Help for the Deserving

A public information video about appealing against decisions to remove disability and sickness benefit has elicited the whining disapprobation of the Assistant Supreme Commander of the Idleness Police. Chris Graybeing's dislike of the video rests partly on the understandable grounds that at least some of it was factually true, and partly on the fact that its tone apparently lacked the sort of jovial barrack-room bullying which the DWP likes to adopt when dealing with fraudulent benefits claims, viz. all benefits claims. Clearly this would never do, especially in a welfare culture where some fraudsters are prepared to die of disease just so they can continue to live at the taxpayers' expense. The fragrant Jonathan Djanogly wrote in April that he would instruct his minions to edit the inconvenient truths out of the video since, in the words of the welfare rights adviser who brought the matter to light, the parts to which Graybeing objected "were all parts which claimants would find helpful."

It is heartening to see that Graybeing, who shot to fame a couple of years ago through his attempts to protect Christian hoteliers from the taint of homosexual money, has not given up his philanthropic enterprises. Atos, the private company in charge of kicking people off benefits, has been subjected to two separate television documentaries which portray its assessment procedures as arbitrary, callous and concerned more with numerical targets than with claimants' needs. Since Atos is sponsoring the London Paralympics, at which it is hoped that much of Team GB will be detected and arrested en masse, Graybeing has generously resumed his natural aspect - that of a middling malignant dingbat - in order to distract public attention and spare the company further embarrassment.