Arguing over who is "patronising"

Kathryn Ryan, Radio NZ interviewing UK Secretary for Work and Pensions Ian Duncan Smith.

Smith talks about assessing, monitoring, supporting and sanctioning unemployed or 'disabled' people. Ryan talks about the state hectoring them.

He describes communities which have a culture of worklessness, hopelessness and low life expectancy. Only miles away are aspirational communities with much longer life expectation. He wants the people in poor neighbourhoods to mirror that aspiration.

She calls him patronising and he says, more or less, her attitude is patronising.

Overall I don't hold a huge amount of hope for the UK reforms. Smith is obsessed with simplicity of operation and making work pay. But won't go to the lengths that the US has gone. For instance, where the US (many states) expect work from sole parents when the youngest is one (or even younger), Smith will only apply similar expectations when youngest is 5. Unless temporary means temporary, the attitude to welfare won't change. That was what Clinton understood and built the 1996 reforms around. Until temporary means temporary, people will keep getting themselves into dependent circumstances.