What is the matter with MPs today? Why is it Labour’s ‘moral duty’ to force the sick into work they can’t do?
Prime minister Keir Starmer seems to have been the worst of the lot, judging by the BBC’s report. He said the benefits system was “the worst of all possible worlds” – which is actually pretty close to the truth – but for the wrong reason.
He went on to say that the system discourages people from working, which is a crock. People with long-term illnesses, and disabled people, who aren’t working would love to work – simply to get out of the system that treats them like liars every day of their lives, subjects them to assessment after pointless re-assessment and tries to catch them out in anything that can possibly be made to look like a lie in every answer they give.
For sick and disabled people, the benefits system is nothing but constant psychological warfare. If Starmer is as good a lawyer as he is supposed to be, he’ll know this.
So it is This Writer’s educated opinion that Keir Starmer is lying about this.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
Moving on, it seems the Get Britain Working group of 36 Labour MPs seem to have taken their name too seriously, saying the government has a “moral duty” to help long-term sick and disabled people to work if they can.
Who decides whether a sick and/or disabled person can work? The assessors who are paid to find ways to say they are perfectly healthy “malingerers”? The MPs who have an ideological bias towards cutting the amount of money being spent keeping these people alive? We know it isn’t any doctor – medical evidence was cut out of this process in the days of Mansel Aylward.
(If you don’t know who Aylward was: he was a senior civil servant who colluded with a criminal US insurance firm, Unum Provident, to move assessment of sickness and disability benefit claims away from medical evidence and onto a mumbo-jumbo method called the biopsychosocial model; the assertion was that every claimant’s illness was all in their mind.
It led to any number of abuses including, if I recall correctly, hounding an amputee regularly to see if their limb(s) had grown back.
Is that the “moral duty” these MPs mean?
The report says they have told Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall the government faces “hard choices”. Would these be the kind of choices Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has been facing on his many recent foreign trips that have cost the public purse £180,000 according to the Daily Mail, and provided no benefit whatsoever to the country in return?
I wonder what we would find if we examined the expenses bills of each of these Labour MPs. How many times would an average annual sickness or disability benefit paymet fit in those expenses claims?
And they preach to the country about “hard choices”.
The simple fact is, picking on people who cannot defend themselves has always been the easiest choice of all – especially for those who live in comfort and never have to live through the consequences of their decisions that affect other people.
A hard choice might have involved taxing the very rich. As has been said many times in the past, a simple one per cent tax on their assets would bring in many times the £6 billion that the government wants – which includes the £5 billion which is intended to come from sickness and disability benefit bills.
There is a way to get that benefit bill down, of course. It is to prevent people from becoming ill; to stop them from falling prey to disability. That would require the planning of a health service that genuinely works for the benefit of the patient, rather than to enrich private company shareholders, and employment laws that ensure the dignity and comfort of all employees.
One would have thought the Labour Party – and therefore a Labour government – would stand four-square in favour of such things but the world is full of surprises, isn’t it?
As for Starmer, I think I’ve finally worked out why he speaks in such a strange, clipped manner. There seems to be something blocking his nose. It might even be something he has inserted himself.
Otherwise he might be able to smell what he’s shovelling.
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Why is it Labour’s ‘moral duty’ to force the sick into work they can’t do?
What is the matter with MPs today? Why is it Labour’s ‘moral duty’ to force the sick into work they can’t do?
Prime minister Keir Starmer seems to have been the worst of the lot, judging by the BBC’s report. He said the benefits system was “the worst of all possible worlds” – which is actually pretty close to the truth – but for the wrong reason.
He went on to say that the system discourages people from working, which is a crock. People with long-term illnesses, and disabled people, who aren’t working would love to work – simply to get out of the system that treats them like liars every day of their lives, subjects them to assessment after pointless re-assessment and tries to catch them out in anything that can possibly be made to look like a lie in every answer they give.
For sick and disabled people, the benefits system is nothing but constant psychological warfare. If Starmer is as good a lawyer as he is supposed to be, he’ll know this.
So it is This Writer’s educated opinion that Keir Starmer is lying about this.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
Moving on, it seems the Get Britain Working group of 36 Labour MPs seem to have taken their name too seriously, saying the government has a “moral duty” to help long-term sick and disabled people to work if they can.
Who decides whether a sick and/or disabled person can work? The assessors who are paid to find ways to say they are perfectly healthy “malingerers”? The MPs who have an ideological bias towards cutting the amount of money being spent keeping these people alive? We know it isn’t any doctor – medical evidence was cut out of this process in the days of Mansel Aylward.
(If you don’t know who Aylward was: he was a senior civil servant who colluded with a criminal US insurance firm, Unum Provident, to move assessment of sickness and disability benefit claims away from medical evidence and onto a mumbo-jumbo method called the biopsychosocial model; the assertion was that every claimant’s illness was all in their mind.
It led to any number of abuses including, if I recall correctly, hounding an amputee regularly to see if their limb(s) had grown back.
Is that the “moral duty” these MPs mean?
The report says they have told Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall the government faces “hard choices”. Would these be the kind of choices Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has been facing on his many recent foreign trips that have cost the public purse £180,000 according to the Daily Mail, and provided no benefit whatsoever to the country in return?
I wonder what we would find if we examined the expenses bills of each of these Labour MPs. How many times would an average annual sickness or disability benefit paymet fit in those expenses claims?
And they preach to the country about “hard choices”.
The simple fact is, picking on people who cannot defend themselves has always been the easiest choice of all – especially for those who live in comfort and never have to live through the consequences of their decisions that affect other people.
A hard choice might have involved taxing the very rich. As has been said many times in the past, a simple one per cent tax on their assets would bring in many times the £6 billion that the government wants – which includes the £5 billion which is intended to come from sickness and disability benefit bills.
There is a way to get that benefit bill down, of course. It is to prevent people from becoming ill; to stop them from falling prey to disability. That would require the planning of a health service that genuinely works for the benefit of the patient, rather than to enrich private company shareholders, and employment laws that ensure the dignity and comfort of all employees.
One would have thought the Labour Party – and therefore a Labour government – would stand four-square in favour of such things but the world is full of surprises, isn’t it?
As for Starmer, I think I’ve finally worked out why he speaks in such a strange, clipped manner. There seems to be something blocking his nose. It might even be something he has inserted himself.
Otherwise he might be able to smell what he’s shovelling.
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Follow Vox Political writer Mike Sivier on BlueSky
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
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