What’s worse – living on sickness benefits or dying at work because you were sent back too soon?
![Work and pensions secretary Damian Green leaves a cabinet meeting at Downing Street [Image: Peter Nicholls/Reuters].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/161031-Damian-Green-2-Peter-Nicholls-Reuters.png)
Work and pensions secretary Damian Green leaves a cabinet meeting at Downing Street [Image: Peter Nicholls/Reuters].
The Conservative Government seems to have an unending supply of these sickening (if not actually sick) individuals.
Mr Green is currently parroting former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s propaganda, and trying to pretend that every word has come to him of his own accord.
“In the long run there is nothing more expensive than saying to someone, ‘Here’s a benefit you can have for the rest of your life and we will ignore you,’” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
You can see that he is not really concerned about anybody’s health. He just wants to keep the money they need to survive. One wonders why he thinks he needs it.
“It’s not only expensive but bad for the individual concerned. The great mindset change I want to achieve is the acceptance that a good job is good for your health. The idea that sitting at home living on benefits is in any way good for people, particularly people with a mental health condition, is completely wrong.”
But a good job isn’t good for your health if you are too ill to do it. Hasn’t this buffoon seen I, Daniel Blake?
Silly question. Of course he has. That’s why he is launching his review.*
He wants you to think the government is reacting to concerns raised by Ken Loach’s social comment masterpiece – but instead of helping the sick, he is forcing an agenda of harm onto them.
His review is setting out to find more ways of lying to people that they aren’t sick enough for benefit, in order to send them out looking for jobs they can’t do – because they are too ill.
He will set them up to fail; he will set them up to die.
But that’s all right – his government does not check what happens to sick people it flings off-benefit. If they die within two weeks of the decision, it is recorded.
But we know many examples of people who have died after that period. Their deaths go unrecorded and the DWP carries on its merry way.
Do you have a relative or friend who relies on sickness benefits?
If so – and assuming you can’t be bothered to complain about the Conservative Government’s plans – I recommend that you keep a watchful eye on them.
Take careful note of what happens after they are told they don’t need benefit and must work for a living.
You just see if they actually become more healthy.
My bet is, you’ll be at their funeral within a year.
And the Conservatives will be delighted because they will have saved a few pennies.
Working is better for people’s health than “sitting at home living on benefits” for sickness and disability, the work and pensions secretary has said before the launch of a welfare review.
Damian Green will launch a consultation on disability and sickness benefits later on Monday. It will look specifically at how people qualify for sick pay and doctors’ notes, and review the controversial work capability assessments which determine whether disabled people are eligible for welfare.
There are some concerns that sick and disabled people could be pressured to return to work before they are ready.
Source: Sitting at home on sickness benefits is bad for health, says Green | Politics | The Guardian
*It turns out he hasn’t – according to the Mirror. That means he isn’t in a position to criticise it, but he has. He says it is “monstrously unfair” to Job Centre Plus staff who are paid to persecute the sick and disabled. Now, we all know the arguments, and some JCP staff do seem to have a conscience – but far too few, otherwise the Tory pogrom would not have gained the traction it has. It’s all about creating an atmosphere of fear; the JCP staff fear losing their jobs, so they persecute the jobless.
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I have read the government green paper today and I am screwed and so is dawn the woman I am a carer for
“In the long run there is nothing more expensive than saying to someone, ‘Here’s a benefit you can have for the rest of your life and we will ignore you,’
So he’s going to forgo his ministerial pension then, what a grand chap.
@Brian
……………….which now means the State pension that the Tories now describe to be a “benefit”. Don’t forget that one of Duncan-Smith’s underlings Priti Patel mooted that OAPs should work for their pensions. What is it with Tories that everyone has to work except for themselves? The State pension is the largest single expense to the social security budget, an expense which the Tories would love to dispense with.
one assumes that we wont have to pay NI then ?
From one bag of scum the chalice is passed on to the next bag of scum and all making out of it
The thing is, if he intends to force those with mental health issues into the workplace, it is not just their wellbeing that is at risk! Think about it.
Green and the tories won’t care, they want us to die, either on benefits or on crappy way, just as long as we die, that’s all that matters to the fascist party!
“crappy pay”
The Green Paper contains that seminal phrase “work is to be considered a Health Outcome”. Pure evil, pure IDS in his finest “work will make you free” delusional state. How about, er, “Health and Well Being as a Health Outcome”? How about Work as a positive outcome from Unemployment?
There are two things missing from the trite piece of unbridled ideology (1) what is the treatment of those who can’t work? There is nothing about how that group is defined, so one is left with the impression that as far as the ideologues are concerned there is no such condition, there is no degree of illness or disability that is considered unable to do some toil for a crust, for the right to eat and maintain life.
The other missing element is that while much is said about work “opportunities”, there is zero on the fact that the sort of work suitable for someone who is crippled with arthritis or depression is not available. We know that. There are also no fine words about enforcement of disability and other employment law, or about making it harder to take any action against an errant employer. There is the new Work and Health Programme, which is a new reincarnation of the old discredited Work Programme, but with forced CBT and other forms of pressure and coercion. I fear too many will be sent to these “contract” proxy employers – which is what the Work programme is – for a few hours a day, until they are unable to do even that, and the sanctions will then do the rest. It’s a killing programme. Plain and Simple.