There's a response to Zayn Malik quitting you didn't expect

You might have thought what with the struggle Universal Credit is proving to roll out, the Department of Work And Pensions might have been too busy to pass comment on boyband splits.

You'd be wrong:

Hi @zaynmalik, heard your news. Around 735,000 vacancies available at any time. Get job seeking tips here: http://t.co/7MxPeMGLrA #ZaynMalik

— DWP Press Office (@dwppressoffice) March 25, 2015

I think Zayn should heed this tweet. Given the way the DWP slap sanctions on people at the merest opportunity, ignoring that Tweet will probably leave Zayn unable to draw down his pension in the future.

It's PJP v DWP

PJ Proby was, you might recall, cleared of benefit fraud last year. He's been wondering aloud if the DWP didn't waste a lot of time and money pursuing him:

I was apparently being investigated for seven years before they arrested me in 2007, and then it took another five years to get to court. I wasn’t worried about going to prison.

Far from being worried, Proby had planned ahead to such an extent I think he might have already been working in the prison library:

I’d have coped in prison.

I had it all worked out. I was going to keep prison diaries under the name JL Bird and sell them when I got out.

I was on the verge of telling my secretary to go out and buy me an electric razor to shave my head, ready for prison.

Jesus, I know Group 4 are awful, but surely they don't make you share your own head.

But Proby - at least by his account - has been really ill-served by the DWP. They dropped the charges after finding "a box of evidence" but won't tell him what it was; as a result of all the upheaval Proby lost his home of 13 years:

They threw me out of that house at the trial. I’d rented it for 13 years and didn’t expect to move, but the owner didn’t want tour buses coming by showing everyone where the criminal lived.

I'm not sure they'd have been running tour buses on that basis; and even if they did, I'm not convinced they'd have attracted more visitors than a tour bus to go and look at where trouser-splitting music legend PJ Proby lived.

So, understandably, Proby holds a bit of a grudge against the DWP. Is there any part of the UK state that he's okay with?

I thought the judge and jury could be bought like they can be in America. But I learned so much about English law and I was very impressed by the legal system. They followed protocol and it was handled correctly.

Don't worry. Chris Grayling's working on that.

Iron Maiden singer banged up

Not Bruce Dickinson - he's still flying - but the guy he replaced, Paul Di'Anno. Di'Anno - or Paul Andrews, as he's officially know - has been found guilty of claiming income support, housing benefit and council tax payments despite, erm, going around the world touring.

(Just a sidebar: little disappointed to see the Guardian describe council tax benefit as "council tax handouts" in the report - did a sub from the Telegraph slip in?)

Clearly, he's in the wrong, and his defence:

"He was obsessed with music and performing. He is very naive in terms of business matters and has no formal education," [Steven] Ritter [defending] said.

Mmm. I think you'd be stretching naivety a little far to suggest you might not know you had to declare earnings from concert tours while telling the social you'd got a bad back. Even ET might struggle to convince he didn't understand that one.

The odd thing is the DWP response, though. It doesn't appear in the online version, but it was in the print edition of the Guardian:

A DWP spokesperson said: 'Benefit fraud is a crime. This money is intended to provide valuable support to those most in need, not line the pockets of people earning substantial amounts from their celebrity status."

Leaving aside the unedifying sight of a civil servant using pious tabloidese, you can only assume the spokesperson churned out their reaction without knowing any of the details.

Andrew was hardly "earning substantial amounts" - indeed, the court heard that he had hardly any money (reading between the lines, it sounds like he was touring mainly for fun rather than as a way of earning money); and since when did being 'the singer in Iron Maiden who, when people mention him, is always described as "no, the other one" count as "celebrity status"? It's a status which would struggle to get you an invite on Call My Bluff, isn't it?

More importantly, in sentencing, the court made it clear that his status wasn't relevant in any way to the case:

Sentencing Andrews, who lives in Salisbury, Jane Miller QC, told him: "Your public persona is not relevant."

The judge didn't think it was relevant, so why was the DWP making hay from it?

Government to musicians: No deal

The New Deal for Musicians, Labour's 1999 attempt to try and replicate 'signing on while getting a band together', is being axed. Not, as the Independent makes it sound at first, because it's been targeted specifically, but because the whole of the New Deal is being replaced with something called Flexible New Deal, which is probably going to be a less-well-funded version of the original.

And has the scheme been a success?

Since its launch in 1999 with the backing of Sir Paul McCartney, it has helped more than 4,000 unemployed youngsters get a foothold in the music industry as aspiring bands, instrumentalists, singers and songwriters. Those helped include James Morrison, nominated for Best Male Artist at last month's Brit Awards, the indie rock band the Zutons, the Welsh singer Jem, Toploader and the jazz saxophonist-rapper Soweto Kinch.

Bloody hell. And we're going to let it go on doing damage until October?

The government insists that it doesn't mean the end of support for musicians:

A spokeswoman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: "If someone has a specific talent in music, their help and support would be geared to music. They will still get all the help they require."

Trouble is, of course, under NDfM, (certainly at first), would-be musicians would be given a mentor who understood the music industry and was able to help them. It's not clear if under the Flexible New Deal a general advisor will be expected to provide support for guitarists and songwriters regardless of if they understand their needs or not.