"....back in the mists of time before New Labour came to power, Tony Blair seemed to understand all this. There was much talk of adopting the radical American Wisconsin reforms which set a cut-off date for welfare payments and thus pushed claimants back to work, and of channelling into education the money that would be saved from social security.This brave new world imploded with the sacking of Frank Field, the welfare minister who was appointed to think the unthinkable and then discovered that indeed it could not be thought - particularly by Chancellor Brown, who slammed the door shut on Field's proposals and his ministerial career.
Ever since that time, welfare thinking has gone precisely nowhere."
LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=510768&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=256&in_check=N
