Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Game over for Labour

There are times when you instinctively know things have changed, and yesterday that point came, when Mrs Me indicated her intention to vote Tory at the first opportunity, a reaction to news that David Cameron was launching a new policy, to shoe horn the feckless lazy long term bludgers, we affectionately call the long term unemployed, back to work.

Odd as it seems, this to me, sounds like the kindest thing to do, with this countries parasites, it may seem cruel to suggest those who've grown fat on our taxes actually do something for their money but really its the humane thing to do.

This country is probably on its third generation of benefit dependent scroungers, I just wonder whether the conservatives are going far enough, I think they are suggesting that benefits should stop for those on the dole more than 2 years, that's hell of a long time to be sitting in front of a TV all day.

Its time politicians put the squeeze on all those whose have made a career out of bleeding society dry, instead of financing women who've made a career out of having babies and young men fathering them, lets just stop paying them after 6months without a job.

I can understand those who become unemployed resenting the thought of working for poverty pay, but for anyone without a house full of kids, who is purchasing their home, the most you can get on benefits is about 60 quid pocket money so already large sections of the community have no choice as to what job they take.

The industry in which I work, generally employees people on an agency basis, that means the work can and does dry up, so I sometimes find myself a reluctant visitor to the local jobcentre, usually the indignity of one visit is enough for me. How anyone could spend years attending the jobcentre is beyond me.

The idea of forcing people in to work may seem alien but its no worse than you and I working long hours, just so some moronic F-wits can live in luxury at our expense.

Now if the Tories could also announce a policy of setting the minimum wage around 7 or 8 quid they'll get my vote too.

11 comments:

  1. Tony something that I am finding now is that a lot of my business competitors who are selling online are on benefit. I think one of the main problems is that we have far to complicated tax and benefit system, meaning that a massive amount is spent on administering it and not enough on policing it.

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  2. Michael We need to lay off the public sector parasites who administer benefits and replace the system with one reversible tax system. First thing we save if that there would be no need for an ID card scheme. It would be built in.

    two stories

    (1) In 1976 a multiple address benefits fraud was detected. It was run by the IRA based on recruitment of suitable category THANET single mother claimants. The category was that they had not named the father of the child(ren) basically so no central record to detect multiple claiming was raised at Newcastle NI Records.

    The woman caught had 48 addresses across England with a claim for rent, three kids and herself in place at each. In modern terms a take of half a million per year.

    It took a non Thanet civil servant a lot of effort to detect this by fortuitous information received as the system had no means to detect it through admin !

    The Wimbledon address used as one of the 48 fraud addresses was also a suspect active unit IRA safe house/bomb cell.

    Thanet civil servants who had taken the woman's initial claim for benefit were asked to give evidence. Keen as mustard at the prospect of staying on expenses at an hotel etc. Then the IRA was mentioned and the Thanet w-nkers all got instant amnesia.

    (2) Recently my son in law was conducting visits of single mother claimants to encourage them to attend interviews set up to encourage them to work.

    At a Thanet address the woman told him she had never heard of the claimant. Then she said "I think she might be my landlady" private rented.

    He referred matters to a fraud investigator who took four weeks to establish that there were a number of addresses across England at which the claimant drew benefits, rent and council tax benefits plus having a working tenant. It also emerged that the children for which she claimed family allowance and social may never have existed or may have died. But whichever way they have not existed for years !

    That raised the question where is she this multiple claimant ? Trying to narrow it down proved problematic. She might be in UK but she might not.

    Who is she. mmmmmmm ! all we know is the identity she claimed benefits under.

    Did such an identity ever exist ? might have done but we cannot be sure it was hers.

    Presumably they stopped the benefits. But did the private tenants rent keep getting paid for a while ?

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  3. I never knew the IRA had been so incredibly active in Thanet - the Thanet MSN Chat has had dozens of IRA anecdotes and I think Thanet Life has had its fair share ( to the point of banning them).

    Are these all seperate stories, os just the same one being told over and over again at amazing length? Curiously there is virtually no aspect of blogging that doesn't have a potential IRA connection for this writer. Still it beats reading about police corruption and malpractice dating from before most of us were born...

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  4. If it's of interest, this is an extract from the Conservative release on its proposed policies (issued January 8th)

    Regards

    Ewen Cameron
    ______

    Work for Welfare: Real reform

    Conservatives have today published our vision for real welfare reform underpinned by four key principles:



    1. Respect for those who cannot work

    Those recipients of incapacity benefit who really cannot work will receive continued support and will remain outside the return-to-work process.


    2. Employment for those who can

    Every out-of-work benefit claimant expected to work or prepare for work.
    A comprehensive programme of support for job seekers including training, development, work experience and post-employment mentoring.
    Welfare-to-work services to be provided by the private and voluntary sector on a payment-by-results basis, according to their success in returning people to sustainable employment.


    3. Assessments for those claiming out of work benefits

    Rapid assessments for every recipient of out of work benefits – for all new and existing claimants.
    The assessment process will determine how much welfare-to-work providers are paid for placing a claimant in work.


    4. Limits to claiming out of work benefits

    People who refuse to join a return-to-work programme will lose the right to claim out of work benefits until they do.
    People who refuse to accept reasonable job offers could lose the right to claim out of work benefits for three years.
    Time limits applied to out of work benefit claims, so that people who claim for more than two years out of three will be required to ‘work for the dole’ on community work programmes.

    Welfare reform and the couple penalty
    Because we have a holistic approach to solving poverty, our commitment to welfare reform is also in the context of ending the couple penalty. Instead of keeping people on benefits and locked in a cycle of deprivation, we will support families.

    Britain has one of the highest rates of family breakdown in Europe but Gordon Brown’s tax credit system penalises couples for staying together. As it stands the tax credit system discourages cohabitation because couples with children can receive more money by living apart or claiming to live apart. The cost of the couple penalty can reach several thousands of pounds.

    Because the Government’s policies so heavily discriminate against families with two parents it is harder for couple families to escape poverty. As a result the risk of poverty has hardly changed for children in two-parent families since 1997, and actually rose last year from 21% to 23%. In addition, 60% of poor children live in couple families (Welfare Isn’t Working – Child Poverty, Reform, 14 June 2007).

    Based on similar schemes abroad, we are confident that our radical welfare reform programme will return at least 600,000 people back to work - enough to pay the cost of ending the couple penalty. This will mean that 1.8 million of the poorest couples with children will gain on average £32 a week and 300,000 children in two-parent families will be lifted out of poverty. The long-term effects will be greater still, as our programme will help to provide a sustainable solution to child poverty by encouraging work and reducing family breakdown.

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  5. Once upon a time there was a thing called the Beveridge Report. It proposed an actuarial contribution based "national Insurance" system.

    The wartime generation would pay in a tanner a week. And in return they would get unemployment pay, sickness pay and an NHS.

    The sums did not add up. Hence each generation ends up relying on its successor generations to pay its pensions.

    we also got a means tested system called at first National Assistance.

    National Insurance set up with a central records office. But means tested benefits did not. they were expected to gain a central record, to detect multiple claiming, by reliance on the National Insurance system.

    Problem is that not all claims for means tested benefits contain a contributory element. And in certain of these types of claim no central record exists.

    So the claimant can raise a claim at each local office of means tested benefits without any central record detecting that they have a number of concurrent claims.

    The IRA MO was cited merely to emphasise that the loophole exploited by the single mum (Story 2) has been left to exist for many decades. A tip of an iceberg because this is also the MO used by illegal immigrant rackets.

    This is not an efficient way to administer the issue of public funds.


    The torys' proposals are akin to reinforcing a weak position.

    The system is fundamentally flawed. NI is a mathematical nonsense. Income support is based on the fallacy of trying to maintain a claimant at the level they have reached.

    In the First World War (before even I was born) we had a two tier approach to PTSD then called Shell Shock.

    Other ranks were sent to medical facilities and, for example, overdosed on insulin to attempt to chemically jerk them back to fitness to fight.

    officers were sent for s rest cure at a country retreat.

    The tory idea that doctors should be empowered to prescribe treatments not for their curative worth but for their short term ability to create a bogus fitness for work of a claimant is outrageous.

    I think we should end the demarcation between being unemployed and being incapacitated from work. And make one category of scaled economic inactivity, partial economic activity full economic activity. And use a reversible tax system.

    We would save the cost of the public sector parasites who administer benefits. We would make inroads into the black economy. We would make a lot of benefits fraud no longer undetectable.

    Nearly half of those on the sick are for psychological or psychiatric reasons. The reason for this is the All Work Test criteria.

    For example. If a man has lung damage and is sensitized to isocyanates he would defintely be harmed by certain workplaces.

    But he gets no points towrads his disability assessment for ACTUAL potential harm in the workplace.

    Whereas a man with fit lungs who says he fears harm to his lungs at the same workplace would be given points for stress ... of the fear of work.

    The man with the damaged lungs is classified fit for work. the man with the clamed fear of work is classified unfit for work because "Stress" only requires 7 points to qualify but physical conditions require I think 15.

    Now stress and a bad back and you are cooking. Long term rates of incapacity, carers and mobility components (not taken into account against the other half's tax credit claim).

    "Collusive separations" are endemic.

    Girl gets pregnant. Lad agrees to pay her in her hand without involving CSA. She scores a council flat and full means tested benefits (topped up with the secret payments from the lad). the lad is not crucified by CSA and he may even move into the flat.

    I was speaking to a Thanet woman recently. In her thirties she had achieved what she wanted two children by the same father no csa. Payments from the dad to top up her benefits.

    I spoke with another. She had claimed as a single mother since her early twenties. At 42 she had another cild in anticipation that with 18 years of further benefits as a single mum she would reach retirement age and never be required to work.

    Something needs to be done but the tories do not yet have the answers.

    The educationalists do not have the answers.

    There are hard choices to be made.

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  6. There are out there some genuine disabled people who are single with children, no cash on the side, not milking the system but because they have an incurable illness which renders them unemployable. This is not their fault. Illness can strike anyone. To lump all incapacity claimants together in such a cynical way is abhorrent. I speak with knowlege on this and feel rather angry with the dismissive comments made.

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  7. My references are quite clear they refer to the long term unemployed, obviously those, who are incapable of working should be looked after by society.

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  8. better yet, these "lazy feckless scroungers" could be given jobs repairing and maintaining the rail tracks, then they would be indistinguishable from the lazy, feckless workers who are already employed there. long hours, maybe, but little to show for it, bar stained tea cups and empty bacon sarnie wrappers.

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  9. Anon sat 10:20:00 AM

    Thank you for your comments, it makes me feel superior knowing there are people like you with such simplistic views.

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  10. Simplistic maybe, but accurate and informed. Glad someone makes you feel superior.

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