General Chat

ok you only have to say it once, :-D

what i was trying to say was,

why would someone with arthritis be able to live on benefits,but someone who"s just had his second heart surgery have to go back to work(in my opinion he was unfit) IT just does not seem fair, but a lot of things are not fair now.

sorry to go off thread,but just trying to explain to brown eyed girl :-)

suzanne im genuinely pleased your dads surgery worked so he was able to return to work but for others it does'nt.
so do you mean that he would have worked regardless even if unfit? but i do agree many people also dont have a work ethic though.

suzanne im genuinely pleased your dads surgery worked so he was able to return to work but for others it does'nt.
so do you mean that he would have worked regardless even if unfit? but i do agree many people also dont have a work ethic though.

suzanne im genuinely pleased your dads surgery worked so he was able to return to work but for others it does'nt.
so do you mean that he would have worked regardless even if unfit? but i do agree many people also dont have a work ethic though.

suzanne im genuinely pleased your dads surgery worked so he was able to return to work but for others it does'nt.
so do you mean that he would have worked regardless even if unfit? but i do agree many people also dont have a work ethic though.

totally agree with Dazed RollotheRed i found the program quite sinister. its more of the disability hounding again that makes me see red. turning the general pulic against people who as you say are a small percentage of 'fiddlers' which you get in all walks of life what about all these bankers and directors as in the BBC recently id say they are genuine scroungers and fiddlers. oh and by the way can someone tell these blinkered people there are no jobs out there... there are n't enough 1 and 2 bedroom houses to downsize to thats causing abject misery a nd poverty in the form of the bedroom tax etc
i'll have to leave it there because im fuming again

I didnt see the programme,but read a bit about it in a mag.

all i can say is ,

my dad age 60( at the time) having had three heart attacks,2 lots of angiplasty and 5stents(he later had another 2 stents and another angiplasty) was deemed fit for work(hes worked since the age of 14) and went back to work on the oil rigs .
dad never stops,know age 71 and retired,he still wont sit still,
some have a work ethnic some dont.

Neither myself nor Dazed have missed the point. The raison d'etre of the program was to suggest in a media journo sort of way that the Daily Mail / Xpress and back bench view that social welfare abuse is rife is correct. It is not.

"It was the cash amount that they would have qualified for in 1949 adjusted to the spending power of a similar cash amount in 2013."

The logic of this is deeply flawed.

There is no absolute measure of rich poor or in between it is something relative to the time and place you live in and your peers. Some of my friends feel very deprived because school fees are so high ...

The program should have compared benefits as a proportion of income in 1949 with benefits as a proportion of income in 2013. That modern benefits give more spending power and have wider eligibility is inevitable as the UK is overall far richer than it was in 1949.

The very restrictive way in which the "social" and the Labour Exchange handed out benefits from 1949 through the 50s 60s and 70s caused any amount of social tension, family break up and sheer misery. Take a look at any Ken Loach movie, Alan Bleasdale's "Boys from the Black Stuff" and so on to see what I mean.

I do not see why social welfare should depend on contributions made. In any case most people could never pay for the social benefits they receive in a lifetime from the state ( health, education, pension, benefits for a bad patch ... ) . The taxes paid would never cover it i.e. more than 90% of people are net beneficiaries of welfare spending something the Daily Mail is loath to admit.

For sure it is a very bad policy to allow people to start living on benefits as a way of life and to supplement it with assorted cirminality.

The solutions to that lie with the delivery of education, law enforcement and job opportunity. The present government is going backwards at speed with all of these. Meanwhile having a go at " the scroungers" is intellectual dishonesty of the highest order as official stats show that fraudulent claims are a tiny percentage of overall welfare spending and a lot less as a percentage than stock "shrinkage" in Tesco.

The Treasury was opposed to the brave new world of Ian Duncan Smith for the very good reason that his plans will greatly increase overall spending in the short run and it could take some years to see any benefit, if ever.

The jury is out on that but whoever wins the next election the scheme is going to need a lot of redesign. Jumping on "scroungers" and sending poster vans around some London postcodes is not redesign.

The idea of the voluntary sector taking over chunks of government and local govt responsibility using their volunteers and funds raised is crass. Most charities / non profit orgs. are refusing to go along with it and rightly so.

I think you have to go back to the pre Great Reform governments ( pore 1837 ) to find as big a bunch of scoundrels running UKGov. The present front bench should thank their lucky stars that Unite made such a hash of cooking the Labour leadership election.

:-|

Rollo,

The program did not attempt to compare like with like in the monetary sense that you imply. It merely used the 1949 benefit sums that the individuals were paid and adjusted them to the spending power of a similar cash amount in 2013. The real comparison shown was the criteria for being eligible for being granted benefit and retaining it. The young disabled man for example would have been ineligible for any benefit in 1949 but quite rightly was eligible for the highest benefit amount out of the 3 examples in 2013.

I agree entirely with your sentiment that welfare spending on care of the elderly is fully justified on the basis of the contribution that they have made to society. Whilst I feel such care should be given top priority I don't think that the fact that the majority are now reaching pensionable age fitter and with a greater life expectancy than ever before can be ignored. When pensions were first introduced in the UK the age for eligibility for both men and women was over 70 years of age. It was only in the 1970's that average life expectancy in the UK began to exceed that. Incidentally less than 600,000 pensions were granted by 31/12/1908

DET,

I agree that care should be taken to try to ensure that any tasks found or created should not take away paid employment opportunities. I am sure that many charities would welcome an influx of additional labour to assist them in some way. Additionally lots of jobs in the community such as maintenance or beautification go undone because funds are not available to pay someone to do them. If those on JSA who are fit enough were required to spend 2 or 3 days a week fulfilling those tasks society in general should benefit.

Dazed,

Like Rollo I think that you may have missed the point of the alternative benefit money that they were given. It was the cash amount that they would have qualified for in 1949 adjusted to the spending power of a similar cash amount in 2013. It was not supposed to be what they would be expected to live on today. Incidentally I agree with you that pretending that the widower had to pawn the watch was stupid, done no doubt for dramatic effect. In 1949 he would have most probably had to do that just as your grandmother was expected to have sold all her valuables before seeking outside help. Thankfully today we are a little more caring.

Obviously not all people on benefits are scroungers but there are some for whom it has become a lifestyle.

Arthritis can be assessed via X-rays - I spent a very painful hour in our local hospital having both my knees done, afterwards I could barely walk as they expect you to get into some of the most unnatural positions.

Through these X-rays, it was established I had no cartilege left in either of my knees and that I had arthritis in my knees and shins.....

It was a complete farce. If you want people to live on 1949 benefits etc., then the logical thing would be to have all foodstuffs, utilities etc., also at the same prices. Then these people would have had a more realistic idea of living on benefits in 1949 and the money they were given was actually for that time a good amount, and they would not have struggled in the way that they did, especially the widower, who was reduced to tears (utterly disgusting).
A futile programme, made for the Mail reading middle Englanders who think that all people on benefits are scroungers.

What they should have done was go back pre 1949. My paternal grandparents had health problems with my father, he had a skin complaint and his mother was advised to regularly (daily) rub Olive Oil into his skin, this was c.1934. You could only get Olive Oil in the chemist and in very small, expensive bottles. They needed help so gran went to the equivilant of the social. The woman she saw, listened very carefully to all my gran had to say, all the while playing with a wooden ruler. After my gran had told her everything this woman rapped my gran across the knuckles with this ruler and told her to come back when she had sold her wedding ring!!!

Although I didn’t see the programme I did read a review about it in yesterday’s DM – before any one starts moaning at the choice of rag, it was free while we were having a drink in a café!

Not unsurprisingly they did lay into the aches and pains lady. Although the article did castigate her character, periodic reoccurring physical problems can make someone hesitant to apply for a job which may exacerbate them. She apparently had an Autistic son who would have needed caring for.

The article mentioned that although the disabled young man wanted to work, he was more likely to be shortlisted for an interview if he didn’t mentioned his needs. If the article was correct, his income when employed would be less than he was receiving in Benefit. A Catch 22 situation that many people must find themselves in.

The idea that someone should give back will receiving is a good one, but there is the danger that the tasks found or created might be taking paid employment opportunities away from other people.

The whole idea pf the program was utter tosh because it was not comparing like with like or, as if often said, you cannot compare apples with oranges.

Any method measuring relative poverty or standard of living between groups must use the same geographic location and time period. For instance the income of a worker at an IT call center in Bangalore is rather less than JSA+HB. Yet the Indian worker will have the greater spending power.

In the 1940s welfare had only just moved on from the days of needy people being supplicants to the relieving officer. Indeed one of the reasons that Chruchill was unceremoniously dumped in the post war election of 1945 was that his association with the gradgrind policies of the 1930s was too close.

With some ups and downs the real average income of people living in the UK is very much higher than in the 1940s. The corollary of this is that welfare benefits have also been higher in real terms than in the 1940s and 1950s.

The current trend inspired by the Daily Mail and egged on by the Tory back bench towards a population just on the edge of disaster and fear and loathing of those a peg or two further down will bring no good.

In any case by far the largest item in welfare spending is care of the elderly and pensions. People over 65 have paid their taxes and often fought for this country. The current assault on their standard of living is nasty and distasteful.

I disagree on one point though I didn't see all of it, Jonesy, re the disabled lady, on a TV programme, or over any short period of time, a catalogue of ailments such as she had like arthritis can't be reasonably assessed. One day you can walk up the stairs, lift a bag of shopping, make a supreme effort....the next day you can't. And you wouldn't find many employers who would or could take you on if that was the case?

But it was interesting. I was very glad for that nice young man that he was offered a job :-D

edit, The point was made well that in 1949, this was how it was.... BUT aren't we supposed to have 'progressed' since then in our treatment of the sick or old? We can now spend millions on ' un-necessary' gadgets in a year that in 1949 would have been unthinkable...surely we can afford to give some of that to those who need it?.

Very interesting program on Channel 4 last night (1st of 3), comparing today's State Benefits to those available back in 1949 when the Welfare State came into being. It looked at the criteria necessary to make a claim, what monetary benefit was paid out in 1949 (Adjusted to 2013 level) compared to what claimants receive today and what steps the state took back then to ensure that only those prepared to help themselves were given assistance.

http://goo.gl/JubrZI

The most basic rule in 1949 was that unless you had a proven record of past employment you were not eligible to receive any financial benefit whatsoever from the state. If however you were prepared to work the state did much more to find you work within your capabilities up to the point that employers were required by law to provide employment for those with physical or mental disabilities. The level of benefits paid out were set deliberately low so that individuals were unlikely to see living purely on benefits as an alternative way of life to working to earn their living. Tests to assess an individuals capabilities decided what a claimant should be capable of were strict and likely jobs were offered. If the offer was refused then the claimant even if previously eligible were stripped of all benefits.

The characters in this 1st program were interesting. A 75 year old male widower living on a pension. A female approximately 50 years old who having worked in the past now has obviously decided she is unfit for work due to numerous claimed ailments and is living on benefits. A 24 year old male, disabled since birth who is in receipt of benefits but would much prefer to be able to get a job but because of his disability is finding it hard to find an employer who is prepared to offer him one.

By the end of the program the pensioner who can cope on his 2013 pension but not on his adjusted 1949 one has unselfishly decided that he would accept the 1949 alternative of giving up his own home and moving into a care home. Any state money saved he wants to be put to use helping out young disabled. The 24 year old has been given an opportunity to prove that he can work which he has done successfully and is now employed and off benefits. Unfortunately the female is still entrenched in her belief that the state,( I.E. the rest of us), owes her a living and thus continues to receive benefits including driving round in her people carried provided through Motability.

I'm sure that nobody wishes to see people dying of starvation in the street but I'm equally sure that nobody wants to see those who could help themselves being rewarded for not doing so. Should we consider re-applying the 1949 criteria, paid nothing in, get nothing out? Should the state do more to provide employment for the unemployed? Should the fit unemployed have to do some work for the public benefit in order to receive their Jobseekers allowance?

What are your thoughts?