Liverpool Daily Post - Police called after welfare experts offer advice to disabled ahead of Atos sickness benefit assessments

POLICE were called by staff at a firm that assesses whether people are genuinely too ill to work - after a councillor stood outside their offices offering free advice to claimants as they arrived.

Workers at Atos - the company controversially employed by the government to make sure everyone claiming incapacity deserves their benefits - contacted the force because of a "demonstration" going on at Mann Island.

But police just found two men handing out leaflets and no sign of a demonstration.

Wirral councillor Joe Walsh, who is also chair of the network of Trade Unions Congress Unemployed Centres, and welfare advice expert Terry Craven said the incident happened after one claimant asked them if they would accompany him to his medical.

But the Atos staff are said to have refused to carry it out if either of them were there - even though claimants are allowed to take a friend in with them.

  "There was huge market failure in the finance and banking sector - everyone knows that - and we've not robustly said so. The truth is that in government we didn't sufficiently map out the contours of the mixed economy and put stakes in the ground about where the market can't go. We were frightened of dealing with some of those so-called great Thatcherite legacies, like liberalisation of the City, so we let the City grow out of control. And I don't know why we don't just say that. Why don't we just say that?" Might it be to do with protecting Ed Balls' reputation? "I don't know," he says, but doesn't sound entirely convincing. "I didn't do the economy, I was the coordinator."

    Watson fears Labour's unwillingness to admit they let the financial markets get out of control has cost them their economic credibility. "If we don't explain that properly, how can we argue that it's the reason the crisis took place in 2008? Our problem is that, in the absence of that explanation, people blame the 2008 crash on our profligate spending."

    Once Labour has admitted the reason for the crash, it could then offer a "distinctive economic programme" of investment to create jobs. "It's all about jobs. Not taking risks is not an option." Does Labour's current economic policy takes too few risks? "Yes, definitely. The country is in a crisis. If Labour's not going to give the bold solution, then who is?"

I agree with this so much my head hurts from all the nodding.

Yes please. Sunny is right to note that this got buried in amongst the revelations about what went on in Falkirk. But this would be welcome from the leadership, sadly there is no chance of such un-blairite recanting

keep to the Fen Causeway

We're 21 months out from the General Election and thus far a potential Labour manifesto looks like Muller Lite to the Tories' Deluxe Corner - a bit better for me but unlikely to rock my world.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the Welfare debate - a catalogue of Labour surrenders based on one fundamental misconception: That public policy can or should be based on "fairness". In lackluster unison, the opponents of Iain Duncan Smith's reforms mumble that it is unfair that families with severely disabled kids should have their welfare income limited to £500 per week. Meanwhile the Tories thunder that it's not fair hardworking families should pay taxes so the unemployed can live on a higher income.

The trouble is; they're both right. But only because our public debate has reduced individuals in society to the level of rats escaping a fire; each trying to make sure that someone else's life is more unfair than ours. And Labour's just accepted it.

But public policy isn't about "fairness" or "unfairness", it's about responsibility.

An interesting view on how a simple change in presentation can overcome voter resistance

keep to the Fen Causeway

VIENNA (Reuters) - An Austrian brewery is offering beer lovers a trip back in time by reviving a 300-year-old recipe it found in the town archives.

The family-owned Hofstetten brewery in the Upper Austrian town of Saint Martin recreated the "Neuhauser Herrschafts Pier" from ingredients listed in an invoice for the local Neuhaus castle in 1720, when Austria was one of Europe's big powers.

Using small crops of emmer and malting barley grown from ancient seed varieties agricultural historians had preserved, owner Peter Krammer was able to reproduce the mix of barley, wheat and hops that marked the brew made three centuries ago.

"We thought that old kinds of grains must have more taste," he said, adding it took five tries before he was satisfied.

So I spent my weekend about halfway up at 3500 meters elevation helping with various support tasks... gasp...