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Welfare reform plans face £1.6bn black hole after Lords reject measures to limit sickness benefits
By Jason Groves
Last updated at 4:52 AM on 12th January 2012
Lord Freud warned peers that extending the cap on ESA payments to two years alone would be expensive for the taxpayer
Ministers were facing a £1.6billion black hole in their welfare reform plans last night – following a triple defeat in the House of Lords over measures to limit sickness benefits.
In a shock defeat peers rejected plans to limit eligibility for Employment and Support Allowance – paid to those deemed too sick to work – to just 12 months in cases where individuals have enough money to support themselves.
Government sources last night acknowledged there was now a real risk that the flagship plan to cap the maximum amount of benefits a family can receive to £26,000 a year will also be thrown out when it is debated next week.
The price tag on defeats over the Welfare Reform Bill now stands at more than £2.2billion. A Government source last night described the defeats as ‘disappointing’ but said the measures would be reintroduced in the Commons.
The sums of money are so large that ministers are confident they can force peers to back down.
Welfare Reform Minister Lord Freud warned peers that extending the cap on ESA payments to two years alone would cost the taxpayer £1.6billion over five years.
But leading medic Lord Patel, an independent crossbench peer who led last night’ s rebellion, said the proposals were unacceptable.
He said: ‘I am sympathetic to cutting the deficit, but I am highly sympathetic to sick and vulnerable people not being subjected to something that will make their lives even more miserable.’
The Government was defeated by 234 to 186, majority 48, over the one-year cap.
Ministers are believed to fear the plan to cap the maximum amount of benefits payouts a family can receive to £26,000 a year will be thrown out
Peers also voted through an amendment that will allow young people unable to work because of disability to receive ESA, even if they have substantial means.
Independent peer Baroness Meacher said: ‘The Government has said they will protect the most vulnerable. The Prime Minister himself made a very personal commitment to help these people. Is there anyone more vulnerable than a severely disabled young person who has never and will never have the chance of earning a living?’
In a third defeat, peers also threw out a proposed time limit on ESA claims by cancer patients receiving treatment.
The defeats came after Labour teamed up with Crossbench peers and a small number of Liberal Democrats to outnumber the Government.
A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions last night insisted the Government’s plans were fair to both the sick and the taxpayer.
The spokesman added: ‘Our plans are about returning the welfare state to its original purpose of supporting those with the most need. But we need to ensure that taxpayer’s money is spent on those with the most need – those who are too sick or disabled to work and those with the least money.
‘ESA for people who could be expected to get back into work, was never intended to be a long term benefit. ‘The time-limit of one year strikes the best balance between recognising that some people need extra help to enter the workplace and that the taxpayer cannot afford to support people indefinitely who could be in employment.’
But Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne called on ministers to now abandon the proposals. Mr Byrne said: ‘The Government has been defeated tonight because quite simply they tried to cross the basic line of British decency.’
Categories: News Tags: £1.6bn, after, benefits, Black, Face, hole, Limit, Lords, measures, plans, reform, reject, sickness, welfare
Supermini that drove into a PC storm: Volkswagen’s latest car in controversy over ‘Black up!’ model
By Ray Massey, Transport Editor
Last updated at 2:54 AM on 10th January 2012
As a leading carmaker Volkswagen is revered for its radical thinking and engineering genius.
Sadly for the German business, it is a little less adept when it comes to extricating itself from a PR nightmare.
With the launch of its new ‘up!’ supermini looming, the firm decided on a few special editions to boost sales of the model.
Stalled: The ‘black up!’ – a version of Volkswagen’s new supermini – was dropped in the UK over fears it could cause offence to ethnic minorities
One, however, proved a little controversial. While the ‘white up!’ was always on safe ground, the ‘black up!’ was clearly heading for trouble.
UK bosses blocked the name fearing that if it was used in Britain, it could give offence to ethnic minorities – because of the connotation of white actors and singers ‘blacking up’ to perform as minstrels.
The solution they came up with however was hardly inspired. Bosses simply decided to reverse the words and call it the ‘up! black’.
Funnily enough, no one has been convinced and a PR storm that could have been averted now refuses to blow over.
Matthew Collins, of campaigning organisation Hope Not Hate, branded the name ‘insensitive’.
He said: ‘In this country at the moment we seem to be dealing with an explosion in racism and these are not the wisest of words to have been chosen.’
Volkswagen said there were no plans to change the ‘black up!’ name on the Continent because, as foreign words in European countries, they did not have the same ‘resonance’ as in Britain.
A spokesman said: ‘We recognised the potential sensitivity and reversed the wording.’
OTHER CARS THAT GOT LOST IN TRANSLATION
- General Motors was baffled that its Chevy Nova was not selling in Latin America in the 1970s, until somebody pointed out ‘Nova’ means ‘it doesn’t go’ in Spanish
- In 1971 Ford launched a ‘Pinto’ range. The car struggled to sell in Brazil as the word is slang for small male genitals
Balls up: Ford’s Pinto was a flop in Brazil
- Honda was forced to change the name of its Fitta car in 2001 after it emerged the word means a woman’s genitals in Swedish. It was rebranded the Honda Jazz
- In the 1960s Rolls-Royce was apparently going to call the successor to the Silver Cloud the Silver Mist – until it was pointed out that ‘mist’ in German means pile of manure
Categories: News Tags: Black, Controversy, drove, into, Latest, MODEL, over, Storm, Supermini, Volkswagen's
The black hole of Britain! Mystery as heating, doorbells and showers stop working in sleepy village (near ‘top secret’ military base)
By Ted Thornhill
Last updated at 11:54 AM on 5th January 2012
Villagers in Hampshire, near the world-famous Watership Down hill, fear they have become the latest victims of a ‘black hole’ mystery which has hit other parts of Britain.
One family, the Smiths, were baffled when their heating, shower, doorbell and even their cars’ remote door locks refused to work and they discovered similar problems were being experienced by their neighbours in Kingsclere.
They spent much of the festive season without heating and lights after the failure of household systems that rely on digital technology, specifically radio-frequency identification (RFID).
Festive gloom: Some residents in Kingsclere had a miserable Christmas after experiencing an electronics black-out
Chris Smith, whose wife’s birthday on Christmas Eve was ruined by the systems failure, spent more than £250 trying to fix the heating and shower but neither worked until late on December 27, according to the Newbury Weekly News.
He has speculated that secret experiments at the nearby Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston military base are responsible – but a spokesman for Ofcom, which oversees radio communications, had a more mundane explanation.
He said: ‘Often these problems can be caused by a video sender – that transmits a television signal to other sets in the house. They are not the source of all the problems but in a lot of cases interference is tracked down to those devices.’
But Mr Smith, who had the heating system installed 18 months ago, said he did not know of anyone nearby with a video sender. However he did think it was odd that his heating, shower and doorbell began working again late on December 27, at the end of the Christmas break.
In October the residents of Dimond Road, Southampton, reported that their remote car key fobs had stopped working. The problem was tracked down to a faulty video sender which was ‘leaking’ a frequency that interfered with the fobs.
Strange: Remote car keys were one of the many devices that stopped working
Residents in a street in Windermere, Cumbria, had similar problems in March 2010, which were eventually traced back to a wireless device used to take orders at a nearby restaurant.
Mr Smith said he spent much of Christmas reading manuals and making phone calls in an effort to get the heating fixed.
Although the boiler was running, the wireless thermostat on the heating system and the digital shower stopped working.
He told the Newbury Weekly News: ‘It was a rather cold and smelly Christmas.’
A heating engineer called to the house in Ash Grove, Kingsclere, had to move his van 100 metres up the road because his key fob also stopped working and it was the only way he could get out of range of whatever was causing the problem.
WHAT CAN CAUSE RFID INTERFERENCE?
It’s likely that electromagnetic interference (EMI) of some sort is causing the failure of Kingsclere’s electronics, but the source of this could be anything from an electrical circuit to radiation hitting the Earth from the Sun, or possibly a military source.
Electromagnetic pulses (EMP), fired by microwave generators, can be used to disrupt magnetic fields, which in turn causes massive voltage surges that paralyses equipment.
Nuclear weapons produce huge EMP waves, but of course, that being the source in this instance is out of the question.
The Smiths had called the emergency engineer after realising that despite having hot water, the shower, which had a digital control, did not work at all.
When the heating engineer finally arrived, he had to phone them from the doorstep to be let in because the doorbell, which also operated via a wireless connection, had failed.
When the engineer inspected their heating system he found that the fault was with the wireless communication system.
But when he returned to his van to collect a tool to try to fix the problem, his vehicle failed to unlock using the remote controlled key.
Having eventually found a way to get into the van, he installed not one, but three new communication units in the boiler before giving up and telling the family that the problem must be external to their system and it was also affecting other homes in the village.
Mr Smith said: ‘We spent Christmas without central heating and had the additional cost of buying an electric heater for the children’s bedrooms and extra logs for the wood burner.’
The total cost for the repairs, which did not get the system back up and running, came to £200.
He said ‘Through Facebook, we learned that we were not alone and that all over the village people were having problems with remote controls, car locking, etc.’
It meant the entire village had become a sort of digital ‘black hole’ with families relying on hi-tech gadgets discovering that nothing worked.
It wasn’t until about 5pm on December 27 that everything suddenly started working again – but nobody knows why it all decided to come back on and what had caused the problem in the first place.
Mr Smith has now concluded that the common link between the failed devices was that they all used radio-frequency identification (RFID).
But he said: ‘The question is, what caused the blocking of the RFID frequency in the village and how do you even begin to find out?.
‘Kingsclere is in the shadow of the Hannington television transmitter, so it could have been engineering work that went wrong and unnoticed over the holiday period.’
The Hannington television and radio transmitter serves the surrounding area, and the company responsible for it, Arqiva, admit that a strong signal from it could affect RFID devices, but say on this occasion they were not to blame.
Mr Smith added: ‘Kingsclere is also close to any number of military or scientific establishments that could have been responsible for this, but I doubt any would discuss this problem.’
Kingsclere is about eight miles from the top-secret Aldermaston atomic weapons base and is also used frequently by RAF Chinook helicopters which fly over the surrounding countryside.
Categories: News Tags: 'top, Base, Black, Britain, doorbells, heating, hole, Military, Mystery, near, Secret, showers, sleepy, stop, village, Working
‘Murder Is My Business’: The startling black and white images of New York crime scenes that gave rise to storied photojournalist Weegee
By Jennifer Madison
Last updated at 10:25 PM on 4th January 2012
With their hard shadows and dark imagery, these pictures could have been taken from any number of crime scenes in a melodramatic film noir.
But these grisly photos are no movie magic. In fact, they inspired the genre.
What follows are real-life pictures of New York between 1935 and 1946, when photographer Arthur Fellig, or Weegee as he became known, covered the police beat on the Lower East Side.
Grief: The wife of man who has just been killed tries desperately to get to his body before collapsing in New York in 1940
Weegee, Fellig’s pseudonym derived from a Ouija board (chosen for his ability to arrive at crime scenes before police) set a new standard for tabloid photojournalism with his distinct and dramatic black and white street photography.
He started out as a Hollywood paparazzo but his talents eventually landed him freelance jobs for a variety of New York newspapers and photo agencies, such as the Daily News and the Daily Mirror.
Rogue’s gallery: The line-up for a session of the night court is led into the building in handcuffs in 1941
Caught: Anthony Esposito is booked on suspicion of killing a policeman in New York on January 16, 1941
Crime scene: Police officers stand outside a restaurant in front of the body of someone shot dead in 1943
In a 2006 article entitled ‘Unknown Weegee, on Photographer Who Made The Night Noir’, New York Times reporter Holland Cotter described his technique.
‘He prowled the streets in a car equipped with a police radio, a typewriter, developing equipment, a supply of cigars and a change of underwear,’ Mr Cotter wrote, dubbing Weegee a ‘one-man photo factory’.
‘He drove to a crime site; took pictures; developed the film, using the trunk as a darkroom; and delivered the prints.’
Grisly: But this is in fact a wax display or a murder at Eden Museé, on Coney Island, created in 1941
Duty calls: An installation view of ‘Weegee: Murder Is My Business’ at the Photo League in New York in 1941. Arthur Fellig, aka Weegee, was often at crime scenes before the police
Ghoulish: A crowd of onlookers at the scene of a murder on the East Side in 1943
Macabre: The blood-spattered body of Dominick Didato is shown in Elizabeth Street, New York, in 1936 and, right, Weegee captures police recovering the body of Reception Hospital ambulance driver Morris Linker, along with his vehicle, from the East River in 1943
Clues: Police officers search around the body of a murder victim lying in front of a pram in 1940 and, right, a police officer and a lodge member look at the blanket-covered body of a woman trampled to death during an excursion ship stampede in 1941. Other bodies are also visible in the scene
Weegee was born Usher Fellig in Zlockzów, Austrian Galicia (now Ukraine), but his name was changed to Arthur when his family emigrated to New York in 1909.
He became known for his obsession with the macabre with his stills of New York’s crime-ridden Lower East Side, but eventually returned to his roots in Hollywood.
Inspiration: Joe Pesci’s character Bernzy, pictured alongside Barbara Hershey in the 1992 film The Public Eye, was based on Weegee
His 1945 book of photographs, Naked City, was the inspiration behind the 1947 film of the same name and he was uncredited as a still photographer in the 1964 Stanley Kubrick film Dr Strangelove.
He revelled in his own notoriety, stamping the back of his pictures with ‘Credit Photo by Weegee the Famous’.
Speaking of his archive, he once said: ‘The easiest kind of a job to cover was a murder. The stiff would be laying on the ground.
‘He couldn’t get up and walk away or get temperamental.’
He died in December 1968 at the age of 69.
In 1980, his widow Wilma Wilcox formed The Weegee Portfolio Incorporated to create a collection of his works from the original negatives and his entire archive was donated to the International Center of Photography in New York in 1993.
In the 1992 film The Public Eye, the lead character Bernzy – played by actor Joe Pesci – was largely inspired by the photographer’s public persona.
Weegee’s work from the 1930s and 1940s – 100 framed photographs, magazine, newspapers and films – is now on display as part of a travelling exhibition called ‘Weegee: Murder Is My Business’, opening at the International Center for Photography on January 20.
The exhibit features the museum’s extensive Weegee Archive, including lurid highlights of crime scenes, murder victims covered by blankets and crowds gathered around bodies – scenes that have been repeatedly replicated in film noir.
It will also include ‘environmental recreations of Weegee’s apartment and exhibitions’.
The exhibit will be on display until September 2.
Accident: This girl was killed after jumping out of a car on Park Avenue, New York, in 1938
Gun fight: This well-dressed man was shot dead during a hold up on November 24, 1941
Debonnaire: Hats hang from hooks in a pool room on Mulberry Street around 1943
Headlines: More images from the Photo League in 1941. Weegee generated his name from the Ouija Board, and his ability to get to crime scenes before the police
Disaster: A display showing images from the excursion ship stampede in 1941
Society: Visitors take a good look at some of Weegee’s grisly images at the 1941 exhibition
