The article raises the question as to whether you can live off that small amount. Ultimately the question would be: is it difficult to go without? Do you have the self control to limit your spending? Using DirectGov to input a fictitious 25 year old who lived alone it's fairly easy to find out that living on benefits should be pretty straight forward when 'all' entitled benefits are taken into account. Presuming they live on their own, in an average single bed flat, in an average Band D property, in an average part of the world (rent £400 per month, council tax c.£1200 per year) the results are surprising. On top of the Jobseeker's allowance, there is housing benefit of £92.06 and council tax benefit of £23.02 per week. A total of £179.38 per week.

So you don't have to worry about who's paying your council tax and rent? Fuel and food are the next essentials. Life in a single bed flat or studio shouldn't consume much of either of those and it's quite feasible to eek out a sustainable life on the remainder. You could even stretch to purchasing the internet/phone for £6.73 a week and a TV Licence costs £2.74 a week. You may have to kiss your rollies and beer goodbye, but you can live quite easily without them.

So to those who say it's not enough. Oh it is. It's more than enough.

The ignorance of the government on this matter is evidenced every time Mr. Brown is questioned about the economy. He will immediately begin to tell you how much better the economy is doing and how much the national debt is not as bad as other countries. This report should serve to those who have bought into this bogus rhetoric as a slap in the face. The OECD report clearly shows Britain’s debt well above even that of Iceland’s.

Only a couple of days ago, the government promised to introduce legislation to halve the deficit within four years. While it is quite doubtful that the Labor Party has any any intentions to fulfill that promise, perhaps a new elected government will be able to at least recognize the problem. We will see...

Imagine that the problem was not a shortage of loans, but of food, caused by a deadly bug that had contaminated every grain of soil. Only one strain of produce that was immune: wheat. There was one food we could still eat: bread.

Imagine also that the bread baking industry was going through its own crisis because, a month earlier, the UK’s dominant retailing business, Tescopoly, had decided to sell bread at 1p per loaf in order to rid the nation’s high streets of the few remaining shops that were preventing its continued expansion.

The Government decided to bail out the bakers by:

1. Servicing the debts of every UK bakery;
2. Paying senior bakery staff handsomely in return merely for turning up for work;
3. Fixing the price of bread. The market price of a loaf was £2 (pre-Tescopoly). The price was now fixed at 40p. [UK interest rates were cut post-crash to 1% from 5%, an 80% reduction.]

How much bread did the bakers produce after this bailout?

As the disappointing news of continued starvation spread reports emerged of bakers stockpiling wheat yet ordering new Ferraris.

A second emergency policy was announced: falsifying the wheat accounts. The public knew that the exercise was simple false accounting, but they did not object, so desperate were they for any hope of increased bread production.

Virtual computer generated wheat was treated as if it were real. It was kept in a virtual cold store and the policy was given a fancy name – “Quantitative Freezing”.

Incredibly this policy boosted morale for a year or so and was presented as working.

The emperor’s true nakedness was exposed as the bodies piled up.

A longer version of this article was posted at the Cobden Centre here.

BA itself has many other challenges on its plate, ranging from the sharp plunge into losses, expected strikes and ongoing debate about its planned alliance with American Airlines. However, its worsening pension deficit – at an estimated £3 billion and above its current market value – represent a real impediment to completion of the Iberia deal.

Prudently, Iberia included a get-out clause in its market statement – ‘Iberia will be entitled to terminate the merger agreement if the outcome of the discussions between BA and its pension fund trustees is not, in Iberia’s reasonable opinion, satisfactory because it is materially detrimental to the economic premises of the proposed merger.’

Despite the hours of legal time devoted to drawing up this convoluted sentence, it remains opaque. Clearly, though, Iberia could walk away. Moving to its asset base, BA inherited its key asset – 41% of the slots at Heathrow, which drives its valuation. Without them, its core business class operations at Heathrow simply could not function.

Mindful of the £22.5 billion raised from the sale of 3G spectrum in 2000, could the Government not auction the very valuable slots at Heathrow, both to raise funds and to generate more competition?

Of course, BA would vigorously oppose such a policy even if it were phased in over a deferred period. There are also highly complex legal issues relating to slot ownership both in the UK and in the EU.

But does – and should - BA have effective ownership of over 40% of Heathrow’s slots sine die, unless it chooses to sell them?

However, altogether the Government coalition experienced a smaller increase of votes, signalling the possibility that the government will be re-elected. But the government parties still have to show that they can get the Danish economy out of the present crisis without expanding public expenditures further. The next budget already contains a deficit of about 10%, and according to CEPOS this is built upon excessive current expenditure.

With a deficit this large the Danish government will need to cut the public expenditure and reform the Danish labour market at some point however, in a country where more than 30% of the workforce are employed in the public sector, this is not exactly a vote maximizing strategy.

This shows everything that's wrong in schools - and public services generally. They are centrally planned and uniform, and unless you have lots of money, customers (in this case, parents) cannot escape and go elsewhere. In competitive businesses, providers have to focus on customers and serving their needs. In monopoly state services, there is no need to bother. So as the complaints mount, ministers send out one central directive, then another – Stalin-style. None of it does much good, and the complaints continue. So then they move to give customers 'voice' – saying they are guaranteed this standard, that standard, this right and that right, and can have a say in how things are run.

This has never worked. Most parents, patients, and public service users do not want to sit on a governing board or have to bother with constant public meetings and elections (I sat on a school board for four years, and became an elector for my local hospital, and I must say that both were a complete waste of time). Public service users certainly don't want to be bothered complaining to an ombudsman or spend the nervous energy going to court if their treatment is poor. They just want a decent service. In a competitive sector, like supermarkets or filling stations, they can just take their custom elsewhere. They don't need to sit on the board of Tesco or Asda – they just go elsewhere, and that sends a vital signal to the providers about what customers actually want. Exit is far stronger, and easier, than voice.

It really does give the impression of beleaguered government strategists pushing phantom armies across the map. In a statement that shows the system's complete contempt for customers, school heads have said it will be a 'whingers charter'. Well, we need more people to whinge at bad service. But we also need to give them the power to go somewhere else. That is why a Swedish-style state-money-follows-the- child voucher system, which the Tories are considering, looks so attractive.

Dr Butler's book The Rotten State of Britain is now in paperback.

Many countries are going backwards. This is not surprising. The UN and British government – egged on by NGOs and activists – has bet the house on the daft idea that if western governments transfer enough money to governments in poor countries, health systems will magically improve and medicines will get to sick kids. As far as strategies go, this is a turkey.

Once it makes it to the recipient government, what happens to that money is anyone's guess. There is almost no data on how aid money makes its way through recipient health systems.

We do know, however, that much of it is lost to corruption – from ministers skimming off their share of grants, to local health workers charging patients for nominally "free" services. Then the Western consultants and NGOs need to take their cut.

When some aid money does make it to local clinics, World Bank research shows it is most often the educated, urban classes who benefits, rather than the rural poor for whom it is really intended. To cap it all, the influence of Western NGOs on donors has also meant that "fashionable" diseases such as HIV get the lion's share of funding, to the detriment of less high profile problems such as pneumonia, which kill many, many more.

In the short-term, donors could spend taxpayer's money more wisely by bypassing governments altogether, instead putting health services out to competitive tendering amongst the voluntary or private sectors. In the long term, we can't hope to improve child mortality by simply beefing up aid. There is no way western aid agencies can fund a clean water supply, health services and a decent daily meal for every child in Africa. Even if such a thing were logistically possible, such large inflows of hard foreign currency would wreak havoc on fragile local economies.

In the end, the only way to solve child mortality is by fostering economic growth.

The author is Senior Fellow at the International Policy Network. This is taken from the Independent's World Vision blog: The Aid Debate

Although the rise of government welfare has had a similar impact on US private welfare as in the UK, the case of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon Church) has survived the onslaught and is insightful in considering how private welfare can function outside of the state. Members of the church fund the program; on the first Sunday of every month everyone skips two meals and donates the saving from those meals. If a member loses income, becomes unemployed, etc. they meet with their local leader and together they determine the needs of that individual or family, and assistance is given accordingly.

Accountability is at the center of the program: if an individual is on Church welfare he must meet with his local leader each week to determine what progress he or she has made and what else might be done to fix the situation – often families are asked to sacrifice items such as cell phones and cable television before financial assistance is rendered. The Mormon Church also has its own employment services that help individuals seek employment through networking and Church run companies and organizations. There are even private markets, referred to as Bishops’ storehouses, in which individuals can purchase food for nearly 90% below market value while they are in the welfare system.

The program that the Mormon Church has developed creates a sense of accountability and helps people improve their circumstances rather than slowly becoming dependent upon the system. Co-operatives are able to do what no government can, by creating true accountability and fostering the importance of self-reliance and accomplishment. Yet religious commonality is not necessary to create the type of ‘friendly society’ the Mormon Church has. Private groups like this could flourish if it wasn’t for one major problem: the government does not allow you to opt-out of the state run system. If the state allowed an opt-out option for those who can confirm enrollment in a private co-operative, things would improve dramatically and private co-operatives would spring up everywhere.

Harold Wilson 'Wilson defends 'pound in your pocket' BBC (1967).