'Benefit attack on welfare state hits those in the North'
'Benefits reform gives London weighting'
... see what they did there? 
Here's the Torygraph saying that IDS has got it wrong
Daily Vile, I mean Mail saying 'right an' all, workshy scroungers, bloomin' immigrants mutter mutter' (guessing)
The Guardian's seems to be the 'straightest' reporting of the three (though in general have fallen out with the G. Yes, I'm sure it's very upset about that.)
Merry @ the slanted news there.
I suggested the Single Working Age Benefit ages ago. It won't be the one they go with though it would be the simplest and possibly even the cheapest in the long term.
It would save about £8 billion right away in administration as the admin cost of a weekly standing order payment to every citizen is essentially zero.
Employers would pay the same wages less the amount everyone gets already. That money they save would be taken by the government by increasing a tax rate and so roughly speaking everyone would be back where they started.
It would mean that anyone could say "I don't want to work any more" if they were willing to live on just the basic benefit, but anyone who really doesn't want to work already finds a way to do that.
On the other hand someone out of work can think "I can take that job and see how it goes without losing benefit". They would always get more then when not working.
Currently if you give up benefits to work and then find yourself out of work again then you may be much worse off this time around.
Of course even that system isn't quite a 'one size fits all', but it probably leaves only a small group who need special arrangements. I'm not sure how best to cover the cost of children either. Maybe they count as 1/2 or 1/3 of a citizen with their payment going to their parent.
I see that one of the papers claims that benefits come to more than is taken in taxes.
I have no idea what the amounts are, but that has to be a lie doesn't it? no money is spent on other things then?
Pani, I think the pani model is definitely the one they should adopt. Especially with regard to people being able to have a go at a job without the head-exploding rigmarole of what it does to benefits if your circumstances change - and even more so if they change more than once!
My version of the Single Working Age Benefit isn't exactly the same as their one anyway, but I would love to see if it could work.
I thought at the time it would also sort out the ID card issue. I said we'd open a basic citizen's bank account (Bank of England?) for everyone. Their basic benefit would go into it (they could transfer it where they liked after that) and it would be associated with their photo, thumbprint and national insurance number. That's all the ID you need really and banks are already set up for keeping track of which customer is which so you don't have to invent a whole new bureaucracy
Gets my vote, anyway.
Could be good for social cohesion, too, as it would reward households (whatever their composition) while not forcing anyone to stay in one just because they were dependent on someone else.
Now, what are you policies for dealing with some of our other complications .... I feel sure you might have some that are better than those of the present (and previous) incumbents! 
Ooh, how about Pani and Merry for PM?
Well our PM David Cameron is on the trail of cracking down on benefit cheats again today.
The idea of paying a benefit to everyone is very simple isn't it. If they did that then there would be no need to cheat as everyone would be entitled anyway.
Housing benefits need a bit of thinking about as housing costs is the main factor making it impossible to live on wages earned.