'The purpose of Welfare is to help people into work

[AnnieMaybe]

This is what David Cameron just said at the end of the BBC benefit programme

Does he not know what welfare is? Has he forgotten the ethos of where it has evolved from

Truffle not always the case. Depends what is included in the T's & C's of the Insurance.

but he probably does not need benefits anyway.

some figures

Facts and Figures

Your tax - give it rest

Disability insurance exists for exactly the circumstances you've described above Misspixie.

This is not to say that I begrudge anyone assistance for anyone who's had such misfortune; rather, that I am not one accident away of being dependent upon the state.

Every single one of us is one payslip away from redundancy or one accident away from being dependant on state help for the rest of our lives no matter how much one has planned/saved.

that's just not true. some people are one payslip away from a financial crisis but many people do not live their lives like that/do not find themselves in that situation.

catastrophes do happen and people can have very shitty luck but many people don't factor normal live time events into how they live their lives and pay the cost.

e.g. your partner leaving you is likely. redundancy is something many/most people will experience in their lifetime.

You are touchingly naive if you think private insurance for disability is reliable, Truffle. Just like any other insurance, it's full of small print and exceptions and limitations.

As one or two MNers can testify, who had such insurance before they became ill and are now reliant on the insurer of last resort aka the welfare state.

A particular nasty is the clause about pre-existing conditions. You often can't get insurance for the condition most likely to make you personally too disabled to work.

So yes, if you actually work to earn your living then you personally are just one accident or diagnosis away from being dependent on the state. Those who don't have to work and the money comes in anyway (property, shares, inheritance, whatever) will be fine.

and it should not be news to any adult that you cannot get insurance from something you already have.

Well exactly. So people who already have - or have a high chance of having - a condition when they start work can't get cover. Even if they're able to work for years before it kicks in.

Which is why as a country we can't rely on private incapacity insurance. It just doesn't cover many of the people most likely to become ill.

You may personally be three payslips away from disaster, YouAre, rather than one. Myself, I had six months' living expenses safely tucked away when I became ill.

That was ten years ago.

I'm not sure what you're talking about PartialFancy. Are people entering into the early stages of illness at a young age, or trying to get disability insurance at a old age?

I'm sorry to hear that you're ill, Partial.

I'm not going into detail. The facts are so prominent that it would out me in an instant. In summary. He was insured but not against what happened because it was a freak accident. They didn't have to pay out. Ergo the T's & C's. A bit like when life insurance covers say they will cover all eventualities and then back out if you had an irritant cough for six months that you never bothered to tell them about.

partialf - I too am sorry you are ill.

Many health conditions are diagnosed at a young age.

Many health conditions are genetic even when they don't become apparent till later (which is why insurance companies ask for family health info).

Some health conditions are not diagnosed at the time of insuring but the insurance companies go back and find symptoms (eg headache) which make the later discovered brain tumour "pre-existing".

Private health insurance is often provided through one's job, which creates a dilemma about changing jobs when a condition has emerged.

Your insurance may cover you - but then you have a child who becomes disabled and needs fulltime care for their whole life.

And many, many other obvious problems with relying on private insurance.

.

Custardo that's fab! These cosmetic companies work wonders nowadays

Again, all those ranting on about how everyone should 'work' - do you actually understand what you mean by the term? Is it really more beneficial to society or the individual for someone to stack shelves in Tesco in exchange for their benefit thus enabling Tesco to sack a paid worker and replace him/her with a Workfare serf, than it is for a person to recieve a subsistence benefit and fill his/her days with stuff like getting the shopping in for the elderly, doing odd jobs for neighbours, knitting cardies for the village jumble sale or whatever?

If we have to give a portion of our taxes to keeping MPs in duck houses and moat-cleaning, not to mention the fucking Windsor parasites, what's wrong with a few pennies of those taxes going to support the people who want to make art rather than spend their days sitting in a call centre chasing up the folk who've defaulted on their payday loans?

You might also like to consider how few of the current MPs have ever done any actual work in their lives. Most of them, these days, study politics at university, followed by a bit of unpaid trotting around in a constituency office (which Mummy and Daddy can fund them for) and then straight into Parilament. Yet they are very keen to insist that other people should be on their knees scrubbing, or shovelling shit, or digging holes, whether or not they can live on the money they're paid.

The most shocking thing about last night's Panorama for me was the fact that Brent Council was forking out over £600 A WEEK to put a family up in two rooms in a B and B! Presumably some "hardworking person" is making a fortune out of this racket. The real scandal is that all our social housing has been sold off and never been replaced which is why it is now unaffordable for those families shown last night to live in London. Even if they get work I doubt if any of those people featured could earn enough to meet those costs.

Presumably some "hardworking person" is making a fortune out of this racket.

Yep. Many times over.

The thing is about this country is people are letting the government turn people against each other.
we spend to much of our time judging people and focusing on others incomes money etc ...there is a loads of reasons people may not work but people judge them all the same unless that person goes in to full life personal details, why is that anyone's business.

workfare for lone parents on income support , what about stahm with working partners who claim tax credits ,shouldn't they count in that too ?

mummy

I would quite like the ability to stay home with children extended until school age, so it wouldn't matter if you were a lone parent or a SAHM supported by a partner who needed tax credits

Unfortunately I'm not sure that the county can support this at all

Rufus the Country can stop letting the big boys come over here and quite literally shit on our doorstep for one. Billions to be made there and I'm not exaggerating neither

Thanks for the links DawnDonna I did read them.

Maybe we need to accept that we can never have full employment again, there will always be more and more unemployed people in our society, and start planning for how to deal with it? Maybe having a minister for the unemployed or the same thing with a different title?