brings up the question she was prepared to be subsidised by the state to do work for free for only what she wants to do.

Is it the right of the individual to decide on what they do when being given money by the state?

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Having read the report it lookjs like they lost on on a technicality

T
so basically they need to give you a bit of paper with the small print on it explaining what will happen and then they are covered

Paternalism - in the general, non discriminatory sense, where the government takes control over your decisions for your own good - really only makes sense if the government is making better decisions than you would make unaided (thus we have rules forcing people to send their children to school because left to their own devices some would leave them to play in gutters instead).

It sounds like the Poundland role was no more valid as work experience than the voluntary one. The purpose of the scheme is to get people into work experience, not to run their entire life for them. So it was a poor decision to force her; seemingly, some rules needed amending to change this practice. Judging from the report, it seems that they have been amended.

I understand the desire to make some people who have no history of work take something to get them started, but if a candidate is pursuing a career path, even one that some petty bureaucrat sees little long term value in, they are not a rational target of such a rule and should be excluded.

It may not be an absolute right. But the government has to accept limits on what it can require, and of whom.

A technicality their own lawyers said they would lose on, yet they still carried on. Picking a fight your own side says you won't win is a pretty stupid thing to do. So, as I say, the government is likely to end up down the thick end of £100 million. Now I don't know about you, but if I lost my business a sum of money that had seven figures in it, I wouldn't even bother waiting to be told to clear my desk.


Probably a bit more than that. In these kinds of cases, the expectation is you make the information available in a way someone reasonably likely to need to know it will understand. So probably it'll require some sort of written agreement between the provider and the claimant that the claimant understands what the conditions of the scheme are. Course, plenty of people sign things they don't really understand or bother to read.

The best bit of this : This government is claiming the fact a judge says the scheme wasn't slave labour as some sort of victory. There's a high moral standard to adhere to, eh?

It's hardly impressive that anyone was making such a vacuous comparison in the first place.