Downing Street insisted yesterday that Tony Blair had not broken Olympic rules by raising London’s bid for the 2012 games at the Commonwealth summit in Nigeria.
No 10 said the Prime Minister had not breached a ban on lobbying after the International Olympic Committee issued a rebuke to Mr Blair in a letter to a committee member, Matthew Pinsent, the British rower.IOC rules prevent cities lobbying to promote their bids until the final stage of the process to choose a venue for the Games. But Mr Blair raised the London bid during an informal sports breakfast at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Nigeria.The Prime Minister praised the “extraordinary success” of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester. With the cost of keeping a child in care at £100,000 a year, the cash would be better used on giving them an education that would transform their life chances, he said.Mr Bird warned that unless action was taken soon, the “yobification” of many British towns and cities would continue as the anti-social behaviour that characterised underclass life flowed into mainstream society.. Among them are many talented people.”Mr Bird’s chief solution to the problem was to end the dependency created by well-intentioned but misguided social policy of governments, civil servants and councils. Instead, the state should demand work in return for benefits, with some unemployed forced to renovate housing estates, parks and other public places.By relating work to benefit, “we get people up in the morning rather than spending their time watching daytime TV. The payment of benefit without work began in the early 1970s when for the first time people who were able-bodied were allowed to live indefinitely on handouts, he said.

Its members fill up our prisons with their crimes; our hospitals and medical services with their poor health and poor nutrition; they make many of our so-called ‘failing’ schools unmanageable. Policing, monitoring and controlling them is a vast waste of public time and resources They also represent a huge waste of human resources. The founder of the The Big Issue made a savage attack on Britain’s “dependency culture” yesterday with a call for the jobless to be forced to work in return for state benefits. In a Christmas address for Politeia, a right-wing think-tank, Mr Bird also called for the Government to pay for the poorest children, particularly those in care, to attend the best public schools.A former homeless person himself, Mr Bird said tackling the myriad problems of those at the bottom of society was “the most pressing requirement of our times”, he added: “The maintenance of the underclass costs big money. The Revenue can top up in those small circumstances.”A Labour spokesman added: “David Willetts is wrong.

His comments are further proof that the Tories want to scrap the tax credits and deprive all of these families of the extra money they are receiving.”The Tories protested to the Electoral Commission yesterday over the Government’s plans to give about £900m in child trust funds to almost two million families in May 2005.. That is why the tax credits system was designed to be as flexible and responsive as possible.”Dawn Primarolo, the Paymaster General, said the system was only causing “a small number” of families problems. She said: “The Revenue will be staffed each day throughout the Christmas and New Year period. Now, they are trying to recover the money in a ham-fisted and aggressive way. Recovering overpayments should be done gradually.”An Inland Revenue spokesman said: “Almost six million families are benefiting from the new tax credits.