The disabled should be prepared to work for less than the minimum wage...

[revolutionscoop]

...according to Phillip Davies MP. It's almost as though he's implying that disabled workers should come cheap, rather like faulty goods that are sold at discount. I pity his constituents.

This man is a twat of the highest order. I feel sorry for people with disabilities living within his constituency.

Whilst I know that his views aren't held by the majority of the Conserative party, the fact that Lord Ashcroft fronted a company to finance Twatty Davis into pole position leaves a lot of questions.

Hopefully the main party will hang this bastard out to dry.

No-one deserves less than minimum wage

No it isn't. Its not a plan to reduce the wages of people with disability currently in work, its to get the institutionally unemployed into work, look at how many spend their time volunteering in charity shops, is it not better for them to earn something on a market stall

". It is about adult competent people who may have been doing the job for 25 years pre disability and the bigotry of some people who refuse to accept that disability does not equal inability to work in all cases."

The charities he mentioned seem rather bemused according to reports, so i woudl wait and see what happened wrt to that one.

And MIND where everyone has a disorder that may affect their- erm- mind can't be equated with say a disability that only affects an absility unrelated to a job.

not that i think it's OK with MH either.

And it comes down to this as well: the rents and living costs of people with a disability are not going to drop. Can we as a state afford to make up even more disparity with benefits? I don't think we can afford to do that actually. It would happen, though.

And the other issue it this has stiopped discussion of possible ways to get disabled people into work. Government bursary fiannced internships where disabled people could train in a job role might be a great idea, and bursaries are less than minimum wage but they should be optional for those who wish to participate as with any otehr internship, and we would need to find ways of reducing the YTS factor where full earninga dults were repalced with YTS trainees who were then let go after their YTS scheme time ran out inn order for more low paid YTS trainees to come in.

The clue is in the name...it's minimum wage for a reason.

Cos that's the minimum people should get.

flippinada - I can't see posts on this thread who defend this tosser or what he has done.

I hope the Whips have him for this. And I hope that his constituency (and those of the other 4 mavericks who supported this) go for deselection.

It's an issue that isn't going away, that's for sure. When I used to work in the council they had a blind solicitor who had a full time 'reader'. He was a good solicitor by all accounts. I think there was some kind of funding available to the council for the partial costs of the 'reader'.

So if there's a way around it for a blind solicitor, there really ought to be some kind of lateral thinking to get people who can work, into work.

"He took the time to visit MIND and reiterated one of their suggestions"

That's not true. MIND definitely do not support his suggestion. See here

"try and make a positive difference in peoples lives"

How exactly is his suggestion going to achieve that?

Quite Lying.

I am encouraging ds1 to become self employed as I think it's by far his best bet- no customer will know he has AS, only that he makes damned good jewellery.

As an ASD professional it would be easy for a central body to have some of us that could be sued as mentors for the first year of a job and contacts thereafter, visitng maybe once a month to assist with- well in my field, organsiation, hierarchy, social skills. And I suspect that woudl cost less than making up HB, CTC, CTB, WTC etc for many low paid workers.

meditrina - they have, somethingwitty was defending him, unless I've misinterpreted his/her posts?

That's what I was responding to.

Hopefully he will be deselected. Disgusting man.

Sounds like he's banging a drum for the Equal Opportunitites to go out the window then, doesn't it.
"No Equal Ops available for you, you person with disability - perhaps if you sell yourself short we might consider employing you because obviously you are not going to perform to the standard of someone without a disability, regardless of anyone's IQ in the situation or the skills required for the job"

Fuckwit.

It's anohter good reason for me not to follow through with getting an AS diagnosis isn;t it? Presumably my MA will be worth far less with a dx than without, even though it's ultimately a piece of paper.

DISGUSTING. What a horrible man.

Seems that way Peachy - just gives the employers an excuse to downgrade your pay, if this idiot had his way.

flippingada - SWYM! < note to self, read more carefully >

He's been publicly challenged to name individuals or groups who supported his comments. Silence (what a surprise).

BTW - what is even more reprehensible is that there is no mention of the disabled in his odious Private Members Bill. He was just using it as a debating point in the House.

It was one of those comments that prompted me to pos meditrina.

I'm really astonished that someone would try to defend him tbh.

Surely DC must come out and make comment about this at some point..?

I mean *post. Typing too quickly!

I think the comments were shocking and offensive. Why shouldn't people with diabilities or mental health issues get minimum wage at least? Everywhere should be encouraged to have a diverse staff team such as makes up society.

It's the lazy (and ignorant) grouping of "mental health issues" , "learning disabilities" and disability generally with what seems like the whole job market, so reducing the whole complex subject into one possible scenario.

Not big and not clever.

I doubt DC would want to dignify this twat with a response.

They've got the relevant Minister on the record speaking against it and denying and coalition support, so the Government position repudiating him is clear.

he said if you are slower to do work and are very keen to have it and have a willing employer and willing employee then it should be lawful to work for less than the minimum wage. The real issue is one of the effect of lowish additional work/payments on benefits entitlements which accept those with disabilities and many many others. No Government seems able to deal with that.

We all know that to get any sort of job lots of young people have to work for nothing nowadays so I don't think these comments about the disabled are wrong but as a politician perhaps he should be aware some topics are not to be talked about.

I would ignore somethingwitty82 - whoever he/she is they always pop up on controversial threads and spread shite. The posting style is very similar to other previous trolls knobs posters.

did he indicate young people specifically when he made those comments?

But the point is that young people have the ability to grow up and once they reach 21 they are covered by the minimum wage, and have a MW relating to the age they are at.

How would you police againts exploitation of those with disabilities? The nature of which might never change?

I think he was just saying that if someone's disabilities mean they will do the work much slower than someone who hasn't those then it should be possible if the employee and employer want it to offer them work at less than the minimum wage. Presumably he also intended the difference would be made up to their benefit levels as before and the state saves the element which is their wage. It sounds very sensible but I doubt the state can work out a system where that occurs.