Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Can I Have a Sick Note Doc?


There are 2.9 million people in receipt of disability benefit in Britain. I wouldn’t have the temerity to suggest that they are all work shy, scrounging bastards, but after coming across this figure a number of things occurred to me.

In the past thirty years the number of people in receipt of disability benefit has trebled. This is rather odd given the overall improvements in health standards and longevity over this period. It seems even more preposterous when one considers that all the heavy industries which were a staple of working class life thirty years ago have more or less disappeared. I’m sure that shelf stacking or working in a call centre have their hazards, but I’m pretty sure that they can’t be compared with working as a stevedore, or digging coal out of the ground.

I also think that it’s rather a strange coincidence that the figure of 2.9 million is almost identical to the number of people who were unemployed following the first Thatcher Governments decimation of manufacturing industry during the early 1980’s.

Whenever I hear Gordon Brown boasting about record levels of employment, I find myself wishing that he would announce the number of people that are classed as economically inactive. If we add up the numbers of long term unemployed, disability claimants, and single mothers, everything in the economic garden starts to look a lot less rosy.

We’re encouraged by the press to think of the ‘underclass’ as illiterate chavs and deadbeats. In reality, the underclass consists of everyone who is effectively reliant on the state for their subsistence. These people have no hope of social mobility, and have fallen out of the productively employed sector of British life. We have instances of entire families that have never worked in their lives. I know of one district of Glasgow in which one third of the populace is in receipt of disability benefit. That figure beggars belief.

It’s difficult to know what’s to be done about it. Given the general cack handedness of government, any attempt to weed out the scroungers will probably just end up persecuting people that genuinely can’t work. The spongers are wily enough to work their way around the system

Labour won’t do much about it for fear of being seen to pillory the poor, the very people whose interests they are supposedly the guarantors. The Tories may huff and puff, but ultimately they don’t give a stuff because these people have never voted for them and never will.

I feel sorry for people who are born into this cycle of supplication to the state. If your parents have no expectations, then you will have no expectations. Even the system of higher education has been buggered up to such an extent that a degree has little value. God help the people at the bottom of the heap who don’t even get to university.

13 comments:

Kyahgirl said...

we have similar issues in Canada. people who are chronically unemployed eventually go on welfare then don't muddy up the employment ratings.

garfer said...

Britain claims to have full employment. There are labour shortages which are filled by Eastern Europeans.
These people are doing the jobs that our welfare claimants aren't prepared to do.

Sniffy said...

Spot on garfer. It makes me laugh how the DWP is going on about stopping benefit fraud with their "We're coming to get you" advertising campaigns. It's not the fraudsters that need stopping, it is those who can legimitately support a lifestyle of inactivity through claims of benefits of up to £40,000 a year, plus free house, free car, bills paid, etc, etc, etc.

The answer is clear and simple: kill them all.

Anonymous said...

Sniffy beat me to it.

Put them all down, I say.

garfer said...

The worst thing of all is that some of them actually boast about it.

They definitely want shooting.

Sniffy said...

My neighbours are like that, they don't ha'f rub it in. It really hurts when you get home after being stuck in traffic on those hot summer afternoons and you find that they've been lounging about in their garden, enjoying a barbecue that YOU'VE paid for.

Fuckers.

Burn their fucking houses down.

garfer said...

I was just viewing your blog and I got a Samsung pop up. Fuckers have a nerve.

As a special incentive. disability liars get their benefits bumped up by £30 after a years lounging about.
That really encourages them to get back to work.

Sniffy said...

Social services don't help either. They provide the added incentive of arranging free extensions on council houses for those with the best limps.

Frobisher said...

Not quite a black and white issue. The Labour Government has been more than happy to "massage" the employment figures by having high numbers of people on disability benefit. This is at huge cost to the country, and even Blair seems to be rattled at the cost. Perhaps a maximum amount of benefit money any one person/family can receive from the state/council no matter how many kids/health problems/excuses they have. This figure would obviously be a lot less than paid-for work. Watch the figures fall then!

garfer said...

That would be an excellent scheme Frobishire. Single mothers with eight children by different men would have no alternative but to allow a few of them to starve to death.

surly girl said...

i used to work for the sickness benefits dept. the amount of people coming onto the sick once their unemployment expired was incredible - most with lovely, unquantifiable "back pain" or "depression". while i don't doubt that there are some genuine cases, it was apparent even then that the system was being totally abused. to my mind, some of the blame lies with a society where doctors are intimidated into issuing certificates for fraudulent claims, and there isn't even any way for the people processing the claims and seeing the trends to make any changes - years and reams of red tape before any action is taken.

scrounging fucking bastards.

there's no point even getting into the single mother thing. if i work (which i do) i'm castigated for either abandoning my child, or exploiting childless co-workers. if i don't, i'm a scrounging fucking bastard. that'll teach me for marrying a twat and getting knocked up and then leaving him after five desolate, boring years i suppose....

garfer said...

I'm not having a go at single mothers per se. It's the Vicki Polllards who have loads of kids by different men and spend the next twenty years living off the state that annoy me.

Aginoth said...

Playing politics with peoples lives, same old same old