Crazy ideologues on the rampage as Truth retreats into hiding

Another twist in the tale of bonused depravity at the UK Dept of Work and Pensions

Steve Topple at the investigative site Canary had this to say two days ago:

'The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has quietly awarded a lucrative contract to a private consultancy giant—this time to Deloitte....The £15 million contract will extend over two years with an optional third. It is aimed at increasing “efficiency” in how the department investigates alleged benefit overpayments and fraud. But behind this familiar Whitehall outsourcing tale lies a much darker story. It is one of obsession, misplaced priorities, and ideological war on poor and disabled people.

The fact that the DWP has turned to Deloitte should sound alarm bells.

This is the same firm that helped build the disastrous Track and Trace system during the COVID-19 pandemic, which the Public Accounts Committee described as failing to deliver “clear impact” despite costing £37 billion. Deloitte’s involvement in public sector projects has often been synonymous with ballooning costs, patchy outcomes, and little accountability.

Now, the DWP is trusting them with another vital public service....The government’s obsession with so-called “benefit fraud” has long been exposed as ideologically driven rather than financially prudent.

Despite what the DWP would have you believe, fraud and error combined account for just a fraction of total government spending. In 2022/23, the National Audit Office reported that fraud across Universal Credit amounted to around £5.5 billion. This is dwarfed by the estimated £46 billion lost annually to tax avoidance and evasion. Yet HMRC does not get anything close to the TCR’s £443 million budget to chase that down.

A welfare system obsessed with detecting fraud rather than preventing hardship is not fit for purpose. If anything needs reviewing, it is not the claimants—it’s the ideology driving the DWP’s decisions. Until then, millions will remain caught in a punitive system. It’s one that’s designed more to appease political headlines than to protect human dignity. And Deloitte, once again, will laugh all the way to the bank.'

I agree with every word. This is the same heartless neoliberal ideology that cut off my State Pension twice in the last year. An unelected and unaccountable monolith compounding the crime by hiring a grubby crony with a long track record of scamming Government...a classic case, in fact, of the shameless in pursuit of the shameful.

My God, but the UK is a mess. There is no trust in any data source that can by relied upon for accuracy. Take, for example, the case of my own bank/building society hybrid Nationwide.

This is how the Nationwide presents itself based on a seemingly groundless decision from the once respected organisation Which.

By stark contrast, this is how seven thousand genuine Nationwide customers rate them:

Yes, Which Best Banking Brand of the Year 2025 is rated 1.9 on a five-point scale by those who actually use it. Perhaps Which can enighten us as to the criteria they used to reach their decision?

It's the same old recurring story of a battered Britain run by banks, bureaucrats and blocist sympathisers with EU and US Secret State NWO diplomacy agendas.

Take a long, hard look at the latest moves by the Putin pokers to dabble in a dangerous game of mad nuclear brinkmanship in Ukraine.

In a startling statement at a defense conference in Germany two days ago, one US Army general explained that NATO’s new “Eastern Flank Deterrence Line” will enable the alliance to rapidly neutralize one of Russia’s heavily fortified regions “faster than we’ve ever been able to do.” The remarks triggered a strong response from Russia’s State Duma, with top lawmakers warning that any attack on Kaliningrad would elicit "a full spectrum of retaliation".

The West is playing with fire here, and continues to be in denial about the 2014 Russia/Ukraine accord that Zelenskyy and his fellow cypher-warriors have been flagrantly abusing over the last decade. Vladamir Putin has warned that "any use of nuclear weapons against Russia would be Kyiv’s last mistake, and the consequences for Kyiv would be dire...Russia's nuclear doctrine provides for a stern response to existential threats".

But the neocons insist that the Russian leader is bluffing....and the US poodles in Brussels remain gung-ho about ever more cutting-edge weapons being given to the Zelensky faction.

I wonder how many readers of these columns have listened to anti-Russian gigahawk Senator Lindsay Graham in recent weeks? I suggest you watch this Face the Nation interview of the GOP pol demanding total sanctions against all Russian gas products.

I'm scared now. I admit it. If you're not, you should be.