Dear Dave: pay child benefit to all regardless of income, and save a packet

Why?

With increases in medical science I would have thought that there was less.

The problem isn't "fraud", it's people claiming a long term sickness benefit for an illness which is temporary. This isn't a fraudulent claim, it's one that the system doesn't classify properly. ISTM perfectly right that someone who was ill, but isn't any more, to come off a benefit designed for sick people.

tim

Reply to
tim....
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We're not seeing government borrowing drop right now though.

Agreed. (Personally I think they should have let the banks fail anyway.)

Because there are a lot more people alive now. Because a lot of disabilities were not recognised in the past. As another poster said - because we are (should be) a more caring society nowadays.

No. I read this in an old fashioned newspaper. I can't recall which one although it was probably the Indepedent.

Reply to
Mark

Well, put your money where your mouth is and make voluntary contributions.

Simples.

Reply to
®i©ardo

The banks's profits won't wipe out the deficit!

And the whole economy too? You'd have been happy if your savings had gone up in smoke? Or if your employer's salary account had so you weren't paid?

The proportion has massively risen.

More caring? So it's more caring to simply write large numbers of people off as "disabled" and useless to society? Yeah, really caring, maybe in the world of hand-wringing middle-class Gruniad readers. I do unofficial voluntary work helping benefit claimants (including some claiming disability benefits), the vast majority are capable of some sort of work, but the way the benefits system works makes it not only not worthwhile, but positively discourages it.

One guy I know suffers from paranoia, he couldn't hold down a full time job but he's a whizz on website design, asp.net etc and the idea that he couldn't do productive work on an ad-hoc basis to help support himself (at least on a temporary basis) is ludicrous. But the unbelivable hassle he would face if he came off benefits temporarily and then had to go back on makes it simply not worth the risk, so the most he does is help others with websites etc voluntarily just for something to do. I am convinced that if he started to see that people are prepared to pay him for his work his sense of self-worth will increase dramatically.

The vast majority of those on disability benefits can do some sort of productive, useful work. But the way the benefits system works makes them make a stark choice between "can I hold down a full time job" or "am I useless to society". Disability premiums (other than those which reflect the additional cost of the disability eg mobility components of DLA) act as an incentive to claimants to prove they *can't* work. If they prove they can work by getting a job, they'd find it hard to reclaim if their condition got worse or flares up.

Ironically it's the Tories who are now undoing their own work - in the

80/90's they wanted people off unemployment onto disability benefits because it made the unemployment stats look better!

You may as well quote the Daily Mail as a source.

Reply to
Andy Pandy

They should be helping to reduce it though.

I don't subscribe to such an apopacliptic view. The banks should not have been bailed out as they were. They could have been allowed to 'fail' and then completely nationalised. Taxpayers money should not have been given to the very people who were pivotal in causing the whole mess in the first place.

So it's better to write ME sufferers off as scroungers, is it? They're making it all up then?

I'm not saying the system is perfect. I do object to the proposals to make it worse.

One thing we agree on ;-)

I can't. I don't read the gutter press.

Reply to
Mark

There were many conditions that just weren't acknowledged 30 years ago.

This could be modified without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The new proposals will lead to a person with no legs having to have regular checks to ensure that they still cannot walk! Also checks will often be done by non-experts.

Reply to
Mark

Why? I already make contributions through the taxation system.

Reply to
Mark

They are. That's the point. But they can't do all 3 of rebuilding their reserves, paying the taxpayer back more quickly, and get lending again to business just by cutting a few bonuses.

Oh really? So you expect the banks to fail and people with money in the bank not to lose out?

And while this was happening the economy would have ground to a halt. Banks did fail in the 1930's. Look what that led to.

Well they certainly shouldn't have allowed Fred the Shread to walk off with such a massive pension, and let them carry on paying bonuses, but the last govt was so up their arses...

But there is no way they could let the big retail banks fails.

Strawman alert...who is saying that?

I object to proposals not to make it better. Not that the current proposals make it much better - ideally all means testing should be abolished and benefit withdrawal incorporated into tax.

So were they right 20 years ago or now, eh? I'd say now.

You get more unbiased reporting in even the Mail that you do in the so called "Independant".

Reply to
Andy Pandy

A person with no legs may not be able to walk, but that doesn't mean they are not able to work.

Reply to
Ronald Raygun

Exactly! I could do my job quite easily with no legs, I'd struggle with other stuff but working would be a piece of piss. The policies that want to see someone with no legs (or similar disability) as the subject of pity and charity and chucked on the scrapheap of life long benefits dependancy is ending, hopefully.

Reply to
Andy Pandy

And how do you know this?

Oh yes, you heard some Labour politician claim it on the TV

tim

Reply to
tim....

In message , Mark writes

And where are all these jobs going to come from as public sector jobs are reduced?

Reply to
Gordon H

That's true in a society which creates such jobs, and where you have an obligation for employers to provide them, which used to be the case. I'm not sure that still applies?

When the company I worked for decided to get rid of anyone over 55 I was

58, and tried for a number of jobs for which I never got an interview, in spite of being healthier and fitter than many my age.
Reply to
Gordon H

There's the guarantee scheme to protect them.

And we don't know what is going to happen in the future. Personally I think the bail-out has just delayed the problem, rather than prevented it.

Arguably the banks should never been allowed to grow so big that we need to bail them out at all.

I was pointing out an example of why there may be more disabled now than 30 years ago. ME was not recognised at all then.

I was not aware there were any proposals likely to make things better. The headline change is a freeze on benefit levels.

Neither. I was just agreeing with you that they fiddled the stats last time around.

Bwahahahahahaha!

Reply to
Mark

With limits. It wouldn't have covered 100 million waiting in a major employer's payroll account to pay the employees that month. And funded by other banks, if a few major banks went bust the others would probably have gone bust paying for the guarantee.

It delayed the pain, but it should have lessened it too. Unless people bury their heands in the sand and think it can all be solved by not paying bankers bonuses.

Indeed. But the real problem was the mix of retail and investment activity. If all the banks suffer from the same thing at the same time then it doesn't really matter how big or small they are.

What, the headline in the "Independant"? Try reading the budget report. Most benefits will increase with CPI, some will go up more (eg CTC), some will reduce (eg silly levels of HB), some have a sharper withdrawal rate (eg tax credits), but IIRC child benefit is the only one "frozen".

Neither?? So they were wrong to move people from unemployment to disability benefits 20 years ago, and they are wrong now to move people from disability to unemployment benefits?

Yes. And now they're putting it right.

But I thought you didn't read the Mail. So how could you possibly know?

I read both and they are both very biased.

Reply to
Andy Pandy

In message , Mark writes

The Mail is about as unbiased as the Socialist Worker.

The crossword is about right for a lunch break, and there's Money Mail on Wednesdays. After that, it's just Tory propaganda.

Reply to
Gordon H

Yes, but the point is that so is the Independent.

Mark

Reply to
Mark Goodge

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