Tories show their true colours early

[nexus]

George Osborne's secret plan to slash sickness benefits

Chancellor plans to slash welfare bill by £2.5bn for people who are disabled or too ill to work

I've got no personal axe to grind here - I'm not on benefits and I only know one person who qualifies for sickness benefit- I do know that the whole system was recently overhauled and tightened and there is now a massive problem with the medical reports for ESA (as reported by R4 You and Yours, the Citizens Advice Bureau and many others). Basically some seriously disabled and terminally ill people are no longer getting ESA.

This is what the tories want to do to the already inadequate ESA:

Despite official insistence that no decisions have yet been made on where the axe will fall, Osborne stated in the letter – written three days before his emergency budget – that agreement had already been reached to impose deep cuts on the budget for employment and support allowance (ESA) – the successor to incapacity benefit. ESA is paid to those judged unable to work because of illness or disability.
Osborne told Duncan Smith: "Reform to the employment support allowance is a particular priority and I am pleased that you, the prime minister and I have agreed to press ahead with reforms to the ESA as part of the spending review that will deliver net savings of at least £2.5bn by 2014-15."

I know the more rabid right wingers on here will say that spending needs to be slashed, but hey lets not target the most vulnerable in society first eh? We could try and sort out tax fraud first.

[JohnB]

I've got a friend on incapacity benefit. She wants to work, and will start a job only to find it's too much for her, and has to give it up. If the right sort of job came up, maybe she could cope with it long term, but that type of job doesn't seem to exist where she lives, and if it did probably wouldn't pay enough for her to live. She finds it hard to find housing that is affordable on benefits too, so is constantly struggling with finding enough money to pay the bills. She talked about getting rid of her car, but in a rural area, and without the energy to walk or cycle far a lot of the time, she would be stuck. She might be able to manage her finances slightly better if she was completely well, but it would still be a struggle, and trying to do so when she is unwell just adds to the problem.

Somewhere in the country there may be a job and housing that is affordable and practical, but she needs to stay in the area she lives in now, to support her elderly parents and her son.

There must be countless people stuck in the same situation, who want to take a productive role in the world, but are prevented from doing it by a system that doesn't give them a chance.

[biffvernon]

The whole point of the Tories is to shrink the size of government, forcing people to stand on their own two feet, or fall over if they haven't got any.

Oh, yes, they're clever at hiding the agenda with a smokescreen of hand-wringing about the need for cuts but the perception of national debt is a gift for the far right.

It's the nasty party, why should we be surprised when they turn out to be nasty?

[JohnB]

The whole point of the Tories is to shrink the size of government, forcing people to stand on their own two feet, or fall over if they haven't got any.

In the past, when it was survival of the fittest, the weak, ill and disabled would have died, but we've created a society where every life is valued and should be maintained as long as possible. To a certain extent it's a good thing that people are encouraged to stand on their own feet, and maybe what we need at the moment. We're heading into uncertain times, with the end of economic growth and resource depletion, and perhaps we can't afford to carry passengers in the long term.

In the long term, either the government should come clean and say that the economically inactive are useless and should be allowed to die, put adequate facilities in place to enable them to stand on their own feet where possible, or pay benefits at a level that allows them to have some quality of life. I wonder which options would get them re-elected.

However, right now, if it's a choice between *ankers getting big bonuses, or threatening to leave the country, and people in need of support getting it, the *ankers can take a long walk off a short pier.

[frank_begbie]

I don't think we'll be seeing any MPs at the jobcentre.

[Lord Beria3]

First of all, there is not a peception of national debt, its a reality!



At some point, and even the Labour party agrees here, we need to implement cuts to bring down that debt.

Going into to Osbourne, its a tricky one. Yes welfare takes up a huge amount of government spending and massively increased under New Labour -a era of economic growth where millions of immigrants came to find work.

Secondly, there are areas of the UK in which entire towns are on incapacity benefit - this is absurd! Clearly a radical overhaul of the system is required and a bit of 'tough love' is needed with some applicants.

Hopefully these reforms will save money. Nobody wants the genuinely disabled to suffer, and I am compassionate about the less fortunate in society but at the same time I doubt Osbourne is driven by a raging hatred of the poor (despite the Lefts obsessions) and any cuts in benefits will be done to mitigate as much as possible any suffering to the genuinely disadvantaged.

Part of being 'we are all in this together' is that everybody has to take a sacrifice. Middle class families are going to take a hit in terms of child benefits, higher fees for their kids wanting to go to uni and higher taxes. The rich will get hit by the 50% rate of tax and a Treasury led attack on tax dodging... and so the poor will have to take hit as well, as they use up a considerable amount of the welfare budget.

Will a modest hit on benefits be the end of the world? Hardly, the Tory-lib plan to raise the threshold before you pay taxes will benefit low-income workers and savings will have to be made by everybody.

I'm not sure why everybody is so stunned about the above, we all know that we are entering a period of economic tough times... even a Labour goverment would be forced to start axing money to local goverments (which will hit public transport in rural locations for example) which hit the disadvantaged.

[Lord Beria3]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog ... nding-1963

As this chap in the Guardian notes...

Utter nonsense. We will be spending the same as a percentage of GDP in 2015 as in 2003/4. Figures from the Guardian data

This kind of scare mongering is ridiculous, though it may ironically do the coalition a favour. Labour wasted a monumental amount of money. An Everest sized mountain of money. They frittered and pissed money away like it grew on trees. Articles like this that wail and scream set an expectation of horror that may well never come to pass. Was 2003 that bad? Was our country crumbling around us? Did we have no schools, hospitals, police, roads or power stations? No. Will we miss the IT systems, contemplation suites, multi-billion luxury refits of government buildings, will we miss the quangos, the wars, the consultants, the ID cards, databases and £3 billion benefits overpayments? Labour even managed to spend £10 million on tax credits for the dead.

No, we can cut the state back a long, long way. And what's more, we have to. We're bringing in £480 billion in tax this year and spending nearly £700 billion. That just cannot continue.

My personal opinion is that the cuts, spread out over 5 years, will involve a degree of hardship, but people have got used to such a incredibly rich lifestyle, even in the last 10 years, that returning to 2003 levels of public spending is not the end of the world!

Ironically, these scare stories about the cuts will benefit the coalition in the medium-term, most people will read the headlines, get scared, but the actual process will largely fly by most people and by 2015, with the economic recovery roaring ahead the governments first major tax cuts for the lower to middle income groups will benefit alot more people than those affected by the cuts .

[Ludwig]

Secondly, there are areas of the UK in which entire towns are on incapacity benefit - this is absurd! Clearly a radical overhaul of the system is required and a bit of 'tough love' is needed with some applicants.

Tough love my arse. Yeah, I'm sure the Tories' hearts are bleeding.

Can you explain how cutting incapacity benefit creates jobs?

I'm not saying that there don't need to be cuts, but please quit all this crap about tough love, and these specious implications that cutting benefits forces people to find work that, in reality, doesn't exist.

The simple fact is that servicing the deficit by cutting benefits is much easier to push through than doing it by increasing taxes. Very very few of the people on benefits would ever have voted Tory in the first place.

[frank_begbie]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog ... nding-1963

As this chap in the Guardian notes...

Utter nonsense. We will be spending the same as a percentage of GDP in 2015 as in 2003/4. Figures from the Guardian data

This kind of scare mongering is ridiculous, though it may ironically do the coalition a favour. Labour wasted a monumental amount of money. An Everest sized mountain of money. They frittered and pissed money away like it grew on trees. Articles like this that wail and scream set an expectation of horror that may well never come to pass. Was 2003 that bad? Was our country crumbling around us? Did we have no schools, hospitals, police, roads or power stations? No. Will we miss the IT systems, contemplation suites, multi-billion luxury refits of government buildings, will we miss the quangos, the wars, the consultants, the ID cards, databases and £3 billion benefits overpayments? Labour even managed to spend £10 million on tax credits for the dead.

No, we can cut the state back a long, long way. And what's more, we have to. We're bringing in £480 billion in tax this year and spending nearly £700 billion. That just cannot continue.

My personal opinion is that the cuts, spread out over 5 years, will involve a degree of hardship, but people have got used to such a incredibly rich lifestyle, even in the last 10 years, that returning to 2003 levels of public spending is not the end of the world!

Ironically, these scare stories about the cuts will benefit the coalition in the medium-term, most people will read the headlines, get scared, but the actual process will largely fly by most people and by 2015, with the economic recovery roaring ahead the governments first major tax cuts for the lower to middle income groups will benefit alot more people than those affected by the cuts .

[woodpecker]

My personal opinion is that the cuts, spread out over 5 years, will involve a degree of hardship, but people have got used to such a incredibly rich lifestyle, even in the last 10 years, that returning to 2003 levels of public spending is not the end of the world!

These nonsensical ramblings are so tiresome.

Do you just cut and paste together phrases you find on the internet in a random fashion?

[frank_begbie]

We have to pay for the ships and missiles somehow.

Where's Robin Hood when you need him?

[nexus]

Woodpecker asked Beria:Do you just cut and paste together phrases you find on the internet in a random fashion?

I've started to do a kind of 'cut and paste' of my own. I cut LB3s posts by missing out his ones on any given thread, then I paste them in a mental file that says 'probably not worth looking at...'

[syberberg]

Secondly, there are areas of the UK in which entire towns are on incapacity benefit - this is absurd! Clearly a radical overhaul of the system is required and a bit of 'tough love' is needed with some applicants.

I think that requires some proof please.

.....and so the poor will have to take hit as well, as they use up a considerable amount of the welfare budget.

I think you might be missing something about welfare and who it's for...

Will a modest hit on benefits be the end of the world?

Modest for whom exactly?

Hardly, the Tory-lib plan to raise the threshold before you pay taxes will benefit low-income workers and savings will have to be made by everybody.

Yes, it is a good idea, but it means bugger all to the disabled who can't work.

Ironically, these scare stories about the cuts will benefit the coalition in the medium-term, most people will read the headlines, get scared, but the actual process will largely fly by most people and by 2015, with the economic recovery roaring ahead the governments first major tax cuts for the lower to middle income groups will benefit alot more people than those affected by the cuts

In light of the latest report from the US Military, that might be a tad too optimistic.

[Lord Beria3]

Ludwig - there are jobs around, although they are poorly paid, which is why immigrants take them!

It may be that cutting benefits will force people into taking jobs which at the moment for snobbish reasons think are below them. After all, a bit of physical labour is too much for some of our young men and woman on jobseekers allowance.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 09741.html

Several Wisbech employers had been persuaded to give some of their immigrant workforce a few days off and to replace them with unemployed locals. Is it that they can't get the jobs because overseas workers are undercutting them? Or is it that they just don't do the jobs as well?


Actually turning up is quite an important element in this experiment and one that not all the participants seem to have grasped. On the first day at a local potato-packing plant, Terry and Paul pitched up half-an-hour late for their 5am induction, and seemed mildly resentful to be picked up on their timekeeping. They had done better than Lewis, though, still living with his mum at the age of 26 and apparently devoting most of his energies to improving his skateboarding and X-Box skills. Lewis had sent a text at midnight the night before. "Hey. It's Lewis. I really can't do tomorrow. I've only just got in and I'm feeling really ill." Paul, meanwhile, was moaning about having to work alongside an Eastern European colleague called Yuri. "Oh well, that's bugging me already, innit," he said, as if it was some dastardly plot to make him underperform. "I'll call him Bill."

Things weren't going a lot better on Victor's farm where three novices were being given a crash course in asparagus picking – not a complicated skill. It isn't easy money this – only 38 pence per kilo picked and a lot of bending and stooping. Even so, one Polish worker had cleared £176 in a single day by cutting half a ton. Sam, slouching down the rows and kicking sulkily at the soil, looked as if he would be lucky to fill a punnet by the end of the morning. Back in the potato-packing factory, an hour's work had to be redone because Paul and Terry had got the count wrong. "We're getting the finger pointed at us because we're the new boys," whined Paul. "We all have bad days, don't we? We all have days when we can't count." On this day, it was clear, Paul didn't know how many beans make five.

Theres more in the review, doesn't quite fit in the bleeding heart liberal case that all the unemployed are victims and aren't the Tories so evil. Get a grip!!

Woodpecker - I couldn't care less about your opinions.

[Ludwig]

Ludwig - there are jobs around, although they are poorly paid, which is why immigrants take them!

Oh FFS. Of course there are jobs around - just not enough for everyone to have one. You do realise there are 3 million unemployed in this country? Even if all the immigrants were to leave tomorrow, there would still be a shortfall of at least 2 million.

It may be that cutting benefits will force people into taking jobs which at the moment for snobbish reasons think are below them.

Or perhaps because they couldn't afford to live on the wages because they couldn't pay their mortgages?

If my current job applications don't yield fruit, I plan to apply for low-paid jobs. But this is not a long-term option for me, if I want to keep my flat. Sure, buying a flat was my decision, and if I'd known about PO 6 years ago, I wouldn't have bought it. But even so, a mortgage is no no more expensive than renting, and unless I want to live in a shared house or with my parents - I'm single and 41 - I simply can't afford to work stacking shelves.

After all, a bit of physical labour is too much for some of our young men and woman on jobseekers allowance.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 09741.html

Interesting reading, and corroborates my opinion that many of the younger generation are lazy, spoilt, self-pitying wasters. However, even if they were of better calibre, can you explain to me how this would create more jobs?

Theres more in the review, doesn't quite fit in the bleeding heart liberal case that all the unemployed are victims and aren't the Tories so evil. Get a grip!!

Why don't you get a brain? Where did I say that all unemployed are victims?

I pointed out that there is a shortfall of jobs in this country of between 2 and 3 million. Nowhere have you responded to my question as to where these jobs are supposed to spring up from.