On paper this looks a promising plan because if someone who is fat and unwashed is suddenly given a large lump of money it’s likely he or she will immediately send their child to school instead of letting them do burgling and drugs.
And a child who’s read Milton and Chaucer is statistically less likely to throw a brick through a shop window than a child who hasn’t. There’s no actual proof of this, obviously, but we know it to be so.
The government decided that this responsibility should be handed over to local authorities, which, again, sounds good on paper. You ask a government minister where all the poor people live in Bolton and he won’t have a clue. But people on the borough council will.
After a little while the government started to ask if the councils were happy to have been sent a large amount of money. And it turned out, amazingly, that they were. Thrilled, in fact. Overjoyed.
They sent reports to London saying the scheme had been a huge success. They said that 90% had been cured of their sloth and their violent tendencies and had turned over a new leaf.
And what’s more, they argued that, having invested £448m in the scheme, the government had saved £1.2bn, thanks to a reduction in the cost of policing and providing truant officers and benefits and so on.
However, and this will come as a surprise to no one at all, it seems councils may have exaggerated the benefits of having a money distribution van. Because a report released last week found that the scheme had no impact. The people who wrote it actually used those words. It had “no impact”. As in: none. Diddly-squat. Zilch.
On paper this looks a promising plan because if someone who is fat and unwashed is suddenly given a large lump of money it’s likely he or she will immediately send their child to school instead of letting them do burgling and drugs.
And a child who’s read Milton and Chaucer is statistically less likely to throw a brick through a shop window than a child who hasn’t. There’s no actual proof of this, obviously, but we know it to be so.
The government decided that this responsibility should be handed over to local authorities, which, again, sounds good on paper. You ask a government minister where all the poor people live in Bolton and he won’t have a clue. But people on the borough council will.
After a little while the government started to ask if the councils were happy to have been sent a large amount of money. And it turned out, amazingly, that they were. Thrilled, in fact. Overjoyed.
They sent reports to London saying the scheme had been a huge success. They said that 90% had been cured of their sloth and their violent tendencies and had turned over a new leaf.
And what’s more, they argued that, having invested £448m in the scheme, the government had saved £1.2bn, thanks to a reduction in the cost of policing and providing truant officers and benefits and so on.
However, and this will come as a surprise to no one at all, it seems councils may have exaggerated the benefits of having a money distribution van. Because a report released last week found that the scheme had no impact. The people who wrote it actually used those words. It had “no impact”. As in: none. Diddly-squat. Zilch.
