I actually think that we’d be a lot better off if every law passed and Treaty signed since about 1960 was repealed.

We wouldn’t be in Europe, there’d still be the death penalty, homosexuality in public would still be illegal, etc etc.

I like Tax Credits… whilst I agree the system leaves a lot to be desired (the excessive automated paperwork; the errors pecked into the keyboard by the battery hens they employ; the way they don’t allow married couples to share their 16 hours minimum; the garbled complex info; the… oh I’ll shut up for once.
The principle that you only get something for doing something is precisely what is needed as a replacement for the JSA and Income Support and some other benefits.

It’s more practical to have a mix of tax credits and work when you’ve got small children, because otherwise, you wade into the childcare system, with it’s arbitrary limits on funding of something like 80%, and having to work a *lot* of hours (i.e. sign out of the working time directive).
The other issue is that if your objective is to get as many people in work ASAP, as opposed to getting as many people in full-time work ASAP, you are going to make a lot more progress with the former, as it enables small local employers to offer part time work, and tax credits recipients can build up a “portfolio” of part-time “piecemeal” work.
There are social cohesion (feral kids on the street) issues; and low skill employability issues involved… ultimately I think even as a right-wingish type, you want as many people in some kind of work to some extent as possible, as it keeps them from being subsumed into the system of being a perpetual and ungrateful client of the state; and it’s practical – in poor urban areas, there are often a lot of part-time low skilled jobs available, but usually not enough to make it viable… tax credits makes it viable, and you’ve planted the seed of work… the last thing you want is to fill those jobs with immigrants and simply give up on the indigenous people letting them fall into the benefits underclass, never to escape.

But yeah, the bureaucracy is excessive in this country… I think it stems from a lefty academic idea of “evidence” (you know, school league tables, ASBOs etc..), whereby you rely on stats and paper to measure your progress as a substitute for the analogue approach of eyes and ears and face to face hands on stuff.
You need autonomous humINT on the ground – coppers and some kind of benefits warden to manage stuff, and replace a lot of the data entry call centre crepe.

@Promsan
“the fact they’re still in power is simply an electoral anomaly… like a paralytic driver slumped over the wheel of speeding bus.”

I love it! Brilliant image!

“…Tax Credits were a good idea though”

It would have been better to raise the tax threshold to the level of the minimum wage. Far less bureaucracy for essentially the same result.

Similarly, arguing that the past *never* has a relevance to [sic] “arguing about a future propensity” is also a causational logical fallacy; as is, inserting “myopic” (poisoning the well) before UK-only perspective.

“every schoolboy knows that” ; P

Try working on your syntax before venturing into the murky quagmire of logic; and watch out for your argumentum ad ignorantiams.