Will the cruel Tory welfare reforms save any money?

First topic message reminder :

My personal opinion is that the current spate of tory reforms to the benefit system are cruel, regressive, and worst of all won't save money (the alleged intention).



In a supposedly modern civilised country one would think housing would be considered a human right.......rather than simply an investment / a chance to make a fast buck.

I note there is talk of a yacht for the biggest benefit claimee of them all. I note over £10billion has been spent on the olympics. I note £32billion is being spent on a high speed rail link (london-birmingham) - this will shave, a no doubt absolutely vita,l 32mins off the journey (essential??!!!) and be used by a miniscule % of the UK population.

How about investing this money in affordable social housing instead? Or do government no longer care to invest in those they view as peasants and serfs?

The tories efforts to turn the nation against those unfortunate enough to find themselves unemployed via vile smears, and an insidious propaganda campaign, are reminiscent of Nazi germany's propaganda campaign against the jews.

Iain Duncan Smith is a disgusting human being and has blood on his hands.

Instead of kicking the weakest targets that can't defend themselves....maybe the Bullingdon bullies should try picking on somebody their own size.....like the bankers, or benefit leeching corporations like Tescos.

They currently resemble a 20st thug stamping on a little girls head.

Welfare is essential and if we are to remain a civilised country we owe it to ourselves to provide for those less fortunate; unless we want to see people starving and homeless turning into savages.

The biggest burden on the UK in recent times has not been the unemployed.....welfare is not a burden - it is an essential expense in a civilised nation.

The biggest burden, and the cause of much unemployment, has been the rich greedy bankers who have cost this country, and us taxpayers, untold £billions in order to benefit a few. They have placed the real burden on the UK.

Clear your diary for Wednesday, when George "mañana" Osborne will put everything right for the Country. Later.

The ACTUAL "Last Chance Saloon".

Cheers!

"George Osborne’s game: from austerity to cruelty"

Article by John Cassidy:-
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/12/george-osbornes-journey-from-austerity-to-cruelty.html?mbid=social_mobile_tweet

Six more years.

Thanks for that, Gideon.

I've been asked to share with you this message from Liam Byrne, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary:-

Hello,

Last week’s Autumn Statement exposed the grim truth of David Cameron’s economic failure. Growth down. Borrowing up. And Britain’s strivers paying the price.

Since then hundreds of people have been in touch to tell us their fears about what David Cameron’s failure means for them and their families.

We've now launched a website, www.thepriceoftoryfailure.com, to share those stories.

This one, from Robert, was typical of what we've received so far:

"My daughter and her partner relied on their tax credit to make ends meet. George Osborne cut tax credits earlier this year and they are now £25 per week worse off; this has put them almost on the bread line."

Robert’s daughter isn’t an exception or someone who has slipped through the cracks. With support cut for working families, many of them the poorest in society, she’s just one of many ordinary working people who are picking up the bill for this government's failure.

We need more of these stories to expose the truth of this government which is cutting tax for millionaires while millions pay more - will you share yours?

David Cameron tried to say he was making further cuts aimed at the “shirkers and scroungers”, but the truth is that six out of ten people hit by these cuts are people who get up every morning and go to work. The lowest paid ­families ­getting tax credits. The new mum who will lose £180 in maternity pay.

At the same time – next April each person earning over £1 million a year will be getting on­ ­average a tax cut of £107,000 each, not just for one year, but every year.

I’m asking every Labour Party member and supporter to back the people who are doing the right thing – who are in work, or trying to find work, but need a little bit of help to get by.

Will you help us share these stories and back those that need our help the most?

Show the Tories they are out of touch with the vast majority, on the side of the wrong people.

Liam Byrne

Three things you can do now:

Share your story || Tweet the campaign || Share the campaign on Facebook

Ivan wrote:I've been asked to share with you this message from Liam Byrne, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary:-

Great idea, Ivan. I received the same message, so following your example I've posted it on my blog.

The Tories are losing their vile war on 'scroungers'

Extracts from an article by Polly Toynbee:-

"Part-time workers gain nothing from tax cuts and lose from tax credits falling behind inflation. As ever, the government ignores the epidemic of under-employment, the millions seeking longer hours. Any couple failing to find 24 hours of work a week has already had a £4,000 cut in tax credits: these are the inconvenient hard workers who give the lie to the vile 'strivers v skivers' riff.

Bungling was uncovered by sharp-eyed ‘Political Scrapbook’: in Shapps's vicious little campaign his photo of a perfect blond hardworking family is the same picture used in ads for cod liver oil, a Spanish dentist, a building firm and home schooling for Christian fundamentalists. Stupid, or what? A contrasting picture of a lazy slob lying on a sofa will no doubt turn up elsewhere, too. This is pure Shapps, as slick and tacky as his get-rich-quick ads in which he posed as a ‘Michael Green’ who had made millions. But launching this hasty campaign shows the Conservatives are rattled.

Ipsos Mori polling shows attitudes shifting: only 27% think the Chancellor is right, or should cut benefits deeper, while 69% think benefits should rise with or above inflation. As many expected, more people now know friends and family struggling through no fault of their own. Osborne thought he'd hit the button with his workshy sleepers behind blinds.

Meanwhile, Clegg suddenly sees the wind changing and is devising a new stance to distance himself. But after voting through cuts for disabled children, it's a bit late to boast he stopped the Tories using a garotte as well as a cheese wire."

For the full article:-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/18/tories-losing-vile-war-on-scroungers?CMP=twt_gu

Myth: We’ve seen a constant increase in the level of spending on benefits.
Reality: In the decade prior to the recession, spending on benefits had shown the longest period of stability in the history of the welfare state.

Myth: We’ve seen an increasing number of people claiming out-of-work benefits.
Reality: Out-of-work benefit receipt has been in long-term decline and is half a million lower now than in the aftermath of the last recession.

Myth: ‘Welfare’ spending goes mostly to those on out of work benefits.
Reality: Out-of-work benefits account for less than a quarter of welfare spending and just over half of non-pensioner spending.

Myth: Benefit spending is high because of large families on out of work benefits.
Reality: Families with more than five children account for 1% of out-of-work benefit claims.

Myth: The welfare state is supporting households to stay out of work for generations.
Reality: Only 0.3% of households have two generations that have never worked.

Myth: Families are better off on benefits than in work.
Reality: The vast majority of families would be better off in employment.

Myth: The welfare state enables people to ‘languish’ on benefits for years on end.
Reality: Most out of work benefit claims are not long term in nature.

For the details:-
http://www.turn2us.org.uk/pdf/Mythbusting.pdf

One only has to catch a quick glimpse of The Sun to see that desperation is really beginning to creep in to the Tory ranks. The lies get bigger and the propaganda becomes even more shrill.

Whatever can it be that is so upsetting The Spiteful Party...?

Maybe they expect Mr. Mitchell to get his job back.

Myth: 'THE 1% RISE IN BENEFITS IS FAIR BECAUSE IT HITS SHIRKERS, NOT STRIVERS'
According to the Resolution Foundation, "far from hitting only the out of work, 60% of the value of Osborne’s latest £3.7 billion cut would fall on in-work households". Why? Because the 1% rise - which equates to a real terms cut - affects universal benefits like child benefit and tax credits. The benefit loss for a low to middle-income household is about twice the size of the personal allowance gain.

Myth: 'OUT OF WORK BENEFITS HAVE RISEN MORE THAN AVERAGE EARNINGS'
In 1979, unemployment benefit (the predecessor to Jobseeker's Allowance) was about 22% of average weekly earnings; today it's only about 15%, because JSA has been indexed to inflation. In normal times, earnings rise faster than prices. But we're not living in 'normal times', partly thanks to Osborne's growth-killing austerity measures.

Myth: 'THERE ARE LOTS OF OUT OF WORK HOUSEHOLDS WITH BIG FAMILIES'
Families with more than three children account for less than 10% of claims.

Myth: 'THE BENEFITS BILL IS RISING BECAUSE OF CHEATS AND FRAUDSTERS'
The government's own figures show that just 0.7% (£1 billion) of benefit expenditure is overpaid due to fraud, compared to the £70 billion lost through illegal tax evasion.

Myth: 'HOUSING BENEFIT IS BEING WASTED ON LAZY, OUT OF WORK HOUSEHOLDS'
According to ‘Shelter’, only one out of every eight people who receive housing benefit is unemployed. The vast majority of claimants are pensioners, carers, people with disability and people on low incomes. Even ‘The Daily Mail’ has conceded that there’s been an 86% rise in housing benefit claims by working families over the past three years.

MYTH: 'PEOPLE GET PARKED ON BENEFITS FOR YEARS AND FORGOTTEN'
The majority of people on Jobseeker's Allowance claim the benefit for less than three months; fewer than 10% claim it for more than a year.

Myth: 'MEANS TESTING BENEFITS IS FAIRER AND CHEAPER THAN HAVING UNIVERSAL BENEFITS'
According to the National Audit Office, means testing "makes the administration of benefits more complex and is associated with higher costs as well as increased rates of fraud and error". It also notes that "there can be disincentives for recipients of means-tested benefits to return to work".

Source used:-
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/welfare-budget-10-things-they-dont-tell-you_b_2314578.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Two interesting articles that put into perspective government priority and hypocrisy.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/28/nationalarchives-welfare

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/27/olympics-nero-orgasmic-hangover

Maybe figures such as the Olympics £9billion mentioned would have been better spent on welfare - instead of cutting it?

I guess helping British citizens avoid destitution, poverty, malnourishment, and likely resorting to criminal activity just to survive is less of a priority. ie: your welfare takes a backseat to corporate well being.

Our taxes are obviously better spent on vanity projects in London in which establishment figures can luxuriate, and pat one another on the back in self-congratulatory exultation whilst pretending it's all done on behalf of the ordinary people. Our taxes are obviously better spent on bailing out banks and continuing to keep financiers, and our masters, living in the opulent style they ill deserve.

God save the Queen? I don't think so!

Ian Duncan Smith confirmed as misled ..

http://news.uk.msn.com/socialvoices/benefit-fraud-is-just-a-distraction-from-real-issue-of-tax-dodgers

The ignorance that lies at the core of Tory welfare policy reform is not an ignorance of unawareness, or an absence of knowledge, but rather one of calculated misinformation. Probably the most disgusting thing about this Tory-dominated regime is the deliberate spreading of lies to facilitate a systematic assault upon the sick, the poor and the disabled. Ministers have lied to and misled the public in order to promote their squalid agenda of dismantling the welfare state.

For those wanting to destroy the welfare state, the first move is to create 'the undeserving poor'. By constant repetition, they construct a cultural underclass via the media, with the tabloid press, much of it owned by multimillionaires, at the forefront. Each day they fill their pages with accounts of people “living on handouts”, "living in “mansions”, “daring to have children”, “laying around doing nothing with their blinds down”, all the while emphasising that it's your taxes letting these scroungers live in “luxury”. By this constant drip feeding, the words 'welfare' and 'scrounger' become intertwined.

The next phase is to question the idea of a universal welfare state itself. As the welfare state is dismantled, as the quality of services deteriorates due to ever greater reductions in funding, the middle class begin to ask why they are paying into a system that gives them so little back. Their gradual exclusion from the welfare state leads to them being persuaded to seek private options to deal with old age, pensions and health care, urged on by a government that tells them that it’s the only solution. And of course, as private provision takes over, the cycle of dismantling can continue. Public services now become a service solely for the poor, as the middle class abandon the system.

Why dismantle the welfare state? Who benefits from its progressive degradation? Obviously not the lower class. But neither do the middle class, as the new private systems are more expensive, often of poorer quality, and invariably far more complicated than what existed previously.

The real reason behind the cuts is simple, they are ideologically driven. None of it is to save money. Welfare reform won't save a penny, because the costs will just be passed onto somewhere else. It's all about crushing the welfare state. The Tories have for years hated the fact that 'their' taxes should be used to help the sick and the poor. Based upon no evidence whatsoever, they perpetuate the myth that there’s a vast horde of scroungers out there who are living a life of luxury on benefits. However, the most disgusting thing about the Tories is that to promote this idea, they peddle downright lies as truth and feed it to the masses, who regurgitate this filth ad infinitum. And, sadly, a few of those who do are members of this forum.

Ivan - we need a 'like' button on the forum...

" The real reason behind the cuts is simple, they are ideologically driven. None of it is to save money"

I am not even sure that there is any 'ideology' attaching to it, A typical Tory just likes the cruelty of 'punishing' groups they may despise. It is no more 'ideology' than is the desire of some twisted people to pull the wings off small insects...

The more wealth and possessions that individuals acquire, the more fear they have of The Poor - in case the condition should prove contagious.

After last weeks uproar over the removal of Child benefit for those where a single family member has an income of over £60,000 it is surprising to see today's rule change to the Mobility component of Disability Living Allowance where by if the recipient is able to walk 20 metres they will be seen as able to manage without it (Too Fit)...

Atos, the private company paid to reduce the Sickness Benefit bill will no doubt tell any one who turns up for their compulsory assessment they have managed the 20 metres walking test so no payment will be paid.....

Today I worked out that if I walked from my front window through the living-room to the conservatory and back to the front window I would be just 2 metres short of this distance!!!!

so this distance is really no distance at all, many disabled would have to cover this distance to get from their house to their car, or taxi, not everyone has off road or parking directly outside their house.......

Many who use artificial legs may be able to walk for a reasonable distance but then may have to stay off their leg for many days until sores caused by the artificial leg heal....

The reason has been plainly stated as a way to save £2 billion of the budget, not a question of targeting the benefit to those who may need more....It is a plain and simple cut......

http://wearespartacus.org.uk/pip-emergency-act-now/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/14/disabled-people-dla-dangerous-experiment

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/thousands-to-lose-disability-benefit-after-1534735

Hi mate, could you post a link to the announcement?

If being unable to travel '20 metres' on foot is the relevant measure, it appears that it may prove possible for the English cricket team to claim, judging by their performance in India this morning...!

Myth: We’ve seen a constant increase in the level of spending on benefits.

Reality: In the decade prior to the recession, spending on benefits had shown the longest period of stability in the history of the welfare state.

IVAN......Sometimes you should actually find out the facts before you type. I know those years of New Labour spin have taken their toll on you, but you should try to come back to reality at some time. So here's some actual FACTS for you to digest and spit feathers over

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) helpfully publish benefit expenditure details going back to 1948.

Looking at the half century between 1961 and 2011 (the last year for which there is solid data, rather than projections), we can see that the amounts of money paid out by the Department and its predecessors in wefare has grown six fold in real terms, from £27.7 billion (2011/12 prices) to £162.8 billion.


However the DWP data isn't complete, as it only covers those payments administered by the Department itself, and not those paid out by other organisations, such as HMRC. For this reason, some commentators - the Institute for Fiscal Studies among them - prefer to use Office for National Statistics (ONS) data on 'social benefits' taken from its Public Sector Finance series.

This charts a steeper rise in welfare spending, from £25.6 billion in 1961 (2011 prices) to over £203 billion in 2011. That's nearly an eight fold increase.

http://fullfact.org/factchecks/welfare_spending_economy_-28294

Thank you for not linking directly to the ONS website, blue.

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/datasets-and-tables/index.html?&newquery=anly&content-type=Reference+table&content-type=Dataset&content-type-orig=%22Dataset%22+OR+content-type_original%3A%22Reference+table%22&pageSize=50&applyFilters=true&sortBy=pubdate&sortDirection=DESCENDING :affraid:

IVAN......Sometimes you should actually find out the facts before you type. I know those years of New Labour spin have taken their toll on you, but you should try to come back to reality at some time. So here's some actual FACTS for you to digest and spit feathers over

blueturando. I’ve been through all this before - on this very thread - on 29 August! You replied that you “like to read the blogs you post”, yet it seems you chose to ignore the facts contained in them and are now resorting to insults.

In the decade prior to the recession……Looking at the half century between 1961 and 2011

Can you spot the difference? ‘Reality’ might be comparing like with like. I “found out the facts” for the last decade. In case you didn’t know, a decade is ten years. You produce figures for the last fifty years and then try to claim that disproves my evidence!

Your figure for ‘benefits’ of £203 billion in 2011 includes the state retirement pension. ‘Reality’ is that payments to pensioners account for 42% of the social security budget. The state pension is not what most people think of as a 'benefit', more an entitlement after years of paying National Insurance. Are you implying that the state pension is “out of control” because it’s been linked to inflation for the last thirty years, and for a few years before that to average wages?

My evidence related to spending on benefits as a proportion of our GDP, not in cash terms. GDP is a far more honest way of making comparisons, since the whole economy has grown. Total expenditure on welfare was 11.6% of GDP in 1996/97; under Labour it averaged 10.7% up to the crash of 2007/08. After that, benefits for children and working age adults rose from an average 4.9% of GDP up to 2007/08 to 6%. That’s only to be expected during a recession, and hardly evidence of benefits being “out of control”.

Housing benefit accounts for 20% of the social security budget. That's increased in both cash terms and real terms because rents have risen much faster than wages. Most housing benefit is paid to people in work, not to Osborne's fictitious layabouts with their curtains drawn. Yet it doesn’t alter the fact that the percentage of our GDP spent on welfare was, as I demonstrated, stable under Labour after 1997.

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/mythbuster-welfare-reform/

Problem with statistics is, you can make them say anything.
Problem with the economy is, it's largely an intellectual construct.
Problem with people is, if they don't have a safe warm home and enough to eat they die.
My vote goes to making sure everyone has a decent place to live, good health care and enough to eat - then maybe that notional object the economy will be improved by the fact that the country is full of healthy well fed people with the energy and the motivation to make a contribution.
There's more than one form of wealth, and money doesn't even come near the top of the list for me

astradt1 wrote:After last weeks uproar over the removal of Child benefit for those where a single family member has an income of over £60,000 it is surprising to see today's rule change to the Mobility component of Disability Living Allowance where by if the recipient is able to walk 20 metres they will be seen as able to manage without it (Too Fit)...

Atos, the private company paid to reduce the Sickness Benefit bill will no doubt tell any one who turns up for their compulsory assessment they have managed the 20 metres walking test so no payment will be paid.....
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/thousands-to-lose-disability-benefit-after-1534735

Just a quick hat-tip for pointing me in the direction of this change - my article just posted in 'Home & Personal Finance' resulted...

boatlady wrote:Problem with statistics is, you can make them say anything.
Problem with the economy is, it's largely an intellectual construct.
Problem with people is, if they don't have a safe warm home and enough to eat they die.
My vote goes to making sure everyone has a decent place to live, good health care and enough to eat - then maybe that notional object the economy will be improved by the fact that the country is full of healthy well fed people with the energy and the motivation to make a contribution.
There's more than one form of wealth, and money doesn't even come near the top of the list for me

Hear Hear! 100% agree Boatlady! Some people only know the price of everything, but the value of nothing!

And that, I would submit, is the problem with politics

Adele Carlyon wrote:

boatlady wrote:Problem with statistics is, you can make them say anything.
Problem with the economy is, it's largely an intellectual construct.
Problem with people is, if they don't have a safe warm home and enough to eat they die.
My vote goes to making sure everyone has a decent place to live, good health care and enough to eat - then maybe that notional object the economy will be improved by the fact that the country is full of healthy well fed people with the energy and the motivation to make a contribution.
There's more than one form of wealth, and money doesn't even come near the top of the list for me

Hear Hear! 100% agree Boatlady! Some people only know the price of everything, but the value of nothing!

Ditto! And welcome back Adele - haven't see you around here for a while.

Judged on their own merits, Osborne's austerity measures have been a total disaster,but as a smokescreen for the enforcement of Tory Dogma they are a definite RESULT.

We've been neutralised by guile.

Yes, I'm definitely thinking it's all been part of a bigger, and cleverer plan

From http://skwalker1964.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/credit-where-its-due-tory-mp-j-lefroy-in-wca-debate/

I like to give credit where it's due on this blog. With this government I don't get many chances to do it, but today I've been listening to the Commons Work Capability Assessment (WCA) debate, and there's one example I'd like to highlight.

Jeremy Lefroy, Conservative MP for Stafford, stood to speak on the issue and clearly has a heart for disabled people who are being hounded via the WCA process. Mr Lefroy argued:

• against constant reassessment of people who have conditions that are unlikely ever to improve

• against the idiocy of a system that classifies a person as fit for work on the basis of being able to lift and move an emptycardboard box once, without regard for the fact that very few employers want people to move empty boxes, that ignores the difficulties of getting to work in the first place and without regard for the fact that being able to do something once doesn't mean you can do so repeatedly

• against the massive hole in the system when it comes to assessing people with fluctuating conditions, who might be relatively well on the day of assessment and much worse the next

• for including details of appeal cases that find that WCA assessments were clearly wrong and unreasonable in reports on appeals

• against the common situation of appeals taking so long that as soon as they're decided in favour of a claimant, he or she is then immediately considered due for assessment again

Mr Lefroy also, apparently, visits in person each constituent who has had difficulty with Atos and the appeals process - and vouched personally for the fact that many WCA judgments are clearly ludicrous compared to the daily reality of life for those assessed. And unlike other Tory contributors, he didn't use this as mere lipservice leading in to a defence of the programme of assessment or an attack on the previous Labour government for supposedly 'consigning disabled people to the scrapheap' or similar.

I salute Mr Lefroy for a compassionate and well-reasoned contribution to the debate.

Of course, the fact that he stands out like a bright, white tooth in a mouthful of decay only draws more attention to the rotten state of the Tory-led government - and begs the question of why he's still representing the party of baby-eaters, disabled-bashers and NHS-strippers.

But credit where it's due - and I just hope he shows as much sense and heart on the many other nonsenses and prejudices of his party.

skwalker1964 wrote:From http://skwalker1964.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/credit-where-its-due-tory-mp-j-lefroy-in-wca-debate/

Jeremy Lefroy, Conservative MP for Stafford, stood to speak on the issue {of WCA} and clearly has a heart for disabled people who are being hounded via the WCA process.....
I just hope he shows as much sense and heart on the many other nonsenses and prejudices of his party.

A reminder of how it can be too easy for us to generalise. Not ALL right-wing politicians are b@st@rds, but the exceptions have been keeping their heads below the parapet recently.

With the Coalition government currently behaving like an invading foreign power, the fear is that the more they get away with the worse they will get. Things like this "review" of those on the lowest rung of the Benefits ladder can so easily become the thin end of the wedge for similar categories of Claimant. History proves that un-productive members of Society are all at potential risk of some degree of "culling" from an unsympathetic administration. The evidence is already available from records of World War Two, in which particular segments of the population of Europe were selected for elimination.

An exaggeration? Time will tell.

The Tories tell us they have paid off 25% of the deficit, now we know how they have done it not through their hard work (that would effing kill them) but off the backs of the disabled unemployed and the vulnerable, you're right the more WE let them away with the more they will want to get away with and the time has come to fcuking stop them in their tracks.

Quite surprising, and encouraging, to hear of a Tory MP responding in such a humane and reasonable way to this issue - pity more, on both sides of the house, aren't listening so carefully to what constituents have to say and actually doing the job they're there for - REPRESENTING their constituents, instead of squabbling like a load of schoolboys

boatlady wrote:Quite surprising, and encouraging, to hear of a Tory MP responding in such a humane and reasonable way to this issue - pity more, on both sides of the house, aren't listening so carefully to what constituents have to say and actually doing the job they're there for - REPRESENTING their constituents, instead of squabbling like a load of schoolboys

I would not worry about one tory MP boatlady, more than likely his constituents have told him not to reapply for his seat or he has realized that the Tories are out on there ear come 2015.

The response of the minister, Mark Hoban, to the debate was disgusting - but appeared to be reviled by both sides, since the House agreed without a vote to Michael Meacher's assertion that the Atos-based WCa system is broken and a new system is needed.

Scroungers - No. 274

What should we make of an individual who is content to be reliant upon public funding, is far from his place of birth and yet appears to be more than able to live the good life to the extent that he is clearly consuming more than the majority of the hard-working population?




(publicservice.co.uk)

This fellow was born in Yorkshire , but is now an Essex MP. He is paid for by you, the taxpayer, and is a fat slob who makes no tangible contribution and is therefore of little use to society. Rumour has it that the only reason that his curtains aren't found drawn at 9am each day, is that he has eaten them...

They're all in the trough! ....

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/01/06/rail-fares-minister-simon-burns-car-commute_n_2419087.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

Original including various links is at http://skwalker1964.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/oh-irony-tory-minister-decries-demonisation-of-wca-process/


Work & Pensions Minister Mark Hoban: twisted priorities

I listened to Michael Meacher’s debate in the House of Commons yesterday on the government’s Work Capability Assessment (WCA) programme. On the whole, it was very heartening, as MPs of all parties made contributions passionately advocating proper treatment of disabled people and vilifying the current system as conducted by Atos. A Tory MP even did himself credit by making his impassioned argument without using it as an excuse to take cheap swipes at the last Labour government.

Unfortunately, Tory Minister of State for Work and Pensions Mark Hoban failed to take the opportunity to show the same level of compassion and sense. The very opposite, in fact. So opposite that I didn’t believe my ears at first, and had to wind back to hear it again.

Just before Meacher’s round-up of the debate and the closing motion, Mr Hoban stood up to give his final comments. Over the space of several minutes, he proceeded to perform what amounted to a whitewash, acknowledging that the system could be improved but denying the problems with assessing fluctuating conditions, with assessment of people with mental health issues, the problem of incorrect assessment as fit for work that results in around 40% of such assessments being overturned by appeal judges, and the problem of inadequate training of assessors. He called the shortcomings of the system and of Atos’ assessment process ‘myths’ and even claimed that, in a system that has 40% of its decisions overturned on appeal, the complaints rate was only 2.6%. Presumably all those people appealing their decisions are actually perfectly happy with the process!

These statements flew in the face of statements by MPs even of his own party, as well as masses of evidence provided by charities and campaigners, and were mind-boggling in their own right. But they were positively sane by comparison with what came next:

demonising the work capability assessment does not help our constituents and does not address their concerns.

This government has set new benchmarks in terms of the shamelessness of its distortions, exaggerations and outright lies, both to Parliament and to the electorate. But even now, almost 24 hours later, I’m still struggling to believe Mr Hoban actually said what you just read. But he did.

This government is relentless in demonising anyone it wishes to attack and rob. From public sector workers, to doctors, to all benefit claimants – and especially the unemployed and disabled – this Tory-led government has shown neither conscience about, nor any concern for the consequences of, its tactic of casting vulnerable people as ‘scroungers’ and hard-working people defending their pay and jobs as selfish and unrealistic.

The WCA programme has caused massive distress for tens of thousands of disabled people, and continues to do so – and is even believed to be the cause of a rising death toll. It has been described, by a non-disabled journalist, as a campaign of terror against disabled people.

Many disabled people – as MPs also testified to the House – find themselves trapped in a cycle where they are assessed as fit for work, refused benefit, appeal, spend months in the appeal process, win their appeal, and then find they’re immediately due for another assessment. The human toll of this woeful programme is huge.

This government feels no qualms about doing all this, or about ignoring the consequences and cost in terms of human fear and suffering. But criticise its process and policy – even if MPs on all sides agree – and it will react forcefully. It will accuse you of ‘demonising’ its programme, and ‘demonising’ poor old Atos, that downtrodden company that only saw a 57% increase in its profits (€182 million) in its latest full financial year.

Could there be a clearer example of this government’s twisted priorities, distorted worldview and absolute venality?

You’d think not, but the sad fact is that there’s little doubt that it’s only a matter of time until we see even worse.

Separating the sheep from the goats is simple, but distinguishing between the Deserving Poor and the undeserving variety seems to be far too difficult for our Leadership.

They're almost psychotic, this lot - it's just impossible to believe any sane person could seriously make half the statements they make.
Actually, maybe I mean sociopathic rather than paychotic.

boatlady wrote:They're almost psychotic, this lot - it's just impossible to believe any sane person could seriously make half the statements they make.
Actually, maybe I mean sociopathic rather than paychotic.

I think sociopathic is just about the perfect word! Mind you, psychotic - as in separated from reality - would also fit.