Uk Sees 27000 Increase In Lazy People

[Game_Over]

At the end of the day there should be no such thing as 'disability' benefit any way.

There should just be one benefit paid to anyone who is not working - for whatever reason.

Why should someone who is 'disabled' because the eat, drink or smoke too much be paid more than someone who just loses their job.

There is actually a good case to be made that they should be paid less.

The bottom line is that these discussions are really pointless because nothing will be done until the money runs out

And when the money runs out it won't matter who is in government

Benefits will be cut.

No society that pays people who don't work more than it pays people who do can survive for very long.

[Riedquat]

At the end of the day there should be no such thing as 'disability' benefit any way.

There should just be one benefit paid to anyone who is not working - for whatever reason.

Why should someone who is 'disabled' because the eat, drink or smoke too much be paid more than someone who just loses their job.

There is actually a good case to be made that they should be paid less.

That's fairly obnoxious as a general principle. It sounds fair enough for the ones who eat themselves until they can't fit through the door but there are also people who are disabled through no fault of their own and need extra simply to survive. I'm all for sorting out the lazy, scroungers, cheats etc., but I don't want it done by also destroying a few who really do need it.

[Game_Over]

That's fairly obnoxious as a general principle. It sounds fair enough for the ones who eat themselves until they can't fit through the door but there are also people who are disabled through no fault of their own and need extra simply to survive. I'm all for sorting out the lazy, scroungers, cheats etc., but I don't want it done by also destroying a few who really do need it.

I notice you didn't quote the rest of my post in your reply:

The bottom line is that these discussions are really pointless because nothing will be done until the money runs out

And when the money runs out it won't matter who is in government

Benefits will be cut.

No society that pays people who don't work more than it pays people who do can survive for very long.

End of quote.

No matter how 'deserving' these people are, no society can pay people who are unproductive more than it pays those who actually generate wealth.

All you are really saying is that life isn't fair.

[headmelter]

The bottom line is that these discussions are really pointless because nothing will be done until the money runs out

The money has run out. . . .

[Game_Over]

SO what? Just increase the deficit and debt ... this is what Dave is doing for the next few years anyway, same as Brown would have done.

Exactly.

So people are complaining about cuts when the government is actually still massively increasing debt.

The level of welfare we currently have is totally unaffordable

And whether cutting benefits or not is fair

is a completely irrelevant argument

because when the money really does run out, benefits will be cut - whoever is in power.

[happy_renting]

Definition of 'employee' : Someone who isn't unemployed yet.

We are all a phone call, an email, a tyre tread, a virus, away from unemployment. Some of you just don't realise it.

Enyoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.

[Game_Over]

Definition of 'employee' : Someone who isn't unemployed yet.

We are all a phone call, an email, a tyre tread, a virus, away from unemployment. Some of you just don't realise it.

Enyoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.

Well I'm not a phone call away from unemployment

And neither are the 8 million other economically inactive people in the UK.

In actual fact, all the people living on benefits are just one more financial crisis away from massive benefit cuts.

So enjoy yourself while you can, because it's later than you think.

[deeplyblue]

What makes someone incapable of looking after themselves more deserving than someone who just wants to try it on and be lazy?

Both are unproductive for the economy.

Why should I be paying tax to either group?

If you do not think you should pay taxes to support the unproductive, and, presumably, do not think that the productive need to have taxes paid to support them, which taxes do you think you should pay? What would you like to support?

The foreign embassies? The military? The legal system? The NHS? The state pensions of the ordinary over-65s/66s/70s?

Are any of them "productive?"

db

[deeplyblue]

At the end of the day there should be no such thing as 'disability' benefit any way.

There should just be one benefit paid to anyone who is not working - for whatever reason.

IDS agrees with you, I think. It seems to me that it makes sense to give a basic income to anyone not working - including mothers bringing up children, and those who choose not to work. But I mean a basic income.

So, you might ask, why would anyone work if others could live off the taxpayers and just watch Daytime TV all day?

Have you ever tried watching Daytime TV all day? Everyone's nightmare Old Folks' Home. Sit in a chair, get unappetising food put in front of you and watch a TV showing "Bargain Hunt" and repeats of "Location, Location, Location" from 2006 all day and every day. For excitement have a "keep fit in your chair" class and a weekly trip to the Bingo.

If work is good for you, gives self-respect, company, a sense of achievement, then there will be enough people out there who want to work to do the "productive" bits.

Apparently the happy Old Folks' Homes are the ones where the residents help out with peeling the potatoes and weeding the garden.

db

[Game_Over]

IDS agrees with you, I think. It seems to me that it makes sense to give a basic income to anyone not working - including mothers bringing up children, and those who choose not to work. But I mean a basic income.

So, you might ask, why would anyone work if others could live off the taxpayers and just watch Daytime TV all day?

Have you ever tried watching Daytime TV all day? Everyone's nightmare Old Folks' Home. Sit in a chair, get unappetising food put in front of you and watch a TV showing "Bargain Hunt" and repeats of "Location, Location, Location" from 2006 all day and every day. For excitement have a "keep fit in your chair" class and a weekly trip to the Bingo.

If work is good for you, gives self-respect, company, a sense of achievement, then there will be enough people out there who want to work to do the "productive" bits.

Apparently the happy Old Folks' Homes are the ones where the residents help out with peeling the potatoes and weeding the garden.

db

This view is obnoxious apparently.

[winkie]

IDS agrees with you, I think. It seems to me that it makes sense to give a basic income to anyone not working - including mothers bringing up children, and those who choose not to work. But I mean a basic income.

So, you might ask, why would anyone work if others could live off the taxpayers and just watch Daytime TV all day?

Have you ever tried watching Daytime TV all day? Everyone's nightmare Old Folks' Home. Sit in a chair, get unappetising food put in front of you and watch a TV showing "Bargain Hunt" and repeats of "Location, Location, Location" from 2006 all day and every day. For excitement have a "keep fit in your chair" class and a weekly trip to the Bingo.

If work is good for you, gives self-respect, company, a sense of achievement, then there will be enough people out there who want to work to do the "productive" bits.

Apparently the happy Old Folks' Homes are the ones where the residents help out with peeling the potatoes and weeding the garden.

db

....sometimes disability is all in the mind.

[deeplyblue]

No society that pays people who don't work more than it pays people who do can survive for very long.

How long a society survives is first a matter of definition of terms - "society" and "survive" being two and "productive" (which is mentioned by others) a third.

However, consider the many centuries when Europe supported the massive structures of the Catholic Church. Some members of it did what might be considered useful work (brewing good beer?) but surely saying mass and telling everyone they were wicked would not count as "productive" in the way in which the word is used here. The monks, the priests, the bureaucrats mostly lived more comfortably than those who produced the food, the raw materials and the manufactured goods. This social system survived for centuries.

Even after the Reformation, much of Europe spent a large proportion of its wealth on the Church.

It is one of the cornerstones of the Marxist analysis of history (with which I am not generally in sympathy) that for centuries the people doing the basic productive work of factories or farms were usually the ones who were paid the least. The richer you were, the less productive work you did. We are still waiting the final crisis of capitalism, when the workers take the control and get the money.

db

[deeplyblue]

....sometimes disability is all in the mind.

Well, yes. Being able to peel potatoes clearly means that you can do something useful for an hour - providing someone will bring the potatoes to you from the garden. Being able to garden means that you can remember what decade you're living in, who you're talking to and how to peel potatoes when you need to eat.

Doing one useful thing for an hour twice a day, with help and a rest afterwards doesn't make you employable. Not until you reach the upper echelons of society or become a senior banker.

db

[deeplyblue]

This view is obnoxious apparently.

Sorry, which view? And obnoxious to whom?

The one that says work is good for people and they will do it voluntarily, so there's no need for coercion?

The conclusion that says we might as well support those who choose not to work as well as those who can't work and stop wasting money trying to work out which is which, and forcing those who could work to fail the task of trying to find it?

db

[winkie]

Well, yes. Being able to peel potatoes clearly means that you can do something useful for an hour - providing someone will bring the potatoes to you from the garden. Being able to garden means that you can remember what decade you're living in, who you're talking to and how to peel potatoes when you need to eat.

Doing one useful thing for an hour twice a day, with help and a rest afterwards doesn't make you employable. Not until you reach the upper echelons of society or become a senior banker.

db

Why would a person in an old peoples home require to be employable?

There is a thing called being self employed, but not everyone has the mindset to undertake such commitment that requires persistence and courage, bringing with it a high chance of failure.....if you never try you will never find out, just carry on going nowhere sideways......

[deeplyblue]

Why should someone who is 'disabled' because the eat, drink or smoke too much be paid more than someone who just loses their job.

There is actually a good case to be made that they should be paid less.

Which implies several things which are not necessarily so:

• that someone who loses their job is an innocent victim, not someone who has been picked for redundancy because they're idle and stupid

• that the prime cause of disability in working age adults is excess, (it may be true in later life when years of eating, drinking and smoking catch up with you) and not the myriad reasons why people get multiple sclerosis, leukaemia, inherited body malfunctioning, paranoid schizophrenia and lots of other things that strike completely outside the control of the person affected.

• that someone who takes up skydiving and does in their spine when the parachute doesn't open properly has not made the choice which crippled them As, you can argue, has someone who joins the bomb squad and gets their legs blown off.

• that all disability payment goes to the disabled person. Consider the case of a child with cerebral palsy - the money goes to the parent(s) who has to look after them

• and finally that disability payments are all made to compensate the disabled person for being unable to work. This is true of ESA. It is not true of DLA which is paid to disabled people regardless of their employment status to help with the additional costs that are involved with disability, like, for example, having to move house because the old one can't be adapted for a wheelchair or having to have a member of the family give up work to become a full-time carer.

db

[miko]

Which implies several things which are not necessarily so:

• that someone who loses their job is an innocent victim, not someone who has been picked for redundancy because they're idle and stupid

• that the prime cause of disability in working age adults is excess, (it may be true in later life when years of eating, drinking and smoking catch up with you) and not the myriad reasons why people get multiple sclerosis, leukaemia, inherited body malfunctioning, paranoid schizophrenia and lots of other things that strike completely outside the control of the person affected.

• that someone who takes up skydiving and does in their spine when the parachute doesn't open properly has not made the choice which crippled them As, you can argue, has someone who joins the bomb squad and gets their legs blown off.

• that all disability payment goes to the disabled person. Consider the case of a child with cerebral palsy - the money goes to the parent(s) who has to look after them

• and finally that disability payments are all made to compensate the disabled person for being unable to work. This is true of ESA. It is not true of DLA which is paid to disabled people regardless of their employment status to help with the additional costs that are involved with disability, like, for example, having to move house because the old one can't be adapted for a wheelchair or having to have a member of the family give up work to become a full-time carer.

db

Well nothing is black and white , yes there are people who have been made redundant due to being idle and stupid , but also there are those who have been made redundant because the company has closed down , moved abroad ect so there was nothing in their power they could have done to stop their redundancy . While working they would have paid income tax and NI on their earnings and then more purchase taxes on goods they have bought and had to buy like petrol to get them to work.

There are also different types of people who are/become dissabled. But quite frankley the DLA has got completley out of hand .

I know someone who has only ever worked for a few years in his life ignoring cash in hand work ( yes he has a heart condtion ) and for the last 12 years he has been awarded top rate DLA for both the carers component and mobility. He has never been reassessed and no one has ever asked him who his carer is ( who does not exist ) . We worked out that someone going to work would need to earn £35 k per year pre tax and Ni to afford his standard of living .Which is £10 k above the average wage in this country , and as we know many millions earn less than that.

His house is provided rent free and council tax exempt. They change his car every 3 years tax and insure it . Does he really need a new car every 3 years , I could understand it a parent needing a car if they had to transport a dissabled child but just for this person to drive about in it is totally unnessassary. He has not got to go anywhere of any distance and as for shopping if he has the top rate carers allowance then the carer could do the shopping for him.

The state is not attending to his needs , but also his luxuries . As a foot note he still does some cash in hand work and after running up thousands of £'s on high interest CC's he went bankrupt . They just wrote of his debt and cannot touch any of the weekley money he receives as the law states that that is the minimum that he must have to live on.

Last time I spoke to him he was moaning about someone down the road who had been awarded top rate DLA after lying to the people who awarded these payments. He said the guy was not that ill and did not deserve the payments . In my opinion neither of them do.

[Harry Monk]

I became lazy in May 2010 but luckily the laziness disappeared about five weeks ago and I am currently delivering frozen and fresh foods, 26 tonnes at a time from Holland to the UK. However, the company does not seem financially sound and so I am expecting to become lazy again at any stage.

[miko]

I became lazy in May 2010 but luckily the laziness disappeared about five weeks ago and I am currently delivering frozen and fresh foods, 26 tonnes at a time from Holland to the UK. However, the company does not seem financially sound and so I am expecting to become lazy again at any stage.

Umm it catches very quickley this lazyitess, but CCC knows the cure if only people would take it , quite simple if you think about it

JUST TRY HARDER TO GET A JOB.

[Game_Over]

Sorry, which view? And obnoxious to whom?

The one that says work is good for people and they will do it voluntarily, so there's no need for coercion?

The conclusion that says we might as well support those who choose not to work as well as those who can't work and stop wasting money trying to work out which is which, and forcing those who could work to fail the task of trying to find it?

db

My original comment that people should get paid the same benefit whether they are disabled or not, I think.

There clearly should be just one, universal 'out of work' benefit.

It would then not be necessary to decide if people were disabled or not, or degrees of disability.

I know it is tough if you are disabled, but it is also tough if you lose your job or are not bright enough to get a well paid job.

Life is fundamentally unfair and if the state borrows money to try and eliminate unfairness in life

sooner or later the state will go bankrupt.

[Harry Monk]

I missed this good news!

Well done you.

Ta, have been a bit busy so not been about as much on HPC. It's good to be back at work, even though it's far from being the best job I've ever had. Like most people, I consider unemployment to be hell. I am sure lazy dole bludgers exist, but most people I saw up the Nash seemed to be the same as me, bereft and deeply worried.

Other news, am considering buying this house http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-18660450.html , would offer £90k, will need to borrow £50k but even if interest rates hit 12%, which seems unlikely, mortgage payments would still be less than rent on my flat. Current interest payment on £50k would be about £1500 p.a compared to rent of over £6000 p.a. This house would have been £160,000 at peak.

Not in a rush though, and I know prices will fall further.

[deeplyblue]

My original comment that people should get paid the same benefit whether they are disabled or not, I think.

There clearly should be just one, universal 'out of work' benefit.

It would then not be necessary to decide if people were disabled or not, or degrees of disability.

I think that there is a good case for this - I'm not ready to sign up for it yet, but wouldn't shout it down. There are, of course a few details which need ironing out ...

I would say that such a universal benefit should be paid to anyone who is unemployed regardless of whether they are capable of work, or fully fit and just disinclined to do anything but sit at home. We have had testament here that many people would prefer to work; some like the company, the extra income, the satisfaction, the feeling that you are contributing. Some want to sit at a computer terminal trying to prove that lizard people have taken over the earth. Some really are happiest watching old films on the telly.

There are, however, many people for whom this is anathema - "work or starve" brigade. Now some are quite puritanical about this, and almost believe it. Usually what they mean is, "Work, starve or have your family look after you," since very few believe that the very young and the very old should have to work in the present to eat in the present. There are certainly some who think that every adult could do some work from which they should have the money to eat, or should have saved up enough to cope with a rainy day.

There are a much greater number who cannot countenance the paying of unemployment money to someone who is voluntarily unemployed. This usually leads to demands that those who can do paid employment should do so. That leads to a need to divide the seriously sick and disabled on the one hand, and the those who could work on the other - and we're back to disability testing. After a while someone else wants to divide those who could work a little, from those could work full time, and so goes as the system gets more complex, the rules as to who is entitled to what and under what circumstances acquire exemptions and modifications and testing people becomes a bigger and bigger industry. And then we're back with an arcane structure which isn't that much of an improvement.

So for your system to work, we have to have general assent across the political spectrum and amongst the public at large that anyone who wants to live on unemployment income should be allowed to do so, with no capacity testing. As I said, I think this has a lot going for it - not least that it would cost a lot less to administer and save employers coping with hundreds of job applications from people who really don't want the job.

I know it is tough if you are disabled, but it is also tough if you lose your job or are not bright enough to get a well paid job.

Life is fundamentally unfair and if the state borrows money to try and eliminate unfairness in life sooner or later the state will go bankrupt.

Again, I have to agree with you to some extent. The modern European model of democracy seems to include the idea of minimising the unfairness in society, and I'm not sure that this has not become an unhealthy obsession. However, there seems to be a general feeling that life in our society should not be unfair. The cry of "postcode lottery" gets raised by one newspaper or another at frequent intervals - it's "not fair" that person at address A should be entitled to a certain drug on the NHS, while person B only a mile and a half away is denied it We should all have it, the piety says, because that would be fair. They rarely say that person A should be just as deprived as person B.

One of the rationales for the NHS itself is that everyone should have access to, say, the services of a midwife, not just those who can afford to pay for it and that these services should be paid for out of funds collected by the state from everyone. We should, this argument goes, not say to those who can't afford it that they will have to manage without help and if mother and/or baby dies then we accept this as "one of those things which just happens."

Can you get this notion of fairness kept for the NHS extended to unemployment? I think you'll have problems. I wish you luck.

db